Escondido Union School District Board of Education Meeting - February 20 2025

001[crosstalk] Doug Paulson: Well, good evening, everybody. I'd like to call to order this Board of Education study session on February 20th, 2025. And at this time, I'd like to ask Miss Harper if she would lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand. Ready. Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. All members are present except for Mr. Huston. At this time, I would like to see if there is a motion to approve the agenda. Joan Gardner: I'll move to approve the agenda. I'll second. Doug Paulson: Miss Gardner moves, Miss Harper seconds. I do want everybody to consider this motion carefully so we will take a moment to compose

002ourselves. Michelle Kemp-Zempoalteca: [off-screen] This is the only motion needed tonight. Would you like to? Joan Gardner: Yeah. Could you? Doug Paulson: Yeah. Can we do a hand vote, please? All in favor, please say aye. Motion passes 4 to 0. All right. Do we have any public comments tonight? Seeing no public comments, we will move on to item C one. Planning for the 25-26 school year. Mr. McGuire. Andrew McGuire: Good evening board president Paulson, board members, cabinet, Doctor Ibarra, everybody watching at home. First of all, to start off with, I've just gotten over a cold. So my voice is not perfect tonight and I have a cough drop in, so forgive me if, let me know if you can't hear me, I'll repeat myself or try to speak up. Okay. Before us tonight is our study

003session that we do generally every year in February as we start to prepare for our adopted budget for next fiscal year, which also would include where we're at so far this year and some of the planning around what we're doing to continue to stabilize our budget. So let's dive right in. So first I want to start off with where we were last. So the last time I talked to you and stood before you representing our budget was our first interim back in December. And this is what it was. So this is as of as if we were standing in December. So we were still the red numbers on top, looking for ways to reduce our unrestricted general fund expenses by $4.6 million in the next year and the following year of 3.3 million, and doing

004so, we would maintain a fiscal solvency there. The green box in our ending fund balance in that third year. And I get asked quite a bit like, what's that goal? What's the goal ending balance that you're looking for and working towards? And kind of just as a general rule, is our our minimum required reserve plus about 5 million. Now remember the minimum reserve of about 11 million. It's barely enough to get us through half a month of payroll. An additional 5 million isn't going to get us through that full month. But what it's there for. It just gives us time to plan and to to make adjustments. If there were something to happen, catastrophic with funding in some way. To give us time to plan and adjust for that. So now I'll move on to

005past December, go through the winter break. And here we are in February. So I want to set the stage for what we're here doing tonight. So first of all, this is a study session. So I'm going to stand up here and I'm going to do a lot of talk a lot of discussion about this. So I want it's a two way conversation. But the study session around our our planning for our district, our budget, all of that, that's an ongoing study session that we're all doing every day here in this building. And really, what I want to do here tonight is to bring our board into what we do on a daily basis in this. It's a conversation. And so every time I'm going through a lot of information, I'm going to share all this

006information. And if anybody has any input questions or need clarity, comments or anything, please jump right in at any time. So first let me set the stage for building our adopted budget. You kind of start with like what's our that core fundamental for building the budget around. And so we were I was drawing it up on the whiteboard in my office and really kind of came home was we got to do everything we can to protect our people. And that's what I wrote, kind of at the top. I wrote that on my board. Reduce non-people so that we don't need to reduce people. And so what you see, that's the blue circle. So I drew up the non-people and that's what's on the left. And then I drew people and I just grabbed a pen.

007It was blue. I circled people and it became the blue circle. So you might hear me reference quite a bit, protecting the blue circle that's protecting our people. So when we when I listed out the non-people stuff, like what are those things that we can go look at and how we can use those reductions there to protect our bottom line, to reduce our unrestricted general fund expenses and that so starting off with vacancies. So yes, certainly vacancies used to be full a person. But this is after and most of this when we're talking about in this vacancies is our classified staff. And we build positions into our district, into our whole operation based on what the needs of the district are, what we need to support, and that's how we determine what positions to have,

008how many and that sort of thing. But anytime someone leaves a position, we want to look at that and determine, is this need that led to us having that position still there? And so we may not need to backfill that position at all. Maybe we need to move that resource of a position somewhere else to where we have a need. And we can do that when someone vacates that position creating the vacancy. And we certainly right now we have several vacancies that we're holding on to as we continue to determine our need. And as part of also in our in our protecting our unrestricted general fund ending balance. And leases. And so one of the big lease that we have is for our Apple products. So our iPads or MacBooks for our staff and looking

009at ways that we can reduce that cost and not necessarily reduce having those things, although we are looking at reducing the need for iPads maybe in our lower grades . We're still working through what that might look like. But again, this is not just about budget cuts. It's about utilizing all of our available resources outside of our unrestricted general fund to reduce those expenses and that's the main column that we're after, the unrestricted general fund. That's what determines our fiscal solvency, truly. And so we'll talk more about what that means here in a little bit. Contracted services. And by that what I'm talking about is like consultant agreements, things of that nature, those kind of contracts that we're looking at. Do we need that still. Is it meeting our need? Is it something that we

010just have and we keep moving forward. And so looking at that really hard now in is this something we still need and can we reduce it. And so there are some things that we're recommending for reductions in that category. Software. We have lots of different software in the district, lots of different programs. Some of it great, some of it maybe it's lived past it's it's. We don't really need it as much anymore. It's not meeting our need. Maybe there's something better. So certainly there's some software programs that we're looking at recommending reducing as well, because they're no longer something that we truly need right now. Supplies. This is a big part of the conversation. Last year, we went from the January through our adopted budget for last year of reducing our budgets, kind of slowing

011down our spending. A lot of that was on supplies, and certainly there's an amount of supplies we need in every classroom in our offices for us to carry out our jobs. And we wanted to get down to what is that that minimum level of supplies that we need to get our jobs done. And certainly in future years, things improve. There could be additional things that maybe would help even more, but aren't necessarily that that minimum need that standard. And right now that's what we're searching for is what is that true cost of doing business. What is that minimum need? And so that's where if we can reduce supply costs as much as we can without impacting our ability to do our jobs, that's what we're after when it comes to that. Now reorganization, it kind

012of it's similar to the vacancy conversation. And this is where perhaps we have a person. Now, you might see this a lot in our certificated staff where, you know, maybe the student population, there's an enrollment decline more than our overall district, maybe more so at one school, but another school might be growing. We might need to move a teacher, for instance, from one school to another. That's that's what I mean by reorganization. And even our classified staff, like I said, we have a vacancy or even someone that is just in the position, but we need to move that person. We need to move that position and the person with it somewhere else. And that's reorganization. And so we're going to talk, and I'm going to go into a lot more detail on what these things

013mean and how it applies to what we're doing to to manage our budget as we go through tonight. Now available funding sources. I kind of touched on that a little bit. And that's what funding sources do we have outside of our unrestricted general fund that we can use to pay for some of the things that we can't really live without, but we may not be able to afford in the unrestricted general fund at this time. And so I'm going to walk through some, some of this, this is going to be a little bit more in a little bit more detail. So bear with me. So first of all, a thing on that list there is Medi-Cal. Now some good news for once from the state is there's been a change in what qualifies for reimbursements

014through Medi-Cal. And a lot of the services that are some of our staff provide in our special education program. And we can go get reimbursed through the Medi-Cal program from the state and the state's updated what qualifies for that. And surprisingly, they allowed us to go back several years and re and get further reimbursements than what we did in those years. And so we've gotten some increase in revenue through this program, some of the catch up from previous years based on that. So that was really good news. In addition to that, through some of the good work of of Patrick in our special ed department. He's back here. It's Patrick, and his team is some tightening the practices of that so that we're guaranteeing we're maximizing how much reimbursements we can get it going forward.

015And so from the catch up of the old funds to that, we've developed kind of a higher amount of revenue. Some of it's one time because of the catch up money. But I'm going to talk about something that we can do with that here in just a second, even before I leave this slide. And [inaudible] which is the Redevelopment Agency. Talked a little bit about that in previous presentations. Without going into all the details of what that is, it's a funding source that we're getting you know, through the state, through the regional redevelopment agencies, an amount of money comes in and we share a high school district based on our enrollment. And that actually expires in 2033. But other than that, there's another risk that's even I would say we know we have we can

016plan for a known deadline, a known, you know, end date. But it's also tied to some debt that the city is carrying. And if the city continues to make their debt service payments, interest payments on that debt, then we continue to get this revenue stream. But if the city decides to pay that debt off, the revenue stream shifts to them at a lower amount and we and the high school district lose it. And so right now, we're assured that that's not something they didn't do at the last December. And that's kind of when they make that decision, the city council, that they're not looking at doing that right now. And we're definitely engaging with them in talks about trying to get to an agreement to guarantee that they will not do that, so that we

017can continue to maintain this funding stream all the way through its ending 2033. Mr. Paulson. Doug Paulson: Okay. Mr. McGuire, on this topic of the redevelopment funds. The city has in the past attempted to make that payment, but we have a legal agreement with them. Do we not? Can we just get clarification saying they will not pay that off and we will continue to get the RDA funds? Am I correct about that, that that's actually a legal agreement that was drafted by the previous city attorney? Dr. Luis Ibarra: That is correct. We have a, there was an agreement for back payments. And so we entered into an agreement with the city for justifying it. That's what's going to take. And so when we try to make that payment, it was based on the dissolution of

018all the redevelopment agencies. And so therefore they were trying to make a case that that agreement is null and void. So we were going to begin entering into some pretty long term [inaudible] but but we were able to strike an interim agreement which says, hold on, they're not going to do that. G iving us time to kind of enter into a new agreement that will keep it moving forward. So that's kind of where we are at this point. But yes, you're absolutely correct. We have a document that was signed and it says that for back payments. Doug Paulson: So I would ask staff to please keep us apprized if, if the city were to be considering anything like this, I think we would want notification so we could go and prior to them making the

019decision, or. Andrew McGuire: We will be engaging our board to take it up to the City Council to ensure that we can maintain this very necessary funding stream for us. Absolutely. This is a team effort here. Dr. Luis Ibarra: Definitely. Andrew McGuire: So and I have a whole slide about this later in some of the things we're talking about with that. But that's another source because we have also been tapering it off in its contribution to our general fund. We have some of that money, and I have a plan for what we need to do with that, or what we recommend to do with that here going forward as well, to help us to continue to reduce our general fund expenses. Then we have educator effectiveness. That's another one time money grant from the state.

