001All right. Thank you so much. Good evening, President Fak, Vice President Nelson, trustees, and Dr. Munchchi. Thank you for being here for this special study session regarding the graduation requirement uh committee update. Um, as you know, we've convened throughout the 24 25 and 2526 school years to review how to best incorporate the added graduation requirements of ethnic studies, financial literacy, and the alternative pathway to a diploma. And the purpose of this special study session is to allow more time for dialogue and direction before you vote on any further changes to our existing graduation requirements. Our current board policy statement indicates that a high school diploma in is intended to enable all students to take advantage of opportunities for postsecary education and/or employment. So why are we reviewing our existing graduation requirement? As you may remember,
002there are the three new state requirements that sparked our discussion around existing graduation uh requirements here in Gilroy Unifi. Those three pieces of legislation added in an ethnic studies requirement, financial literacies requirement, and an alternative pathway to a diploma for qualifying students with disabilities. AB 101, we'll start with ethnic studies. AB 101 requires the completion of a one semester course in ethnic studies, and our high schools must offer an ethnic studies course starting in 202526, which we are currently doing. though. This is a year-long class that we um have had in place for a while with um the previous pilot that has then now been um in implemented as a year-long course with financial literacy. AB22927 mandates this as a standalone course required for students in the class of 2031. Unlike ethnic studies, this course
003may not be combined with another course and financial literacy may replace the one semester econ requirement and we are required to offer the course in the 2728 school year. Our desire is to have a pilot course in place by next school year, the 2627 school year, so that when we implement the course fully in 2728, we have a quality A throughG approved course that has gone through iterations and has received feedback from students and teachers about the different curriculum options. With the impending implementation of this course, we do have some sense of urgency around our district's approach to examine our existing graduation requirements. Finally, AB 181 and SB14 introduced an alternative pathway to a diploma. This new law allows an alternate pathway to a high school diploma for students with significant disabilities, but this only
004pertains to qualifying students who are eligible to take the California alternate assessment or the CA. As you may recall, our proposal for implementing this alternative pathway was approved at the May 2025 board meeting. Since then, um, the since the 2425 school year, we've had several individuals participate on the grad requirements committee. Those individuals are listed here, and each high school participated alongside district leadership with teacher representatives from each of our departments um, and our academic coordinators and principles also attended. Keeping in mind the existing board policy language around the purpose of a diploma, the committee generated this collective understanding of a diploma. This was our guiding statement throughout our work together and it closely resembles our version or view of that portrait of a graduate that we had been discussing and that is that a
005high school diploma demonstrates students mastery of essential skills through their completion of a rigorous and meaningful education. Student completion of these requirements one empowers students to be productive citizens and two allows them to take the next step in life whether it be for college or career and our committee felt that this was aligned with the existing board policy language. So to recap, this timeline shows when we met as a committee and I will start with a reminder of the proposal we brought to the board in May 2025 and some of what was approved. I'll start with that alternative pathway to a diploma as we need to not take any further action on this. Um this is again for those students who are call eligible who now have a way to earn a high school diploma.
006Those who are not call eligible but who have an IEP may pursue a waiver for certain requirements that are above the California state diploma because again our diploma as it stands is A throughG aligned. With our A throughG diploma in place, we leverage ED code 51225.1 to wave requirements that exceed the minimum state diploma requirements for specific student subgroups. Those are foster, migratory or newcomer students. And as I mentioned earlier with the expanded waiver are students with disabilities um for certain disabilities. But um the students must qualify through their IEP meeting after uh various accommodations have been put into place after the IEP goals have been reviewed numerous times. Um and again, thanks to our board's action in May of 2025, no further action is required at this point in time. But these are the
007supports that we do have in place to ensure that students fulfill our A throughG diploma requirements. So moving into how our existing graduation requirements play out across four years for a general education student. You can see here that four-year plan. This was the proposed pathway presented in May of 2025, which the board examined and discussed with the committee's recommendations presented. You can see here that financial literacy would pair with economics and government would pair with ethnic studies in the students senior year. Because of the committee's belief in the value of an A throughg diploma, the committee recommended that we add in the financial literacy requirement and reduce the existing one-year ethnic studies piloted course to a halfyear. We had discussed how the courses marked with an asterisk show where students have choice. For example, students
008um they don't necessarily need to take Spanish one in 9th grade. Rather, they can start their world language requirement in 10th grade um etc. And our counselors and academic coordinators actually play a very supportive role in helping students with these course selection options. This slide captures a summary of the discussion that occurred between us um that late night in May of 2025. Some ideas were floated such as considering the elimination of the economics requirement especially since the new ed code allows that econ be waved with the financial literacy added requirement. Um we discussed the secondyear Spanish requirement. Um, and we talked about making VAPA and CTE classes all semester long classes, though that could pose some challenges with the master schedule. And the third-year science requirement was also called into question, though it was acknowledged
009that it um supports students with the state CAST test. um and how we have revised our um existing third-year science course to be an actual elective. Moving away from the mandated biochem fizz, but really allowing for that third year to be a choice um has really helped and um better engage students with science. And our trustees asked that we continue to consider eliminating A throughG requirements as the default diploma, acknowledging the importance of career or vocationalbased education. From that discussion, our committee sought to re-evaluate how to better incorporate more elective opportunities for students while maintaining courses that support student achievement on CASP in both English language arts and math and on CAST in science. Examine how to improve elective choices each year and address the challenge of sophomore year which currently lacks flexibility and choice.
010Our board's direction was to complete the strategic planning process where we saw our community's desire for more CTE opportunities for students. And our trustees accepted the revisions to the graduation requirements that support our English language learners um and our students with disabilities, which was the expanded waiver process and then counting the um ELD2 class as to English credit towards graduation. As previously mentioned, the financial literacy class should be piloted next year in 2627 so that we can have a viable course in place when we are required to implement the course in the following year in 2728 per ed. As a result of the robust discussion that occurred, we acknowledge the governing board's desires to provide flexibility, have high scores on dashboard indicators, provide opportunities for college and career, and emphasize choice for the high school
011experience without mandating too many additional requirements. So to frame this dilemma from a design thinking perspective, we asked, how might we redesign the high school graduation requirements to balance schedule flexibility, student engagement, and their college or career readiness while addressing concerns around current course requirements and state mandates? This is the million-dollar question. It is a question, though, that is not unique to Gilroy Unified. It is one that the state of California is grappling with. Um, as we had briefly discussed last board meeting, the state of California is exploring the portrait of a graduate with the work of the California Collaborative on Educational Excellence or CCE. It is um their work um that is carrying on um despite you know who's next in the super state superintendent seat. Um at the same time that same organization
012is looking to redesign the high school experience. So like I had mentioned this is not a unique um um dilemma if you will for Gilroy Unified as the whole state is really looking at what does high school look like for our students and how do we better engage our students in high school in their education. So, as a committee, we took that feedback and we've continued meeting this year. We plan to bring back to our April or May board meeting this agenda item to vote on. And um instead of us having a very very very lengthy discussion there, that's why um I was hoping that we could have some of that dialogue here. Um and I am presenting with you several different solutions that hopefully address the question posed. Um, and so here are our
013various uh, grad requirement considerations that our committee reviewed and uh, we ask that you consider the pros and cons of each of these options. And again, this is not an action item. We're not voting on anything today. This just allows for some of that dialogue and further direction. There are four different options I'd like to show today. The first is a CTE pathway aligned schedule. The second is a schedule without economics and the third is what happens when we eliminate A throughG for all and the final is the proposal presented in the May 2025 meeting just to revisit that. So starting with the CTE aligned schedule, I recalled our visit to Hollister High School where we witnessed numerous CTE pathways in action in beautiful facilities with teachers who are qualified to teach those specific areas
014um and just the amazing building. And so I started to dig into that. What does that look like? Well, they have eight different industry pathways. Um, and within those pathways, it may look like they have fewer choices than what we do, but those are very eight robust pathways that they offer. Um, each concentrator course has an attached capstone course. Um, and it why that's important is in order for us to have CTE completers, students must complete both the concentrator course and the capstone course in order to be acknowledged on the California dashboard. The added bonus of course that Hollister High offers is the under the credit section um where you can see some of those pathways uh result in specific certifications and we have put some of these pieces into place um with our various
015um pathways as well. So Hollister High School's gened student pathway looks like this. As you can see, their 10th grade is also impacted with a lack of flexibility. They are also an A throughg default diploma. Yet, their emphasis on the electives focuses on CTE and they do have some minor differences which we will explore. For Gilroy Unified, the we have five pathways, five industry pathways. Um, and some industry pathways have more options than what you saw with Hollister. Um, and the courses within those pathways are not always consistently offered from year to year, as not all classes either fill up or teachers with the necessary credentials are hard to find. And so, we get creative with our scheduling. When we compare our gened pathway with Hollister high schools, you can see that we actually have
016a very similar structure with very similar challenges. But what we recall from our visit are the very beautiful facilities that house these amazing CTE programs that they have. And you can see that there are a few differences between our graduation requirements. We each offer 220 credits with the minor differences in that we require three years of science and Hollister requires two. But it should be noted as my science teachers pointed out, but they have health. Um, and that health is paired with ethnic studies. Um, and we have what's called a half-year CTE requirement, which in our May of 2025 proposal, we had actually asked to increase to one year. Um, and Hollister High School's college and career readiness indicator is actually only at 54% and ours most recently is at 50%. So, we're not too
017far behind. Undoubtedly though, Hollister High School has a robust offering for those career pathways. eight pathways is significant. Each one resulting in either dual enrollment credit or a certification or is in line with A throughG requirements and A throughG credit. So still students have opportunity for choice and exploration and are not closing the door for college because those courses are A throughG approved by our University of California system. At the last board meeting, meaning um earlier this month, um there was also a special study session related to uh where there may be community support for a bond. Um so I grabbed a screenshot of that because I found that important to this discussion. And one of the areas where there was very strong support for a bond was where the bond would support renovation and
018construction of CTE classrooms to better prepare students for jobs. What we saw at Hollister High School, I believe, aligns with the type of facilities and offerings our community in Gilroy hopes for our students here. But in order for us to offer those choices, it's important to remember the facilities and resources required to do so. I was looking at a neighboring um county where they actually presented about CTE pathway challenges and opportunities and I'd compared it to some of our own challenges and opportunities and found that again we are not alone. I think again the whole state and country really are putting a focus on CTE education and we all believe that CTE matters. What Hollister High School does beautifully is that their courses count towards A throughG credit. As I mentioned, and with the state's
019focus on ensuring more students are prepared for 4-year universities upon completing their diploma, there was a push in many school districts across the state to change their requirements to the A3G diploma when we did at the same time several years back. And in doing so, it pushed many high schools to convert their classes to be approved by the UC system to count towards admission. Simultaneously, we acknowledge that there are challenges with expanding CTE. Those are facilities, teacher credentials, and program funding. As a matter of fact, we can only secure some of the funding for CTE if the teachers have that CTE um credential. Finding qualified industry credentialed instructors is also a challenge, not just for Gilroy Unified, but across the state. And while we are receiving funding that supports our CTE programs all listed here,
020this is what um is actually sustaining our existing programs and we do have yes quite a bit where LCAP is also supporting. But should we wish to expand our offerings, we will need to invest more, acquire more funding funding, physically redesign our spaces, and think creatively about how to hire and/or incentivize teachers to earn those industry CTE credentials. It's not impossible, but it is a challenge that everybody in the state is really looking at. The next requirement is the one where we considered eliminating the economics requirement. If we just add in financial literacy and take economics away, we are swapping out one course for another. It's a one forone exchange. But this would necessitate in a schedule where we have year-long class that ethnic studies remain it as it's being remain as it's being piloted,
021which is a year-long class in nth grade. and we're not really doing too much different to what's already in place. If the economics requirement is eliminated, what happens to ethnic studies? And this is also a question that many districts are grappling with. If we want more flexibility for student schedules, eliminating that economic um require econ requirement actually um calls into question whether we should offer ethnic studies as um embedded into the existing curriculum. um it could be condensed into a semester which is what we have pro um proposed earlier but it could also be embedded into English but it is not a prefer English social studies actually other elective courses as well whether it's art etc and this is not the preferred recommendation of our graduation committee as they believe um strongly in the curriculum
022that was locally developed by our teachers um but it is still another way to meet the law's requirement ment. If we consider taking away A through G for all, you will see much more flexibility each school year. Here you can see um that we've kept the economics requirement and the ethnic studies requirement in senior year. And you can see a lot more pink show up on the schedule. Um that pink being the electives here. You can also see that students have basically two elective choices or more each school year. Um, and it still maintains four years of English, three years of math, and three years of science. So, it's still slightly above the basic uh state requirements. Um, but that's because our board desires to ensure our recommendations support CASP scores as well. This slide,
023if you missed it, I'll I'll do it again. Here you go. Um, this slide shows no economics uh course as a standalone um and no ethnic studies as a standalone class. And you can see how the how light senior year becomes bringing in some concerns about seniors level of engagement with school and concerns around higher levels of potential dropout as they have so much more um room that isn't necessary towards their completion. Finally, I will rep I'll represent our most recent proposal. Rep sorry, I will represent our most recent proposal with some data points for consideration. Bringing back that college and career readiness indicator, in order for us to have students actually considered as meeting on this um indicator on the California dashboard, students must complete one of these following options. Obviously, there's actually a
024heavy emphasis on proficiency on the CASP um in both ELA and mathematics, whether it's with A throughG completion or CTE completion or even with the seal of biiteracy. And it's important to call out that our A throughG completion has been that factor that has helped support GUSD students in meeting um on this indicator. So if A throughG is eliminated, how could we maintain or improve college and career uh the college and career readiness indicator which then calls like how are we doing on this indicator? So I was really pleased to see with the release of the 2025 dashboard that we've uh demonstrated significant growth from 24 to 25 across almost all subgroups with regard to students being prepared. Um the percent of students not prepared in almost all cases also significantly declined. I think it's
025pretty notable to see that the percentage of students meeting on that prepared level increased from 41.2% to 50%. while those not prepared decreased from 43.7 to 36.9% and we saw several equity gains. This is exactly why A throughg diploma requirements were um a big thing several years back um and it is why we shifted into having an A throughG diploma. The desire of our district has been to provide more access and opportunity for all students to both college and career. And by having that A throughG, the philosophy was that we at least keep that door open for four-year university. So revisiting this proposed pathway, our committee still feels strongly about its originally proposed solution in that we would add in ethnic studies and financial literacy, each being a semesterl long requirement while maintaining all other
026existing requirements. However, in our May 2025 meeting, trustees, you requested that I demonstrate how those courses with the asterisks be moved around to make 10th grade a little bit more reasonable. So the next slides show what that might look like. Students don't need to take Spanish one in their nth grade year as I had mentioned earlier. Rather they can take it in their junior year perhaps. Um, while that might prevent some students from earning the seal of biiteracy, we continue to explore possible dual enrollment options that can actually ease that up for students as they move through high school. Um, and the physical science course and elective science courses can be switched in 10th grade and 11th grade. Um, although ninth grade must be biology because we are required to cover some of those health
027standards um, in there. And if students understand that they can craft their own pathway with their academic coordinators selecting some of those courses more freely, if we don't lock them in to certain schedule requirements, then they may be able to disperse some of the electives across their four years instead of concentrating them all in their senior year. Here we actually even moved world history to 12th grade, partnering it in with ethnic studies in a way. Um, again demonstrating that not all of the courses are currently prescrib as currently prescribed need to be taken in that sequence. Once upon a time when there were CSTs and our students were taking a world history test and a US history test, that's when it really mattered that all 10th graders had world history and all 11th graders had
028US history, etc. And while there are some classes that must remain in their existing location like English 9, 10, and 11 or math 1, 2, and 3, and bio, and nth grade, other courses can be moved around. And with this in place, you can see that students can explore more when they are in nth grade if we shift around some of those tiles. And I want to re um have you recall as well that in order for students to be CTE completers, they must complete that um concentrator class and then the capstone class, pardon me. And so this allows for some of that exploration in nth grade and then they can earn that um uh capstone after 10th grade and then potentially be ready for some industry work in 11th or 12th grade. So this
029still allows for that pathway. Bringing it back to those indicators that qualify GUSD graduates as prepared on the dashboard. There was again remember 50% of our graduates were prepared on that um dashboard. Of those 50% 83% were considered prepared because of their completion of the A throughG requirements. 67.5% were those who passed an AP exam and 50.8% met or exceeded the CASP in both ELA and math. In comparison, only 24.7% qualified due to CTE pathway completion. And arguably, maybe that's because we have our A throughG requirements in place. 15.7% um earned it with college course credit. And there are students besides GEKA who are taking college courses um through our high-step programs through their own um dual enrollment opportunities that they pursue. And 24.9% of our students um attained it because of the seal of
030biiteracy. This is important to point out because if we want to increase the CTE pathway completion, it's not just about eliminating the A throughG requirements, but ensuring that we have the CTE pathway courses, staffing, and facilities to offer for students. And while we believe it's important to keep pursuing CTE pathway development and looking at that creatively actually looking at the existing electives that we offer and seeing how those are both A throughG and CTE aligned and looking at strengthening our partnership with Gavlin College. Um we're we are expanding ways to also promote the seal of biiteracy for students who may be fluent in another language that we don't teach in our schools. um that they may be fluent in a different language at home and we're also exploring different options to ensure that those students
031can earn the seal of bi literacy which could also help towards this indicator. So we're exploring different ways as well but further with um our added partnership with San Jose State University we believe that our A3G diploma ensures that more students are motivated to stay on track um and our credit recovery and summer school options support students in doing just that. So looking at the students who were approaching prepared, 37.7% were approaching prepared because of their performance on the CASP in both ELA and math and 37.7% um being on track with their A throughG coursework while only 30% were CTE pathway completers. And that's that's a good thing, right? Because we think about again that small chunk of students who were approaching how do we get them to the next level? But remember, CTE pathway
032completion alone is not enough. The students have to be proficient in ELA and math um for the CASP. So, bringing us back to our existing board policy and our committee's collective understanding of a diploma, our committee believes that the last proposal opens more doors for students ensuring that they have the at at least the they have choice for college. And in considering um the dilemma, should we choose to increase our CTE offerings and elective choices, we need the funds, materials, staffing, and facilities to do so, which may not yet be feasible without that support of the bond. Yet another possibility is to consider a slower approach to moving away from an A throughG diploma if that desire remain and approving our most recent proposal knowing that we can revisit these graduation requirements again once we've
033secured funding and established stronger CTE pathways. To recap, this slide um shows a quick overview of the potential pros and cons and uncertainties with the various proposals. Um and as I had mentioned, our committee felt very strongly that our proposed um schedule revision was strongest, but we did acknowledge that there is truly limited flexibility unless we start moving around those tiles and really um ensuring that students are informed and aware how they can move around those different requirements. Um the CTE Hollister High School pathway aligned schedule really did give us an opportunity to see how another school district is doing it. Another school district that is very heavily CTE focused. Um and we saw that they did maintain strong A throughG. They had consistent CTE offerings um which for us might be a challenge at
034this point in time. Um and they only had a two-year science requirement which may questionably impact the um CA performance on CASP. If we eliminate um econ from the schedule, again it maintains strong A throughG because economics is not required by the UC's or CSUs for admission. Um which did call however into question where ethnic studies would be placed within the students schedule and how it could be integrated. Um but it may offer more flexibility for students. If we eliminate A throughG for all, there is an uncertain or unknown impact that it would have on our existing college and uh the California college and career readiness indicator. Um and we acknowledge that there are existing CTE limitations again because of facilities, staffing, funding, materials, all of that. Uh but it does increase flexibility. Absolutely. There's
