001We have no public comment. Okay. Then I will take a motion to adjourn to closed session. I'll move to adjourn to closed session. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passes. We will adjourn to closed session, and we will return to open session at six o'clock. All right, it's 6:00 o'clock. We will return to open session. We have one item to report out of closed session. A motion was made by Trustee Blackman and seconded by Trustee Martinez to approve the appointment of Amy Nichols to Assistant Superintendent of Business Services effective July 1st, 2026. The motion was approved unanimously. And next, we'll move to our pledge of allegiance. Board Trustee Bhutani, can you lead us? And Trustee Bhutani, can you read our district mission statement? Yes. District mission statement. Dublin Unified School District will educate
002every student to become a lifelong learner by providing a safe and supportive environment that fosters collective responsibility for each student's success. Thank you. Before we move to the next item, I do want to introduce, we have another person up here at the dais with us. We have our student trustee, Nikki Pulai, from Dublin High School, who will be our student board rep next year, and will be sitting in on the meetings here with Trustee Bhutani as he finishes out his term. So we are excited to have you here, and I know we'll hear more from you when we get to the student board member reports. And with that, I will turn it over to Heather to introduce our new leadership staff member. Thank you very much, and good evening. I would very much like to
003welcome Amy Nichols to come and stand up with me at the podium. And I know that I'm going to be joining Matt in making some comments tonight. But Amy, we are so excited to welcome you to Dublin. We are pleased to have Amy as our new assistant sup of business services. Ms. Nichols brings extensive experience in school business administration, fiscal management, facilities oversight, technology leadership, and operational planning from several Bay Area school districts. She has successfully led fiscal stability efforts, budget improvement plans, and complex bond programs while maintaining a strong focus on supporting students and staff. Amy also brings experience collaborating with labor partners and participating in negotiations with employee associations. Her thoughtful leadership, commitment to transparency, and collaborative approach make her an outstanding addition to our district leadership team. Please join us in welcoming
004Amy to Dublin Unified School District. Matt Nichols. Yeah, there's really not much more I can say other than welcome. Amy, welcome to the team, welcome to the community, and we're thrilled that you're here. I feel like you are the perfect person for this role, so welcome aboard Before you say anything, we wanna give you a little plant for your new office. Oh. Just remember to bring it back with you. It's very pretty. Right? And welcome. Thank you. Thank you. This is a beautiful plant. And thank you to the members of the board, cabinet, and community, including DTA back there. So thank you. I'm looking forward to working with you all. Do it up here? Yeah. Right. Dead center. Thank you. Okay. We are going to move on to our resolution on LGBTQIA+ Pride Month. Dr.
005Campbell. Yeah. Thank you, President Speck. We submit to you this resolution for LGBTQIA+ Pride month. This is an annual resolution that we bring to the school board. We strive for educational spaces to be inclusive. We want students and staff to feel like coming to DUSD is a welcoming place, to not only to work, but also to learn. Just wanted to also point out to the community and to the board that on the resolution it states all of the dates where we recognize and display the pride flag throughout the course of the year, not only at the DO but also the secondary school. So I present to you the resolution. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Our final recognition is our Emerald High School NCS Champion boys' volleyball team. Superintendent Campbell, future superintendent... Oh, actually, Superintendent
006Funk, future Superintendent Campbell, President Speck, board, cabinet. It's my pleasure to introduce a incredible group of athletes from Emerald High. As you may know, Emerald's been making a name for itself on the athletic fields, in particular in net-based sports. They dominate in tennis. They're bringing home banners in badminton, and tonight we're here to talk about volleyball. I'm gonna ask Athletic Director Kurt Johanson to come up and say a few words, but before he talks about the accomplishment that they've made, I'll talk about one other first that they brought to the school. They are the first Emerald High School team to have a feature segment on 49er Cal High Sports, which happened recently, so congratulations to them on that. But Kurt, if you'd like to come up. Board, staff, just wanna honor these young men and
007coaching staff, and Coach Yu back there, and I'll have him come up and say a few words here in a second. First of all, just an amazing run by this team. They won the NCS Division III boys' volleyball championship. They had to win four games to do that, and they bounced around, played all over the place to do it also. And then they were able to go on into the CIF-NorCal championships and got to the semifinals, played extremely well in that also. And when I look at their accomplishment, they are probably the first school, especially in the NCS, that's ever won a title in their first year of existence, but also without any senior athletes. They were playing mainly teams that were dominated by senior athletes. Their team is mainly dominated by freshmen and sophomores.