020It actually has an expiration date at the end of next year, so we have to spend it down by the end of next year. That's intended kind of in just the most general of terms for professional development and things related to that. And so we'll talk a little bit more about that and some of what we're asking or recommending to do with that for now. But that kind of goes to the use of the most restricted funds first. So just as an example, there might be something without going into a lot of detail that qualifies or that we can use title one funds for, for instance, it's a very restricted resource right now, of course, we can use our unrestricted unlimited use kind of money in our unrestricted general fund for that. But if it

021qualifies for one of the restricted resources, That's what we want to budget that into expense into first. So. So we get rid of all of the things that only can go into those. And then that leaves us with the unrestricted general fund for things that don't have a restricted resource for. So just to help us to manage and make sure we're not left leaving money on the table and get our hands tied to where now we have money we have to spend that's restricted, but we don't have anything that we can allowable uses for it. So we focus on restricted monies first and that being one of them. Then we have the EUSD plan. Now that was a big the centerpiece for our adopted budget as we talked about, you know, last year building into

022this year. And that's where we took all of the once the the state reduced that COLA from about 4% to 1%. And then just the the chaos that created in all of the districts in California. And although they say they didn't cut education funding, but we base our budgeting and planning on the future years, the three years, our current year and two out years there based on what the COLA the state is saying. This is your revenue expectation based on that COLA. So we built all of our plans on a 4% COLA for the current year, and then we find out in January and in May that they're going to reduce that from 4 to 1. Right. And so that's where we went to work. And look at all the one time monies as we're

023leaving Covid. And a lot of one time monies came out during that time is to take all that one time money. We cleared out some of the plans we had for that and then utilize that to transfer unrestricted general fund expenses into. And that would help us to grow our unrestricted ending fund balance. And so a lot of and I'll have a multiyear projection here in a little bit. But that ending fund balance there, it's 32 million at the first interim. That's pretty much mostly made up of those one time monies. Because of that cut in revenue had such a dramatic impact on our district finances. And so that's what the EUSD plan means. And it's really just a catch all for utilizing all the different buckets of money that we have available to us

024to maintain fiscal solvency. And so it's really about movement of expenses as opposed to reducing expenses. That's what the EUSD plan really signifies in that. So now I'll go into some of that later. I'm going to circle back real quick and celebrate Patrick and his team one more time, because it's going to lead me into the next bullet here on the right side. And that's that we had in our budget as well. And some of that one time money. We also made a lot of it into commitments, dedicating it to specific things, enrollment decline, special education costs. As our special education costs have kind of had a inverse relationship to our enrollment decline, which I have a slide for later. Just remember, we have a downward slope there, but an upward slope in our special

025education costs. So we set aside some of that one time money to offset that continuance of that sharp increase in costs, but under the leadership of Patrick and his team and all those that are professionals that work in our special education program, I think we've actually been able to find a plateau. And in doing so, we think that some of that money we set aside for that at this point where I stand now, now things can change as we continue through the year, it looks like we're probably not going to need that set aside as much as we thought when we adopted our budget because of the work that's happened since then. So let's talk about the federal funding. That's a hot topic in the news, isn't it? What's going to happen to the federal

026funding? We're getting emails from community people concerned. What is your plan? What are you going to do? Are they freezing our funds? Are they going to take it all away? So so I'm going to show you what our federal funding is and our education programs here in a second. But first, I want to tell you, it's already come home to roost. It's happening. So there was a we have our residency program, a teacher residency program. It's grow your own, right. We're training teachers. They're working with us and and become our teachers and and raising them up from our own community. And certainly that's funded by the state. We have a lot of of of funding and grants available for the people that are in the program to help to us to do that program and

027for the people to participate. But then we also got involved, awarded a grant from the federal government. It's kind of a supplemental to that. And it was about $50,000 a year. We were told a couple days ago that they're rescinding that grant to us. Not going to go into the details of the why. We all watch the news. We understand what the what what's going on with that. But that is already come home to affect us. Now, that was a grant money we haven't received yet. And I can imagine that that would be the first focus is money that hasn't left the Treasury yet. Stop it before it does. And so we've already had an impact of federal fund freezing, cutting program cutting and that kind of thing. But so let me show you, when

028it comes to federal funding, these are the the main federal funds we receive for educational programs. You've got your titles one, two and three. There we have our homeless grant there, the Mckinney-vento, and then the bottom one, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act IDEA. That's actually that's like the special ed funding that the federal government gives us to support our special education program. Now, it should be noted that our special education program is an annual contribution of from our unrestricted general fund of about $13 million. And so and then they give us 4 million too. So all in all, they're not giving us very much towards the cost of that, but they're still giving us some. And if we lost that, it would have a tremendous impact. And certainly if things like title one and

029those things got reduced, we'd have to make an adjustment into the programs that those monies support. But an immovable object on there is our special education program. We have a legal requirement to provide the services as called for in the IEPs that our students get for the needs that they have. We can't cut back on those services. And so and also I put on there a column is the salaries that are associated with some of those things. So you can see there. And so what what I'm one of the first question I want to ask the board for discussion is because we're not needing or looking like we're going to need some of that extra money be set aside for our special education programs. I think we've hit a plateau there in those costs. Is

030we would recommend to use some of that money, slide it back over to our federal, our restricted general fund where our federal funds live as a set aside in case there is a reduction in our federal funds. Now that would be a one time set aside. It's again, just like the EUSD plan, all of that. It's using that money to buy us time to make the adjustments. It's not going to be enough. So we're looking at is we could probably put 4 million, up to $4 million set aside in a calling it right now of a federal state stability commitment of sorts. And so I wanted to hear from the board. Is that is that something that instead of releasing that money to other purposes, just to set it aside for this new potential risk,

031financial risk to us if these funds are reduced in some way. So I'd like to hear from the board if you think that would be a prudent maneuver for us to do. Doug Paulson: So if you don't mind, I'd like to ask if I could start off asking a few questions. Before we even address that question. [inaudible] . Nope. Right here. Right here on the federal funding, the ECIA title one, what does ECIA stand for. Andrew McGuire: Kathleen? [crosstalk] Doug Paulson: It's EIA is that educational improvement Act. It or one of the answers? Yeah. Okay. Not its title one. It's it's it's okay. Okay, so I apologize I apologize. That was an unfair question. I've just never seen that. So I was wondering. Andrew McGuire: We don't call it that. We just call it Title

0321. Doug Paulson: That was something else. Okay. So those those funds, what are those funds currently used for? Title one only. Andrew McGuire: Go ahead. Dr. Luis Ibarra: To the penny. Doug Paulson: Yep. Michelle Cagle: Most of our sites or the title one sites receive funding. Then there is another site for the district wide [inaudible] out of that. [inaudible] Orton-gillingham is getting paid out of that. Some [inaudible] on your side. Okay. The site. Doug Paulson: So it's it's those supplemental activities to improve the students' education, particularly for students that fall in the socioeconomically disadvantaged range. Michelle Cagle: Yes. Doug Paulson: Okay. Michelle Cagle: Specifically, yes. [inaudible] . [inaudible] Dr. Luis Ibarra: Site budgets. That's [inaudible] get their monies for their intervention teachers. Doug Paulson: Okay. So that would that would have a tremendous impact on

033the quality of education that our most needy students receive. Can I can I just ask a question about the title three? Immigrant student that's migrant Ed. Are those direct services that our district is providing, or are those going through the county's migrant education program? Dr. Luis Ibarra: Kathleen, can you come to the mic, please? Doug Paulson: I'm sorry. Dr. Luis Ibarra: No. That's great. [inaudible] got some questions for you. Kathleen Sorenson: Sorry. Migrant Ed is a separate funding source, and we actually contract with SDCOE to provide the migrant services that title three immigrant is funding. That's based on a threshold of getting an increased amount of immigrants in each year. If our immigrant population increases by 10% in a given year, we receive that funding. So we've been receiving it for the past [inaudible] .