035a lot more choice. Um, and again, we have to have the classes for students to choose because we also wouldn't want to set them up for a false choice like, "Hey, guess what? The only class that's open is Spanish 3. Congratulations." Right? So, just kind of thinking about those things as a a slow roll um and a slower approach potentially to completely revising our graduation requirements. And so that's why we felt that our proposed schedule, the proposed revision maintains that strong A throughG, maintains CTE and our current FTEES um or full-time teacher equivalents. And um it we acknowledge that limited flexibility, but that's where we had some good brainstorm as a group about how to make it so that students don't feel so locked into that um sequence. So with that um thank you for
036listening. I know that was a long presentation. Um I uh I welcome feedback and um you know would love to hear your thoughts about these various proposals. >> Yes, Trusty Peno. >> Sonia, could you put up the um proposed schedule? >> Which one? The this one. Oh yeah. >> Okay. I I am frustrated because I can't get all the schedules aligned >> together. >> Well, then they're they're on the same they're back. >> So, no, that I just want that up there. Thanks. >> Yes. Um I just did my four-year plan with my ninth grader and it was very overwhelming and I feel I'm somewhat trained in this but um I'm looking at this grade 12 and we're lumping in English which is a grad you I'm a senior right and so my senior year
037I have to pass English financial literature government, ethnic studies, and government in order to graduate. Um, that just seems like a lot of graduation rate, like I have to graduate or I have to pass these things in order to graduate. Um, I just working with students in my past, um, I just thoughts on that. I think no matter what, seniors will always have classes that they have to pass in their senior year just because of how the math works. No matter what, there will always be that pressure to pass certain classes by the time they reach that final year. True. But if I'm if I'm a senior and I have to pass an elective class, that could potentially be a heck of a lot easier than a ethnic studies class. potentially. >> I think it
038depends on the student and I think it depends on, you know, the the way that the students work through it. Um that's why we also have the summer um grad um opportunity for our students, right? To ensure that we um provide as many opportunities as we can in case we do have those students who may fall behind. But I think that that scenario does not go away if we remove some of those requirements just because of the sequencing and some classes are just more appropriate at certain grade levels. So we'll always have that burden of they have and that pressure I should say of they have to pass by senior year or in senior year. >> Yes, trust. >> Um first of all, thank you to you uh for leading this process and everybody who
039was on the committee. Um, and thank you to Trusty Marino getting us this in advance so we could look at it because I it's just a lot to look at, but I really appreciate all the hard work that everybody put in. And then um talking to a few people and um just just understanding how confident they feel in this work because of the extensive process that you went through together to get here just brings me so much comfort and um helps me um just move forward with more confidence and that um that we're going to make a good decision, right, to support um our students. So thank you for that. So thank you for leading it and everyone who was on the committee. I really appreciate your hard work. Um, I'm really loving the proposed
040schedule right now. Um, and I'm I'm liking that I feel like I see something for everyone in it. And then I also um am very happy that there we the recommendation that I'm seeing here does not get rid of economics. I I just um financial literacy is is is hugely important and that's the personal and and how you navigate through your your world. The the larger world and looking at it from a macro, you know, um view is so important right now too. You know, we would be missing our opportunities to talk about supply and demand, tariffs, you know, the stock market. And so that's just so important for our kids. And I see how that really does meet the goals that we have for some of the preliminary things that we're seeing about the
041portrait of a of a graduate being a good citizen, right? And so I'm happy to see that. I'm also feeling like I I like seeing ethnic studies as a semester course. I think it could be um really robust in a semester. And I I I hear what you're saying. there's there's nervousness about making sure, you know, that our seniors, you know, are passing their classes in their senior year and they graduate. I just see those classes, all of them, just being really engaging and there's nothing more that we that we love than learning about ourselves and like what, you know, what impacts us personally in government, in economics, in financial literacy, and ethnic studies. I see those as just being really essential and robust classes and I love seeing them in the senior year. I
042can only imagine the conversations that take place in those classes. Um and just I'm just really happy with what I see here and I'm I'm very thankful for all the work that you did. >> Uh Trusty Nelson. >> So I want to echo the comments. Uh this was a lot of work. Darn. I mean it's just tremendous amount of work. And thank you, Trusty Mareno, for giving us a heads up. But then I tried to look on my little laptop. I said, "Mm- mm- like right now I'm doing this." Nope. Not working. I I like this. And I want to address what um Trusty Kim said. Uh so our current pathway is for seniors two potentially difficult classes, English 12 and Econ Government. This one that's up right now has three. So, it's it's only
043one additional class and I can see where kids would really enjoy financial literacy and ethnic studies. Um, the other one if you go to the shifting tiles, if you go to the next slide, that becomes even um >> worse because now you're adding Spanish too. And even though Spanish one might be a heavy burden for freshmen, I think it works better to have Spanish earlier rather than later for the seal of biliteracy and also continuity with earlier Spanish. And then the next one um the last one you have that's five five uh classes that the seniors would have to worry about. So, a sometimes having taught high school, uh, the kids haven't passed it earlier. So, if they're seniors, I had seniors in my freshman class. >> Yeah. >> Because they hadn't passed it the
044first time. So, um, the Go back. Go back one. >> Yeah. This one allows the seniors who maybe didn't do well the first time around to to fix it, fix the problem. So, I I like this. We're not voting tonight, but I think out of all the options, I think this one works the best for me. Oh, that's it. >> Um, I do have a clarifying question. So, um, your proposed pathway is what potentially the board can vote on, but then the shifting tiles, is that up to the individual student? >> Correct. This would be the recommended print out in like um the course catalog for example so that students can see what the recommended kind of pathway is. But then as counselors or academic coordinators work with the students they would then devise the
045plan for each individual students and I anticipate that more and more choice would be embedded as as more opportunities with dual enrollment and CCAP etc open up for our students. >> Thank you. Yes, Trusty Jabono, >> actually. >> I was just going to say um I'm just getting happy. I I because I know that initially when we were some of the questions came out, we were really just hoping to see something that worked for everybody and that can be impossible, but I'm just seeing the possibility. And I know um we have our some of our academic, you know, counselors in the audience and just the opportunity to work with each of our youth to plan it out with all the opportunities that we have available. you know, we have the concurrent enrollment, we have the
046online options, you know, there's this zero period, you know, you have summer school. There's so many options to be able to give you a schedule that works for you. Um, so I know that this is going to put our academic coordinators in a tough spot because they're going to be individualizing for lots of kids, but it's possible. So, um, I just wanted to say that. >> Yes, Trusty Moreno. Thanks. Um yeah, thank you Sonia. Um and to the I know some of the um committees here um I know that uh that very long meeting was probably didn't go the way it probably was uh thought was going to go. Um some of it was quite confusing. We didn't know why there was asterisks by these things until I think it was explained, but then that
047still didn't seem to land. Um, but I'm very happy to see that this proposed pathway, um, like Trusty Do say, it's gonna address most of our students and and their needs. And I happy I don't have to go through high school again. So, but thank you. Um I also and it might not be the um because it it might be a little bit different but um in terms of I know as we're building our CTE pathways right um can we leverage what we are we currently have like our computer science and our biomed and add in some sort of a certification at graduation. >> We thank you for asking that. We are in the middle of actually exploring that, working on an agreement with Gavlin College to do just that and also looking at how
048do we continue to connect students with different industry partnerships um and strengthening that CTE. Um while we have some challenge there right now, um we are still looking at and as you may recall back in November we had approved the CTE um leadership advisory committee with our community partners. Um, and so that's all part of this work of really developing, ensuring that we have a three-year plan in place for exactly that purpose to see and explore how do we ensure that more students earn that capstone and that we have a a certification um coming out of it. But we are taking steps towards that. >> And do you happen to know when it would roll out or what your expectations are? >> I wish it were tomorrow. Yes. Um but it's it's really a slower
049process because it is about examining those um industry partnerships that we have available. And as I mentioned, there still are limitations with our existing facilities. And we really can't encourage more students to take more classes if we're not able to offer those more classes. Um so that's those are some of the challenges. And so I'm I'm hoping for that bond. I'm hoping that as we continue to seek and apply for grants and um you know really develop our facilities and consider how to incentivize teachers to earn that CTE um you know addition to their credential. I think these are all different components worth exploring. >> Uh Trustee Peno, >> thank you for this. I know it's a huge amount of work and we added some things to your plate. So, I appreciate that you uh
050fixed that and went forward. Um I know the concern about senior year. Um I used to do uh in my previous life uh 45 years ago I was a a counselor at Gilroy High and I uh did master scheduling and just to give you an idea, we did master scheduling without computers. So you can imagine how crazy that was. Um and I remember telling kids, okay, you have a choice between you can sing or sew. That was all that was open. So uh this is great. I understand the reasoning and electives to go to an annual elective because it made it easier on the on the U master scheduling. Um, but I do believe in my gut that it took away some flexibility. Um, but it was a nightmare trying to align those. So, I'm
051not so worried about senior year. Do kids can kids because this u reflects 240 units if they pass every class. >> Can kids now just go for four periods their senior year? um our existing practice is that we do not allow for just those four periods. Um and that could be part of a a later discussion especially as we look at the work-based learning opportunities um and expanding dual enrollment etc. Like those might be different opportunities but of course those have significant impacts as well to consider um impacts on staffing um even concerns within um the community. I remember even when I was at GEKA as a principal and even before that as a teacher, the principal was talking about the concerns about bringing in an unscheduled period for students and what that could do
052because oh my goodness, students are out and about in the community. Look out. Um but but um it's really um as it stands, we we do not allow for that. We actually have a full schedule of six periods. And I am most concerned and it's I don't have a answer for it is sophomore year. Sophomore year is just a killer. It always has been. It was 40 years ago and it still is. It's it's a difficult year and it's a difficult year um for a a student social emotional. So anything we can do for that year um would be helpful. And I'm not crazy about moving like Trusty Nelson. And I'm not crazy about moving Spanish one to um junior year because I firmly believe in in um having as much foreign language as possible.
053So I I would love to see a Spanish 4. I know we rarely have Spanish 4, but if we had Spanish three and four and um really could get kids biling to be bilingual and enhance that sale of biiteracy is very important to me. So, um, anything that would diminish that, um, I think is diminishing opportunities for our kids. All that being said, and you know, I would love to get rid of econ. I'm sorry, but I think financial literacy would meet that. Um, but of course, we don't have anything to match it up with, so we can't do that. Find something to match it up with. Um >> health maybe. >> Yes. Yes. Trust you. >> Anyway, >> go ahead. >> That's it. >> Um okay. So um when when you were talking about
054reimagining and really being creative when thinking about CT pathways, I do believe we deserve um better facilities and um and that would just be wonderful. But in lie of that, we we have a lot existing that we could really work with and leverage. Like for example, I'm thinking of the strengths that I see here. We have we have Spanish speakers in our community, strong Spanish speakers. We also have math for three years, financial literacy and econ. Why not, you know, um business or marketing or, you know, a business related pathway because I know if students want to study international business, a foreign language is an asset to that. So, we have things within our schedule that we could look at that don't really require additional um facilities that we could really benefit from. And I
055know that when we were in Hollister um and I know what they were talking about, I understand the the the the intention behind the answer. Um but we asked what would be most um what was the most um uh popular elective and they said ceramics, >> but it isn't a CTE pathway because it is not a good return on investment. And that struck me. My daughter is a ceramics major and she had to decide what she wants to do with her life versus what she thinks she has to do with her life and we encouraged her to do what she wants to do with her life. So she will be a ceramics major transferring and really pursuing that as a career. I would love for us to take the extremely strong VAPA um pathway that
056we already have and really provide an opportunity for a pathway, a career pathway for folks. Even if it may not seem now like a good return on investment, it might be um it could be. Thank you. The only um thing I would want to point out though is with any elective that we add in because of all of our declining enrollment and all of those pieces, we have to consider what are we taking away. Um what class would be um replaced because if we add more classes in that's more FTE. That's the only I mean if I understand the the comment about the VAPA pathways that currently exist to strengthen that pathway. 100% understand that. I'm also commenting on the the uh statement that was about looking at um the electives adding in electives for
057like a business pathway for example if we don't offer those courses already and if we're adding in additional electives that's the part that it poses a challenge >> right I hear what you're saying and um I would not be suggesting that it would just be how do we use the math courses and the existing courses that we have to and Spanish to to support that pathway >> absolely Absolutely. Thank you. >> Yeah, I just want a couple of quick comments. Um, so I I want to push entrepreneurship because like you like entrepreneurship and VAPA really good. You you you can make a living out of that. Um you can um and then also for the electives for senior year if we are looking at um uh is that what if if and when we can
058develop that could be the um like the internships they can spend uh fifth and sixth period on job internships. >> I yes and no. Yes and no. Um so we still have the minimum minutes requirement right? Um, so that's where potentially that fifth and sixth period might go away, but we'd also have to work with our auditors about how many periods students are required to be in um, school. And so we'd have to look at that. And then there's also questions of like student safety and the partnerships and you know, are they on are they covered by us during the internship or are they covered by the employer like how there's a lot of questions there, but it is something that we are exploring and looking into. Yeah, Crystal Del Rey. It's a charter school
059in San Jose. That's what they do. It would be amazing if we can have something like that for our seniors. >> We will look into it. >> Thank you. All right. So, um I know we're a little bit over time, but if we could just take a two-minut bathroom break and then we'll be back at 7:05. >> Welcome back. You guys just finished sense. That's set. Okay, we are starting regular session at 7:06. We will start with the pledge of allegiance. If everyone could please stand. >> Ready? We begin >> the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisibley and justice for all. Buenardes. Buenardes. Welcome. My name is Cesar. I'll be your interpreter and this evening. For those of you that would like to listen
060to this in Spanish, you could pick up a headset in this direction. Thank you. Gracias. >> Thank you. And can we have an a motion for approval of the agenda? Move approval. Second. >> All in favor? Any opposed? Motion passes. We will next go on to 4C, general public comment. We do have um nine speakers for this. First up will be and and each speaker will have three minutes. Uh first up is Jennifer Humphre and then followed by Molly Leech. Good evening, superintendent, board members, and members of CA cabinet. My name is Jennifer Humphre. I'm coming to you right now as a parent of four GUSD students. I have a sophomore at Christopher in the computer science program. I have an eighth grader at Brownell who's the sergeant- of- arms in ASB. I have a
061sixth grader at Brownell who is a two sport athlete. And I have my fourth grader at Lasanivas who is in dual immersion. They are all actually sitting right there in that row. And I am coming to you as a parent because I want excellent teachers for my students. In a given week, I was going to say a given day, but Christopher's Bell schedule is a little bit different. In a given week, my children have 18 different teachers. 18. That's a lot. And I want those teachers to be the best that they can be. and they can be the best by protecting their prep time, by investing in them. And management's proposal to take away the fourth Monday of the month and to add or to take away Wednesday prep time will hurt my children. So
062now I want to change roles. My name is Jennifer Humphre. I am a dual immersion kindergarten teacher at Glen View. I've taught in the district for seven years and tonight I'm coming to you because as a kindergarten teacher I have no prep time other than the fourth w the Monday of the month and my Wednesday protected time. That's all I have. Taking away those that time will hurt me. It will hurt my family because that prep doesn't magically go away. it gets taken away from them because when I go through my week, I went and added up things. I spend between 15 and 18 hours a week outside of like bell-to-bell prepping for my classroom. I know that the proposal, someone said the extra district meetings will improve student outcomes, but districtmandated meetings don't leave
063me a better teacher. They burn me out because I'm being asked to do more with less. I want to be an excellent teacher, but I need help. I need prep time. I can't do this. I can't make my family suffer. So, I know at the beginning of the year, we were told that the key word was change. So, my question is, is the negotiating team willing to change? Are you willing to protect your teachers? Show them that they are important to value their time by protecting their prep time. Thank you, Molly Leech. And then Adriana Flores. Good evening school board and Dr. Munchie. My name is Molly Leech. I've been an educator for 38 years. I have taught in Gore Unified for 26 years. I currently teach at Al Ro School in first grade. I
064am here because I'm very concerned about class sizes. As I teach in the primary grades, we do a great deal of our of our teaching in small groups. This is where we make our greatest impact. With each child added to our class roster, our small groups grow. As our small groups grow, the laser focus for those groups gets watered down and the skills that our groups need become more broad. I am passionate about teaching my students to read at grade level and to understand mathematics at grade level. To do that, I need to be able to work with these students at the skills they specifically need. The skills for each g group need to be laser focused, not a broad brush. Dr. Mucci's word for this year was change. Changing to larger class sizes only
065hurts our students. It will not improve their education or test scores. Changing our Wednesday collaborative time, taking it away from us will only hurt our students because my colleagues and I cannot work together and plan better strategies to meet the needs of our students. Changing the number of staff meetings to more so our have less prep time hurts our students because we cannot plan our best um to meet our individual needs for our students. we do have in our classes. Time is vital to teachers for planning and preparing. Making no changes to our salaries is harmful to our students too. Teachers need to make a val a livable wage. And in Groy, we lose the best new teachers. They don't stay here in Groy. They go up to north to get paid thousands more dollars.
066All they have to do is 25 drive 25 more miles. I do hope we can make some true positive changes here in Gilroy for our students and our community. Thank you for your time. Adriana Flores and then Lisa Wharton. Good evening, Superintendent Munchie, board members, and members of the cabinet. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Adriana Flores and I am an academic coordinator at Gilroy High School. I have been a counselor in GUSD for over 20 years and I am also currently a parent of TUSD children. Tonight I am here to advocate on behalf of our GUSD academic coordinator and counselor teams for a necessary and reasonable change. School counselors should not be responsible for scheduling or facilitating section 504 plan meetings. The American School Counselor Association states that while counselors
067are vital members of the 504 team, they should not serve as coordinators or case managers because doing so creates a conflict with our role as student advocates. When counselors are responsible for coordinating and facilitating 504 meetings, they are pulled away from their primary duty, supporting all students academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs. ASCA warns that this role confusion ultimately harms students by limiting equitable access to counseling services. We want to continue our strong working relationships with our administrators and want to improve structured systems that prevent issues. 504 plans post ser pose serious legal concerns because section 504 is a civil rights law. When compliance breaks down, liability follows. Currently, counselors are being placed in positions of responsibility such as scheduling and facilitating meetings without the authority to require staff attendance, enforce accommodations, or ensure
068compliance. This creates a situation where individuals can be held responsible for systems they do not control. We already know that our district has faced legal challenges in this area. This is a real and preventable risk. Many districts have addressed this by creating dedicated 504 coordinator positions. Our district has shown it is willing to create new roles when needed. This is an opportunity to do the same in a way that improves systems, supports students, and protect staff. Please encourage the district to work with GTA to improve our contract language to remove 504 coordination and facilitation from ACEs and counselors. clarify appropriate roles and language that ensures these responsibilities are placed with positions that have the authority and training to carry them out effectively. We all share the same goal to serve students well, support families, and
069protect our district. Our proposal of improved contract language moves us closer to this goal. Thank you, >> Lisa Wharton. And then Morgan Duran. Good evening. I'm going to try to get through this. It's been a rough day. Um, last time you heard from my daughter on 33 students in her class and her inability to focus was so much going on around her. But today, I'm here to talk about my students on my case load. 40 of them. I have 40 students that need need to see or some of them they came to me with 300 minutes to serve. I have teachers that are asking me to do push in during math blocks or just one student which is very difficult when everybody has math at the same time. I am good at my job. I
070don't know how to keep doing my job and be good at it and help these kids grow because that is why I do it. Oh, sorry. Lately, I just feel like I brought my computer tonight. I'm trying to figure out my schedule because five of those 40 kids came to me this week. It is not easy to fit in five more kids. I can't bring my computer home. I have four kids of my own. My daughter needs a lot of help on math trying to get her past 30% on her tests. So, I don't bring my computer home and I am late getting stuff in. Legal wise, I I do it. I meet their deadlines, but I have parents waiting for copies of IEPs that I'm working so hard to get to them. But it
071is another thing I have to do. It's myself and one parah or 40 kids with special needs. A group of seven and resource is not a small group. A group of seven and agenda class is not a small group. I strive to see each of my students once a week. Some of the groups my parent sees twice a week, but I make sure that I see every single student once a week because I am the teacher and I need to make sure that I am catching things and that I'm adjusting things. Wednesdays are our only time to collaborate. And outside of that, I I've got nothing. No time with my para to try to discuss students and their progress, things that he sees. He's going to school to be a resource teacher. I just don't
072have the time for it. And I wish I did. And I I can say like my kids, they're making growth, but not the growth they should be. So, thank you Morgan Duran and then Cynthia Duran. Is there a Morgan Durant? Okay. Good evening, superintendent of board of members and members of cabinet. My name is Morgan Duran and I am here to talk about more prep time. We all have schedules to keep everything organized. Teachers do not have enough time to do their lesson plans after school. All teachers need to do their lesson plans for the upcoming week to be prepared and deliver an effective lesson. I know this because my mom is a DI Spanish teacher at Glen View. My mom never has time to do her lesson plans for the upcoming week at school.