008There are a few juniors. So just the accomplishment of these young men and their skillset, just a tremendous accomplishment, and being very close to also getting to the next point of being in the championship of the NorCal was also special. So very proud of them. Our whole high school's very proud of them, and I'll bring Coach Yu up here. You can say a few words, and then you can introduce your team quick. Who's coming up? You want me to- Oh, okay. Right on. Hello. No one told me I would be speaking, so I didn't prepare anything. I apologize. But I do wanna say, with school district support, with the school staff, Kurt's support, we couldn't ask for anything more. They didn't realize what we would become, but without that knowledge, still being able to support
009us as if we were champions, we became champions ultimately. So thank you. Thanks to all the boys' hard work. I don't know if I'm riding their coattails or you guys are riding my coattails, but either way, it's been a fun ride this year, and we look forward to next year. Thank you. Aiden YuenOh, come on up to receive your... Oh, Aiden's not here, actually. Oh. Yeah. He's... Sorry. Yeah. Ravant Suresh. Nia Shajil. By the way, he's a freshman. Jayden Yu. Another freshman. Tyler Yim. Anderson Wu. Benjamin Tong. He actually started as varsity, moved down to JV to get more practices, came back to start on all the playoff games. Akil Mutiela. Isaac Lee. Nathaniel Klum. Our team captain, Arian Dewarin. Viraj Dubey. Krishav Chanda. I tell the story. This person was a setter last year.
010I asked him, "Would you consider being a middle next year?" During the summer, he tries out for middle at club level, and then he became the best middle in our league. Isaac Yang. That's everybody, right? You guys come up. We're going to get a picture up here, and all the other coaches come up too. Why'd you walk to the front? Stumble back. I'll take five. Yeah, you go, yes. You're going to have to... Slide everywhere. No, Matt, why don't you get on the front? No, that's... You're going to get in... Nah. You're the only one I can't see. All right. One, two. Thank you, guys. Thank you. All right. Great job, and congrats again to our Emerald boys volleyball team. Next, we're going to move on to our student board member report. Trustee Bhutani. Yes.
011Good evening, everyone. I'll start off with Emerald. Emerald's ASB is continuing several academic support opportunities for students this week, including snack and study sessions in the library tomorrow, May 27th, from 4:00 to 6:00 PM, to help students prepare for finals. As we've just seen again in athletics, Emerald swim team had an incredible season this year. In only the program's second competitive season, Emerald placed third in overall in both JV and varsity at the BVAL championships. And students are also continuing to achieve recognition at the state and national level. For example, AP Chinese student Amy Gao earned third place in the 2026 National Mandarin Chinese Speech Contest, while Mandarin 4 honor student Anshin Cheng earned an honorable mention as well. Freshman Carol Zhang also received recognition through the 2026 Creative Youth Awards and previously earned a
012California gold key in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards for her visual artwork. And lastly, Emerald ASB recently concluded elections for the 2026 to 2027 school year, and we're excited to see the new ASB officers continuing to build school culture on campus. And that's it for my report. Now I'd like to introduce the new incoming student trustee for next year who I'll be transitioning this role into, and they'll also share a few updates for Dublin High. Hi, everyone. My name is Nikki Pillai, and I'm a rising senior at Dublin High School. So for the Dublin High School report, currently in Dublin High School, we're starting finals week this Friday, which will be ending next Wednesday. For ASB activities, we're currently having less stress week to ensure that students are mentally prepared for finals week, including
013llamas on campus and other different sorts of coloring activities. And there's also different senior graduation activities going on for class of '26. We just finished senior banquet, and the bachelorette is upcoming this weekend. And I'm so excited for this opportunity, and I can't wait for next year. All right, great. Thank you to you both. All right, our next is our report from our Dublin Teachers Association. Good evening, distinguished members of the Dublin Unified School District Board of Trustees. It remains my honor to serve as the proudly elected representative and leader of the diligent, tenacious, and adaptable members of Dublin Teachers Association. Meaningful partnership means a better future for our students. The initial budget proposal posted last week did not reflect the priorities of our partnership, fully investing in our students. The revisions that were posted
014this morning are a step in the right direction. We know that our partners on the board share our members' commitment to investing in our students and thank them for providing the guidance necessary to make those adjustments to tonight's presentation. The partnership that we have collectively worked to establish between DTA and our trustees is neither easy nor common. It is intentional and must be nurtured. It required an openness and willingness to behave differently, not just talk differently. It remains my hope that as our new DTA leaders ascend to their roles in July, that the partnership will continue to flourish and expand to include the members of the DOC management team. But that will take true commitment to change. What kind of change you might ask? In DTA, our members call that difference total and complete transparency
015and pure democracy. That's the DTA difference and why our members are so effective at securing the best for our students. DTA leaders respond to and deliver on our members' express needs. When I'm standing up here before you, as I have for the last two years, it's not as Brad, it is the elected voice of over 700 members telling you and our community what our students need to thrive. As we turn our attention to tonight's main event, the district budget, we need a district budget that reflects these priorities. DTA members stand ready to partner with district management to ensure that our district invests in students as their number one priority. Thank you. Next, we'll move to a report from CSEA. Good evening, early evening, President Speck, Vice President Martinez, Trustees Schirra, Blackman-Reyes, Mr. Bhutani, and Nikki.