034But before that, we hadn't received it for a long time. I'm not sure if we're going to receive it for next year. So, so that money goes to our newcomer support our paraprofessional, several professionals that work directly to provide direct support to students. Doug Paulson: Okay. We do have a text from our rather large audience tonight that the mics appear to be coming in and out, so we'll be careful at the at the podium and all. But I'm not sure. Okay. So can I ask a question? [inaudible] I'm going to have to work that one. So any other questions? Joan Gardner: So my understanding is my fear is because there's talk of the education department instead of giving specific amounts, taking and giving, making it making it a block grant to the states, and the

035states administer it. But in this state, whenever something comes from the state level, there are always strings and paperwork attached, so it could end up being more costly than it is right now. More time consuming. Dr. Luis Ibarra: And so the feds, there's a lot of strings attached to the you know these monies. Doug Paulson: So the IDEA money, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, that's federal money that comes to it with a lot of regulations. Correct? Yes. And so a question I'm not sure who this question is going to, but if the federal government stops funding that, do the regulations also go away? Andrew McGuire: I'd imagine not. That's not how it's happened in the past. And in fact, many of our mandates of things we are required to carry out and do by

036law are not funded. And so it would not be surprising to me if the funding were reduced, but the regulations were not reduced. Dr. Luis Ibarra: Because this is a federal law, I mean, IDEA I mean, what we're required to do or provide special education services is federal. Andrew McGuire: But also the regulations that we're doing is protecting those services we're providing to those students that have those, you know, significant needs in many cases as well. And so even if the regulations were to be loosened, I don't know that we'd want to make a decision to reduce the services that are needed by those students. Doug Paulson: Yeah, absolutely. Agreed. Okay. Other questions? Mark Olson: Just maybe some clarification. So with the proposal you mentioned about moving the $4 million from, I think it said

037special education or the. Andrew McGuire: We're going to set aside for a one time money, special education set aside. Mark Olson: Right. Andrew McGuire: To use some of that to help us to build a set aside for this particular risk. Mark Olson: Right. And that's that's one time. Right? Andrew McGuire: That would be one time. Mark Olson: One time. And what would those. I mean, if we did move that. What would that funding go to either secure or continue for as long as it is there. Like just if you have any specific I'm curious. Dr. Luis Ibarra: If you look the salaries total it's about we're under $4 million. So if we do that set aside let's say we get it after like the and we've got deadlines. If we have to do reductions in

038force, this would allow us to keep those. It could fund those positions and give us time a year to make more instead of cutting. A quick response we can look for ways to to reduce those positions or find alternative funding. Mark Olson: So so if nothing changed, we're essentially just giving ourselves another year to make what would be very difficult decisions. Not that that's not a bad solution. I just want to make sure that's essentially what we're we're talking about. Joan Gardner: We'll hope for some attrition. Mark Olson: Or natural attrition or perhaps different policy change that would mitigate some of that. Andrew McGuire: And of course, for salaries, if some of those programs have to be reduced, it's not something we want to do, but we might be forced to, but also to protect

039our special education program. It's also a $4 million federal revenue there as well. And so we've [inaudible] situation to stand before you and start talking about those tough decisions. But we also wanted to be ready to give us time to have those discussions. Mark Olson: Okay. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. That answers my questions. Zesty Harper: So but so is the salaries for the individuals with disabilities on a different area or. Andrew McGuire: So we have. So all of our special education salaries, we don't charge any of them there. Because if we do that some of those services we wouldn't be able to get reimbursed for. On that other thing I talked about in Medi-Cal. So if we were to charge salaries for some of those people, we couldn't then get reimbursed for that

040in the other program. So we use this for like nonpublic school, things like that. What else besides nonpublic school. [inaudible] I think that we wouldn't qualify for reimbursements for. So that way we protect our ability to maximize our reimbursements. So that's why there's not salaries on that particular line. Zesty Harper: I mean, I like the idea of I mean, we could all speculate what's going to happen, but, you know, there's no way to know. It changes every day. So, I mean, I like the idea of giving us time and setting aside an amount so we can keep up with the services as long as we have the funds and have time to pivot when decisions are actually being made that are completely out of our control, but kind of gives us the time and the

041control back to make changes. Mark Olson: Only thing I would add is just. And I presume that you would take it from this lens, that if we went through with this process and then throughout the course of the next year, opportunities to kind of adjust, whether through attrition or other things that are triggered that we take advantage of, you know, not just trying to spend it out, but, okay, let's save this so we can use it in a way that's more judicious in the long term. Andrew McGuire: So that's what I talked about on the one of the first slides to in the vacancies reorganization, that constant evaluation of what are our needs, what are our resources in the form of positions and making sure that we're we're keeping ourselves right sized to our positions

042match our need. And especially right now as we go through this era of stabilizing our budget post Covid, that's the name of the game. Exactly. But doing that through the lens of protecting that blue circle, the people. So that's kind of the concept that we want to advocate for in and how we manage our budget. There are questions or anything on on on that. Doug Paulson: So I think you're looking for some guidance. And I would just like to say I'm in I'm in favor just exactly as Mr. Olson has stated, as long as we are looking for maximum efficiency and really looking at every one of these expenditures, knowing something's got to be cut. Which one is going to least impact kids. Andrew McGuire: Okay. So I'm going to move us past this. And

043so this is an early, early preview of our second interim. Now the next board meeting I'll be up here again doing a second interim presentation. And that's the actual board meeting where there will be a vote, where we'll be recommending the adoption of an update, a revision to our adopted budget. That's called the second interim, but for now this is more or less that first box there. That's the second interim as it is. There's going to be some minor adjustments before March 6th, but this is primarily what you'll see on March 6th there. We've added a fourth year because we're talking here in building towards the adopted budget. Now, when we get to the adopted budget, that current fourth year becomes the third year of our four year projection. And that's that year, you know,

044we use to determine our fiscal solvency and planning forward that 4.6 million is still up there, and that is still accounted for and reduce the expenses by that amount. And and that's a lot of what we're going to talk about tonight is how we're going to get there. But then we're not talking about 26-27 or 27-28. And so there was a 3.3 there. We removed it for the purpose of this discussion. So if we were to get to the 4.6 for the next year's adopted budget, but did no other reductions to our general unrestricted general fund expenses, that our ending fund balance in what will become our third year and our adopted budget is in the red box. Red box is bad. Below the minimum reserve, insolvent, to the tune of $3.5 million. And so

045that's why we're talking to you tonight, because we've got to get that red box to green, and we have a plan. [inaudible] show you down there, this is how it would look on a boom that works. 4 million. That's the federal budget set aside that we were just talking about there. So that's how it would show up. You see where the SPED one was here and not here. And now it's the four. And so we're pulling some of that and another million from our EUSD plan. You know, one time set aside to make that 4 million. Okay. Any questions on this before I move on? Zesty Harper: Oh, I was, sorry. I was just going to say that I do want to commend Patrick and his department, because if he's able to stabilize the SPED

046budget. That's really helpful. Behind the podium. Thank you. But no, that's that's actually a great help, I think, to our overall bottom line, but still providing the services that our students need. Andrew McGuire: All right. Okay. So now I want to talk. Let's talk about I skipped a slide or I missed a slide. There it is. I'm going to go backwards. We're going to go forward and we're going to go backwards. We're moving slides around to make sure that [inaudible] I misplaced a couple here. So first let's set the stage here. Now on kind of current facts current state of the district if you will. You saw the financials. Some of a lot of what drives that right is our enrollment and of course our attendance. And we're going to get into that here in

047a minute. But I've been showing more of a condensed version just the last few years of this. But I wanted to show let's go back to 2008 and just show the steady decline of our enrollment in this district from over 18,000 now to just over 13,000 that we predict to be at in the 26- 27 year. And so that's obviously something that we have to adjust for. And that causes a lot of decisions that we're we're having to make. And it certainly has a downward impact on our revenue potentials. Right. See I just got a couple of notes in there that a prep, Epiphany Prep School, a charter school opened up there in the 16-17 year. You can see the decline continued to happen there. Covid. But then Epiphany Prep closed. We had a little

048bit of a bump up. We got a couple hundred of those students did join our district, but the tidal wave of this overall trend for years of decline, you know, overwhelm that. And then the decline continued to start working its way down. I'd have to go back to get to the last slide. Okay. So Miss Cagle here, put together this slide to kind of talk about the impact of enrollment decline. Our attendance situation and COLAS and how they affect that. What effect they have on our budget and across our years of our multi year projections. You want to walk us through this. Michelle Cagle: So this slide represents the financial impact of the three years. It's comparing our first interim and our second interim. The overall reduction to our revenue is $8.5 million. The factors

049that play into this is the reduction of COLA in the 25-26 school year of half a percent, and the current state of affairs, we've decided to reduce [inaudible] limit by an additional amount in the two out years, as opposed to where we had it at first interim. We've also taken a look at where we at our at our ADA rate. Natalie and her team. The principal, the teachers, everybody at the site is doing an excellent job in bringing higher attendance. Unfortunately, the rate of growth is slower than anticipated. The good news is that of the 106 days that we've had, only 20 days have been less of an ADA rate than the same time last year. So there is improvement. At adopted we were at 94 across the board for all three years. We downgraded

050[inaudible] 92% and [inaudible] 4.5 and 93.5. [inaudible] the potential is there to have an increase next year. There's a new program for attendance recovery. It offers a lot of flexibility. We're now going to be able to use [inaudible] do that through the before school, after school, and on Saturdays. I know Rick is already working on implementing a program for that, and I mentioned that the reduction was 8.5 between first interim and second interim. In the overall reduction since adopted was $11 million. [inaudible] how we balance our budget based off of this information. Zesty Harper: Sorry I was. What's the [inaudible] Michelle Cagle: Revenue reduction from adopted to now. The second interim. From first to second was 8.5. We started showing that reduction at first interim. Zesty Harper: Okay. And then but you said so now,