073For example, when my mom picks me up from school, she she disinfects all the students tables and services. After she puts the iPads in the cart and she charges each iPad, I also help her with sharpen the pencils so he can go home early. I see my mom working in her classroom or collaborating with her partners. By the time my mom sits on down on her desk, it is time for us to go home. We get home at or 10 on Mondays and Wednesdays. She gets home at the same time even if she did not pick me up from school. I help her because I see my mom on the weekend staying up late and up early just to finish her her weekly planning. I would love my mom to have more family time with
074our family. Please do not at another meeting. Thank you for your time. Good evening, Superintendent Munchie, board members and members of the cabinet. Tonight, I want to speak about our time, our hours of our workday. Teachers do not need another meeting where we are asked to sit and listen. These meetings take away from the limited time we have to complete the essential task required to be ready for the week ahead. For years, I've told my husband that Mondays are meeting days, and he has taken the responsibility of picking up our four children. On rare Mondays, when there is no meeting, the time becomes crucial for me to stay in my classroom and continue planning and preparing. Our work day does not end when students leave. The effort we put into our classroom is visible the
075moment you walk in. Just two Sundays I ago, I brought my family with me to school so I could complete a large bulletin board to display 50 student writing pieces. It looks beautiful. But the time, care, and precision it took to create that display came at the expense of my personal time and the person and the time of my family. Um, I am very fortunate to have a an amazing husband and a supportive family to my two boys. Um, they're 18 and my daughter is 11 and I have a a 23month-old baby. We do this work because we care deeply about our students and their success. With parents visits approaching, we spend countless countless extra hours ensuring our classrooms reflect the pride we have in our students work. But appreciation shouldn't go beyond word and
076speeches. What we need now is action. We are asking you to support us with meaningful salary increase, one that reflects the time, dedication, and the impact we bring to school every day. we make a difference now. It is time to make a change. We really need a change and it's now and I think this is the year that we can make a change. Um Dr. Munchie and the boards. I think that together with GTA, we can make a big change and I think that's the change that we need. And many times I I feel that we always ask for a salary increase and it never gets to where it's where yes, our teachers need that. We see it. We reflected many uh maybe maybe many speeches. Oh, the schools look great. We went to a
077walkthrough. It was amazing. But we don't need a thank you, you did great. We need it reflected in our salary in that in that um we need it in that percentage that the GTA asked. That would be amazing and I think that's a big change that we need in this community and it it would make a difference. >> Thank you. Thank you >> Nikki Patel and then Kim Menzo. Do I do this? I just go. Okay. Sorry. Thank you for giving me the space to speak today. My name is Nikki, better known as Miss Patel to the students of Elliot Elementary. It's clear to me that the district has a strong vision for student success. I feel called to make it very clear that teachers are standing up for what they need because they have
078the very same vision. We too want students engaged, growing, and reaching their full potential. We too want meaningful change. Teachers already spend hours in meetings reviewing data, reflecting on student needs, and participating in professional development. We understand the importance of this work. However, expect expectations continue to increase while preparation time is reduced, leaving less and less time to implement the very changes these conversations are meant to inspire. Increasing meeting time only widens the gap between what teachers know could benefit students and what they realistically have time to do. We don't need more time being told what the data says. We work with the data every day in our classrooms. What teachers need are the resources to respond to what the data shows. Our most valuable resources are time and money. And we're being told both
079of them are in short supply. Do we really want teachers spending more time sitting in meetings discussing possibilities than actually being in their classrooms doing the work that changes students lives? When you take away our time, you take away our ability to collaborate, communicate, create, and innovate. With less planning time, you should expect less responsive teaching. Not because we don't care, but because that's a very natural consequence you face when you don't give teachers the space to turn vision into reality. When you ask teachers to sacrifice the time needed to plan, reflect, and implement instruction, the quality of that instruction will inevitably suffer. When instruction suffers, student learning suffers. And ultimately, the data we are working so hard to improve will suffer as well. This is not the direction that many districts are moving because
080it is not a path to student and community success. Teachers want to see every student reach their full potential. Teachers are doing the work to make magic happen in their classrooms. And we are here for the kids. And if we all want real meaningful change, we need to listen to the people who are doing the work. Thank you. Kim Manzo and then Sheila Monger. Good evening. I'm speaking on behalf of one of my colleagues. Why is it that district management feels that more meetings plus larger class sizes equals better learning outcomes? This is the reality. Smaller class sizes plus prep time plus livable wages equals better learning outcomes. Smaller class sizes help so we can meet with all the small groups we need to meet with to help meet students where they are. Prep time
081helps us to differentiate those lessons to target the needs of as many students as possible. and livable wages help so teachers don't have to get extra jobs after we've been teaching all day or tutor or worry about how we're going to pay our bills. Why stick us in more meetings where a lot of the time we just fill out forms and think about things we have to do instead of having prep time to do the things we have to do. Teachers are often told, "You're the expert in your field. You're the experts, you tell us. So listen to your experts. We are telling you we do not need more meetings. We do not need less prep time. We do not need larger class sizes. None of these things help children learn. What we need are
082manageable class sizes. What we need is prep time to differentiate lessons and to do the best teaching we can. What we need is to be able to afford to live in the same area we are teaching. GUSD says we invest in our students. We invest in the future. Well, we're asking management to prove it. Invest in the teachers. Pay us a livable wage. Invest in our classrooms. Lower the studenttoteer ratios. And preserve teacherdirected prep time. Now is the time to prove you are willing to invest in our students and community. Last year, there was over $40 million extra that you than you budgeted for, and this year could be looking like the same. Management always cries, "There's not enough money." There is enough money. Look at the reserve. There's plenty of money. Thank you, >>
083Sheila Monger. Good evening. My name is Sheila Monger, but I will be speaking on behalf of my friend and colleague, Christine Hart. My name is Christine Hart, and I'm a veteran teacher at Luigi Elementary. I'm here to urge you to adopt the TK3 class sizeou directly into the contract. Let's be honest about what happens if it expires. Our TK3 classes sizes would skyrocket and become one of the largest in the county. In the grades where students are learning to read and learning how school works and where early intervention matters, every student deserves as much support as possible. And there is another consequence that we're already seeing at school sites. Because these positions were tied to a temporary agreement, many of our teachers were hired to keep class sizes manageable are on temporary contracts. And that
084means we are losing good teachers at my site. We are at risk of losing an incredible teacher because their position isn't permanent. This is someone our students rely on and our staff wants to keep. But they may be forced to leave simply because the district refuses to make the position permanent. So when you talk about class size, you're also talking about stability for our schools and our students. A one-year extension does not solve the problem. It pushes it down the road while teachers and students pay the price. If the district truly believes in smaller class size matters and that early grades, then this should not be temporary. It should be in the contract. Our students deserve stability. Our schools deserve to keep great teachers and this board has the ability to make that happen. to
085make it permanent and to make it right. Okay, now we are on to item 4 D, report of action taken in close session. Do I have a motion for case number 2026-10? Um move approval of stipulated agreement 2026-10. >> I'll second. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. We are on to item five, student board representative Sophia from Mount Madonna High School. Good evening, Dr. Munchie and board. I am a student at Mount Madana High School. At Madana High School, we have had a lot of engaging activities that have helped us feel more connected to our school and our future. Last week, students participated in rock the mock. We wanted to thank god and the rotary for putting together such a meaningful event. It gave us a chance to practice
086world skills like speaking and professionalism which will help us in the future. last week's or sorry yesterday we had a career day where students uh heard from Calire Digital Nest, Barbers Institute, South County EMS, the US Marines, the city of Campbell, a registered nurse, and Calo. It was really helpful to learn about all the different career paths and hear directly from professionals about their experiences. Students in Power Cafe have also been enjoying activities like one tea and art projects through Sixth Street or which gave us a fun and creative way to stay engaged after school. Hov will be taking place every Thursday as well as leadership every Wednesday. We also celebrated Valentine activities on campus. It was really meaningful that every student received a gratitude note to start the February break on a positive note.
087It also made us feel many of us feel appreciated and supported. We have 26 students who have completed graduation requirements thus far, which is something we are very proud of as a community. We also want to thank the Rotary for their generation generous book donations. Many students have overall the many students have overall these experiences have made our school feel more connected and supported and focused on our future. Thank you for continuing to support our opportunities for students like us at Mount Madonna. I will also be representing Solar Sono Middle School. At Solzano Middle School, they have had s several activities that have helped bring our school and community together. The highlight students and highlight students talents. Recently they had an art showcase where students were able to show off their many skills. This included
088theater skit, a theater skit, an original music which gave students the chance to express their creativity and share their talents with others. In January, they had a kickoff rally focusing on the building a community. Thank you to ASB for organizing this event and helping us create a positive a positive and inclusive environment for all students. This week we are c they are celebrating March spirit week which has been a fun way for students to to show pride participate and stay engaged on campus. In addition tonight there is a family activity planned for solono family which is another great opportunity to strengthen connections between families students and our school. Overall these events have helped make our school more connected, creative and supportive place for all students. Thank you. >> Thank you Sophia for that excellent report.
089Now we are on to item six, the superintendence report. Dr. Mucci, thank you. Good evening board uh GUD staff, students, and members of the community. Uh I'd like to start my report by um highlighting two awards that two of our schools have recently received. Uh, GEKA once again received the California Distinguished School Award. We were just notified of that. And then also, Gilroy High School just received the California Exemplary Arts Education Awards. Congratulations to both the schools and the staff. Uh continuing on the recognitions, March 5th, we also recognized AXA region 8 awards uh winner Tracy Yip as confidential employee of the year. As many of you know, Tracy Tracy has been a member of our uh district for many many years and I I think most of you have probably worked in her with
090her in some capacity. on March 9th, I was able to visit Christopher High School, the leadership uh ASB class. Um, and it it was really fun. I had done that with Gilroy High uh I think last month and I had to reschedule Christopher High. Uh we had a really engaging conversation and students uh and I we talked about um how to engage students in their own learning. Uh they had some suggestions and concerns about AI. uh they also wanted we spoke about support in achieving students in uh realizing their dreams. Uh then also they shared their experience at GUSD. Again I left um the room really inspired. Um in fact I was telling Miss Gretchen that she has announced her retirement. I said I don't know maybe I'll take your job next year. It it's
091just it was really inspiring and fun to talk to the kids. They are just so smart. Our students are so smart across the district. Um on March 9th uh we had our monthly SPACK meeting and then on March 10th we had coffee with the superintendent. Uh also on March 10th in the evening I was able to attend Christopher High School the choir performance. Uh and once again our students um they did an outstanding job. Um I know Trusty Moreno was with me, Trusty Peno was with me that evening. Um, Trusty Nelson, we miss missed you because we know you don't miss a single concert. So, we kind of kept looking at the door. Maybe she'll come in. Uh, March 11th, we had the GUSD reclassification ceremony, which I know for many of us, it's it's
092one of my favorite uh events in our district. It's just so heartwarming to see all the students being recognized. um our students that are bilingual now, bilingual, biliterate, bicultural, uh which is something that we honor and we celebrate in our district, but also just to see the pride and joy uh among the families. On March 13th, as was mentioned, Sophia mentioned earlier, we had rock the mock at Gilroy High School. We had a slightly different model this year where uh we had only one day instead of two and all four high school students were there. We had about 168 students and we had 60 community members. Uh Trusty Pisano, I know you were there. Um thank you for joining us that day. The same day around the same time, uh Senator Cortezi visited Gilroy High
093School. Uh he wanted to uh look at our wellness centers and again because we had rock the mock um I wasn't able to take him around to see some of the other wellness centers. Um but he uh visited the wellness center and also he walked in to see what Rockmach looked like. He spoke with some of the community members. He was very happy to get a picture with the students and um it it was a great visit. On March 18th um oh we don't have a picture of this one. We um had a meeting with our Yak students. As I've shared with the board, this is our second year um of the student the youth advisory committee. As you know, we have historically had once a month the superintendent meets with the parents from Alder
094School and last year we started the youth advisory committee. Um the students are working on projects. um last year they again they they meet in their own school groups and decide what is the need at this school and then they work with their uh student community and the principles to identify a a project for their school. So they have two more meetings at the next meeting in April they will be completing the projects and then in May they will be presenting. So we will share the date with you. I hope the board you can all come visit all of you we we'll share it with all of you as well. please come support our students. They work really hard on this uh because they do it independently with very little guidance from us that you
095know we support them. Miss Flores and I, we meet with them. Um uh earlier today I was able to attend the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce women's leadership summit. Uh they had a keynote speaker Margaret Graciano. She's an executive coach and she talked about seven levels of personal uh group and organiz organizational effectiveness. Uh very very good good speaker and then I had to leave early because I wanted to be here in time to prepare for the board meeting. Um on oh it's coming up March 9th uh we had our uh spring visit uh to Rucker Elementary. March 11th was Lasanimus and March 16th was Glen View Elementary. Following the visit to Glen View Elementary, I actually decided to stop at Brownell and visit some classrooms over there. And then I headed out over to Gilroy
096High School because I was very interested in seeing the teen uh the impact teen driver assembly as I've shared with the board as part of our ongoing safety um protocols. Um and following the incident, unfortunate incident at Lasanmus, we started to look at what can we do on our campuses and in the especially in uh the areas around the school uh in the parking lot. Um we I'm happy to report that we have been able to um add some enter exit signs. We have some uh arrows that have been marked for for just uh direction of traffic. All the crosswalks have been repainted. Um and also what we did is we uh we are working with impact team driver where they have assemblies at all the schools all the high schools middle schools and elementary
097schools. So because of the just the different calendars at all the schools the assemblies will be done completed by May. Uh but I was able to sit through the one at Gilroy High School. So uh very happy to do that. And this is all uh really hard because the assemblies were kind of last minute. Um as as all of you know right now all of you know as well we are preparing for CASP testing which is coming up in the next month month and a half. So adding on these assemblies was um it it was challenging but we did it because it was important for us. Um other visits coming up, Luigia Praa, Gilroy Prep School, South Valley, Brownell, Solarzano, Elliot, Gekka, Mount Madonna High School, Elroé, and then Gilroy High School. Uh and also
098on March 28th, uh we have the Gilroy FFA community farm day. If you have not attended that, I highly highly recommend it. It's a lot of fun. and it's a family event. Lots of farm animals, food, um um just just a great community feel. So, it I I've really enjoyed it the last two years that I've attended. Uh April 6th through 9th, uh we have spring break for uh schools. April 25th is run for fitness at Gilroy High School. Again, I invite you to attend that and um participate in that. Um, something we've changed is in the past, if you remember, it used to be run for fitness and we just had the run in the morning, but since last year, we've actually added, we've invited our community partners where the table events. Last year,
099I think we had a Zumba class. It's just a lot of fun. And there's food. So, again, another fun event. And April 30th, we have our future chefs of America, which I always look for forward to attending because the food is great and our students do such an amazing uh job of prepping meals and um and those are the future chefs of America. So, that concludes my report. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Munchie, for your report. Now, we're on to item seven, our consent agenda. Do I have a motion? Move approval. >> Second. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Now we are on to item 8A, public hearing, notice of proposed increase in statutory mitigation fees on residential and commercial industrial development. And this is a public hearing.