016Welcome. My name is Karen Pagan-Chamberlain. I'm the president of Chapter 439, Dublin, California School Employees Association. This school year has tested our district in ways that cannot be overstated. We have faced difficult conversations surrounding budgets, layoffs, staffing reductions, site fund cuts, operational uncertainty, and the growing strain placed upon the employees who continue showing up every single day for our students. As president of CSEA Chapter 439, I want to express my deep appreciation for the responsibility and privilege of representing classified staff during one of the most challenging periods many of us have experienced in public education. This work is not always easy. It requires difficult conversations, advocacy, accountability, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to the people who keep our schools running every day. Throughout this year, I have witnessed classified employees continue serving students with grace,
017professionalism, and resilience despite uncertainty surrounding their own livelihoods. From instructional assistants, custodians, maintenance and operations teams, office staff, technology employees, nutrition services, paraeducators, and every employee group in between, classified staff have carried tremendous weight while continuing to put students first. I also want to acknowledge and express appreciation for our teachers. While labor negotiations can at times create tension, I believe deeply that classified and certificated staff are connected in purpose. We serve the same children, the same families, and the same community. The work educators do each day inside classrooms matters profoundly, and our district is strongest when all the employee groups work collaboratively and respectfully together. So hats off, DTA . This year also highlighted important lessons about leadership, communication, and trust. Employees want honesty, they want transparency, they want to understand not only the decisions
018being made, but the reasoning behind them. During times of financial uncertainty, trust becomes one of the most valuable currencies a district possesses. As we prepare to welcome our new superintendent, Dr. Campbell, and our new chief business officer, Ms. NicholsI want to offer encouragement and hope for the years ahead. Our district has extraordinary employees, passionate families, and students deserving of stability and opportunity. But moving forward successfully will require more than budgets and spreadsheets. It will require transparency, it will require collaboration, it will require visibility and accountability, and above all, it will require rebuilding and maintaining trust across all stakeholder groups. Trust is built when employees feel heard. Transparency is built when information is shared openly and consistently. Strong districts are built when leadership works alongside, not above, the people doing the work every day. As we
019move into the next school year, I remain hopeful that we can move forward together with renewed commitment to honest communication, collaborative problem-solving, and protecting the educational experience our students deserve. Thank you to every employee, educator, administrator, family member, and community member who continued showing up this year despite the challenges. Public education succeeds only when all of us remain committed to one another. And finally, as the board of trustees prepares for the next school year, I would like to wish each of you a restful and enjoyable summer break. This past year brought many challenges, important conversations, and opportunities for reflection and growth. It is my sincere hope that the coming school year is guided by strong leadership, renewed trust, transparency, collaboration, and a shared commitment to doing what is best for students, staff, and our community.
020May the next school year be filled with hope, growth, stability, and meaningful progress for all of us. Thank you for your continued service to Dublin Unified School District and to the students and families we collectively serve. Thank you. Thank you. Our next item is special order of business. Is there any reordering that anyone wants to see of the agenda? Seeing none, we are going to move to our public comment. Vicki, how many public comment do we have here in the room? We have four cards for folks here in the room, few people online, but so far no one with their hand up. All right. Just know, for those online, you can speak on the item when we get to it. Or this public comment time, you can speak on anything. If you are speaking on
021an item that is on the agenda, then you can't speak on it when that item then also comes up. But it's up to you when you would prefer to speak on it. If you are online, please raise your hand in the next five minutes. And Vicki, go ahead and call the people in the room. Okay. For the interest of expediency, I'll go ahead and call three at a time. So the first speaker is... Oh, looks like we have just got one more. Oh, for a different one. Sorry. No, never mind. Charice is first, followed by Susan Carol, followed by Allison Tonsic. And I'll just mention you have three minutes. We will have a timer going for you, and it looks like the microphone's already on. We can't respond, but we are listening. Thank you. Okay.
022Hi, everyone. I'm Charice Poston. I am the ELD specialist, and I worked this year at Dublin Elementary School. I'm a proud DTA member, and I'm here to speak to you all about... Well, I get to speak to you twice tonight, so I'm really excited. But today, I'm really hoping that the board of education will direct management to meet with DTA to discuss next year's budget, especially since the governor just released the May revise of the budget, and it's showing that we're going to have a lot more money to work with. I want to talk to you with my two and a half minutes a little bit about my day-to-day. I don't know if you've ever heard from an ELD specialist this year. ELD stands for English Language Development. I work with a very vulnerable population
023of students. I've worked at Dublin Elementary School for four years. It's my fourth year. And the FTE allocation has shifted quite a bit since I've started working here. When I was hired, it was 0.6. That's what I wanted. I wanted to work part-time. I had a baby. But when I got this job and worked three days a week at Dublin Elementary School, I saw the need of the students. I was like, "Wow, I'm only here three days a week. I could work here six, seven days a week, and I would not be able to get everything done that I would want to do." So I told my principal this, and then my second year, I got to work at Dublin Ele full time. It was awesome, and I really started building a program, gaining the
024trust of the teachers, and started to see really great results in our testing in our LPAC scores. And then the next year, we got told that our FTEs were shifting again because of budget cuts, which is fine. I was there four days a week, and then I'm there four days a week this year. Next year, I'm going to be there three days a week. All that to say is the FTEs change. I understand that. But I'll just tell you a few of the things that I do day to day. I manage a caseload of around 70 students. I work with small groups of students who are learning English. Many of them have moved from other countries. A lot of them have experienced trauma. Some of them are refugees. A lot of them are dealing with