051is that a finalized program where we can start recovering the ADA [inaudible] Michelle Cagle: [inaudible] Yes. Zesty Harper: Oh, wow. [inaudible] Fantastic. Doug Paulson: [inaudible] that both ACES and ELOP, or one or the other? Andrew McGuire: We can use her. I'm sorry. You go ahead. Michelle Cagle: We'll be able to utilize ELOP. And that's [inaudible] before that, we weren't going to be able to use it. We were going to have to use our unrestricted fund to be able to recoup ADA. But now we're able to use ELOP. Doug Paulson: But not ACES. Michelle Cagle: [inaudible] [inaudible] said ELOP. Doug Paulson: Perfect. Okay. Thank you. Andrew McGuire: So in that impact and remember that number that from adopted budget. The second and I still own. From adopted budget to second interim. It's an $11 million reduction

052in our revenue. So let me show you what the what that means to us later on. As far as if that weren't the case. All right. So now let's talk about some of our plans. So like I said, some of its reductions of expenses, some of its movement of expenses out of our unrestricted general fund into other available funding sources. So earlier today, I know some of Doctor Laura and and Audrey met with our Wheel program teachers and discussed that will we have proposition 28, our music and arts money, that we've been using to fund part of the Wheel or about half of the Wheel that's going to be continuing. But because we need to reduce our expenses and our unrestricted general fund, one of the recommendations or proposed reduction is to reduce the unrestricted

053general fund portion of the Wheel, and that that would be about $1.3 million in an unrestricted general fund reduction. The classified vacancies right now that we have that I talked about a little bit earlier, totaled to about half of a $1 million at this point. The contract reductions that we've identified for consultant agreements and such that we're no longer need at this point, 120,000 hotspots. And so this is something where we've had a lot of hotspots available for our students, and we've maintained about 3,000 of them or so. Right now, currently, if we were to only have the hotspots that are currently in use, it's about $150,000 a year currently. It's budgeted for 300. And so we're also working with T-Mobile and Cox. They have low cost or no cost internet that's available for the

054whole home. And we're working with our family liaisons and helping all of our, our families. And at this point, for the T-Mobile program, for that free internet. All of our families are qualified for that. We have letters for them that we've given to our family liaisons so that we can help them through the process to get not a hotspot from us, but home internet through T-Mobile for free. And as we work through that, the intent obviously, is to even bring down the need for hotspots even further. So they'll still have access to the internet. They'll still be able to do their schoolwork at home with those programs, but not at a cost to the district to do that. And enrollment declined as we talked. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Olson. Mark Olson: I'm just curious. And

055maybe you don't have the answer to this, but maybe. Do we? Do we know the ones that are actually being checked out? Are they actually being used? Like, can we, like, pull the gigs at. Andrew McGuire: Yeah, Leonard can talk to it, so I'll drink some water. Yeah. Leonard Levine: We just recently conducted a review and made sure that we're only active the [inaudible] only those hotspots that are actively being used are still turned on. The rest, we deactivate d, and [inaudible] from the school, so we have them here at the district office now. Mark Olson: And then of the ones that are actively being used, like do we do we get a report on how much traction they're getting throughout the day? And my concern is if they're getting used throughout the middle of

056the day when the kids are in school, are we really trying? Like, what are we doing? So I mean, I get we're trying to provide access, but as you rightly point out, there's a lot of services out there. So I don't know if the reports come in at that level of detail, but it would just be curious to kind of know, you know, the extent of [inaudible] who we're trying to provide access to is actually getting at the end of the road to that person that we're trying to get it there. So just or if it's being used at 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 in the morning, hopefully that's not our students. Yeah, they're turned off now. So just it'd be interesting to see that level of report and I don't need it. I'm just raising those

057questions because I do think that tells us what we're trying to cut costs. And if half of the ones that are actually being used are actually being used for the intended purpose, that's additional cost. Andrew McGuire: Certainly, if the student doesn't have internet at home to use for schoolwork, the family doesn't likely have the internet to use as well. And so there could be a likelihood that some of them are using some of the hotspot internet for for other uses. And that's why we wanted to... Mark Olson: Which is fine. Andrew McGuire: ...connect them to programs to where it's intended for the whole house to use for that. And again, at no cost to the district. But if they can't get that program, or if it doesn't work for them, they still need a hotspot

058for that student. We're still going to have some for them to be able to have that, so we can guarantee them access to their schoolwork if that's what they need. Doug Paulson: But I would agree with Mr. Olson. That should be an extremely small number. That's probably not $150,000 worth, because really, we're not in a rural area. Our families can get one of those other services. They may just need that extra push, that extra assistance. Andrew McGuire: And that's what we're providing exactly that. We put together the package of information they need to share with the companies that provide that. So we can we can walk them through the process and help them to our family liaisons to get access to that home internet at no cost. Yeah. Dr. Luis Ibarra: Even the funding letter,

059like there's everything provided for them. It's just now the that outreach to the families. Mark Olson: I'm assuming I don't know the answer to this, but we I know we turned the we're turning the iPad access off in the evening time now, but the hotspot remains active for the household. Leonard Levine: The hotspot remains active for the household, yes, but for our iPads, they cannot [inaudible] internet after night. Mark Olson: Right. Okay. Thank you. Andrew McGuire: So yes, to your point, if the hotspot is still showing usage after after 9:00, we would assume that it's not the iPad. Mark Olson: Yeah. And that may not necessarily a bad thing. We want our families to have access to it, but I think it's just drilling into the data of like, hey, if you know, it's from

06010:00 to 1 a.m. every single day, this is when the polls come in. You know, perhaps that other service is more appropriate for that household. Andrew McGuire: That's right. Leonard Levine: But a lot of the access to the internet blocked, restricted. So it's not like they could go to a streaming service or anything of that sort. Mark Olson: Those people are smart though. Thank you for answering those questions. Andrew McGuire: That's right. They came through our schools. Of course they're smart. Mark Olson: That's right. Andrew McGuire: So good on the hotspots. The next thing on there was FTEs. We're talking about ten certificated FTEs. That's why I showed you that enrollment decline chart, that we're constantly having to adjust our staffing levels based on the number of students that we have. Right. And so at

061this point, we're estimating a reduction of about 10% of our certificated staff, specifically [inaudible] of creates. Okay. What does that mean? I'm one of those FTEs. We already have more retirements registered with us than that number. And that number is going to continue to grow as we talk about even some of the other things from the Wheel to that. So at this point, we're not, this year, we're not recommending any reduction in workforce. Like I said, we're protecting that blue circle, okay. And attrition is absolutely the means for us to protect that blue circle. But we also have declining enrollment in our district. Mark Olson: So what's our anticipated enrollment decline? Do we actually have a hard anticipated number for next year. Andrew McGuire: Total number because we just did the [inaudible] first and second

062on that slide. [inaudible]. Mark Olson: That's that's adequate. Andrew McGuire: Second interim. We'll have the actual number that's baked into the budget. Mark Olson: So we're anticipating 27 to 30 per certificated. That makes sense. Thank you. Andrew McGuire: Okay [inaudible] Doug Paulson: Mr. Maguire. Looking at your enrollment decline slide, I think that a very interesting additional column where you have the year, the enrollment and notes and additional interesting column that I'm not asking you to do right now, but would be our total number of certificated staff, our total number of teachers by year. Andrew McGuire: Yeah, absolutely. And we we have that. We just need to include it on this at this time. But yeah we have that information. Doug Paulson: Yeah. It's I mean it's only relevant so that we can see. And Miss

063Harper brings up the good point. Maybe total classified staff, total certificated staff. And, you know, and understanding that if we have close to the same staffing levels, That's not necessarily a bad thing if we can afford it. It's just we're providing more adult per student and certainly expanding the number of instructional aides, which is a good thing. Andrew McGuire: Yes. Doug Paulson: It would just be another data point that would be interesting. Andrew McGuire: In our available resources, we want to maximize that, to get as many good people in with our kids, to help walk them through the educational process. And when you see that data, actually you're going to see that it doesn't align. So there's a bit of a bump in that staffing, because during Covid, when we staffed up to keep our

064class sizes low, like during the hybrid year and continue that for a couple more years, it'll look a little off kilter because of that, an artificial increase in that, because we had available funding through the Covid funds that allowed us to do that. So when we can, we do. Right now, we're in a situation where we have to get really close to, you know, what our available resources are are smaller. And so we have to tighten up our staffing to to what our need is, as we talked about with supplies, people and everything that we do. Anything else on the enrollment decline slash staffing before I move on to the next section? Joan Gardner: Are we still [inaudible] Andrew McGuire: We are on this page. Joan Gardner: So regarding the contracted services. Andrew McGuire: Yes.