100So I will open it up. Good evening board. Good evening superintendent, members of the public. Just to give the public some context behind what the public hearing is real quickly, on January 28th uh of this year, the state allocation board uh every even number year, so 2026 adjusted what's basically an inflation index on residential and commercial new development that the district is able to levy. So, um, for instance, uh, res on residential new construction, the district is able to effectively levy a fee of $5.38 cents per square foot on new construction. And for commercial, like the one happening right behind our district office with the Amazon data uh, server uh, will be 87 cents per square feet. That's again done every two years. So, every number of years, the increase is about 4% on both
101categories. Um developer fees are highly restrictive. The district uses that to pay off um for what the Christopher High School uh a portion of Christopher High School building that new school um several years ago. It amounts to $1.7 million annual payment. Uh that's how we use our developer fees. >> Okay. There are no public comments for the public hearing. So I will be closing the public hearing. >> Thank you. Now we are on to 8B, renewal petition for Navigator Schools, which is the Gilroy Prep School. >> Good evening, trustees, Superintendent Munchie. Um during this public hearing, this is the opportunity for the public to to um share information um about the renewal petition by Navigator Schools, Gilry Prep School. We will be providing our staff report in our action items. >> Okay. Um, seeing that
102there is no public comment for the Navigator Prep School, so I will be closing that public comment and then we will be opening public hearing of the California School Employees Association CEA local chapter 69 initial proposal for the 2025 2026 reopener negotiations. And we do have um a public comment on that. cabinet. Uh my name is Melissa Aila Carol. I'm a GSD parent, a staff member at Dr. T.J. Owens Gilroy Early College Academy, and the new CSEA chapter 69 president. And I am here tonight to present our initial proposal for 2526 reopener negotiations with Gilroy Unified School District, opening the articles that is in the that are in the proposal that you received. Thank you for your time and consideration. Um, Kyle Dorya. >> Good evening, Superintendent Menchi and uh, members of the board of
103trustees. My name is Kyle Dorya, president of the Gilroy Teachers Association. I stand in support of the initial proposal reopener for CSEA for fair and equitable compensation. Members of CSEA work alongside members of GTA to support our students as clerical and secretarial food service operations and maintenance, transportation, campus supervisors, IT, and more. Their work directly impacts students and members of CSEA are part of our community. They too deserve fair and equitable compensation and a livable wage. CSEA members bring passion and purpose to their jobs, making a difference in the lives of the students they serve. Please take this in consideration as you enter negotiations with CSEA. Thank you. >> Okay. Okay. So, I will be closing the public hearing for uh CASA reop reopeners. And then now we are on to item 9A youth in
104youth in philanthropy. We will be hearing from some of our amazing middle school and high school students. Good evening board members, Superintendent Munchie, and members of the cabinet. Welcome to Youth and Philanthropy. Youth and Philanthropy is a part of Latino Family Fund Degilly and has been in the program since 2013, which started with 30 students in South Valley Middle School and grew into a larger program going to Solarano Middle School and into Brownell and most recently into Gilroy High School. We're now currently serving 120 students in the district. We are also very proud of this accomplishment that started so long ago. what was launched in 2013 and has grown into 120 students. We've now served over a thousand students over the years. Our core objectives focusing on teaching formal philanthropy and leadership skills while increasing
105awareness of higher education and career opportunities. The leadership team is here with us tonight. We have one counselor who was not with us this evening, Franciscoca Garcia, who is now teaching at San Jose State University this evening, but wishes that she could be here. By my side is Claudia Valencia from South Valley Middle School. Um, Lupita Andrade from Gilway High School is also one of our LF board members and YIP co-chairs as well as Gladia Valencia as well. Hector Mr. Hector Salgado is also a counselor at Brownell Middle School and Mrs. Andra Aviana Flores here with us from Gilaway High School as well as a lead at Gilway High School. The vision statement for Latino Family Fund is envisioning an equitable, just, and prosperous South County community in which everyone can create a successful future
106for themselves. The mission statement for Latino Family Fund is to advocate for, partner with, and strengthen Gilroyy's Latino community. Guided by the community, we fostered the conditions for all underserved and historically marginalized people in South County to lead and thrive. The alignment with the GUSD LCAP goals for 2025 and 2026 is the approach the rigorous learning and the post-secondary outcomes. The approach utilizes a formalized curriculum to teach philanthropy. The impact supports student exploration of secondary education and career development to ensure successful post-graduate outcomes. Goal number two, the equitable student support and resource maximization. The Latino Family Fund fully funds the YIP program, ensuring no cost to the district. Enrichment provides equitable programming for both students and their families to support educational growth. partnerships leverages community partnerships to maximize available resources and goal three mental health
107seal and school climate. The integration maintains a close partnership with GUSD mental health department. The counselor led school counselors lead the classroom instruction guiding youth mentors to incorporate social emotional culture into the program. And lastly, the environment prioritizes building safe, inclusive schools through the multi-tered systems of support and social emotional learning. Thank you. Student speakers coming up to the stage here. >> Good evening. Good evening, Gero Unified School District board, Dr. Munchchi, and members of the cabinet. My name is Thomas Lopez Laura and today I will be presenting about the YP program at Solzano Middle School. This stands for youth and philanthropy. Y is a helpful program in which many students learn social skills. These social skills is that we learn is how to give back to the community and how to give back to
108the community and a philanthropy how to show adv advocacy and learning how to build leadership. Philanthropy can mean many different things, but the main idea, the main idea is the desire to promote welfare of others expressed especially by generous donation of money to good causes. Showing advocacy can can be like a public support or recommendation for a particular cause or or policy. Building leadership skills can be difficult, but the main idea is to participate and show the action of leading a group of people or an organization. During YIP, there are eight meetings rotating monthly by periods addressing the topics of philanthropy, advocacy, and leadership. We also have two trips per year, per school year, which are two different places. Like yesterday we visited Micron and uh soon we will be vi visiting a university. When
109we go on these trips teachers will be informed in advance and the students are responsible for for completing any missed work and at the end of the year in May there is an end of the year celebration. All students and their families are invited to give out non to give out grants to nonprofit organizations and student award certificates. >> Thank you, Toma. I am going to cover um the YPN leadership scholarship program that we offer through Latino family fund and um we have offered over $35,000 in scholarships um in the past three years which we are really proud of. Yes. And these scholarships were inspired by the Edward Boss um Proud Foundation. And there are three postsecary scholarships um that we offer to graduating uh students living in Gilroy and attending uh Gilroy Unified School
110District. Um and in addition to a student attending Gavlin Community College transferring out to a 4-year university. So uh we're really proud of the work. Uh the two high school scholarships that we offer are a $5,000 scholarship for a student um going directly to a 4-year university, a $2,500 scholarship for a student um um after high school attending a community college, and then a $2,500 scholarship for a current Galilean Community College student transferring to a 4-year university. And so we do have a video uh here. Um you will see um our recipient from last year, Miss Tiffany Lopez. Hi, I'm Tiffany Lopez and I graduated Gilbert High School with the class of 2025 and I'm now studying political economy here at UC Berkeley. I was also a part of South Valley's youth and philanthropy from
111seventh and eighth grade. And though the program is only two years, its values continue to guide me to this day. It gave me strong leadership skills that guided me through high school, but it also laid out the foundation for the passion I find in philanthropy. It's this passion that pushed me towards political economy. And thanks to the Latino Family Fund youth and philanthropy scholarship, I was able to pursue this passion and be the first in my family to go to college. My biggest motivation is to be able to give back to the community that so graciously gave to me. And so I really look forward to the day I'm able to go back to Gilbert and give all that I can. Thank you. As a part of the youth and philanthropy program, we prioritize um
112exposing our students to college and career pathways uh through uh offering students college tours to a local CSU, UC or private university. our students in experience a guided campus tour um and also get to hear directly from college students. Um this allows them to better understand the college journey and to experience what college life is really like. We also emphasize career exploration through our corporate tours um with local uh technology companies. During these visits, students engage in guided tours and interact with employees. This year in partnership with the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley, we visited the Micron Technology facility. Our students were able to tour the facility as well as to be able to do a hands-on STEM activity and they participated in speed networking with the employers. Uh these experiences are designated um to
113make future college and career opportunities more tangible, accessible, and achievable for our students. Uh, good evening people of uh, Dr. Munchie and uh, people of the G Unified District School Board. Uh, my name is Diego Martine Cardoso Martinez. I've I'm an eighth grader in Brownell Middle School and I've been a member of YP for almost two years by this point. Over time, I've realized that this program is more than just what I've been told as it's just having field trips and just doing projects, but rather giving us students a chance to advocate for things we believe in and enable us to be involved within our communities. Before I joined YIP, I never really spoken in front of a real group of people before, like you all. I would only talk with friends and people in
114my family for the most part. I was always in like my own comfort zone. But when I joined YP, I was put in front of 20-ish people, I'd say. Given the opportunity to try and push for grants to support places and ideas in my community that I thought we needed more of a involvement in. Overall, YP has helped me grow from someone who just was in a bubble into someone that can confidently speak, advocate for my community, and make a real impact on things I care about with you all and others. Thank you. Youth and philanthropy is led by our volunteer mentors along with our school adviserss, counselors. Our school is led by Francisco Garcia with a co-chair. We have Zero Figureroa, Hector Salgado, Kar Migo, Claudius Valencia, Lilia, Lilia Cisneros, Adriana Flores, Veronica Galvan,
115and Lupita Andrade. The youth and philanthropy and leadership program is supported by our mentors who are some of them are here tonight. They help lead and they volunteer to support these youth in the class during the class time. They help coordinate. They implement the program at each school site. They guide the students through leadership, advocacy, philanthropy. They go on the school tours with the the students and the counselors as well. An important part of the MF MTS framework. Their commitment ensures the students gain meaningful experiences that foster growth, confidence, and readiness for post-secary opportunities. And just to say that these mentors have been working with these students for many years now and have had so many years teaching in the classrooms and are very excited to be with these students every month. So, um, we
116are very gracious for all of them. And next, we're going to welcome Christian Valencia, one of our South Valley students. He's going to speak on the mentors. >> One of the most important parts of our youth and philanthropy and leadership program is our mentors. All of our mentors are members of the Latino family fund. They're also leaders in our community with experience in education, business, and entrepreneurship. From September through May, they get their time to work with us, guiding and encouraging us as we grow our leadership and advocacy skills. They inspire us to believe in ourselves, to think about how we can make a difference. We are very grateful for the commitment and for the time they invest in helping GUSD students grow and succeed. Thank you. Sorry, I was distracted. Like I don't know
117how to follow students. It's like you're not going to be as entertained by me. Anyway, um I introduced myself earlier, but again I'm Adriana Flores and now I am here um as the lead adviser for the Gilroy High School YIP youth and philanthropy program. And um this has been the goal of um LFF to expand to the high school. And believe me, we have been waiting like we heard of it, our kids have participated in it, but we were very eager to have the opportunity to also offer it to our students. So that started this year. Um what we did is we put out a survey to all of our students and said, "Hey, we have this great opportunity now at Gilroy High School. Who's interested?" Um so we did link the interest form here.
118Um and from that interest form we pulled student into students into an orientation where we provided like an overview of our program what the commitment was going to be like what they had to do to m to remain eligible to continue to be part of the program. So we gave them all the spiel right uh we ended up with a total of 30 students. We have seven freshman 11 sophomores, eight juniors and four seniors. So they went through the full application process. they they submitted their stuff and expressed interest. So they had the opportunity to join this amazing program that we are now, you know, hosting at Gilra High School. And the difference, you know, we we heard we had the concern like, well, they've done it two, three years in the middle school, like
119what are we going to make do that is different, you know, but in high school, the first thing that is different is that now it starts to count a little more for college, right? Like uh they can list it on their college applications. we encourage like the community service and all of that. So we link and kind of connect um and incorporate things that are age appropriate. So one of the things that we did is like resume writing. We have brought in guest speakers and everything we try to relate to like real world experiences, right? Like we try to connect everything. Look, if you're doing this, this is how you're going to connect it to college or to your future career. And it was really neat to kind of see that when we went to
120the field trip yesterday. Okay, so we took the GA high school students to Migron Technology yesterday and it was kind of like the final connection like look this is what we're talking about. This is how it's going to be connected to the real world. So it has been amazing to have the pro the program on on our campus. Uh now that it's after our first year we're like super excited trying to come up with new ideas of what we we will be incorporating in the future. These are just some photos of the Yip program at Gilroy High School of the board and everyone here tonight. My name is Mia Murio and I am a student at Groy High School. I'm currently in my third year participating in the youth and philanthropy program. Yip has been
121a really important part of my high school experience. It has continued to give me the opportunity to learn about leadership, understand the needs in our community, and see how we can actually make a difference. We meet once a once a month to discuss local issues, hear from guest speakers, and collaborate as a team to support organizations in our community. Through YIP, I give confidence, improve my communication skills, and learn the importance of student voice and improvement. I'm really proud to be a part of a program that helps students make a positive impact in their community. Here's a video that showcases what we have done. Thank you and I hope you enjoy it. >> Yeah, we did. Let the sun go down. Take my hand and find expression. >> And um we drew like hands holding
122up a garlic for >> and we drew a $100 bill. My word is strength. >> My word is growth. >> My word is perseverance. >> My word is development. >> My word is generosity. My word is change. >> My word is fun. >> My word is dedication. >> The Ernie's word is inspire. >> My word is trust. >> My word is change. Take my hand and I will come alone. Let's watch the stars when the lights are Now, I'd like to welcome uh Zoe Guerrero, an eighth grade student at South Valley Middle School. Hello, my name is Zoe Guerrero and I'm an eighth grader in youth and philanthropy and leadership YP program at South Valley Middle School. I would like to thank the school board members and superintendent Dr. Munchchi for recognizing the YP program.
123The YP program at our school allows seventh and eighth grader students to learn about our community, how to advocate for what we believe in, and develop leadership skills. Through this group, we visited colleges such as UC Santa Cruz and CSUMB. We've also had corporate tours at PayPal in 2025 and at Micron this year. Visiting Micron this year has inspired me because it shows how a small business that starts in a basement can become a multi-billionaire company that pro that programs almost all everyday electronic items. In addition, through the YIP program, I've gotten to advocate for what I believe and learned how important it is to use your voice and the impact it can make. As a group collectively, we've learned that philanthropy is something that requires time, effort, and collaboration. We have given $500 grants
124to nonprofit agencies, and we use these grants to help our community. Choosing which agencies get the grants lets us students be the lead of making thoughtful decisions that directly impact our community. My most memorable experience was in seventh grade when I was able to ask questions to the nonprofit Nova Vita community about their grant application and what they would use the funds for. I felt that my voice was heard and valued when we were doing this process. This experience in YP motivates me to become a future leader because I have learned how to advocate, collaborate with my peers and mentors, be a good presenter, and so much more. Thank you for your time. Now I'd like to introduce Susana Ortiz, 11th grade student at Gilroy High. Good evening, superintendent and board members. My name is
125Susan Ortiz Verva and I am a junior at Gilroy High School. I am also a first generation student and I have been fortunate to participate in the first year of Gur High School's youth and philanthropy or as known as YIP during both middle school and high school. My experience in YIP has helped me become more active and involved in my community. One of the things that I enjoy most about the pro program are the ice breakers that we do in the beginning of each session. They give us the opportunity to get to know one another, share our perspectives and build those connections as a group. Over the course of our meetings, we have collaborated on project and taken leadership roles within our team. The mentors create an environment where we feel comfortable stepping outside our
126comfort zones because of how supportive they are. Through this program, I've learned that when you develop your skills and advocate for what you believe in, your voice matters. I truly enjoy participating because I continue to learn about our community and how I can contribute to making a meaning meaningful contributions. Through my YIP experiences, I have also discovered how much I enjoy learning, especially in math and in STEM. Yesterday, we visited Micron and participated in speed interviews with mentors. One mentor shared her story of growing up in Mexico and how challenging it was for her to pursue a career in STEM because it was a field that was dominated by men. When she arrived in the United States, she was overwhelmed by the many opportunities available because of her knowledge and experience. Her story really inspired
127me. She encouraged me to embrace my interests and not and to not be afraid to explore new opportunities. After that conversation, I reflected on my experiences in elementary school when I participated in STEM club and did hands-on activities. I remember how much I enjoyed those experiences and how exciting it was to learn through experimentation and problem solving. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my experience. And now we'll open it up to questions. >> Are there any questions or comments for >> none? >> Okay, Trusty Nelson. >> So, I had mentioned this program before during a board meeting. I encourage you to go watch this in action. You can have a video, but >> it's different watching it in person. >> Yes, Trusty Delono, >> I too have a comment and not necessarily
128a question. I just want to thank um just the Latino Family Fund for their vision and their dedication to serving their community. It's just beautiful to see what's possible within our community and all of the strength and the resources and the expertise that is um able well wanting to be shared right with our youth. I'm so impressed with your your ability to speak in public. You're exceptional. Congratulations for being part of this program and I look forward to more expansion. Thank you everybody. >> Thank you >> Trusty Peno. I am very proud to be a founding family of the Latino family found your boy and to see this fruition of all the years and thank you to all the adviserss and mentors and since I am not seeking reelection I will be at Geroy High
129as a mentor next year. >> Trusty uh Ebaker. >> Yes. Okay. Um very impressive. I really enjoyed listening to the students in particular. I actually know one of them. Um, very Hi, Zoe. But you could tell just how much growth and confidence that they build. And I wish I had a program like this when I was in high school. So, I really love what you're all doing. Um, I actually have some uh great connections with different local colleges. I I think I had heard in the presentation that you're looking to expand and and do maybe other things. So, be happy to make some connections. In fact, there's a parent uh within our community who actually is a academic counselor for Mission College and she was recently telling me that she wants to figure out how
130she can get connected more to the community and do good work. So, um and she's a Latina uh woman as well. So, happy to make this connections for you, but congrats uh to a wonderful uh program and again very impressed with the students. I just love how you got up there and spoke so confidently. It's not an easy thing to do. So, um great to see. Uh these are our future leaders of um the next generation. So I love it. >> Trusty Bono, >> sorry I did forget um fail to mention one question. Please just I guess let us know. Let me know how we I can support you, how we can support you. Um it's a great presentation and if there's anything that you're needing, just like Dr. Baker was saying, please let us
131know. And I do want to make a plug. I mentioned this at a few board meetings ago. The Santa Clara School Board Association has a wonderful award every year called the Hoffman Award. I just think this could be such a great um a a great program that could really be lauded by others and um is shared with others. So, please think about that. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Any other questions or comments? Trusty Moreno, >> I was just curious, how did you get connected to Micron? Oh, Micron. So, we started this lovely partnership with Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley a couple of years ago and one of the things that uh we have done over the couple last years is had really good chamber events and we've been connecting people and inviting people into our
132community and I had been tapping on their shoulders for a couple years to try and get them down here and it was their goal to come be part of Yilroy. So we have partnered with them with the BK program and also with the corporate tours and it's been very successful as you can see that it's um it's grown the program and the experience at the school tours has taken it to a whole different level. >> Yeah, we like um companies who want to be involved. So great. Thank you. >> If I can just add as part of this partnership, one thing that the Hispanic uh foundation provided us was incorporating a STEM activity as part of our tour. So, we're really grateful for them because they provide all the materials and um in some cases
133students take those STEM activities home. Um so, we're really grateful for that partnership and for the ability to be able to expose our students to that. >> Any other questions? >> Say um our mentors please stand. >> Yes. their partnership, their volunteerism, their mentorship. I mean, you know, their their leadership is really um seen in the spaces at the different schools and we couldn't do the work, you know, without that support. So, it's a very um instrumental part in the success of the program. So, thank you. And I also do see um some of our board members from Latino Family Fund. So, please stand. Yes. Thank you for your support and um being here tonight because we talk about it and now you really get to to see and in the showcase. So, thank you
134for for the space. >> Thank you. Thank you for that amazing presentation. Okay, now we are on to item 9B, resolution number 2526-15, imposing statutory mitigation fees on residential and commercial industrial development projects. And this is an action item. It is a roll call vote. >> Roll call vote. >> Jennifer Delbono. Wait, we did not have a motion. >> Yeah, we didn't we didn't do anything yet. >> All good. I mean it's the only difference is time. >> All right, Mr. Mesa. >> All right, good evening board. Again, uh once again, this resolution is tied to the previous public hearing. Uh if approved, the resolution would impose the increased 4% to both residential and commercial effective May 18th. Are there any questions? Hey, roll call vote. I think we're ready. >> Oh, yeah. Sorry. >>
135Move approval. >> Yes. >> Second. >> Now, roll call vote. Thank you. >> Thank you. Jennifer Delbono, >> yes. >> Twin Fak, >> yes. >> Gabriella Kim, >> yes. >> Kenny Moreno, >> yes. >> Michelle Nelson, >> yes. >> Linda Piseno, >> yes. >> Honu Yi Baker, >> yes. >> Thank you. >> All right. Now we are on to item 9 C, a determination of the renewal petition for Navigator Schools, uh, which is the Gilroy Prep School. This is an action item. Are there any questions on this? >> No. Oh, come on. >> Oh, you're going to do a whole presentation. Okay. >> All right. We're prepared. Um, good evening, trustees and Superintendent Munchi. We are back once again. This is an action item from um the public hearing that we had had earlier this
136evening. Um we are um pleased to present our staff report. This is a formal process of the charter renewal petition process. I'm going to walk you through um our findings. You have received the report. Um so we do welcome questions and we have our friends from Navigator Prep here this evening to also answer questions if needed. Um just a overview of our author our history as an authorizer. Um, Gilroy Prep with Navigator Schools is a sitebased charter. It is authorized by us for the last 16 years. So, we've had a long partnership with them. We are, I think, the original authorizer of Navigator Schools. Their first charter was approved in 2010. The first charter was a two-year charter, which is common on new charters. They came up for renewal in 2012, were approved for five
137years, renewed again in 2018 for five years, then the pandemic happened. And so Senate bills were passed and all kinds of things that allowed an extension. So that brings us to the process to today. Um it's been a great process for us to engage in. Obviously 2018 was a while ago. So, we've been able to become familiar with updated education code, really refine our process, and think about how do we best serve our role as an authorizer in setting those expectations and working in partnership and transparency with Navigator Schools and Gilray Prep. Just a little background on the renewal timeline. This petition started with Navigator's board saying yes, we would like to continue to serve the community of Gilroy and surrounding areas. So in October, their board voted to approve the intent to renew. Um
138in December, we were received their petition asking for the renewal and then the work began in our partnership. In January and February, our executive staff, which really it consists of ed services, student services, business services, human resources, and working with the superintendent. We're beginning to review the petition. And I'll talk about those guidelines and the elements that we were required to review. The last few weeks ago, we had our first public hearing to allow input from the public for you to ask questions. So, we're here tonight and this is where we'll ask you at the end of our recommendations to take action on their petition request. Questions are welcome. The review process is quite um intensive. Um you can see just by the the scope of the documents provided in their petition, their legally required