025immigration issues. So I work with those students in small groups. I collaborate with teachers. I do co-teaching. I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about this later in the meeting. But I also do all of the state-mandated testing. So for 70 kids, all the state-mandated testing at the end of the year takes a long time, and then I do it all at the beginning of the year. I love my job. I love doing it. I get to do so many amazing things and work with teachers. But as my FTE is shrinking, my caseload is not. So every year that I've worked at Dublin Elementary School, there's been around 70 English learners, yet my FTE has fluctuated so many times, and next year it's going to be 0.6. I've really loved building this
026program, and I'm really It just makes me really sad that next year I'm going to have so much less time to try to accomplish everything that I want to. But thank you. Thank you for your time. Our next speaker is Susan Carroll, followed by Allison Tomsic, followed by Lori Sargent. It's handy. Good evening, members of the board, district leaders, educators, parents, students, and community members. My name is Susan Carroll, and I am a speech language pathologist currently completing my 17th year in service to California Public Schools and my third with Dublin Unified. I want to give a quick shout-out to all the Dublin schools I have had the privilege to serve in my three years here, Green, Fallon, Cottonwood Creek, Dublin High, Valley High, and Emerald High. I have learned valuable lessons from administrators, educators,
027and staff, each of these schools, as I've served children preschool through high school. I am a better clinician for it. I am here to share my observations and my concerns. During my time in Dublin, I have observed too many decisions affecting students made without meaningful educator input. And while these decisions may fall within board and district administration's legal authority, authority alone does not equal leadership. The people closest to students are the people who should help shape the decisions that impact them. They are professionals, they are experts. They are the individuals who see firsthand what students need every single day. And yet educators continue to hear promises of collaboration while being excluded from meaningful decision-making spaces. As DT leaders have clearly communicated, the bargaining table is the one place where educators and management meet on equal
028footing. This matters because authentic collaboration requires shared voice, shared responsibility, and mutual respect, not simply opportunities to react after plans are already developed. If you were facing a serious medical condition, would you feel confident in a doctor who created a treatment plan for you without first listening to you, asking questions, gathering input, and understanding your daily experience? Of course not. Education is no different. Why would we expect successful outcomes when major decisions are made without consulting the people implementing them every day? We have heard from management that collaboration can happen next year. But students are in the classroom now. Educators are struggling now. Decisions are being made now. When educator requests for meetings about preliminary budget staffing priorities and student investments are repeatedly denied, it sends a message that professional expertise is optional instead of
029essential, and the consequences are real. When educators are excluded from decision-making, morale declines, trust erodes, implementation suffers, and ultimately students pay the price. Across every successful organization, whether in education, business, healthcare, or public service, the strongest leaders understand one simple truth, and that is people support what they help create. No educator expects unanimous agreement on every issue, but educators do expect transparency instead of surprise, they expect partnership instead of a top-down mandate. They expect meaningful opportunities to collaborate before decisions become finalized board agenda items. Because the reality is a decision made in a boardroom may look effective on paper, but if it ignores classroom realities, it will fail where it matters most in practice. Now, with additional state funding projected for Dublin schools, educators are not asking for control. They are asking for a seat
030at the table to help determine how those resources can best support students directly. Because educators know which classrooms lack support, which students need intervention, which systems are overburdened, which staffing shortages are hurting services, and which workloads are unsustainable. You cannot build a thriving district by silencing the professional voices of those doing the work daily. The request tonight is not radical. We are asking for structures that reflect best practices and leadership. Strong leaders invite perspective even when it is uncomfortable, especially when it is uncomfortable. I am confident that every person in this room tonight wants all of our students to succeed. That common goal should unite us. Thank you. Our next speaker is Allison Tomsic, followed by Lori Sargent, and then we will have an online speaker. Better. Good evening. As you may know, I'm Allison
031Tomsic. I am a site rep for Kolb Elementary. I'm here to talk to you about the safety at Kolb. Have you heard what happened on Monday, May 11th? Well, at approximately 11:30 AM, our school was put on lockdown. The announcement was made over our PA system by our principal secretary as there was no administrator on campus due to illness. After the lockdown was lifted, we learned that some teachers never heard the announcement. We also had approximately four substitutes on campus, along with other staff members who were unsure how to respond in a lockdown. These concerns were addressed during our staff debrief. Following that, I spoke with several colleagues who expressed serious concerns about the safety of our campus. As a result, I filed an informal grievance. I was scheduled to meet with Tim Leal and
032our site principal this morning. However, when I checked the calendar invite last night, I saw that Mr. Leal had declined the meeting. There are still critical safety gaps on our campus. We do not have an intercom or audible buzzer at the front door, and the doors and windows are not properly tinted. My classroom windows are tinted darker than the door to our campus, which lets people onThere have been some improvements to the PA system, but we still cannot guarantee that all staff can hear emergency announcements, and some speakers remain non-functional. In addition, we do not have a clear coding system to communicate the severity of a lockdown. We had no idea what was happening. We were told to check emails that said it was not an immediate threat. We don't know what that necessarily means.