065Joan Gardner: You don't say specifically which ones you you decided that would be eliminated. Could we see a list? Andrew McGuire: Yes. Joan Gardner: The contracted services. Andrew McGuire: Yeah. We just summarize it for the slide. But we do have we do [inaudible] exactly which of those contracted services do you want? Yeah, we want to we can we can list some of them off now. Joan Gardner: What all of our contracted services are and which ones I mean because obviously. Andrew McGuire: Oh yeah. Joan Gardner: You went through it line by line. Yeah. Andrew McGuire: And. Oh, we can provide that list to you. Joan Gardner: We might have some suggestions too. Andrew McGuire: I'm sure you do. That's what you're here for. We'll put that in the update. I think we can we can

066probably get that into the update. Okay. I'm going to try to go to the next column here. Are we ready. [inaudible] plan things about okay. Miss Harper? Zesty Harper: One more time. Andrew McGuire: Go ahead. Zesty Harper: What do you think our total in contracts are? Ballpark. Michelle Cagle: It's going to be 3 to 5 million overall. Our contracted services. That's going to include like our transportation. Our [inaudible] Orton Gillingham, Doug Paulson: Consultants. Michelle Cagle: Consultants? Yes. All of that. Doug Paulson: Some maintenance? Michelle Cagle: Yes. It will include some maintenance. Andrew McGuire: Okay. Anything else? Joan Gardner: Not till you start talking. Andrew McGuire: Of course. [inaudible] Yeah, I saw that. This is the section here where we talk about not necessarily reductions in what we're doing, but movement of those expenses into other

067available resources. And so the first thing on there, the relocatable purchase, and that's something that we're talking about with our RDA money and I have a slide for that will go into just a little bit more detail. But we're currently renting some of portable kind of building bathroom buildings, even classroom buildings. A few of those. And so we're using some of this money that we have outside of our general fund to buy those outright so we can eliminate those, the annual cost of rent for these buildings that we're still needing, but we don't need to keep paying rent on them if we have available funding to buy that out. So that's what that means. Future iPad leases. We have a new lease that's coming online to refresh some of our iPads specifically for our younger

068kids. And that that lease that we're looking at using our RDA funds to start to pay that specific lease. We're not going to be able to pay all of our leases with that funding source, but to pay that lease, the annual cost for that one. Now that's 4.0 [inaudible] interest lease. So it's just splitting up the cost [inaudible] money. [inaudible] have the items and transferring that expense out of the unrestricted general fund into our redevelopment agency's money. The next bullet is and and Mrs. Cagle is going to talk a lot about our LCAP here in a minute and the financial aspects of that, but we had some room in our one time carryover, monies that weren't spent, that were budgeted for last year within the LCAP and our supplemental and concentration dollars. So when that

069carries over, it's really essentially a one time money. And so we want to use one time monies for things instead of people. Right. Because people are going to be here longer than the one time than the one year. And so something that we have an opportunity to do is not only like we're shifting the cost of a new lease over to the RDA, but is to use some of that carryover to pay down two of our existing leases that we already have. And what that does is it eliminates the future payments of those leases for the next couple of years, and that provides a $2.1 million across the next two years of savings to the unrestricted general fund. And then [inaudible] collaborative contract, and we've talked a lot about our redesign process, and that's what

070that supports our Mackenzie Scott money. But remember I talked about educator effectiveness and more specifically our restricted resources and how we use those first through that time component on the educator effectiveness. This work is really professional development centered. And so we want to use educator effectiveness first to pay for this in the next year or even in the current year, current year. And then once we get that educator effectiveness, once we've spent that down in a variety of ways for professional development, then that costs, if it continues, could could be included [inaudible] money, which is unrestricted. So I want to spend the restricted money first restricted by what's allowed or by time in this case both for educator effectiveness and then unrestricted. We save that for another day. That gives us the ability to minimize

071our [inaudible] in our unrestricted general fund. Okay, ready to move on. Zesty Harper: Let's say it okay. Because I know I'm not the biggest fan of LCC, so I thought we were like in the $70,000 range for LCC and what they were doing for us, and I [inaudible] my numbers incorrect, but I don't remember ever being at $340,000. Andrew McGuire: So part of that cost are the extra hours, like the substitutes that we need to provide when we have the all day trainings that happen here, as they do that work, working with the LCC group here. So that's part of that cost. It's not the full of the cost that the full 300 there. It's not the contract cost in entirety. Some of that is the the staff time that we have to the subs

072we have to provide to have those trainings. Zesty Harper: Yeah. Okay. But I mean, we're I mean, I know [inaudible] I never liked this contract. Sorry. I don't know where to go with this because it just. Doug Paulson: I think Miss Harper is correct. We need to look at everything with a critical eye. I certainly think that the extra hours to make sure that we continue with our redesign process is valuable. I was at North Broadway Elementary School today. Just a real momentum of positive change and positivity among among staff and students. Because of the redesign, because of this ranch concept. And so I think there's real value there. The question is, is that something we can continue internally? And I think we always need to be considering that. How much of this needs to

073be contracted out and how much could we continue effectively internally. So, Miss Harper, I think I think your your point is well taken. And I think Mr. McGuire is always looking at ways to streamline and make more efficient our entire operation. Andrew McGuire: Absolutely. Zesty Harper: Thank you. Andrew McGuire: There's a lot of different ways to get to where we need to go, and that's always what we're looking at. Okay. So the next slide is going to have a much, I want to have a much more further discussion on. And it's another means of reducing our unrestricted general fund expenses. And so I'm just going to get into it. Our Limitless Learning Lcademy. Now this is a school that came online during Covid. Many districts opened schools like this during Covid response to some of

074those challenges in a more virtual environment. And we first started we started off with 360 kids. But as the years have progressed, the need that led to people enrolling at this school have obviously declined, given the enrollment has been declining over the last several years, and then even next year, projecting an even another decline into that, bringing us below 100 students at that school. Now, of course, this is only on the screen and in this presentation, because we're in a situation where we need to reduce our expenses and our unrestricted general fund. This slide is not here because of the work that's happening at that school. We met with those staff today. Doctor Ibarra and myself met with that staff today and talked about this idea here. And the idea is of closing the Limitless

075Learning Academy and heard the feedback from them and heard them voice some of the the needs that those students have. And certainly that's not lost on us. And there's other ways, like I said, for us to meet those needs. And so one of the things we're in the early stages of exploring this. Budgetarily, there's a $1.4 million in cost for having that as a school, but that doesn't mean that we can't meet those needs in some other way. And so, like we have our home education program, could we expand that in some way? Our independent study program, some other means that are within our available resources to still meet the needs of those students, that have the needs that would lead them to be at a school like this. And so we're in the early

076stages of that, but that's a discussion I wanted to have here, too. We've been having that conversation. I want to hear from the four of you. What are your thoughts on that? And again, with the idea that the recommended action here and is not taking an action tonight, we're not on a vote tonight. There's a process for that. It goes across two board meetings with one public hearing and one with a vote. Tonight's just a conversation. And the conversation centers right now around how do we meet the needs of those students that have the needs that would lead them to Limitless within our available resources, while also providing that reduction of our unrestricted general fund expenses? So it's within our available means. Doug Paulson: And so I will I know everybody will have comments. I

077have a simple comment which is this could easily be made into a school within a school, and certainly staffing needs to simply reflect the current enrollment. And so under one administration, this could be just an additional with 91 students, potentially 3 or 4 classrooms. And, you know, the [inaudible] just like we were moving, if they were going to another school, they'd be at that same level. And so but we could continue the concept as a school within a school very easily. And that would seem very reasonable. Mr. Olson. Mark Olson: I was essentially going to say the same thing. It seems like we can. I'd be curious to know what the grades are of the individual students. Is it more weighted towards two, three, four? Or is it more the higher on the high end?

078Dr. Luis Ibarra: So and more so at the middle school level. Mark Olson: Right. So I mean, I think using the data and as Mr. Paulson suggested, I think the desires and needs of the family members and the students can be satisfied at a much more efficient rate within the existing structure. I think it sounds like those conversations have already taken place. My guess is you'll find pretty similar comments by my board and colleagues. Andrew McGuire: Let's see. Dr. Luis Ibarra: Mr. Garner. Joan Gardner: So I've always thought that it was somewhat similar to our home education program. In any case, I think the fact that it's more middle school students, a lot of them suffer from a social anxiety, I think. And I've been to promotion ceremonies and I've seen the students and I

079think it is a beneficial program. But again, talking about maybe consolidating the two programs home education and Limitless . Yes, even on the campus right now. Home ed is at LR Green. Actually, Home Ed has actually been relocated. It resides that teacher and her staff reside at Limitless. Dr. Luis Ibarra: Yes, we moved them last year. Joan Gardner: So then maybe it should be because I was going to ask about how that whole home ed program is doing what their student population is. Dr. Laura Philyaw: 12 students. Andrew McGuire: 12 students. Yeah. Joan Gardner: So yeah, it would seem. Andrew McGuire: Now that program is really where the the caregivers for the students are the ones delivering that education there with the support of the teacher that works in that or is Limitless. We have

080our teachers providing a lot of that instruction. So that's kind of the difference between the two of it. But yeah, we got to figure out a way where we can still meet those. Joan Gardner: Could be a hybrid. Andrew McGuire: And talking with the staff. And we are going to be speaking with the families coming up about this. I mean, this is not something that we take lightly here. We don't want to remove the supports that some of our students need, but we also are up against that hard, you know, rock and a hard place there where you meet a resources we have available to us are shrinking. Joan Gardner: But that's where it comes. The rubber meets the road when we talk about a personalized education, because some of those students really have some

081needs. Andrew McGuire: Absolutely. And I've enjoyed that promotion with you for a couple of years. Miss Harper? Zesty Harper: Yeah, I was going to say because, I mean, the the teachers and staff there do a tremendous job. I mean, we've all seen it, but I think we could modify it to really be what we can afford and what our students need, but have a hybrid option or something like that, or combine it with home, you know, education. I'm sure you guys will come up with something, but I don't think it needs to be a standalone school site. I and also, I just don't think that's fair to have all those resources for 91 students. When we're hurting as a district wide as well. Andrew McGuire: A technical aspect of this right now, it has a