139elements, their appendices, things that they must um provide to us. We utilized a matrix from FickMat which is the fiscal crisis and management assistance team. They're kind of the gold standard in advising. So there was a matrix that allowed us to know exactly which elements that we should be reading carefully for and analyzing in that petition and supporting documents. So that include the petition itself. We had to analyze academic data, review annual reports and performance goals. That's their LCAP. looking at their fiscal review and independent audits. The fiscal review and independent audits happen on an annual basis um through business services with our assistant superintendent, Mr. Mesa. Um human resources and special education did a confidential view review of records for special education, human resources, and student records. The the part that ed services loved
140best other than just reviewing all the data was that we got to visit the site and do classroom observations. We also were able to engage in focus groups with the school leadership, staff, families, and GPS board members. It was a great day and Dr. Munchie was able to join us for the whole day as well as members of cabinet. The legal criteria for renewal under education code 47605. And I'm going to read these because it's important. And I think we look at is a very comprehensive review of all of the elements. They must show in their petition beyond doubt that they have a sound educational program that their academic performance is based on the California dashboard indicators. That the petition contains a reasonably comprehensive description of the 15 required elements that they have fiscal performance
141and viability. They have organizational capacity and governance effectiveness. and they're in compliance with the charter terms, applicable laws, and all of our authorizer requirements. Charter schools are also under an additional legal criteria for renewal, and it's really based on the California dashboard. Charter schools must show that they meet one performance category. So, they could be a tier one, which is a high performing, they could be a tier two, which is middle performing, or they could be a tier three, which is a low performing. For the last two years, GPS has been in that middle performing. So, it means they're neither high nor low. It's a it's a good place to be, but it does mean that there's some special um extra work that they look at and extra work for us. So, what that means
142is that we had to look at additional criteria, not just California dashboard data. So, we use their local indicators that you could find in their petition, really looking at their star data across the grade levels. So their overall outcomes showed that their students made one or more years worth of growth in both ELA and math. So then we can certify that with their dashboard data, their school-based data that we feel that they have a good comprehensive program and students are making good progress in their academic areas. Just like we are, you know, judged is a harsh word, but looked at um by the California dashboard, they must meet these criteria for all the same areas. GPS is a high performing charter school. They have some work to do around their English language learners, but around
143chronic absenteeism, they their chronic absenteeism is lower than the state average. So, they're at three 13.6%. Their suspension rate is significantly lower than the state average. So they're at a.7%. So they don't even at a 1% suspension. Their English langu language learner progress had a decline. And we've talked with them. It was great to have that conversation when we were with our focus groups to really understand how they're addressing that in their their data talks and their instructional practices. Their ELA is nine and almost nine and a half points above the state average which is significantly above the state average. Their mathematics is also significantly above the state average and they were 10 and a half points above that state average. So we are confident that they're providing their students with a very sound educational
144program. These are the 15 required elements that I'm not going to go into too much detail. what you can see in the staff report, what those are and our analysis of each of those elements. Again, using the FICMAC matrix, there was several criteria that we were confident as each of the departments reviewed that they either met or exceeded those. There were three elements that we made recommendations. They are not anything that would hinder the renewal of the charter, but there are things that they will we provided recommendations. So that was element two which is measurable pupil outcomes and that's really around the English language learner progress. Element five, employee qualifications. They meet all the qualifications but there were some recommendations about just cleaning up some language about how those staffing ratios are presented in a
145in a future charter petition and element 10 suspension expulsion procedures. And this is really not that there's anything wrong with it, but as we know with all of the board policy changes, just cleaning up language to make that clearer and ensuring that we have all the categories issued. So we are confident that GPS meets requirements for all all charter elements. They have a sound educational system. Their governance structure is good. They have fiscal management. Students admissions and enrollment policies are appropriate. They have health and safety procedures. their annual financial audits have cleared. They have an independent study policy that is appropriate and they've also included the closure procedures. And again, we've provided recommendations around English language learn um strategies um special education document practices. It's not a required element, but it was part of our
146annual visit just to help them support them in their processes. Right? we should have a collaborative relationship where we're learning from them, they're learning from us. So, we're able to provide that guidance, which is the role of the authorizer to provide guidance in areas that they might reach out for support or we see they need support. Um, again, that policy clarification that we identified during the review process. Um, the annual site visit is both a part of the charter petition renewal and also our annual obligation as the authorizer. So on an annual basis we are not only looking at their financial records or their human resource records but we are making a visit to the site. So this is a more formalized visit probably not as intensive as we you know had them support us
147with this time but it gives us an opportunity to see how their school is functioning what is their instructional program look like and just what the culture and climate of the school is. So we conducted our site visit on January 12th and in this visit we were able to again meet with the leadership team. It started they have a a part of their school culture practices that morning huddle. So staff comes together they're learning about what are the focuses what are some priorities for the day anything that might be bubbling up. So it gives them a really good chance in the morning before classes start and students are in the classrooms to come together and have a really tight culture as a staff. Um, we got a campus tour. Um, we had classroom observations. We
148used our GSD ed services walkthrough tool. So, we were measuring GPS on the same type of things that we looked for in our own schools within GSD. We met with focus groups with students, parents, staff, and board members. Some of the things that we noticed and we'd like to highlight from our classroom visit, they were very high levels of student engagement. In every classroom, there were clear learning objectives. There was evidence of special education inclusion model. They are a full inclusion school. So there are not special day classes. They have RSP serin but full inclusion model. at Gilroy Prep. Um, teachers provided frequent checks for understanding. There were small group instructional supports. There was use of technology there. It wasn't the dominant thing in classrooms, but we could see appropriate use of technology in the
149classroom. Positive and supported learning environments. There were efficient transitions and consistent routines and expectations across grade levels. Some of the notable practices, and this is one of the it was supposed to be the hallmarks of having charter schools within a school system, is that they have more freedom and flexibility in some of their ed code and just the way that they can operate so that we could see what different practices look like in a system and are those things that we could learn from them. Um, and really that full inclusion special education model is a notable practice for them. They have very strong multi-tered systems of support. UDL or universal divine design design for learning is what guides all of their instructional planning with teachers. Um they have a very strong coaching model. Everyone is
150coached. I think even the yard duties are coached there. So they have a tool that they use. It could be one-to-one coaching. It could be group coaching tied very closely with their professional development model. Um we really enjoyed the middle school squad model which promoted collaboration. I know that came up as a question. So, we they I know they'd be happy to share more about that. Really empowering the middle middle school students to take ownership for their own learning. Um and just throughout there's very strong alignment too and evidence of the school mission in action. It really everyone lives and breathes it including the students. Here are just some themes. You have more detail in our staff report, but really the themes that arose from our students was they felt they had supportive relationship with
151teachers. They felt that they were learning in a collaborative inclusive learning environment and that every adult had high expectations. Parents appreciated the strong academic environment, the positive communication with staff, and again, they also really value the full inclusion model that GPS offers. teachers appreciated the collaborative culture, the strong coaching, the robust professional development provided to them. It was interesting and fun to meet with the board members um and to really see kind of what what drew them to being a board member. They are very missiondriven governance. They align very tightly to all of the um the goals, their compass goals and guide guide points for the school. They have a strong focus on equity and student outcomes and they have clear boundaries between governance and the daily operations of the school. So we get to
152the former our formal re recommendation is that we as a staff that have reviewed the petition um and analyze it very closely that we're recommending that the board approve Gilroy Prep's charter petition for a five-year term. We have no conditions for renewal. The recommendations are not a condition. They are just a recommendation. And this is based on our belief that they've demonstrated academic effect effectiveness, financial stability, organizational capacity, compliance with laws, and again the areas for our recommendations are around English language learner performance, the special ed education documentation, policy clarification, and I'm going to invite the Gilroy Prep team. We give them equal opportunity to share a statement, clarify informations, you can ask questions of both of us or all of us. So, I'm gonna let Miss Carr introduce her team. >> Uh, good evening
153and I just again I'm Kirsten Carr. I am the chief uh communications and engagement officer for Navigator Schools. I've been with Navigator um I'm going into my 11th year, but I started in education as a teacher at Glen View. So, uh, Gilroy Unified is very special to my heart and the fact that this was our founding district is incredibly special to all of us. I am joined here tonight with our interim principal, Shauna Schmidt. I when we were here last time, our principal was the night before getting ready to have her baby and baby boy Johnny is now a few weeks old. He was born that next morning, so she was very sad to be here, but hey, it was a pretty good reason. And then I am also here with Gabby Raldon who is
154a navigator's communications manager and also a former um network uh assistant principal and teacher. So really we just want to say thank you. I am incredibly fortunate when I talk with other charters in the area and other authorizers when I get to talk about what our relationship is like with Gilray Unified. This isn't always the case. And we know how fortunate we are. We know that we can any of us can call any of the staff. Dr. Munchchi is always available if we have questions. We love being able to say we're part of Gilroy Unified and we really love giving um sending our kids to you for high school. Um and now we've had I think a few hundred graduates at this point. I do believe that out of the I think we had 30
155students apply for a GEKA this year and I want to say we got about a third in. I think is about our it's been our average. So, we're incredibly excited about that. But we are here if there are any questions. But really, I just wanted to say thank you. >> Thank you for that presentation. Are there any questions or comments? >> Yeah. >> Board, >> I'm just going to leave you with your the action. So, this is your >> I'm sorry. No, it's a long night. >> I know. I'm still not done. Um, so this is the time for board discussion and determination. Again, we are recommending that the Gilroy Board of Education approve the Gilroy Prep School Charter petition for a term of 5 years beginning July 1, 2026 through June 30th of 2031.
156At this point, after discussion and questions, you must make one of the following motions. either to approve and grant the petition, to approve with conditions, even though we've not recommended any, to deny the petition if you have legal grounds for denial, or to continue this for an additional meeting. >> Okay. Now, board, do you have any questions, comments? Yes, Jesse Baker. >> Yeah, thank you for the presentation. This is a processing question. So, if I'm just curious um what generally happens when a board does not approve by the the deadline, are you is is this in some ways kind of like an accreditation? I know it's not accreditation, but but what happens then? I'm just curious. I >> I'll let them speak, but very important is that if they do not have their charter approved
157by June 30th, they're not allowed to receive their funding for the following school year. So, that's why the deadlines are so so stringent. Okay. >> So, it's just a restriction on funding then. >> Well, and eventually like if our charter is not approved, we can't stay open. >> So, >> um so my question though is and and I'm sorry if you did cover it. Um sorry, there's these little bugs everywhere today. I don't know, maybe I'm just sweet and it's trying to attack me. Um the English learner progress. Um I I know you I touched on it a little bit. There was a decline to 34.8% 8% which is below the state average. Can you talk a little bit more about what happened there? >> I more somebody on site but I can talk about
158it a little bit. It is actually one of the areas that we have been focused on this year because of the fact that we did see that happen. We had done our goal the la the year before was focused significantly on our math programming and focused on getting those math scores up and then obviously we saw this happen. So our wildly important goal this year was completely based on our multilingual um progress. So we hired a multilingual learner coordinator. We have been working significantly to ensure that the curriculum that we have adopted is focused on our on all of our students with a significant um focus on improving our English learner progress. And so that has is something that every site is focused on because it was one of the things that we did see
159that go down. And I don't know if there was anything specific. Okay. Since uh Sean is more on the site, I get to be at all of our sites, but um they're the ones that are very sight specific. >> Any other questions? Can Yes, Trusty, >> thank you for the presentation. I look forward to uh coming out I think with the 26 I think it is. Um, I'm just for my own curiosity, how do you guys handle like does um does go prep have like band and and choir and and music programs, sports programs? >> They have basketball. Yes, >> we do have after we do have sports for our middle school students. They actually play in a league that has a lot of the smaller schools in the area. So, they played Charter School
160of Morgan Hill. They played all of our sister schools. They play uh St. Katherine's Aroma. So, we do have a very active sports um league. It's kind of it's fun. My son was a coach several years ago and so it's been he really enjoyed it. Um the other question, we do have band as part of our um afterchool programming too. This year, the first year it was just for seventh graders and now we have fifth through 8th graders in it. Um we do most of our enrichment is offered as a more of an afterchool activity. We haven't gotten choir yet, but hey, we just did band a few years ago, so who knows? Oh, we do have cheer. That's right. We do have a cheer squad, too. >> Are there any other questions or comments?
161So, um I I just have to say I am very grateful that we have such a collaborative relationship and to be honest, I'm glad we only have one charter school because this looks like a lot of work for our staff. So, thank you to the staff as well. Just out of curiosity, um, uh, where do most of your, uh, students go to for high school? >> Almost all of them stay in the district. It is a pretty even split between the last several years. It has been about a third, a third, and a third. >> Okay. So, they do stay and they go to one of our high schools. Great. Okay. Okay. Are there if there are no other questions or comments? Um, can I have a motion? >> I move approval of the GPS
162grant petition. >> I second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any nays? Motion passes. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Okay, now we are on to item 9D, approval of the California School Employees Association Local Chapter 69, initial proposal to the Gilroy Unified School District for reopeners for the 2025 2026 school year. And Melissa Avia Carol will the chapter president will present or Mr. >> Thank you. I didn't know Melissa would stay this whole time, President Melissa, but I on her behalf, I let her know this would be fairly quick. Um this is the uh thank you trustees uh and Dr. Munchchi. I'm here to present to the board um formal approval of the sunshine document presented by CCA that was talked about in public the open form and public comment. >> Okay.
163And we let's see we do have >> No, we did not. Sorry. Um any questions? This is an action item. Is there a motion? Move approval. >> I'll second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Now, we have the second interim uh financial report for the 2025 2026 fiscal year. I we do have some public comments uh on this item. I'm going to start with that first. Each person will have uh three minutes. Uh, Miss Haley Sano and then Alex Taves up second. Yeah. All right. Good evening. My name is Haley Sana and um, good evening trustees. Tonight I want to speak to you regarding the second interrum along with members of the GTA negotiations team and urge you to direct management to invest
164today's dollars into today's classroom communities. Tonight we would like to share with you some observations of the second interim budget report. The net increase in the local control funding formula LCFF unrestricted revenues into this year was $1.6 million. These funds should be going to local needs, most importantly our students. These are ongoing funds that should go to ongoing needs like smaller class size and the recruitment and retention of highquality educators. Not only is LCFF going up, other state and local revenue is also projected to go up. This is cause for concern due to the ongoing pattern of underestimating revenue and overestimating expenditure. For these reasons, I ask you to look closer at the push and pull within the budget to make it work for Gilway students and educators. Where are our priorities? While salary and
165benefits make up the majority of unrestricted general fund expenditures, it does not provide the context that administrators salaries as a budget priority have increased in recent years while certificated salaries as a budget priority have decreased as indicated by the respective percentage of total outgo. This suggests that investing in our classrooms and the educators who are vital members of our school communities with the many services and supports we provide are becoming a lower priority in Gilware Unified. This also is also reflected in the MYP where educator salaries in the outy years stay stagnant. Certificated salaries are projected to go down in 2027 28 despite regular step and columns increase. Certificated salaries are also expected to be less than the board operating budget. Meanwhile, certificated supervisors and administrators are projected to be higher than the board operating
166budget. For some context in the greater scope of California, Mike Fine of Figmat, an organization that promotes sound financial practices in California schools, stated in an interview with EdSource that more and more districts are at 90% when investing the unrestricted general fund into salaries. School districts are not in the business of saving money. Today's dollars should be spent on today's students. Alex and then uh next is Janet Lee. >> Good evening, Dr. Munchchi, board of trustees and members of cabinet. As Haley shared, I wanted to provide additional information regarding the second interim budget report and corresponding MYP. Our students with special needs require support from qualified educators. Currently, the total contribution to special education is now budgeted at $25.3 million. GTA's put forth proposals to change the system and provide supports to students. These supports
167can help prevent special education litigation and better provide services to our students. It also makes it less likely that services would be provided by contractors. We can invest in improved learning and working conditions as well as qualified educators. Or we can spend far more later on contractors, outside services, and legal costs. Keeping educators in the community with the expertise to support our students with special needs is paramount and can greatly reduce the high costs of contractors that are often not tied to our community. When we pay the high price, sorry, the price of high costs of contractors and online services, it neglects to include the highest cost of all that comes at the expense of our students who are not receiving the beneficial learning environment that they are counting on to thrive and grow. In
168the long run, investing in the educators who serve our students isn't just the right thing to do. It is also one of the responsible ways to manage costs and ensure resources are being used where they make the biggest difference with our students. Thank you. Okay, last up is Gently. Um, good evening. As Alex shared, I wanted to provide additional information regarding the second interim budget report and the corresponding MYP. It is interesting to see that books and supplies has been updated to reflect a more reasonable cost. The year started with books and supplies is a bloated carryover bank account with a budget of over 20 million. We see that projected total for books and supplies are closer to the multi-year average of $4 million. The second interim also shows the ending fund balance increasing from
16931.8 million to 30 32.2 million. Quote, the district is spending down its reserves. End quote. But is it? In 2024 to 2025, our district only spent deficit spent 2.9 million. However, it was projected to be spent down to 21.7 million based on last year's MIP at second interim. but based on the unodudited actual was actually $44.9 million. This is a difference of $23.2 million. In addition, in the year prior, 2023 to 24, the unrestricted fund balance increased by 9.2 million. When looking at the county, Gilray Unified is seventh in unrestricted LCFF from the unodit actuals in 2425. The ending balance is in the top five by dollar amount. When it comes to deficit spending, yes, we deficit spent, but 10 districts reduce their reserves more than ours. Yes, not all districts are the same size
170or have the same enrollment or live with the same conditions. But when we look at our county and we look at funding, it is not right that our students do not have access to the same dollars as their peers in the same county. Each of these items alone may not be an issue, but all the items together are problematic. The CBO does not have a crystal ball and neither do we, but we can look currently and see that GSD has some of the largest reserves in Santa CL County, more than basic aid districts. We can also see that multiple districts in this county have settlements for this year. Um, including some districts starting Sunshine for the following year. While Gilroy continues to fall behind in class size and compensation, this board needs to make a
171decision about what type of district it will be. This year is coming and gone. We are well into March without an investment of today's dollars in today's classroom communities. A student- centered budget starts with the people who serve students, the educators. The budget and the spending should reflect these priorities. Thank you. Hey, Mr. Mesa. >> Good evening, board president, board members, and Dr. Munchie. Um, I'm here to present the 2526 second interim financial report. So, these are the different topics we're going to go over. There's different types of certifications, an overview of the revenue and the expenditures of the second interim, our updated multi-year projection, and then the required certification at the end of the presentation. So, the different types of certifications are positive, which means that the district will be able to meet its
172financial obligation, and qualified means that it may not be able to, and then negative means it will not be able to meet the financial obligation. and and right now second interim is self-certified as positive. So this is your 2526 second interim total general fund revenues. includes both the restricted and the unrestricted portion and the revenues total around 186,266 and 29 and part of that is the LCFF the local control funding formula which is made up of the state aid the property 30 tax or EPA and then the property taxes and that's around 140 million and then we have our um federal revenue which is around 7.9 we have some other state revenue which is around 28.4 4 million and then we also have our local revenue which is around 10.1 and then this slide is
173this the 2526 the second interim both again unrestricted and restricted general fund expenditures and so our expenditures around 215 million813 and then the um the certificated salaries classified salaries and employee benefits all together um make up about I'm sorry I thought I had it here. Well, the certificated salaries are around 69.6 million classified around 29 and then the employee um benefits around 47 million. And just so you know in the employee benefits the reason why it seems large is because our stores on behalf um transaction is in there and that's something that we have to do and record at the end of the year and that's around 6.9 million for this year so far. This slide here is just the unrestricted portion. So when you look at just the unrestricted portion where a lot of
174our um salaries are budgeted, we have more like 88.51% is all total compensation for all um groups both classified certificated. And then also too, just to let you know that, you know, due to some of the carryover in there, it it also makes that go down a little bit. So if it was just the straight unrestricted expenditures, it would be a little bit more than the 88.51%. And this slide here just shows you the difference between first interim and second interm. There really wasn't that much. We went ahead and increased our um interest because we, you know, keep track of that and it looked like we would be able to looks like we're going to receive a little bit more. So I upped it around 150,000. We also got a little bit more of the
175home to school. um state reimbursement um revenue. So we were able to up that per the aortionment schedule and then we're still around, you know, we're only about a4% off there. So the unrestricted reserve for second interim is around 14.92. This is the rest of the one-time funds. Um during COVID we started to receive a lot of one-time funds, a lot of CARES funding, ES for funding and it was over 40 million for sure that we had to track and take care of and then we also had um even some of those fundings and onetime funds were also in other funds but this is just on the general fund portion and so as of today the first two there those resources 7032 and 7033 which are part of the kitchen infrastructure was our first rounds
176a couple years ago. Those are actually zero. Our ed effectiveness is actually zero as of today. And then you'll see the learning recovery emergency block grant the resource 7435 that's 5.9. And that money is already tied up um for our class size reduction and then for some um extra um or FTEEs and stuff that will help with counseling and behavioral type um services. And then so >> additional two years >> for additional two years to the end of um 2028 now. And um we have received you know at one point we had the full amount and then they took away almost 3 million and then they're slowly building some of that back to us. All right. And this slide just notes the major elements of the revenue and expenditure assumptions. As noted earlier, I don't
177have a crystal ball. So, the way we track changes to the multi-year projection is changes in the actual assumptions. Uh point in case this year, um the demographers thought we were going to decline by 187 students. We did not decline by 187 students, only by 15. The average daily attendance percent, right now, we're falling short of that 93.5%. It looks closer to 93. that's going to be a hit to the revenues. We don't know how low it's going to be, but hopefully it's not going to be too far below 93. I know that our goal uh was going to be 95%. That 95% is not attainable anymore this year, unfortunately. Um those are the key elements. So, the the cola of 2.41% for next year, that will be finalized in May. Expect that to change.