033So I proceeded the way I've been trained. I locked the door between my adjoining room, I turned off the lights, I closed the blinds, I turned off the TV, I turned off the computer. I made the kids sit quiet while they're panicking, and I'm trying to keep it cool. It was hard. And when they said to me, "I'm scared," I said, "You know what? I'm scared, too." And they got upset. And I said, "I'm not going to lie to you. It's the reality." Because we had no idea what was happening. So that's a problem. We need better communication systems. I don't know if it's just a site issue or if it's a district issue. I don't know. I was going to ask those questions this morning. There's also a lack of timely communication with parents.
034Families were not notified about the incident before the end of the school day. Their children went to them, and they were notified at about 3:02 PM. We get out at 2:55. These are fundamental safety issues that must be addressed. Our staff, students, and families deserve clear communication, reliable systems, and safe learning environments. Thank you. Our last in-person speaker is Lori Sargent. Good evening, DUSD board of trustees and management team. "When things go wrong in your command, start searching for the reason in increasingly larger concentric circles around your own desk," General Bruce C. Clarke. General Clarke, a four-star US Army officer, whose career spanned World War II, Korea, and the Cold War, was known for his principled leadership and commitment to accountability. His words resonated with me this Memorial Day as I reflected on service, responsibility,
035and the decisions being made here in Dublin. As you know, I'm Lori Sargent, a proud Valley High School teacher, DTA member, and veteran educator with three decades of experience. I'm speaking tonight because the decisions being made are concerning and have real consequences for students, families, and staff. The business services budgeting error resulted in a $3.6 million loss. One direct impact of this mismanagement was the closure of the York campus, home to Valley High School, and the special education adult transition classes. At the time, this was presented as a fiscally responsible decision, and the board expressed a willingness to reinstate them if funding became available. Well, that moment has arrived. The governor's budget revise includes over $18 million in additional support for DUSD. So I ask, now what? Equity requires action, not just words. Equity means
036allocating resources based on need so every student has a fair chance to succeed. Closing Valley High School, a school serving students who rely on a smaller learning environment, direct instruction, and individualized support, is not equity. Combining the special education adult transition program students with vastly different needs into one class and placing them back on the comprehensive high school campus is not equity. Excluding stakeholders, including union partners, parents, and the community from the decision-making process on how to best utilize $18 million is not equity. Why, with new funding available, are we refusing to meet with the very people who serve your students every day? This is not transparency. This is not shared leadership. Leadership means partnership. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, one of the most innovative leaders in Navy history and the computing pioneer, built her legacy
037on transparency and the courage to challenge decisions that failed the people they were meant to serve. To quote Admiral Hopper, "Leadership is a two-way street. Loyalty up, loyalty down. Respect for one's superior, care for one's crew." Her leadership philosophy is a reminder that respect and care are not abstract ideals. They are demonstrated through collaboration, not isolation, through shared decision-making, not unilateral choices, and through partnership, not exclusion. You have an opportunity right now to rebuild trust, repair harm, and demonstrate that you value the voices of those who work directly with students. My ask, do the right thing, partner with your stakeholders, honor your commitments, use this new funding to restore programs, support vulnerable student populations, and ensure that all learners in Dublin have the opportunity to thrive. Thank you. And we'll now hear from our lone
038Zoom speaker, Natalie Young. Hello, everyone. This is your friendly neighborhood Cottonwood Creek DTA employee, Natalie Young, calling for a couple of reasons. One, just wanted to say a thank you shout-out to Curtis for today. I sent an email this morning to lots of people, including the board members, had a couple questions, and Curtis came over from the district office to Cottonwood Creek to talk about it, clean it up, and clear it up, which was really amazing and what an amazing leader does. So thank you, Curtis, for doing that and taking care of that and cleaning it up, and we are all good to go with that situation. I'm here tonight to really strongly request also that management bargain with DTA prior to 26-27 budget adoption being finalized to ensure that we invest in our students.