082California Department of Education school code. It's a school with if it's a program versus a school, there's more flexibility in different funds that can be used to support some of those things, too. So that's one aspect of our discussions about what we can do with it to to do something, but maybe even bringing in the ability, the flexibility of other ways to fund some portions of this, to provide those supports. Zesty Harper: [inaudible] technology you know [inaudible] option that we should offer to students that they can study from home with technology the way we have it. But again, I think you're right. I don't think it should be a standalone site or funding situation. Doug Paulson: And so technically we can just give up the CDS code. To put it into a separate school. I

083think the important thing is that those teachers have done an excellent job of branding LLA, and they've done a great job of of engendering a spirit. And I think what we're probably interested in is continuing that spirit. But that spirit can be part of another campus. And they can maintain as a school within a school or something like that, that some autonomy while also getting all the benefits of, you know, maybe some of the kids want to play sports, want to do other things that are available at the school, participate in ELOP programs, ACES programs. And so I think this could as long as we maintain this idea that we have a program that can be individualized for students, where they can do it at home or partially at home and partially on a school

084site. I think maintaining the spirit of what they've developed there is the important thing, and I don't think we need to give that up. I think it can be accomplished. Andrew McGuire: That's what we're working on, figuring out how to accomplish that right now. Dr. Luis Ibarra: T he teachers are very creative. And they [inaudible] committed to today when we spoke to them, they said they would love to help us figure that out. Joan Gardner: So I thought we already have a sort of a school within a school, they share a principal. It's on the same campus. They can participate, can they not, in the activities of. Dr. Luis Ibarra: There's no reason why they couldn't. Joan Gardner: Yeah. So. Andrew McGuire: But with that school code, it ties our hands in kind of how

085we can, you know, fund some of that in, in, in just in general to obviously with the need. Joan Gardner: So it's basically the funding. Andrew McGuire: Funding is why it's on the slide, not the work that they're doing. They're doing amazing work over. They figured out how to do this and do this well, I wish that we had them all. You know what they've learned in the last few years [inaudible] school together, every district in the world had that when we started Covid, when that just got happened to us overnight. But they used that experience and they developed something now that actually works well. Joan Gardner: Well those teachers are very, very special at that school. Andrew McGuire: They are. Joan Gardner: And it is truly an individualized educational program. It's what we would

086wish for every student if we could. So. Andrew McGuire: Right. Joan Gardner: I'd hate to see that, because you may well lose those 91 students if if you decide to scrap the program so you can add that to your enrollment decline projections if you do. Doug Paulson: Yeah. I don't think anybody's looking to kill the program. I think we need to kill the CDS code. Andrew McGuire: Make it from a school into a program. Doug Paulson: And really, we can continue to call it Limitless Learning Academy. We can continue it in the same location unless we're trying to get rid of those portables. We don't have to change anything. Joan Gardner: Except the designation. Doug Paulson: Except the designation. That's right. I mean, but we can still call it Limitless Learning Academy. It just happens

087to be on the campus of Del Dios Middle School. The the staffing ratios. We understand that's going to need to reflect enrollment and not the fact that this is a separate school. Andrew McGuire: And there is a need for many of those portables because of a whole other purpose, because of the building of the buildings at Del Dios, those were slated to be removed. Doug Paulson: Oh yeah. Andrew McGuire: [inaudible] the state holds us accountable for last year, kind of having a waiver for that. So, you know, [inaudible] those portables to move to other campuses to build their capacities as some of our other schools starting this summer. So. Okay. So we'll continue this conversation. We're going to continue our work in planning. We're going to continue to seek input from family staff and others.

088And thank you for your guys's input here tonight on this, the toughest of all these slides. Thank you. [inaudible] Okay. So I talked about RDA the redevelopment funds. So I mentioned that we've been tapering off the contribution of those into our unrestricted general fund because they will be expiring in 2033, but just tapering them off, [inaudible] but also because they are expired, kind of treating them as a semi as somewhat of a one time resource. So we want to bring expenses as part of the EUSD plan concept out of our unrestricted general fund and into these funds. And so some of the things that one, obviously we've already completed most of the work in our courtyard project here, and you know, the purpose for that is for us to be able to host events here

089instead of paying for other facilities. Right. So I can see in the future band concerts and other things like that that we can do employee get togethers, that kind of a thing that we can host out here in our courtyard now that we've rebuilt it that way. And of course, in honor of Kathy Shirley, who does such great work here for for so long as a lifelong Escondido resident and career here in, in our district. And so we will be having an event right now looking at in May as a an honor and dedication of the courtyard to to Mrs. Shirley. Her family will be here and many of her friends and colleagues that she worked with throughout her life for that. But that's something that we're paying for out of our RDA money right

090now. Like I talked about, there's restroom buildings and some portable classrooms like we have over our Lincoln, the annex, we call it. It's kind of attached to Lincoln, but off on the side of Lincoln, over there with the preschool offices are renting those, [inaudible] and then not having to keep paying the rent on [inaudible] occupied by our partner, Vista Hill. And so that way we're not paying rent on something that we don't have to because we'll have available funds to buy that down. Also, something else that we're looking at is, is what monies that we have that we can use to do things that we might normally do through a bond program, but as that those bond funds are being spent down before we try to ask for anything else, we want to make sure

091that we're maximizing our use of the available funds we have. And we have a need. We have some very old playgrounds, especially at these three schools. And so we have a project going now is to kind of take those down to the to the studs, if you will, and bring in new parts and, and replace most all of that playground above the ground at these schools. And so they have, you know, new modern equipment at these schools using these money like I talked about earlier as well. I'm just skipping right ahead here to the iPad leases, paying that the new leases were going to using the RDA money to pay that annually over the next four years on that. We're also at a point leaving the Apple world where all of our desktop or desk,

092you know, clerical staff, office staff, those kind of folks [inaudible] Windows in in that environment. And the Windows last time we did this and bought those was, I think almost seven years ago. And they're reaching that end of supported life. So their operating system, all that is no longer going to be supported. And at that point they become a hazard to our network security. And so we need to spend some money to refresh those, to replace those with ones that will have more years ahead of them. So they don't become a hole in our network. As you know, that's a problem out there that's happening nearby and far away. We want to make sure we maintain the highest level of network security with Leonard and his team, and so far, so good. Not going to

093encourage anybody to try, but so far so good. Also, along with our our network infrastructure, we put a lot through it, right? A lot of computers are out there as we continuously have to keep up with refreshing our servers as they start to in their end of life as well. And so there's a need right now and using RDA money to do that, where in the past we would have used unrestricted general fund money. That way we protect the unrestricted general fund utilizing this money to to cover that need. And then lastly on the list, kind of a new topic, as I believe we updated the board last week. We have kind of a growing problem over at Rincon. And this last spring it became more than just a small problem like, cough drop got

094stuck there, where the rain is now coming inside the building. In a large amount. And so we have right now we have some teachers that are not in their normal classroom. We have a company out there, Servpro is doing the where, you know, where they took all the walls out, get rid of all the water damage, you know, in mitigating any of that damage there and making repairs to those classrooms because of the roof leak. And then we're also now in process that starting next week, we're going to get in there and start taking that roof. Now, the roof itself, it's over eight classrooms. We're not going to have to relocate everybody. We're talking with the staff tomorrow and the principal about what's coming. There's going to be a little noise, but the kind of

095material we use, it's not like we're putting tar on the roof and that kind of thing. But to be able to take off the top layer of that roof that's causing the leaks, there's more of a solid metal surface underneath that. So the roof's not going to be completely open to the, to the sky and then be able to lay that it's a membrane roof. Back on top of that, we got to get that done before it rains again, or we undo all the mitigation work that we're doing right now in those classrooms to repair the water damage from the last rains. So that's about a $350,000 cost between the the repair work and then the roof replacement on that building. And so instead of letting that hit our unrestricted general fund using our redevelopment

096money to pay for the cost of that repair. And that's a good point, too, for what that money is for. It's intended for facilities, types, things originally. And it's for us it's kind of that emergency backup. If something unexpected like what happened in Rincon happens, you know, they could have that money set aside that we could use, that we're not having to continue to drive down our ending fund balance to repair things that have to get done. Okay. Doug Paulson: So if I could just make a comment. You've got a lot of facilities situations here. And I just want to remind everybody of a pending issue. LR Green the entire campus is at or beyond its lifespan. And at the point that the entire campus, the portables, which is basically the entire campus when [inaudible]

097are suddenly all simultaneously melting down, that's not an emergency. I mean, it is an emergency, but it's not a surprising emergency because I think we talked about this a couple years ago. Correct? So I just want to us to remember that we've got some aging facilities and we've done a wonderful job on many of our aged facilities. Andrew McGuire: Absolutely. Doug Paulson: But we've still got some, some very big issues that need to be dealt with. Andrew McGuire: When our needs are for facilities needs go beyond what our what we can continue to maintain with our maintenance department. Of course, those are things that we're going to have to do something much more substantial with you know, at that school specifically. But that's a conversation for a future board meeting about other ways to raise

098revenue in order to address those kinds of needs. So I won't go into that right now. Zesty Harper: We were in a good mood. Andrew McGuire: Okay. Any other questions on this slide? Joan Gardner: Just about the and I and I I'm in agreement. That's a good use of the funds because it's one time expenditures for things that are necessary. And it would improve the district. But where does our restricted maintenance fund money go or is that not enough to cover some of these needs? Andrew McGuire: I'm going to bring Miss Cagle, she's going to answer that question, and she's going to take the next few slides for you, too. So let me have her talk about the routine restricted maintenance and the deferred maintenance accounts. Like what? That what those monies go towards. Michelle