178I always say if the CBO assumptions aren't changing and the MYP isn't changing, that's not a good CBO. That's not a good director of fiscal. Um so that's why all these are there. Carry over u um balances are never budgeted in the subsequent years. Um so that's also noted there. You'll note that even though we're supposed to grow according to projections in 2728, we still have a placeholder budget cut of 687,000 in 2728 despite the positive COLA of 3.06%. I'll point out in the my level of deficit spending, meaning current year revenues aren't keeping up with current expenses. expenditures are rising faster uh than the revenues because remember we don't automatically get the cola. The cola is applied as a function of our average daily attendance because that's how we're funded. So as our attendance
179rate goes and our enrollment goes, so does our net bottom line funding. Revenue is just a portion of it. You actually have to subtract increases in expenditures to get to the bottom impact of the fund balance, which is what the multi-year projection does. And this is really a picture of a major element that you miss if you only look at revenues. What's happening on the expenses side, a hugely underfunded program, we all know is special ed. It's a mandate. It's required. Now, it's supposed to be a three-legged stool. And by that, I mean the federal government, state, and local school districts were supposed to effectively fund 33% of each. Uh, right. Well, it's not even close. It's closer to like 68 or 70% on US GUSD with the feds really around 7% and the remaining
18025% or so um by the by the state of California. Uh my first year here was in uh 1314 and that was about 8 million and it's hover around that year. Um and then for several years we hover around 12 to 13 million and then COVID hit. Uh and then you can see how just the slope is the average of the last three years is like three million bucks. U and we're on pace. We already on pace uh for over two two and a half. Uh at this point it's 2.1. So a simple math is just where did that $1.6 million change in revenue go? It's gone. Before we even closed our year it's gone. Net revenues are gone. 1.6 million or last year to this year special ed increase was 2.1 million. one variable,
181don't even get me started on utilities and everything else has increased um before we even get to step and column natural increases etc. So there's a lot of cost pressures um within our u total expenditures and I know that this is small for the public to see um but the LCFF revenues are here. Uh and that includes the net change on the major assumption that we hit our 93 and a half% ADA through midappril first day of school through midappril. It doesn't look like we're going to hit it. We're going to feel that as we take advantage of the three prior year um local control funding formula and claim the prior year average daily attendance to smooth out that hit over three years. It's going to be a hit. I really want to um draw
182your attention to the level of deficit spending though for this year. Uh last year, yes, we did deficit spend. And when you look at our total revenues and rising expenses, I don't even want to I mean, special ed contribution took the whole thing. Uh and it's really $6 million every single year after that, irregardless of that carryover that we're spending. It's about $6 million and over $6 million in that subsequent year with a 3% cola in the outear. So, yes, we are having to make cuts while we're still growing because as we have to make cuts, um the the staffing reductions that we're able to make at this point only cut about 25% of the loss in revenue. Um so, yes, expenditures are rising faster um than we uh are getting funded for in revenue.
183This accounts for the learning recovery being spent over two years. So when you do see carryover, uh sometimes it's planned carryover. All this is learning recovery cuz we know we want to commit to those class sizes for the next subsequent two years. That's been the plan all along. You see other districts throughout the county already laying off people because they burned the money through one or two years where we had a gradual approach to see significant difference in investing over a longer period of time. Um the reserves are basically think of it as a savings account. Um the fund balance is being drawn down by that $6 million here and this 6.4. It's basically withdrawing that. If I add a dollar banking on that reserves and funding it on reserves, $1 on this multi-year is
184$3. And then guess what I need to do to replenish those reserves? Reserves then I have to cut what's ongoing and then make it up. So, it's going to hurt me magnitude ways. And I'm glad I think I'm going to have to let my friend Mike Fine know that he made my board meeting. Uh Mike Fine is a good friend of mine because he's part of a southern part of CBOS and I'm part of the Norton group of CBOS. And the 90% threshold is actually a dangerous threshold. And I remember that specifically because when they hired me to be a CBO in Gil Unified, we were over 90% salary and benefits. And remember the county office had a stateapp appointed adviser here with stay and resent authority and we were running out of cash uh
185and so I specifically was hired uh I believe to stabilize the financial picture in GUSD and I'm proud to say that with my team and your support board we have not had uh a devastating fiscal crisis uh during our entire tenure. I credit the board. I credit all our colleagues, my team especially. But I know where that 90 90% threshold comment came from. And it's not an encouraging comment. It It's basically Mike Fine sounding the alarm that says, "Expect more districts to fall into negative status." By the way, Pleasanton just hit that negative status today. So, it's him sounding the alarm as he retires and then, you know, hands the baton to Megan Riley, who's going to be the new CEO of FCMAT. Those are the those are the key people that you want to
186listen to. And the multi-year projection is his number one tool to keep districts in financial solveny out of district receiverhip. Not like Oakland, not like West Contraosta. Remember, they had to change their name. they went bankrupt so badly. Um so that's the second interim financial report. Um other funds are included uh just you know for completeness sake. Uh it includes other funds the estimates and the balance on there as well. Uh a full report of the sex forms is included in your packet. Uh in the next steps as usual we wait for the May revision um to then look at our assumptions take a snapshot of that uh as is right the last set of critical uh assumptions that can and will change our local budget that we will develop and present to you on
187June 18th. And obviously we'll continue to revise the multi-year projection as needed uh hopefully with a an impact of a of a successful agreement with our bargaining and labor partners. Uh, thank you for the presentation board. Are there any questions? Yes, Trusty Peno. >> Mr. Mesa, I want to really thank you and and your staff for uh keeping us in the block. Just found out today that about 30% of the Santa Clara County districts are either um laying off or closing schools or both. And I am delighted to say that all of our employees are still here and will be here by our choice. Not they may choose something else. And all of our schools are remaining open. And those are drastic drastic changes for our community and I'm really um thankful and appreciative that
188we're not having to go through that right now. So thanks for all your hard work. Um, as I always say, school finance is a crazy business. We have to make decisions in March for August when we don't even have a final state budget for next year. Um, we always fly blind and you've managed to uh keep us on the straight and narrow and I really appreciate that. Thank you. >> Thank you, >> Trusty Dalono. Yes, I too want to thank um um Mr. Mesa and your team for um just doing a great job providing us with the information that we need. Um I know that it's very difficult and you do a great job with it and the just as trustee um Pena was saying the the the numbers don't look great. you know, that
189the the funding that's provided to us, the challenges that that are provided to us, um, and you're doing your job and, um, so I thank you for that. And I think what it just continues to remind me is I am I am thankful that our teachers have jobs and I know many colleagues that are in positions now that um, that are very difficult for them and they're trying to find how they're going to navigate, where they're going to go, what's the next step. But I just um am reminded that as a board member, it's my job now to look at our very difficult circumstances because the money's not flowing. it's not coming and we're not getting the support that we need for our special education students. And in light of that, choosing it as it
190is and having to maybe reimagine, right, the way we operate, how we spend the money we do have to make sure that we're meeting the goals um that we all um prioritize and hold important to us. So, I think um we have some work to do. We have some work to do. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? And um um Mr. Mesa, can you explain how the the governor's uh like giving us the 1 whatever million and then taking out the 5.9 is affecting us? >> Yes. Thank you, President Twig. That's an excellent point. So under the California Constitution, um it's Prop 98. It funds public schools. He short changes from the minimum funding uh last year by 1.9 billion and then he's pretending to pay us by tripling what he owes us. Now
191that amount that he owes us this current year is $5.6 billion shortch changing the minimum funding by $5.6 billion. So I have invited all my friends, anybody who would listen to to advocate against that uh on the May revision. Uh, by that I mean Gilroy Unified would have $8 million to put into and invest in our staff and our teachers into our budget priorities this year. $8 million is our equivalent from the minimum funding level. Now, Prop 98 was never meant to be treated as a minimum floor. It was supposed to be uh I'm sorry, it was supposed to be a floor, not a ceiling. It's constantly treated as a ceiling, manipulated. Uh, but in the past, now I'm talking about probably 30 years of of of experience in terms of running the formula. They
192had run the formula, figured out how to manipulate it to get to the bare bones minimum floor. They haven't even run the formula. They just absolutely disregarded the formula and taking that 5.6 billion from the very bottom of the formula. So, at this point, Prop 98 isn't constitutionally protecting education anymore, and I think we should be sounding the alarms on that. >> Thank you for that. Um, so because of this maneuver, we are lo losing $8 million, right? >> We we don't we don't have it right now to spend on today's kids or today's the staff. That's correct. >> Yeah. And then I was even talking to our co, you know, other school board colleagues and I know even like our basic aid districts that typically are very, you know, healthy financially, they are struggling
193in their right like Los Altos which is a very, you know, highealth area. Uh they're doing right sizing right now, which means laying staff off and and you know, Yep. So, a lot of even the basic aid districts are are laying staff off. And so, for a school district like ours in our community to be so financially stable, I think is a good testament to the the previous boards and your team. >> Thank you. Yeah. Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Wisman, all those are communityf funded basic aid districts. They're all doing cuts. Yeah. Anything else? Okay. This is an action item. Um, do I have a motion? >> Move approval. >> All second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Thank you. Now we are on to item 9F. um renewal of
194theou with the city of Gilroy for uh two school resource officers not to exceed $293,969.99. We do have one public comment, Mr. Greg Felios. The refunding of this program was brought up before Gil City Council and I uh promoted it at the Gor City Council. Uh and it was it wasn't just me that that promoted it. There were others and it passed the G City Council. The the refunding of this special program was passed at the Go City Council seven 70-0. All seven of them voted and which is unusual because usually there's some there's some differences but they all supported this program. This is a wonderful program. I know you you've seen it uh and this is great. I come in and there's this great if you read this uh special report that we put
195out and they did this survey of all of the of uh students and staff and parents and in all of these stu in all the survey almost 90% either a agree or strongly agree that it make they feel safe. They uh they uh appreciate having the uh they're comfortable with the school resource officer being there. This is a great program. We and we uh we have two officers and to have these these special officers respond to these schools. Uh a lot of people don't have this. These are these are specially trained officers that uh that are at at the at the service of all these different schools and to uh I wish I wish we had more if we could train all the police officers to do it that would be great so we could
196sp so we could suspend spend so we could send anybody but we don't have that that we don't we don't have the money for that and the opportunity but we do have these two special officers that are going out to the schools and providing this great service. And if you see the purpose of their uh read read this wonderful uh uh uh um information, you know, the purpose of these people is to make the make schools feel safe and for PR. And they're doing both good PR again getting getting the young the students comfortable with with with police officers and making the schools feel safe and secure. this is this is a great opportunity and it's kind of a bummer that they know when you do need them for special discipline problems again and they're
197still they're focusing on restorative justice. They don't they don't want to they don't want to just throw the person in the criminal justice system. They want to divert them. They want to try to help these students out. So, uh this is an opportunity to support to show your support for these uh for this wonderful program. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Flores. >> Good evening again. Um, board president FAK, Vice President Nelson, trustees, Dr. Munchchi. I will be presenting tonight on our school resource officer program as part of the action item uh requesting approval of ourou with the city of Gilroy for the split cost of our two SRO's or school resource officers. As part of the presentation, we will review the purpose of the Gilroy unified model in partnership with our SRO's. We will also
198present the annual survey responses of parents, students, and staff regarding school climate and SRO's. This presentation will provide the survey results as well as the data on suspensions and expulsions, our current system for prevention and intervention for behavior supports, and some testimonials from staff and students about our district's SRO program. Some of this information was previously shared in our joint meeting with the city of Gilroy. So, I will try to move quickly through these slides. Gilroy Unified has partnered with the city of Gilroy to establish a strong model program with our school resource officers to further promote a safe school environment. Taken directly from theou between the Gilroy Unified and City of Gilroy, this slide presents the six primary purposes for having SRO services on Gilroy school campuses. This agreement emphasizes the importance of developing
199positive relationships with students, staff, and the community. Our SRO's work with our school administrators and staff to maintain a safe and secure campus and promote community. Our SRO's play an important role in diverting students away from the criminal justice system and connecting them to appropriate services. Each year since the 21-22 school year, we have surveyed our students, families, and staff members about SRO's through our LCAP. Here you can see the number of respondents each year. There are two SRO specific questions on the LCAP survey that have been consistently asked. Those questions are one, I am comfortable with having an SRO at school and two, having an SRO in my school made our students or made me as a student feel safe. For the first question of I am comfortable with having an SRO at school,
200you can see that this year 93% of staff agree or strongly agree with this statement compared to 93% last year and 90% the year before. For the same statement, you can see here that 86% of fifth graders, slightly down from 90% the year prior, agree or strongly agree, while 92% of secondary students agree or strongly agree with the statement up from 89% the year prior. Generally speaking, the data demonstrates strong support of having SRO's at school. This year, 93% of parents or guardians indicated they agree or strongly agree, demonstrating consistent support among parents or guardians for our SRO's on our school campuses. And here's the breakdown by race and ethnicity among students and parents of those uh responding that they agree or strongly agree with the statement that they are comfortable with having an SRO
201at school. Now moving on to the second SRO specific LCAP question which which stated having a school resource officer in my school made our students feel safe. You can see that 82% of staff agree or strongly agree with this statement consistent with last year and 77% the year prior to that. Historically, we have seen a steady growth in staff support from 62% in the 21-22 school year when we first started surveying families all the way to 80% now. And here are the student survey results from the same question. 89% of elementary and 86% of secondary agreeing or strongly agreeing compared to similar numbers in the past. And here are the parent guardian survey results for the same question. This year, 88% of parents or guardians agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, compared to 85%
202last year and 80% before that. This is the breakdown by race and ethnicity among students and parents of those responding that they agree or strongly agree with the statement that having an SRO in my school made me or my students feel safe. The next few slides show data on discipline districtwide. We have decreased this year with our overall incidents resulting in suspensions at our secondary sites as compared to previous years when comparing disciplinary data consistently each year through January of each school year. Our schools continue to seek alternatives to suspension and provide counseling through our social workers and therapists which does positively address the discipline issues at sites. We take a tiered approach with discipline, actively finding those alternatives to suspension such as using Navigate 360, Yvapee, restorative conversations, referring students to counseling, etc. For
203our administrators, um they strive not to suspend for a first-time offense unless it is for something egregious. As presented at the joint meeting in February with the city, you can see that there has been a steady decrease in the number of overall citations from the year-to-year. And this data presents juvenile arrests occurring on campuses and in the community from year to year. One element that has strengthened Giler Unifi's approach to school safety has been the collaboration with and professional development of our SRO's. You heard a little bit about how they have been specially trained. Um, our site administrators, campus supervisors, teachers, counselors, academic coordinators, and community- based mental health partners provide onampus supervision, restorative practices, prevention, education to our students to promote a positive school climate. Our SRO's contribute to these efforts, partnering with all
204of the personnel on site to ensure students feel safe at school. It is a collective collaborative effort that we all bring to the forefront to ensure school safety. Our school resource officers historically engage in ongoing professional development focusing on school safety, restorative practices, active shooter training, and they engage with our site and district administrators in meetings to review trends and discuss available resources when addressing campus climate and culture. Both of our SRO's have participated in IIRP 4-day training where two days were focused on the fundamental of fundamentals of restorative practices and two days are focused on formal case conferencing. Uh, one of our SRO's is also a trainer of trainers representing a strong commitment to restorative practices. Other relevant training our SRO's have engaged in include mental health crisis response, deescalation techniques, response to traumatic
205or critical incidents, like I mentioned before, active shooter training and terrorism threat response, though one of our SRO's is newer to the team. Um the other SRO is has been around for a few years, but both have engaged in professional development to make them qualified to engage with our students on campus and to take a more restorative approach. At the joint city council school district meeting, there was a request to discuss how our SRO's participate in restorative justice on our sites. Since our school district partnered with IRP or the International Institute of Restorative Practices, I have included their definition, IRP's definition of restorative justice and restorative practice. This is the same organization that has trained our SRO's in partnership with Gilroy Unified. Restorative practices are used for conflict resolution, dialogue, and creating community. Through restorative
206practices, schools are better equipped to create a sense of belonging, minimize harm, and support students to navigate challenges while learning self-regulation and conflict resolution techniques. The philosophy behind restorative practice is one of 8020. 80% being focused on community building while 20% focusing on repairing harm and restoring community and relationships. Restorative justice is a continuum. When most people hear restorative justice, they mostly think of formal conferences or circles. However, restorative justice is more about the culture and the approach and the philosophy and the belief. And it's in our approach to dialogue and questions with one another through effect a effective statements, a effective questions, and small impromptu conversations. moving from an informal restorative justice approach to one that is more formal with those circles and formal conferences that one might think of when they just hear
207RJ or restorative practice. A effective statements help us frame our feelings in a way that maximize and mutualize positive affect. For example, instead of saying, "You never listen to me." A statement like, "When I see you on your phone while I'm talking to you, I feel ignored because it seems like what you're looking at on your phone is more important than what I'm trying to tell you." It might be a little wordier, but it gets across the idea of how the individual is feeling, and it seeks to build empathy, set boundaries, and provide individuals with feedback. A effective questions are open-ended questions that help explore issues in a non-threatening way. Per IIP, our administrators and our SRO's try to refrain from confronting a student and saying, "Why did you do that?" But instead ask openly,
208"Tell me what happened." There are questions that we ask when harm is done and there are questions that we ask an individual who might be harmed um to build that trust and empathy between the two. I have seen firsthand how our officers use a effective statements and affective questions when talking to our students. This is intended as a way to explore positive changes in behavior and responsively explore harm um and how certain actions impacted others. And as we move up that continuum to a more formal dialogue, small impromptu conversations do leverage these affective statements and questions to build community and repair harm. Some sites do hold circles and formal conferences and they might even call upon our SRO's to engage in part of those conversations though it might be on an infrequent basis. They do
209use techniques from IRP to promote reflection and restore community. Our SRO's have been called in for some of those conversations circles and when the community uh when the community based diversion program refers our GUSD stu students our SRO's participate in those formal conferences. The idea behind restorative justice is that we provide control and support working with students and our community to encourage individuals and set appropriate boundaries. we can get to that with box when we have relationships with our students and when 80% of our work is focused on building community. The SRO data summary shows that our SRO's are doing just that with 80% or more of their work focused on building community and 20% or even less focused on repairing harm. The next few slides even demonstrate based on the testimonials from others the
210trust and positive relationships that our SRO's have developed with our schools. This is also evidenced through the previous survey results I shared and growing support each year for our SRO program. I will not read to you the testimonials as you have seen these uh most recently as well, but I have included them in the presentation for your review. And this is how much we have historically paid for our contract with the city of Gilroy, splitting the full cost in half each year. And tonight we ask for board approval for thisou between Gilroy Unified and the city of Gilroy for two SRO's in the amount of $293,969.99 for the 2627 school year. This will then go to the city of Doy for their approval. Thank you board. Are there any questions, comments? No questions or comments.