039Well, let's see. So we got our site budget taken away at all the sites in February, and luckily Cottonwood Creek has a very helpful, amazing PFC that has gotten us pencils and pens and pencil sharpeners and highlighters. A parent went to Target, got us $250 To be able to get us what we needed to finish the school year. We were so thankful and appreciative, but it just is so bizarre when I'm like, "I don't have any more pencils to give." Sorry about that. The budget cuts due to the mismanagement has really harmed us and is continuing to harm us because right now at Cottonwood, the minimum class number for PE classes is going to be about 44.5 kids. That's starting. That's not even having to make adjustments and things because scheduling has adjustments and like,
040"Oh, this person has to take this class. They have to go over here." So that's not what's best for kids, and that's not what's also best for their safety. The larger class sizes, it's just ridiculous for all. The loss of assistant principals, which is such an impact on our safety and supervision. It's really like the woman that spoke earlier about ELD. It's the unmanageable workload of so many special ed teachers, ELD teachers, due to management's refusal to make smaller caseloads. And this impacts not just a small group of kids, it impacts the whole school. It impacts the culture of the school. And the loss of custodial staff and secretaries. I know it's hard. I know there's cuts. I know there are errors, but we got a whole bunch of money from the state, and let's
041work together. Also, we, the teachers, were on the picket line, and we got what we needed, and we also got raises for the rest of you. So let's just work together, please. Thank you. That concludes our public comment. All right. Thank you. We're going to move on to item I1, the LCAP presentation. Thank you, President Speck. I'd like to invite the entire Ed Services Department up. Curtis Harr is going to take a lead on this particular presentation. Welcome, Curtis. Thank you, Superintendent Campbell. Good evening, Superintendent Funk, President Speck, Board of Trustees, executive cabinet, and community. I am here to do a quick presentation on some of the highlights of our '26-'27 local control and accountability plan. I would be remiss if I did not thank the amazing team behind me for all of the work
042that has gone into gathering data and helping to make these revisions. So thank you, Ed Services team, for all of the support that you have provided in making this happen, and also to our community who have come to our community sessions to provide us input as well. Just as a quick reminder in regards to the LCFF funding formula. So the LCFF base grant, that is the money that we receive for all students. That's our ADA. The supplemental grant is an additional amount of money that we get for what is called our unduplicated student population, which must be used to benefit English language learners, low-income students, and our foster and homeless youth. And the last one, the LCF concentration grant, that's not us. We don't get any funding for that. This is the cycle. So we
043developed, beginning in the '24-'25 school year was year one. So the data that you're going to see tonight is a lot of the '25-'26 data inside of the LCAP, as well as the plan which is attached, which is our year three plan for the '26-'27 LCAP. So our vision for the LCAP is our previous LCAP was incredibly enormous. We had everything we did as a district under the sun in that LCAP. So for this version of the LCAP, we pared it down to really focus on some of the higher leverage items. In essence, we really wanted to focus in on how do we support and serve our unduplicated student population and intervention and special education- Unduplicated ... and special education students, as well as our students in need of additional support. For our supplemental grant,
044we received approximately $4.7 million to support those students, the unduplicated students. But we also received some additional allocation for Title I, Title II, Title III, our LRBG, which is extra funding for our promised students, as well as the Educator Effectiveness Grant. This was our timeline. So we really started our updates in February of this year. We came to you with our mid-year update and then held meetings with different educational partners to be able to get the input that we needed for developing our most current plan. So these next two slides, this slide here and the next one. The next slide should also say year two. That was a typo. So it says year two and then year one. They should both be year two. So this here, both slides will just be looking at one
045data set, which is our third grade reading and our fifth grade Star math. Inside of the larger LCAP, we have other metrics and data points for students in all grades. But these were a couple that I just wanted to bring tonight. So just to acclimate, the magenta purplish color on the left is third-grade reading, and then the more turquoise and green, that's Star math all the way through this slide and the next. So you can see here, the all students is in the top, and then we break it down by student group starting on this slide, and then moving on to the next slide. I'd like to highlight our African American students and the rise that they made in fifth grade math. But you can see in a lot of the other areas, while the
046declines are slight, we are seeing a trend of declining achievement in our third-grade reading and fifth-grade math scores.The '23 to '24 to '25 though, I also want to remind us that that is not cohort data. Those are different groups of students each year. So we're not comparing one student group to the same student group. We are comparing all third graders from one year to the next year's third graders to this year's third graders. So this is the data for more of the student groups. And then I'll move on to each of our goals. So Goal One is our academic achievement goal. This goal right here, some of the highlights that I wanted to point out are, this is where we focus on our guaranteed and viable curriculum for all students, as well as targeted supports
047for students who need more support. Also supporting our multilingual learners, and the development of a strategic plan, which we will see later on in tonight's meeting. For Goal Two, this is focusing on a broad course of study for students. These are the goals and actions that focus on things such as alternative education, college and career readiness, and inclusive environments, including our co-taught classes as well as our learning center model. Goal Three is a student wellness goal. In this goal, our actions include some of the highlights of our coordination of services teams, so our COST teams, the amazing work that our sites are doing with Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports, otherwise known as PBIS, and also for community supports and outreach to make connections and partnerships for our students and families. Goal Four is a requirement
048of the LCAP. We call it foundational elements. These are things like having safe facilities for students and staff, staff recruitment and proper credentialing, technology, and also having sufficiency of instructional materials for all students. So our next steps here, just to show you the timeline. So tonight, we are presenting the LCAP for the public hearing to get feedback. We will be posting the most current version of our draft LCAP on our website with a feedback form that will be sent out to the community later on this week for any input or questions. At the June 23rd board meeting, we will be coming back with the LCAP seeking approval for the '26-'27 LCAP, and then following that approval, we will forward our LCAP to the Alameda County Office of Education. We recommend that the Board of Trustees
049conduct a public hearing for the '25-'26 annual update and for the draft of the 2026-'27 LCAP plan, and my team is here to answer any questions that you might have. Okay. Do we have any public comment on this item? I have no cards for anyone in the room, but I do have one person online with their hand up. Okay. So we do have one public comment on this. Should I open up the public hearing and then... So I will officially open the public hearing on the '25-'26 annual update, and the '26-'27 LCAP plan. Are there questions from the board before we take the public comment? Then we'll take the public comment. Actually, they just took their hand down. Okay. Maybe for something else. All right. As I look for the public, I think we can