099Cagle: The [inaudible] maintenance is [inaudible] restricted. We [inaudible] contribute a 3% of our total expenditures. The bulk of that money is just to pay for the salary and [inaudible] maintenance. There's not enough money there to be able to do large capital projects [inaudible] . [inaudible] maintenance gets $939,000 a year, and that's to do the painting of the sites, asphalt, carpeting, those types just to be able to keep up with our annual needs. Joan Gardner: But again, I would think that a roof, roof repair or replacement would fall into that category as well as far as. Michelle Cagle: It would fall into that category. We just don't have that much available funds and that resource to be able to afford that. Andrew McGuire: So what the one roof at Rincon, just one of the buildings, it's

100eight classrooms. That's a $300,000 replacement cost. And if the [inaudible] maintenance here we're talking three buildings roofs with that. So that's why we have to try to find other revenue sources in order for us to do that. That's what our [inaudible] . S o. Michelle Cagle: Okay, so now we'll discuss the mid-year LCAP review in the last board study or the last board, you got to see the data aspect of it. And now we'll be discussing the financial aspect of it. Our LCAP is inclusive of all federal funds, state funds, and our [inaudible] supplemental and concentration funds. [inaudible] We actually had carryover and [inaudible] to incorporate the EUSD plan into the LCAP. In the next slides, we'll show you what we did with that. For LCAP goal one, there was no significant changes as to

101how we adopted to where we think we're going to be ending. The changes that you do see is just the [inaudible] of the budgeting cycle as to what the people and the positions [inaudible] the actual needs of those action items, where you will start to see that [inaudible] importantly, with the social workers and the counselors. At the time of adoption, we were funding those positions with our supplemental concentration funds. Since we had carryover of our EUSD funds, we're able to move those costs [inaudible] ...money to be able to do one time purchases with. You'll see [inaudible] are significant change [inaudible] over the Apple leases. Andy he took a lot of my thunder in being able to explain what we were doing with that. [laughter] So just to reiterate, we took the lease payments that we

102were going to have for the next two fiscal years, which equated to $2 million. We're using the one time money that we freed up by being able to move our social workers and counselor costs out of our unrestricted fund, or out of our unrestricted funding sources [inaudible] restricted funding sources. This also allows us to be able to reduce that $2 million [inaudible] [inaudible] Monitoring into the LCAP. That cost was previously just out of our view. We're now able to [inaudible] use supplemental [inaudible] funds. That service that is provided [inaudible] category or goal three with the safety of our [inaudible]. That has been invaluable in the last weeks. And we see a huge decrease in vandalism, which is saving us money. Now, Andy will go over how all of this work plays into our second interim

103multi-year projection. Andrew McGuire: Any questions on any of that before I move on? Zesty Harper: All three pages. Andrew McGuire: Do you want to take some time to look it over? I'll move on. We will come back to it. Okay. Everything we presented to you tonight [inaudible] first interim. [inaudible] [inaudible] stand now in actuality. This is what really would [inaudible] most close to what our second interim would be incorporating all the cost reductions and cost movements that were presented tonight. All of those actually total up now not 4.6 but to 6 million. So that's a $6 million reduction in our unrestricted general fund expenses. Didn't have [inaudible] big impact as it could have, because we also remember had a reduction in revenue because of our enrollment and specifically our attendance rate. But as you can

104see that [inaudible] looking at what's the least amount of reductions that we can do and still hit that minimum reserve plus 5 million kind of threshold. That's what we put in there, projecting to do another 1.5 million in cuts in the next 26-27 and the 27- 28 years as we stand now. And that gets us to that box from going from red to green at just below $17 million. One thing I wanted to point out, take that $11 million impact that that ADA had on us, the reduction in revenue from adopted to now. If we [inaudible] dollars, we could adopt a budget that had a $3 million surplus instead of a deficit. Our biggest challenge right now, we have risks ahead of us as far as federal funding maybe. State funding cuts maybe. But something

105that's right here in this city is our kids need to show up to school. [inaudible] our families to want to send their kids to our schools, enroll them, keep them [inaudible]. Right. And that's the forefront of our work, is to have a schools that they'd want to come to, but then show up to every day. If we didn't have to make a downward adjustment to our revenues because of attendance and enrollment decline, that's $11 million to that negative seven. We'd have a surplus. That's how important it is, the work that we're doing out there to make our schools accessible, relevant, exciting, centers of education. Miss Gardner? Joan Gardner: Well, yeah, it's great that our schools attract the students because if they're not [inaudible] they're not learning. But I will tell you, my concern is we

106have to concentrate on reducing illiterate students. I mean, that has to we have a we have an emergency, a serious emergency. And I see we're talking about next year implementing a identifying the future struggling readers. Andrew McGuire: Dyslexia screening. Joan Gardner: Is that what it's for? Andrew McGuire: Yeah Joan Gardner: Oh that's for dyslexia. Only I just it just boggles my mind that of how many children are going through and are not not literate, are not able to read. Andrew McGuire: You know, [inaudible] I'm going to leave that up to our teachers because I've been out there. We've all been out there, we've been out there, and they're putting in the work right now to deal with what we're coming out of the Covid era and the student populations and the struggles that they've had.

107And we're catching them up. We've seen that through our data. [inaudible] We've heard from our teachers that were coming in and presented that. It's in the early stages of that. Absolutely. But I think we're going to remedy what you just pointed out. Absolutely our kids need to be literate in math and reading. Joan Gardner: Well, the reading is the first. Andrew McGuire: Absolutely. They got to learn how to read so they can read to learn. And that's what our teachers are doing every day in our classrooms. And they're putting their all into it. And I think that's happening. Patience and support from us is going to help them see that through. And I think that that we're seeing the early stages of starting to climb out of that, the hole that Covid dug for us

108already. But I know there's more work to do. Absolutely. Joan Gardner: Well, you understand that even before Covid, I will say I'm grateful for the fact that we're we're concentrating more on phonics again. Andrew McGuire: Absolutely. Joan Gardner: Orton-Gillingham program is very, very valuable. Yeah, but it it is an emergency and we have to address it as such. And as I said, having fun at school is great, but loving it, you know, there's fun and enjoying to read too. Absolutely love reading. That's what really bothers me is that I know it's no longer Doctor Seuss Day, but reading across America is coming. And when you read to a child, that is so important. It really is. Anyhow, I would I would give that suggestion to the parents and we talked about eliminating cell phones, smart

109phones in school. Are we doing anything about that? Yes or no? Andrew McGuire: Yes we are. We're talking with with our teachers, the staff that's going to have to support that. Everybody has an interest in there not being cell phones. Joan Gardner: There is a state law now, is there not? Andrew McGuire: [inaudible] either to restrict or limit altogether cell phones and develop policies over the next couple of years to do so. And certainly that's one of the things that we're working on here as well. Joan Gardner: Okay. And the other thing was we had an update on the progress of our absenteeism and how it ebbs and flows. And Michelle, you alluded to it a little bit too, that there were only a few [inaudible] [inaudible] from the outset of the school year. But

110my question is, have we drilled down into what grade levels are having, are falling off? And. Andrew McGuire: W e can we can put something like that together, put it into an update. But we're going to also do part of our second interim presentation, which kind of reflects [inaudible] beginning of the school year, an update about our attendance at that time, and we'll work on some more detailed charts that kind of show it by grade level to where I think we can put that [inaudible] Joan Gardner: I'd be interested to know [inaudible] because it looks like the further we get into the school year, the higher the absentee rate. Andrew McGuire: So we've we've had a struggle since winter break for sure. And there's been a lot clearly I've suffered from it myself like multiple

111illnesses going around. We've seen it with our staff. Joan Gardner: I've heard there's a flu epidemic. Yeah. Yeah. But but don't they make some allowance for that if there's a particular epidemic going around? Doug Paulson: No. Andrew McGuire: No, they do not. Dr. Luis Ibarra: And that's what when we're noticing the trends, it's following a similar trend with the cold season. Joan Gardner: Okay. That was my question. And also I have to say I don't know if this happened to everyone, but it's [inaudible] detailed graph of our district wide chronic absenteeism data for this year. Click here. And the click here doesn't work. Andrew McGuire: That on our website? Joan Gardner: So no it's on in the in the update. Andrew McGuire: Oh Friday update? Joan Gardner: Yeah. Andrew McGuire: Okay. We'll [inaudible] in the

112update with the working link. Joan Gardner: Because that would answer some of my questions. Andrew McGuire: Yeah. Because we do put that in like on a monthly basis. Okay. Here's how the last month went. But we can go back. Is that the last week's update? Joan Gardner: Yeah Andrew McGuire: We can go back. Maybe the document after it got shared, something changed or whatever. The work that they're doing that kind of made that happen. But we can make sure that link is active this Friday. Dr. Luis Ibarra: It's working on it right now. Joan Gardner: That would answer some of my questions about specifically what dates that following what events. Andrew McGuire: Yeah. Yeah. We put it in. We could actually copy and paste it back into this update too. We did kind of an