211Uh, uh, Trusty Moreno. >> Yeah, I just wanted to, um, say thank you for the presentation. I enjoy reading it. I also wanted to say thank you to the guys. Um, as a parent, I speak as a parent. I love it. Every day I drive by and see you guys' cars or I see you on campus. I've talked to both of you many times in the community. Um, it is a blessing. And um I know we not all agree that unfortunately not everybody agrees. Um but I think we see the benefit of having SRO's. Um our kids, my kids, all the kids I speak to um they may love the dog more, but they do like seeing you guys there. I want to say thank you personally. >> Trusty Davono. So >> I too want
212to thank What? No, no, no. There you said I'm sorry, Jennifer, but for what? Okay. I too want to thank SRO's. I am pro SRO. I'm just in our district. Um I I still feel very strongly that we cannot afford this. We just heard we keep hearing the nature of our financial situation. We have to make decisions that really will make the biggest impact for our youth. And um so I guess my question is um I guess first and foremost what problem are we trying to solve through the hiring of two SRO's? What's what's our identified problem that we're solving through this position? One of our biggest um areas of need has been that around school safety and having appropriate response from our um from our law enforcement agencies. Um, I know from experience and
213I've spoken about this before that when we have um officers who respond to critical incidents that are happening on campus that we don't have a relationship with as a school community that we don't have um that and if those officers don't have the required training then it actually creates a bigger issue um and a bigger problem for our campus community. um it builds a positive connection and ability to connect students to appropriate services while also providing necessary support. Um even with the element of um confiscating certain controlled substances that might occur, um it's it's best when our SRO's are there to be called upon to help us in those scenarios. Um again having been at a school site the principal where we did not have SRO's because we were under a different jurisdiction um it
214did pose some challenges and so there were times that even our schools would call upon GPD to support us in those areas. They provide a critical support um as part of an important role in that school safety climate and culture to ensure the safety of our of our campuses. So the problem we're solving through two SRO's is having an appropriate school safety response >> which I would um say is a pretty important. >> Okay, I'm just asking what the problem is. Okay, that's the problem. There are many parents who think that we have two SRO's so that they are pro protecting kids from outside influences. There are a lot of people who don't really understand or think that the purpose of an SRO is to patrol within a school. They think it's to patrol the
215outside of a school. Like are we facing in or are we facing out? So how would you explain maybe that? >> I I can jump in. It's both. So that's and I asked what what is the >> I'm also actually if I may I see one of our principles is here. Marita, do you mind if I put you in? I >> really want this time. I need this time because we're going to make a decision and I have lots of questions that I would like asked and I I was a principal. I did engage with SRO and I'm asking our district to tell me what decisions they're making or what problems that we think we're solving through this proposal. So, I got that one. And then I also um I'm just trying to understand very
216specifically what how we're measuring the impact of their work on our goals. So, we saw that the decrease in in suspensions in different areas, but how are we really saying that it's attributed to the cost that we're spending for having SRO's on campus? I find that hard to like know how are we really measuring their impact on those numbers. That is a question >> and I think it was answered in a reduction in suspension and expulsions but also I would like to invite another one of our staff members to share what is the daily impact. really am going to respectfully ask I I'm not asking for someone from the audience to step up in a presentation to ask answer the questions I'm posing to our staff. So my question is how are we >> Marita
217is our staff. >> No no no our district staff prepared this report. We did not ask a principal to prepare this report to us right now. So my question was how are we attributing the efforts of our SRO to the reduction in the data points that you shared? I saw the reduction. How are we connecting those dots? The slide where we discuss the full connection um in the collective effort that it takes for onampus supervision, prevention, restorative practices and education. All of those pieces together um support our um our data points and it's not just one thing but these pieces all play important roles to ensure the positive campus culture and climate. >> Okay. So there are multitude of things that are taking place but they are of an element within that that we believe
218is contributing to the reduction in those numbers. Okay. Then I guess my next question is um when we're looking at this role and if we maybe use an economics um uh concept, I hope I'm using it correctly, the opportunity cost, right? Because we only have so many dollars. We only have so many dollars and it's how we choose to use our dollars that matter right now. What are we not spending our money on in prevention and school climate um by having two SRO versus one? What are we not spending the money on? >> I think that's a question for the board to answer. I don't think Sonia is in a position to decide whether we should have two SRO's, one or none. The the what we are presenting what we are tasked with tonight is
219for staff to make a to present >> what the SRO's do. It's on the board to decide whether the board would like to have two SRO's or not. >> Correct. So, if if we're looking at a pot of money and we have the ability to use the money to achieve the the goals of school climate, improving school climate, I can just tell you the questions that we ask every year, they they really they're not enough. They trouble me. I don't know why students don't feel safe. Um, again when I shared my daughter didn't feel safe because she couldn't use the restrooms. There was too much vaping happening in the restroom. She didn't feel safe because of that. She also didn't feel safe when there weren't enough people on campus. There weren't enough adults on campus.
220I'm hoping that at some point we can really drill down to why students don't feel safe. really feel, not perception, so that we can then match that with a strategy that might actually get us a bigger bang for our buck. I know that, you know, if if I'm not feeling safe in my community or I feel like I need to carry a maybe like a gun with me everywhere. This is someone that taught me brought this to my attention once when I was living in an apartment. If you feel like you have to have like a weapon or you have to do these things, maybe you just live in the wrong neighborhood or maybe you need to really think about why you're not safe or you don't feel safe. The idea that we're choosing to
221spend an an exceptional amount of money on perceptions of safety bother me because if we are going to measure or spend money based on perceptions, then we could just ask kids, do you feel educated? Yes, I feel like I'm educated. then then call it a day. We'll just do everything based on perception. But I think at some point we have to get a little bit more granular or a little more detailed on the root causes of why people don't feel safe and address that versus funding something that really is about a perception. And I still don't feel like I got an answer about what specifically our um officers are doing around restorative practices and building relationships. I I do I am a little troubled in the presentation when I see multiple SRO's in this presentation
222when we clearly have two right here and we've had a number of SRO's come through. How are you building relationship if you're always leaving? And I also that is I guess that's not necessarily a rhetorical question that is a question. And then my follow-up question would be in the absence of an SRO because of I don't know why the other person left like before the year ended do we get a prorated do we prorrate that? I mean who pays for that when they're not there? Um those two questions. How do you build relationship when when we don't have someone who's consistent? And um and then who pays for the SRO position when they're not actually in the position? >> Yes. Uh Trusty Nelson, >> that was a lot. Um there is a survey result about
223safety. Having a school resource officer in my school made me feel >> Yeah, I guess >> you feel Well, but >> so you were living in an apartment and you didn't feel safe. >> Michelle Michelle, it was a it was a story. I was like using an example. If someone if you don't feel safe, >> you might need to examine the cause of why you don't feel safe >> is what I'm saying. This but this is having this SRO >> made me feel safe >> and that was answered by students who chose to answer the survey right >> well declined estate some people and so I do want to get the answers to my two questions because I think those are val >> but I also would like to know like do we are we
224looking at students who aren't coming to school and asking do you come to school will you do you come to school because we have SRO on campus or are you already coming to school and feel good because you see an SRO? And I I think those are things we have to think about because we have a limited amount of money and where are we going to use that those those dollars in a space that's really going to get us maybe some tier one prevention efforts that will really make a difference. Or we can do what Dr. Baker said last time. You said you'd love to have an SRO at every school campus. We don't. We can't afford that. We can't afford that. So, I guess my two questions going back to that. How do you
225form relationships when there isn't a consistent presence of a person on campus? And then when they're not there because of absence or I think there was illness or some something happened, who pays for that? >> I'll address the funding issue. So um I can tell you directly from experience these guys don't stop working just because they clock out right so um in the so just like an employer has obligations under any kind of leave or whatever it is the city has that obligation the city only bills us for theou amount period these guys stop they don't stop 1:00 in the morning 2 in the morning 3 in the morning 5 in the morning 6:00 a.m. Aurelio and I are in touch with them. Sonia is as well. They just don't stop. They're not going to
226bill us for 15 minutes after the bell, guys. The city bills us for the exact amount period. I know they're working multiple multiple multiple days above that amount. We don't get build for that. So, it's a partnership. This is truly a partnership between us and the city of Gilroy. Um, I think in terms of opportunity cost, I think you have to look at a holistic approach. uh this cost, let's just round up to $300,000, you know, on average daily attendance. I think there are situations that our average daily attendance would have plummeted if these gentlemen weren't supporting us behind the scenes knowing that our schools are safe. I could almost guarantee you the attendance rate on those days in one single day would have devastated our district. >> Thank you for for Thank you. the
227idea that if if students are not feeling safe on campus, I would love for us to really figure out why and address that. I just don't feel that the answer is more police officers. I just don't I don't feel that way even my community. Um I guess I mean I'm just going to leave it at that. It's clearly not going to be something anybody else is supporting right now, but moving forward I need more questions. I actually really need to know. I know what restorative practices are. I know what that I know. I want to know specifically if we have a trainer of trainers. I want to know how many trainers our trainer is doing. If our if we have people who are doing this work, I want to know who is alongside the people
228at Gilroy High School doing the circles that I've been hearing about. I want to know what that looks like because they don't know what that looks like. So, I would love for that to be connected more. connect the dots a lot more because this is a lot of money and we have people telling us that they they want that money, right? Or that we could be using in other ways that could be true prevention. >> Trusty person out >> we have a as our second interim today $186 million budget 300,000 is 00016%. I think that's a good amount for safety. And your questions are why don't kids feel safe? Doesn't have anything to do with two SRO's. And if you remember, we've had two incidents at schools where parents have said our community has said
229they would like SRO at every school. the fact that we have two and that parents feel safer or comfortable with SRO's on campus. That's also our responsibility to provide that. And if it's a feeling and a perception 00016%, I'll buy it. >> And I just want to then hold us to this. If $300,000 is a drop in the bucket, if it's a drop, if if it's in Okay. In was tell me your words is, but you mentioned it. You said it was appropriate for safety or something to that regard. It might that I'm close. No, >> I said it's an appropriate amount of money. $300,000 is I will pay that for perception, feelings of students, staff, and parents to feel and perceive >> safety on our campuses. And I think that also I think that
230when we're thinking of actual safety, traffic enforcement in our city could be improved and enhanced by another officer actually on the streets doing traffic enforcement that would actually preserve life and property in a manner which promotes our community. There's lots of ways. >> That's not a responsibility though. >> That's not our responsibility. they could release a member from the from um into back into the community to really preserve um life. >> Uh uh Trustee Baker. >> Yeah. >> Just real quickly, I love having our uh resource officers on our campus and I I do wish we had one on every campus because they can't be everywhere all at once, right? Um, and I don't think you can really put a price tag on um, having a sense of safety and security. I'll just tell you
231a short story. A few weeks ago, um, somebody um, was trying to steal my car right in front of my house. I was inside. I could hear this car and I'm thinking to myself like, "Oh, it's a teenager." Let me tell you, I know what I needed to do and that was to call the police because I knew that the police would come and take a report and there was a a sense of like, okay, even if they don't catch the bad guy, there's somebody there who's going to be looking out for this, you know, random loser who is out there trying to steal people's cars. Um I share that because the the perception is a person's reality and and you know your perception is formed by your experience and and uh what what you
232know of this situation. So, so I guess I'm having a difficult time understanding um uh Jesse Berno's argument about that it it doesn't really and and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but but this question of perception and that it really doesn't matter because what I'm seeing here is that as um my fellow uh board member pointed out, having school resource officers in my school made me feel, they didn't say I have the perception of safety, it made me feel almost 85% of our students um and if I'm not great at math even though I'm Asian. Um said agree or strongly agree to that. I have been told if I like math and I don't. >> Um anyway, so um I I strongly support my daughter goes to Christopher High School. She
233always talks about um Maui and and um uh I I think that they they not only bring a presence of safety, they they facilitate community and um and I think it's so important for our kids to know how to interact with police officers because they are an important part of our society. And um I know that uh the last uh decade or so there's been um a lot of uh conflict around um police relationships with community. So I think it's a great opportunity for our police officers to um develop these relationships so that the students um understand how to utilize them and and um so I again I don't think we could put a price tag on safety. Um and as we uh unfortunately the reality that we live in, we are seeing uh increase
234in violence in our world. Um and we might not hear about it every day, but I know there's almost there's almost daily a school shooting somewhere and it doesn't get reported because it's not big big news. And unfortunately because it happens so frequently, we're not hearing about them as as regularly as um uh we should. So, >> so I I do want to make a couple of points. Um I I don't basically I I think you're asking Trusty Dabono what's the ROI on paying for SRO's. >> But that's not I don't think that's a fair question because we spend what two over $2 million on mental health uh services, mental health counselors, right? Where's the data there? >> We should have data there. But we can't tie like there's no direct we can't tie because
235there's you know privacy information but we can't tie that because we spent $2 million on mental health counselors our students feel x amount safer or x amount like sorry it it's it's this is kind of a thing where it because it's more a lot of prevention it it's hard to quantify the prevention piece because I do want to and and correct me if I'm wrong about the incident at Luiga Preya a couple of years ago, right? Where there's a person that was, you know, on the school campus, was alarming. Um, I think it was death officer Odell >> Odell that, you know, came to the school campus, talked to the gentleman. Um and the you know and then what it was a day later the the guy got pulled over and then it was officer
236Odell who recognized him who then did an investigation in the house who then found all the weapons. So, it's those things um that you know that's that's prevention right there, right? Um because he has a relationship because SRO's have a relationship with our staff, our kids. I mean, I and again I believe kids have gone up to you to report things, right? Um so that's kind of that's the relationship. Now, if if our SRO's acted in a punitive way and they were there just there for enforcement, that's a whole other thing, but they're there to build the relationships to do to do the prevention work. >> So, last year, one of the things that we were very proud about with the SRO is that we had a very strong Latina woman who was a role
237model for the the women or the youth, the women, the girls on our campuses. That's no longer happening. I'm not I am advocating for one SRO. I'm advocating for one SRO where the we then use the hundred I have to lookund $80,000 or so $60,000 on addressing the root causes of why kids don't feel safe or what could make them feel safer. I'm and then I think Dr. Baker, this might help you understand the way I think. If we think we need a police officer on every single campus, that's not a comm that's not I would not send my kid to any one of those schools if we felt like we had to have a police officer on campus. Wouldn't be a school I would want to be. I wouldn't even want to be in
238a community where we felt like we couldn't be at school without a police officer. That's the way I view it. I want to work on why we feel that way. what we can do to address that root feeling that causes us to think that we need an officer on campus. >> Trusty Kim, >> um I feel a sense of comfort when I pull up to my kids school. I'm on um I don't I feel safe sending my kids to school on a on a daily basis, but it's that extra sense of I don't think I shouldn't say that. Um they have someone to turn to if they want to report something. Some someone's right there. Um, I think we are spending and I don't know the exact dollar amounts on what we're spending on mental
239health off the top of my head, but this is one snapshot. This is one survey that is just based on SRO's. Um, there's other surveys that we do that show us that kids feel do or do not feel safe at school and why. Um, my kids feel safe at school with or without the being there that day. Um, I think it's just as a parent a reassurance that there's another adults on campus, another trained adults on campus if needed. >> Yes, Trusty Moreno. >> So, we we very rarely disagree. Uh, and I I said sorry because I jumped in front of you. I said earlier, sorry. Um, I don't want to say anything that's like mean, but um, you have like an unquenchable thirst for data, and that's okay. And and I like that, but
240sometimes things can't be you can't put it in black and white. I I went to Elliot last uh week, or was it this week? I don't know. And they had Corey the juggler there. Now, that cost money. It cost educational time. I don't know that there's a measurable out of that. I know there's data that can be pulled from Corey the juggler. But there was a message there and there was a an example given. And I think sometimes when we just only want to work off data, we miss something. And um maybe we can't uh pull enough of the numbers, ask enough questions to get you what you're looking for. Um I understand you want to make sure that we serve all the students and that there's 15% that don't feel safe or don't come
241to school. We should know why. And I don't disagree with you on that. We should know why. But I think sometimes we have to say it's it's not about the data. Um it's about what I see or or as as um Trusty Kim said, you know, how we feel when we go to school. Um the idea that we're going to get uh a black and white chart that's going to directly link the program to this, it may never happen. It's not even possible. And I just don't want to get stuck. I don't want to give these hardworking people an impossible task and which is find the data, pull it together, present it to me. So I feel that the $180,000 is is worth it. Um because that's that's kind of what you're asking for. Like
242if you can see the data and it is provable, then you'd be fine with it. I'm pretty sure. Right. Um, but I do agree we shouldn't neglect the 15% that don't feel safe or who don't come to school. We should obviously be reaching out to them and that's a different thing than than what we're doing today. So, I just hope that we can not get lost in in trying to find what can't be found because we can waste so much time and I don't want to waste their time. And I think um you know one SRO is fine. Uh yeah, okay, that's better than none. But what happens when they're on vacation or they're sick? And we've discussed this before. Um, sometimes you need backup and sometimes you can't be there. Um, and so I
243think too, we talked about this before, two was the minimum. Two was the minimum to provide support because I'm sure they don't want to do it alone. Um, and for me, I look at like I know we have two guys here. I look at the uniform and I look at their behavior and their tact and the way they approach our children and I don't care who's in that uniform. No offense guys. I want the quality officer and I don't care. I mean, yes, we talked about um the female officer and I and I don't, you know, she came and went. It's fine, but I I care about the quality of of the of the SRO. Um and and I know that they won't be SRO's forever. There'll be new ones that come and that come.