050have our questions and comments during the public hearing, and then we can close the public hearing. She wants to know if you're online in the next minute, please raise your hand for the LCAP. Otherwise, that will be the end of the public comment for this item. Are there questions and comments here from the board? Trustee Blackman. Thank you very much for bringing this forward. I just want to comment for all the people involved in the LCAP that it's been a great process and a wonderful year, so thank you for everybody who contributed for this hard work that our students depend on. My one question is, in past years, and I don't know if it was last year or the year before, but we had talked about, and I know you noted this, that on the
051slide six, for example, when we're showing data sets with regard to our star reading, star math, any of our data sets, that those are individual groups. They're not the same group transitioning from year to year. But we had talked about over many years that it's really hard for us to understand when those gaps accumulate over years, and then they essentially push forward into when they're at their next grade and the following grade, maybe in middle school and high school. That it's really important for us to chart out things beyond just an individual sliver year. So I know we get data sets on third grade, but I thought I had seen in past years, correct me if I'm wrong, Assistant Superintendent Campbell, but- I think what the data you're referring to comes in our data walk,
052when we do that in November. Yes. But I find it interesting because it does sort of segue into the meaning behind some of this. When we saw some drops, a lot of times we can see patterns across years that start to help us better understand maybe the causation behind it. So I know it's separate, but I almost wonder if there's some aspect of it that could at some point be supplemental to these presentations, because it would be helpful to see. Mostly because we're just reacting to numbers, and we know that those are different students each year. So it's really hard to make sense of... And not just different students, but perhaps different teachers. So it's really hard to make sense of if this is in fact a consistent trend or if it's just happenstance. One
053year it was a great year, another year it wasn't such a great year. So I am concerned with some of the very slight, but drops. It seems like if it was a few... of these numbers had come down, but it seems like there's a lot of sliding going on, and I'd love to be able to have us understand a little bit more about why that's happening. I know you're probably also wanting the same thing, but at some point, it'd be good to get some thoughts behind what's going on and why we think it's happening. Thank you. Thank you. Trustee Martinez? I also have some questions, concerns. Just focusing in on some of the achievement gaps, I'd be interested in knowing which student groups are showing the least improvements over the last three years, just to
054make sure that we're focusing in on those student groups to make sure we're giving them the focus that they deserve. What measurable outcomes can the board see over the next year? We sit here, and we see these presentations every year, but is there something that can be brought back and data sets that we can see year by year to make sure that these systems and processes are giving us the outcome that we should be seeing? Are there specific metrics that will show us if interventions systems are actually working year by year? Something that we can really see year by year. I also saw that there were some drops in English learner progress and suspension rates, the color change. So I'm wondering what happened with those two areas. And then the last thing was, I'm wondering
055what we're using to show whether inclusion and co-teaching are actually working in the classroom. So I'd be happy to follow up with any of those, but those were just some of the questions that I had when I was reading through that. Thank you. Thank you. I have some questions as well. Could we go to slide six? The fifth grade Star math, some of those are pretty dramatic decreases. I understand it's different kids, but as I look at the Hispanic group, the Asian group, and the White group, they're over 10% drops, which is pretty dramatic. Also, the all students amount in 2025, so if you go up a slide, the 86% is not mathematically possible with the percentages you have below, because all of the other student groups are less than 86. So my quick math
056using Excel got 74% for all students. I can look at that. You might take a look at that. Thanks. I'd like to understand, that's a very dramatic decrease, 74% from 90 last year and 86 the year before. What we think is driving this, again, I understand it's a different cohort of kids, but that's a very big drop in our fifth-grade math. The CAASPP testing, when do we as a district get our total scores? I know as a parent, I've already gotten my kid's individual score, which I was pretty surprised came that fast. It seems faster than other years. Do you know the answer to-- Melissa, do you know the answer to when we get our CAASPP? As a district. Okay. Yeah. So late summer. Okay. Then I think my other question was just, I hear
057a lot of things we need to continue, a lot of work that we do within the LCAP. Is there anything that you feel you need to stop or anything different that you need to do from what we're already doing today? Yeah, that's a great question, and one of the questions that we have to address in our LCAP is in each of the different goals, there's a prompt for which are: Are there any revisions to any of the actions? There were some slight modifications to some of the things that we were doing or some adjustments to try to get more favorable student outcomes. None of them are popping to the top of my head this very second, but that's something that I can look into and report back out. Okay. So we are just taking comments,
058questions. We're in our public hearing that I'm going to close here in a moment, and then this will come back for approval in June, correct? That is correct. Is there any other comments or questions from the board? Trustee Blackman? I just remember past years that our data sets that were presented in the PowerPoint presentation, it adds a lot of clarity the way you show the charts and the information. But when you go through the actual LCAP document, I feel like I'm cutting through a lot of weeds. I'm trying to understand the nuances of every piece of detail, the way it's written, whether it's a percentage, if it's up or down. The document is not easily readable to try and distill information out, whereas the charts here, not that I need it simplified, but I actually
059really appreciate it, and I think in past years, we had a lot more data in charts. Now, I know that there's some time issues here, but for me to go through this is a huge amount of work. I think in past years, when we had more data backing up each one of these pieces, it was really helpful, and it allowed us to provide better feedback. So that would just be a comment for future. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. With that, no one raised their hand in that minute. Okay, I'm going to close the public hearing. And do you have what you need from us? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we will move on to the preliminary first draft of the budget. Mr. Hobbs? Thank you, President Speck, trustees, incoming Superintendent Campbell, and Superintendent
060Funk. Tonight, we actually have some pretty exciting news to share, the first glance at the budget for the '26-'27. The way I'm structuring this this evening is really going to be in two parts. Wait till we get full screen. There we go. In the first half of the presentation, I'm going to be really reviewing our estimated actuals. The reason I'm going to go into detail on this is this sets the stage on where we're going to start next school year in terms of our balances, so that's an important bit to start with. And then we'll go into the development of the '26-'27 budget, what we have been working on, what changed with the governor's May revision. So the way I've structured these slides is we're going to talk about revenue in the unrestricted general fund.