113analysis of the [inaudible] especially compared to last year so we can see those trends. Doug Paulson: Mr. Olson. Mark Olson: Yeah. Just just a point. And you know, you can this can be my get off my lawn moment or something. But I've been banging the drum about, you know, cell phones and limiting them. I think I've said it here before. I was a terrible student all K through 12. I was a terrible student, but I loved school. I never missed school. I had perfect attendance, like for nearly my entirety of my thing, but I was terrible. And the reason I had I loved school was because I had a there was a connection for me. My friends were there, my teachers that were there. And I really feel strongly that if we can find a

114way to get these devices out of our children's purview during school, they will start to reconnect with individuals that will be their place of socialization, that will place, and by default, they [inaudible] learning will increase. Our engagement will increase, the connection to the teachers will increase. I don't see a downside, so I hope it doesn't take 2 to 3 years. I'm probably on an island with my colleagues about being very, very firm on, especially like through middle school. But you know, the high school can do what they want, but I use my own example. I loved school, but I was a terrible student. But I loved going there because that was my point of connection. And my teachers, you know, I was the kid that got a D but said, excellent citizenship. Pleasure to have

115in class. I can still pull these report cards and show that because my point of connection with my community [inaudible] school and my professional life, I do the same thing. Just like today. I was in a senior center for people from 55 to 99 years old. That is their place of connection. It's where they go to connect with people. They're not trying to learn pottery. They could care less, but the pottery class is being offered, so they are there. And so if we can make our campuses a place of connection for our students, the benefits of them being there if we all know will be positive and the default will be they're there more often, which will give us more resources to help educate our community. So there's the [inaudible]. Andrew McGuire: The law allows

116us for a couple of years to develop this plan. That doesn't mean we take that long. What I know [inaudible] talked with some of our teachers in EEEA. There's a lot of different ways that different teachers are going about restricting that cell phones in their classrooms and around the school. I believe that through gathering the best practices of what works here for our kids to restrict the cell phones in the classrooms, that we can then roll out something for the district when we start the new school year. Right now [inaudible] what's the best way that can work based on what some people are already doing [inaudible] lot of classrooms right now that's already happening. Now, I know [inaudible] [inaudible] ...teams to build. What does that look like in how we restrict the cell phones throughout

117the entire day? Mark Olson: That would be my preference, but I could be on an island. I just, you know, I don't want to put another. I don't want to put another burden on the staff on a campus to police this, because it will I promise you, it will be a losing battle. So if you remove that from it, the teachers don't have to worry about it. The parents don't have to worry about it. The students don't worry about it. I think there's there's concerns [inaudible] not on the agenda. So I don't want to go on to it. But any concern I've ever heard is easily, easily over overcame. So I don't want that to be a barrier. I hope we can be the model, and we can be the example of a district that's

118taking a proactive approach to getting our kids to reconnect on campus and not be the follower. So that's my $0.02. Doug Paulson: And I have the feeling that it is 4-0 vote. And actually 5-0 , that we have a strong policy to roll out at the beginning of this coming school year. I'm also, I will tell you, I'm concerned with the idea that we are going to that we might look at ways of restricting or, you know, once we leave it up to a classroom discussion of how this looks. I would just be. I would just be very opposed, extremely opposed to any idea, to any flexibility, because that is it just sends a message to kids that in some classes, oh, we get to use our cell phones and in others we don't. And

119so, you know, and like Mr. Olson, I just see not just the use of cell phones, but the cell phone management. I, I can't be bothered with anything until I find a place to plug my cell phone in. My cell phone charger isn't working. I've got to go find someone who has a working charger, and it takes precedence over everything. I personally am just totally in favor of no cell phones on campus. I don't know if we can do that. Andrew McGuire: Well, that's what the law allows for us to do. And I talked about exploring what different strategies are happening now so we can learn from what [inaudible] works at small scale so we can roll that out large scale. But everybody has to do it the same way. It's kind of like circling

120the wagons. We have to create no gap so that we don't start to get the cell phones to sneak back in. Once we we were able to... Doug Paulson: They cannot sneak back in. And I also am very supportive of the idea of lunchtimes and breaks. No cell phones. We have to have time to socialize, and I think I may be on an island there. I know the students will oppose that idea, but parents will support it. Andrew McGuire: We're all on the same island, and I believe I heard from a lot of our staff at schools and parents even. We're all together, and we need to work together to help our students understand that you don't need the cell phone to have a full and successful social life that we have in our schools.

121So I don't have anything else. Any questions? Dr. Luis Ibarra: We'll go ahead and bring our proposal back to the board before we implement. We'll because we this was actually a topic of two design team meetings that we've had as well. So we were getting a lot of feedback and then looking at our existing policy. Do we need to beef it up. And then we'll bring a proposal to the board for review. Andrew McGuire: I am done sharing information. Is there any further discussion questions? Comments? Doug Paulson: Can I can I please ask? I'm sorry. I, I am going a little slow today. Can we go back to the to the. Let's go to LCAP goal two. Andrew McGuire: Okay. Doug Paulson: And I've just got just questions. I noticed there's a bunch of items

122on all three LCAP goals that came in significantly higher than the adopted budget, and I, I'm just wondering what happened. And so let's go to item 2-5 track budgeted $288,325. Came in at $444,717. Is is there just an individual explanation for each one of these things? Andrew McGuire: Yeah, everything's going to have its own unique explanation for what cause and effect. I know, Michelle come up. It's about ELC, but I think you do a better job of explaining it as you did to me. Michelle Cagle: So to track [inaudible] expenditures [inaudible] LCAP, we use designated resources so each action item has its own resource. This has been a [inaudible] practice over the last two years. And as we really start to quantify the action items or [inaudible] to change the resources to that, we can

123make sure that each item is actually accounted for in regards to the track program. We have previously used the same resource for ALC and TREC, and when [inaudible] ELC went away [inaudible] adopted, we aren't sure which positions [inaudible] actually were going to be from the budget standpoint and the budget just we overlooked the ALC component of it. So we under budgeted for the TREC. Doug Paulson: Perfect. Thank you. Moving on to item 2-6 juvenile diversion. So that is a contract service through Compact. And it came in three times the budgeted amount. Michelle Cagle: So also in respect to doing the LCAP, we're looking at every action item that we pay in LCFF supplemental concentration and all of the items that we pay outside in our base, and what how we can best utilize our restricted

124funds. Supplemental concentration is in our unrestricted balance. However, it does have restrictions, so we treat it as a restricted resource. What we are paying for out of base was our SRO officer, and in talking with Kathleen, it was an appropriate charge to put into this action item that we didn't account for at the time of adoption. Doug Paulson: Got it. And there's a similar explanation for each one of these discrepant actuals. Michelle Cagle: Yes. When we were developing this, this was happening this time last year in March, April, we just didn't have as clear of the information to be able to quantify it to the extent that we are now. Joan Gardner: So there were guesstimates basically. Michelle Cagle: Yes, based off of the [inaudible] and and that's why we do the mid-year review. Doug

125Paulson: Very good. Thank you so much for that that explanation. Zesty Harper: I have questions again on the yellow [inaudible] Why? [inaudible] and what that means. Michelle Cagle: Okay, so for the social worker and the counselors at the beginning or at adoption, we were going to be using our supplemental and concentration funds to pay for those positions. When [inaudible] our 23-24 fiscal year, we had additional money in our EUSD plan. Our restricted funds. So we moved those costs out of supplemental concentration into our restricted EUSD plan funding allowed us to best use our funding sources, our most successful ones first. Zesty Harper: That makes sense. Thank you. Andrew McGuire: Questions? Comments. Discussion. Okay, Miss Harper. Zesty Harper: It's lot to take in. No, I'm sure we'll have more questions, but thank you. Andrew McGuire: Okay.

126Zesty Harper: That was good. Thank you for. I like the new way to track them with the with the designations. That's very helpful to actually see the actual cost. Andrew McGuire: I said at the beginning of this, this is an ongoing study session that we're always engaged in. You have questions. Reach out to us so that we can provide clarity or even ideas, because you're part of the leadership of our district. So thank you for your time and the conversations we've had tonight. And March 6th we'll bring back our second interim for adoption of the revision to our budget for second interim. And I have one more thing to show you. I forgot for you, Mrs. Harper, the graphical version of our MYP. The Forecaster. So the dark blue line is our adopted budget as

127it was. You know, when we adopted it in June, then we went through the process of closing our books. We had some carryover. That light blue line is the will be our second interim ending balances. That's why [inaudible] up from even back into the current carryover amount from last year. And as you can see as we go forward that MYP I showed you that we took out the cuts as if we don't have plans for them yet. If we didn't make those cuts that that kind of pink line crosses the black line. That's the line of insolvency, right? So the goal is to keep the line above that black line. So you can see at this point that light blue line is above that black line. And that's where that blue circle is that I

128talked about earlier. That's how we protect our people, keep ourselves solvent. We're able to protect our people so that they can go do the work that they do. Like Miss Gardner brought up teaching our kids to read, teach them how to do math, teach him how to be good citizens. We have to [inaudible] circle. And at this point, as we stand now, we're able to. But that work continues. Thank you for your help and thank you for your time tonight. That's the end of it. Turn this over to you, President Paulson. Doug Paulson: Right. I'm looking for my agenda. Zesty Harper: It's right here in front of you. Next meeting. Doug Paulson: Yes. I am looking forward to our next meeting, which is a regularly scheduled board meeting that will be held on Thursday, March

1296th, 2025, at 7 p.m. at the Escondido Union School District Carilyn Gilbert Education Center. With that, we are adjourned.