244But as long as they're of the same quality, our students are are quick enough and smart enough to to understand that they're there for them in a positive way. Sorry, I took too long. >> Yeah, I think um I there you need redundancy. I mean, there have been times where our two SRO's are busy and then we get an, you know, a 911 call from one of our schools and even you, Trusty Delbon, have asked, "Well, where are the SRO's? Why aren't they there?" Right? They're busy. That's with two. So I think it's either two or nothing really because one is not going to do the job because number one we don't expect the SRO to work at 7 in the morning and then at 10 at night when we have our events like that's
245not fair. We don't expect them to work seven days a week. That's not fair either. So like there has to there I mean I'm assuming your schedules are staggered, right? So that you somewhat. They're here tonight. They've worked a full day. >> Exactly. I mean, >> so >> they are here, you know, and like listening to us boring talk about the rest of the stuff. So, I mean, I think I think that too is definitely the bare minimum. And I'm I'm a total proponent of like you have to have redundancy because that means that they can't go on vacations if they have one or if we if god forbid they want to take a month off on vacation then we have no SRO at all for the whole month. And I I mean I would
246love for the whole Gilroy police department to have the same level of training as our SRO's. Unfortunately that's not doable, right? according to the police chief. Um >> I mean just about the schedule. So they do have a staggered schedule. Uh one of them is off on Monday and one of them is off Friday. However, for the four days that that they're here, they they're not 8 hour employees. >> Yeah. >> They often uh when we have graduations, promotions, they're there till almost midnight. They're there till the event ends. They're here right now, which is why I actually wasn't expecting them. uh because officer Odell was off this week on on a family leave and he's here. Um so it's what Mr. Mesa said when we said you know when they're off and life happens
247we all get sick. So you know how do we compensate for that? It's the totality of theou and the service that they provide for our district. The other thing I I and this is just a reminder for the board, we have two large comprehensive high schools, 14 schools in all and three preschools. We serve over 10,000 students in our district. And again, looking at the budget, we can have one, none, two, or 14. and and the decision and I don't think when Sonia is presenting what she's not doing tonight is to convince the board to to make it you know does she want the two SRO's or not that is not what I'm doing that's not what Sonia is doing that's not what Mr. MEA is doing what we wanted to present to do to
248you tonight is factual information the data that we have collected and now it's up to the board to take a vote if the board chooses not to engage then that's on the board our job was to present factual information how our families feel how our students feel um how are I I tried to invite Miss Salceto who is a principal who works with them daily. Uh, you know, I was hoping she could share her experience, but that's okay if the board doesn't want to hear her out. Um, Oh, you do. >> I kept >> Sorry. Yes. >> Trusty Nelson. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So, other other people other people were go, "No, no, no." But I did want to hear and I was curious why you didn't want to hear from a principal. >>
249Well, but I I don't need to hear it. And I have to tell you the idea that this is not a promoted by the district as a way to convince us. It's a proposal for it. So it's not um presenting you data to choose. It's a it's a proposal because you want it and that's okay. I'm bringing arguments as to why I think we should reconsider it and have one instead of two and use the savings for prevention just as I did last year. Well, I I did want to hear from somebody with boots on the ground. >> Can we then request that's part of the presentation or do we literally say, "Can you do you want to present? Do you want to present?" How about you? Do you want to stay for that reason?
250She's >> We were here for that reason. >> She's she's had, you know, >> it is one-on-one. It's happened before where we've had other people who have had >> interactions with whoever is involved in the presentation come up and add some more information. So, I'm going to let's as a point of record or a point of order, I'm going to keep that in my back pocket as something that I can call anyone from the audience. No >> Staff speaking to their experience >> who was not part of this presentation. >> Yeah. >> And it's not >> everyone is for it but me. So, just make a motion. >> I I think this is getting us into the murky water. I think um I I do agree with Jennifer and Oh, it's okay. I'm back on
251your side. Um that um though I appreciate coming and and and waiting this whole time, I don't know that it will do us the service you think it will other than if you want the public record or just to give otherwise I would be happy to make a motion to approve the agenda item. >> I will second that. >> All in favor? I >> I >> Any opposed? >> Opposed. >> Motion passes. >> Okay. Now we are on to item G, the amendment to the master contract with uh Morgan Autism Center for non-public schools for physical therapy services for an existing student for the rem remaining 2025 2026 school year. an increase of $5,96. And this is an action item, Miss um Anna Pledo. >> Good morning, trustees and Dr. Mucci. This is a contract
252to provide 21.4 hours of uh physical therapy that is owed to a student who attends a non-public school. So, the student was owed compensatory services that wasn't in the original contract. >> Are there any questions? Seeing that there are no questions, this is an action item. Can I have a motion? >> Move to approve. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Thank you. Motion passes. >> And then we have item H, approval of the designation of Gablin Regional Adult and Career Education Services, uh, ACES representative. This is an action item. >> Yes, thank you. Um, Gilroy Unified School District is a member of the Gavlin Regional Adult and Career Education Services Consortium. Um, and um, in the, uh, in the past, uh, Greg Kamacho Light has been the principal of
253adult education, but in his absence, um, the requirement is that we have an individual named as the alternate, and that individual must be board approved. Um and so to ensure the continuity of participation and maintaining our ability to meet quorum requirements for these meetings, um the CAE also requires that the member organization designate an alternative representative who is authorized to attend those meetings and vote on behalf of Gilroy Unified when the primary representative is unavailable. Um so for this reason we are asking for approval for the designation of um Greg Kamacho Light as the primary and Kanani Pratt as the alternate um to serve as the um to serve on the Gavlin Regional Adult and Career Education Services um consortium. >> Are there any questions? Can I have a motion? >> Move approval. >> I'll
254second. >> All in favor? >> I. Any opposed? No. Okay. Motion passes. Thank you. >> Now we are on to item 10, board member reports. Are there any board member reports? >> Yes, Trustee Moreno. >> Thank you. Um, I'm just going to run through things that I did. I don't know what happened with me, but I went crazy. Okay, so uh attended Lu Luigi's talent show and I wanted to thank the parent club um for their hospitality. It was a great event. I enjoy the talent shows. Um, they're fun. They really are. And to see the kids get up there and perform is crazy. Um, I also attended the the uh Christopher High, I think it's their spring concert, I think technically um at um at Gary High. That was really really nice. I really
255enjoyed that. Um I had a chance to go to um Christopher High and attend a lunchtime uh Christian club. They they have a Christian club there. And so I went with um one of the um the people who help run it. They asked me if I wanted to come. I said, "Sure." And I enjoyed I enjoyed doing that. I I haven't been to a lunchtime club at a high school in a long time. So, and it's short. I mean, it was like 37 minutes. Their lunches are pretty quick. I was surprised. Um but I enjoyed doing that and spend a little time at Christopher. Um got to do the site visit with with at Los Animus uh with Dr. Munchchi. hadn't been there yet uh for a site visit. So, it was really nice to
256see that's a big school, covers lots of ground, lots of stairs. Um I got to go to Elliot and I said earlier, I got to watch the Corey the Juggler. Um yeah. Okay. Anyway, and uh uh and then I went to the um I don't know what it's called. Is it the NextGen um choir symphony? Southbase Singers. What was that thing? It was called >> NextGen. >> Is that okay? And that was wonderful. Um, seeing these multi-generational group of people. You have the high school singers, you have the South Bay singers, the adults, and then this this massive um, uh, concert um, symphony band and this uh, very talented 16-year-old piano Oh, you weren't there. Sorry. You left. The 16-year-old uh, piano player who was just phenomenal. and they are so pumped about going to
257New York. Um they mentioned it about 15 times and I did want to um say that Jonathan um he really spent multiple times at the microphone thanking Dr. Munchchi the board for our support um for the arts and um uh I represented all of you so I stood for the clap. Um but uh it's proud I'm proud to do that. It's part of my background in my in my uh younger days and um I really did enjoy the the whole concert and I hope they come back and do it again. Thanks. >> Any other board member reports? Yes, Trusty Bizeno. >> So, um I also attended the concert for a very brief time. I took my three-year-old granddaughter. It was her first concert. She was a little overwhelmed. I told her we could leave. If
258you feel like leaving, just tell me and we'll leave. And she sat through the 15 minutes of introductions and I thought, "Oh, this is not good." You know, so then the symphony started to play. And that was a little overwhelming for her. And about 3 minutes in, she leaned over and said, "Grandma, I want to leave." And I said, "Why don't we hang in there until the singers come?" And about three minutes later, she said, "Grandma, I want to leave." I said, "Okay, I told you we would leave." So, I saw part of the symphony. Um, also, uh, couldn't stay for all of Rock the Mock, but that was really cool, having everybody there together. I thought that was a really, really good way to do it. Um, reclassification. I always get tears in my
259eyes when I see the families there and how um important it is to them. And as I always say, people say, "Oh, you know, our um families don't necessarily care." Uh yeah, they do. Um and I went to the Christopher High choir and that was um really fun and that's what gave me the idea to take my granddaughter. Anyway, um and one of the things Anish on on the list is the gifted games at Gilroy High. Friday, April 24th, 9:30 a.m. sort of to 100 p.m. So, um I half the time I get there and half the time I don't, but I'm hoping to get there this year. And um well I got a call about uh renaming the Gilroy High Farm. Um longtime FFA a teacher Robert Coun passed away and he was part
260part of the program. He was there when I got there in 75 at Gary High. So, um, there is some, uh, interest in naming the farm after him. So, I said I'd throw it out there. >> Yes, Trusty Delbono. >> Oh gosh, now I just blanked. Um, okay. Yes. So, um, Rotary, um, noon hosted the area 8 speech contest and, um, just really pleased that, um, DJ from Gekka is advancing to the regional contest and just, uh, she's just a beautiful speaker and also we had a great speaker from Christopher High School, Alley, but um, it was really cool though um, Oakrove had a speaker um, that had a phenomenal speech on the the Yeah. But like why it's so important, right? and how it it adheres to the four-way test of Rotary. It's like
261people need to hear that speech. It was wonderful and and so um just like kudos to us for having community service that was validated by hearing that speech again. I was like it's a good thing that we do that and I participated in the um um the schoolboard association um event for the Hoffman awards and you have to then validate the schools who were being selected. Are you doing what you actually said you were going to do? and we got to talk to the student members who are part of the um east side promise ambassadors through um San Jose State and it was just it was so nice because I know we also have a promise and that idea of just advancing to have um ambassadors who do that warm handoff for all the kids
262that come um and they just talked about how they just have this like an east side way and how it connects them that they're they have they have this other community within San Jose State that you know just brings them together as East Side students and I just thought that's something that we could definitely replicate moving forward and that would be really fun to see if we could um really support that as we move forward. And I feel like I'm missing something but I'll talk about it next. Oh, we have an event happening um March 27th, Friday, March 27th at Brown High School. It's the traffic safety ebike safety that's um taking place with the um city of Gilroy, all the South County Youth Task Force partners, including ourselves, right? Our district's involved. And so,
263um, hoping that people get to make it out there. It's like 5:30, I think. 5:30 to 7:30. >> Yes, Trusty Moreno. >> One more. I just wanted to Yeah, I completely forgot, but I was kind enough to be asked by um, Trusty Delono to be a judge for the Rotary speech contest. You know, looking for dignitaries. I guess that's what I am now. Um, and by the way, Anisha, um, Mary says hello to say hello to you. Uh she was wonderful to sit next to. I had a wonderful time. Um enjoyed the speeches from there was a student from Gecka and Christopher High Hollister and Morgan Hill the Oakwood. Um promising young adults who will probably be in these chairs one day. And um I really enjoyed it. I almost I almost didn't get out
264without promising to be a Rotarian. So it was it was but it was a wonderful event and they did a great job and gave us some good scholarships. Thank you, Jennifer. >> Um, yes. >> Uh, I also attended the reclassification. I was unable to go last year and I actually thought it was an employee kind of event until I read my um, email again. I'm like, "Oh, this is what reclassification is." Um, I think it's a strange word for uh, such a celebratory kind of event. Um, but it was very like at one point I wanted to cry because it really, you know, kind of hit some very personal uh tones, you know, because I was also an ESL student um way back in the 70s. You know, the way that they um handled the
265situation was they would tell the parents, you know, your child cannot speak your native language. And that happened to many of us, including myself. So happy to uh hear I loved hearing from the students and I think it was the first one um uh the little gentleman who um spoke about the importance of keeping his native tongue. So I was really just um very touched by their presentations. Um and of course the second speaker, she was so emotional. I just wanted to go up there and hug her. Um and I have to apologize. I have not been able to make it to a lot of different events. I'm doing two jobs right now at my work and so and then I'm sick and hopefully this will just go away. My car was broken into I
266mean I was actually I could hear the car outside doing something to my car and and then I actually didn't even know my car had an alarm and so until my husband was running down the stairs like your car is being stolen like what what that's your car going off. I'm like I have an alarm. Oh goodness gracious. Anyway, um yeah, they did some uh damage, but we got that fixed. Um lastly, I'm looking forward to going to uh Coast to Coast um in a few weeks with my fellow uh um uh uh trustee uh um Sorry, it's it's so I'm just going to say your first names. >> Oh, Michelle, you're going too. >> Wait, is there four of us going? Yes. Jennifer, you're going too, right? Okay, so there's four of us. Okay,
267great. Oh, fun. I'm excited. Um I went last year with uh Twin and um we had a blast and we ate some really good food. So I'm looking forward to that, too. So um I believe our next board um will be able to actually update. It's so weird. It's like coming up so fast. So actually I'll be in DC in a couple weeks with my son's um uh 8th grade DC trip. So I'll come back and let you know like what the tone is like right now in DC. So, but >> uh Trusty Nelson, did you have a board report? >> So, um I also attended the reclassification ceremony which was very very special. I had never been >> in all my years of GUSD. I'd never been so this was my opportunity. I'm glad
268I went. Um also, uh met Senator Cortezy. I'd never met him before. That was cool that he made the time to come to Gilroy and um went to uh visit Glen View. I'm continuing to um go to Elliot twice a week and it's it's a reality check. One of the boys doesn't even know how to read the word and. So truly it's it's a reality check. Um another kid just doesn't know the alphabet. Third graders. Um, and then also went to this legislative brunch. So, you can speak to this and uh, Trusty Kim can also speak to this, but um, I'd never been to one of these either. It was very interesting to hear uh Ro Kana uh Robert Rivas uh Sam Licardo again Senator you know Cortezy Kim and some other people from from
269the Bay Area about what they've done and what they plan to do to try and address some educational issues and you could speak to that some more and curious about what it means if you're a member member >> of Yeah. Action. >> The legislative action. >> Yeah. So, anyway, that was that was pretty interesting. And and uh uh good food there. >> Breakfast burritos. Yeah, it was good. >> Trusty Kim, did you have a board report or would you like to say anything about the legislative brunch? >> Um yeah. So, I went to that same breakfast on Saturday morning. Um it was nice to hear some positive news and positive um guess not news but some positive outlooks on education. Um I also finished up since our last board meeting did read at Glen View
270and Recker. Um and I really I really really enjoy going to Recker. never read there before, but I ran into my daughter's um first grade teacher there who um she worked in a different district, but now she's here and I'm so glad that she's at Rucker. Um did the ESPback meeting um last week and thank you. Um I also attended the legislative brunch. Um, and it was really good that I mean it was a long morning. It was super early, but they packed in a lot of um, legislators. Um, and uh, I the ones that talked about it seemed to think that the the um, Prop 98 will be fully funded. Cross our fingers. Um, and I think even one of them, I don't remember which one said, "Oh, yeah, that's just Newsome's, you know,
271uh, playing with the numbers, but yeah, don't worry about it." So, I'm like, "Okay, that's interesting." >> That made Albero smile. >> Yeah, it did. >> Yes. Um, so yeah, that was that was always a great event. And then um I did want to let the board know that um the uh Santa Clara County School Boards Association will have their lunch and uh like their lunch and learn here in Gilroy on April 25th at uh Barbecq 152. So um they're trying to bring people down here, >> huh? >> Barbecq. >> Yeah. >> Well, they have the patio area, too, right? Yeah. So, um, yeah. So, it'll be, you know, about it's really about networking. So, it's nice that, you know, North County is coming down to South County. So, they're trying to hopefully everyone here
272will be able to attend. >> Yes. Yes. I will >> Oh, okay. It's also my wife's birthday, so I will not be attending unless my wife wants barbecue. >> It's a lunch. It's a lunch. >> Oh, lunch. Oh, >> it's a lunch. >> So, I will send information over to you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. All right. Now, we are on to um item 11, upcoming and new referral agenda items. >> Is it the Saturday the 25th or is it Friday the 24th? >> It's on Friday. It's uh >> I have it on Oh, maybe I put the wrong ad. >> Google it. >> I will confirm. I have it on um the 25th, but I probably put it on the wrong date. >> Okay. Send us an email. >> Yes, >> please. >> And
273I have one more uh announcement. I'm sorry. uh Saturday Saturday June 20th there's a free candidate workshop for um school school board members only at the register voters office in San Jose um at 900 a.m. 9:00 a.m. Afternoon >> candidates. Did I say that? Candidates. >> Sorry. >> Candidates for school board. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Are there any upcoming and new referral agenda items? >> Oh, just another kind of community announcement. They are bringing back the gay garlic lot of uh at least Christopher I >> okay again upcoming >> I have a second request I I requested this last time too um the idea of a presentation on the um the teachers on special assignment that we have at the district office that support coaching in various areas. I would love to get a presentation
274on what they do, the impact and um the effectiveness of that of those roles. Um, Trusty Nelson or Trusty Peno, did you >> um want to have a discussion at some point possibly if it's the will of the board to uh discuss renaming uh the Cesar Chavez gym Max Cesar Travis Jim >> Brownell campus, right? >> No, it's our It's >> it's between GPS and South Valley. >> We also have a library named um after Caesar Chavez. And then we have several schools that have uh quotes on the wall including South Valley which is a brand new school. Yes, Gilroy High is also we need to look into renaming all of those. >> I know that Yeah. >> So we I've I've already been talking with our legal council that there's going to be a
275process that we will need to engage in. Um we'll if we are going to take off a name or rename then we need to engage our community in deciding what the new names will be. So, uh, once right now, um, Paul Needo is doing an inventory of how many schools and how many buildings are named after Cesar Chavez or where we have any quotes or any references. Once we have that, uh, we'll bring it back to the board and then probably engage in some kind of a community u discussion. >> Okay. >> I have one. >> Yes, trusty Moreno. >> Yes, thank you. Um, I would like to have a discussion or bring back um or have a whatever you want to call this. I can't think right now. >> Um, about athletic eligibility requirements.
276Um, I'd like to revisit this. I'd like to look at our policy compared to the rest of the state of California. Um, I think we should revisit it. I think it's um, it's time for maybe revision. Um, we have the strictest in the entirety of the state and I think we should isn't necessarily service. Maybe it's not something we should look at. I'd like I like to do that. Thank you. And I can email it to you if you want me to. >> Yes, please. >> Okay. Thanks. Um and then uh I because of this strategic plan and project based learning uh being an important key thing that the community and students are asking for. Um I would like to learn more about what like what our classrooms look like when it comes to project
277based learning if it's teacherbased um or is a district-led initiative. Can you share a little bit more project based learning? We do not I >> do we are >> No, we haven't formally trained it. Project-based learning is a very specific training that teachers are provided and we as a district have not provided training to our staff on that. So, it's a very specific program training and we have not provided any training >> okay >> in the last few years or ever as far as I know. So maybe it's not necessarily like specifically projectbased like the curriculum but like instead of the lecture type but what are how are our teachers engaging our students in like handson things? Yeah, exactly. >> So we can we can share what kind of professional development and training we are
278providing. What's happening in a classroom is it's different. It's up to the teachers. But uh what we can do at services can provide for you is that when we have our PD days, what is the training we are providing? Would that be okay? Jean Sonia, >> you want to get up there? >> Okay, we can do that. I >> was going to say is that part of the walk through? >> Yes. >> Yeah, >> we can do that. >> Okay, we can do that. >> All right. Anything else? Announcements. Uh, the next regular meeting of the board of education will be held on Thursday, April 23rd, 2026. Closed session will begin at 5:30 followed by regular meeting at 7 p.m. The agenda will be available on the district's website by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, April
27917th. And then we do not have to go back