061The UGF is the unrestricted general fund. We'll talk about revenues in the restricted general fund, then we'll go to expenditures in the unrestricted and expenditures in the restricted. And what I'm showing tonight are the differences between the second interim report that you saw back in March and where we are projecting to end the year today. And several things have changed during that time, and we want to make sure we address those with you. The first is a loss of revenue in LCFF. As you know and suspected, when we had our strike, we had significantly reduced attendance rates for those days. The net impact for the year was an average daily attendance loss of over 200 students. The result of that is about a $1.3 million loss in revenue for the '25-'26 year. We are looking
062at filing for a solar tax credit for the completion of the Cottonwood Creek Solar Project. That is not something we had budgeted up to this point, but that's another $550,000 to the good. Since second interim, we've added another $300,000 in donations, most of that, of course, at the school site level, as well as our facilities rental. And then I'm going to get into detail to this topic in a couple of slides, but we needed to make several accounting adjustments that resulted in recording a $1.8 million loss in revenue for the current year. Now, that's money that we actually over-claimed in previous years, but I'll get into the details of that in a few minutes. On the restricted side, the only significant change in restricted revenues was this STRS on behalf adjustment. STRS on behalf is
063an interesting accounting task that we need to do every year. The state actually puts money into STRS on behalf of school districts, and we have to record both a expense and a revenue to recognize the impact of that contribution from the state. That's always completely balanced. In other words, whatever the expenditure is, the revenue matches it exactly, and the number varies throughout the year until the state finally says, "This is exactly how much we've put in for every district in the state." So it does increase our revenue. You'll see a matching increase in expenditures when we get to that slide. As we move into expenditures, here we have, again, some significant swings. We saved about $2.2 million in total labor cost due to the strike. We did increase our salaries and benefit costs by about
064$3.6 million. Again, we have some additional accounting adjustments to discuss that will make a reduction that looks like we spent $1.6 million less than the current year. And we've shifted about $3 million worth of our unrestricted general fund cost into the restricted student support and professional development discretionary block grant, the 2025-'26 grant version of that. We're using $3 million of that to cover cost in the '25-'26 year. On the restricted side of the house, again, we have a increase in salary due to the salary increase. We have a need to address a issue with our CSEA benefits and how those have been paid over the last few years, so we've set aside a portion of that same discretionary block grant to cover those costs. We actually reduced spending on curriculum to move that into an
065out year that was planned to be spent in the current year from the restricted lottery funds. We had an extra cost associated with needing to buy some equipment out of the routine restricted maintenance account, another restricted account. And again, you see the balancing $0.9 million of the STRS on-behalf increase in the current year. As we started working on closing the books and getting this estimated actuals really good, we identified several accounting issues that have been in the books for a little while in some cases and resulted in the need for us to make adjustments. The first one, and the one we discovered first and then went into the rest of this, is the way we address our workers' comp liabilities. A little bit technical, but I'll try to explain it, and I'm happy to answer
066any questions you may have about it when I've gone through it. Every year, we get a workers' comp, proposal's not the right word, but our rate for the upcoming year. In fact, you'll be approving tonight, later on the consent agenda, rates for next year's workers' comp cost. We translate that rate into a percentage of our expected labor cost for the year. So let's say that's 1.8% for a given year. We then, every time we run payroll, take 1.8% of all of our labor cost and set that aside into what's called a liability account. It's money we owe our insurer when we get an invoice. That would work great if the labor cost we projected at the very start of the year matched exactly with what our total labor cost is at the end of the
067year. But the reality is that seldom happens. And so over the last 11 years, every one of those 11 years, we've ultimately set aside more for that workers' comp liability than we actually got invoiced forAnd so what's happened over that time is we've recorded the expense when payroll is run, put the money in the liability account. When the invoice comes, the invoice is paid from the liability account, and at the end of the year, we end up with money still sitting in that liability account that isn't actually a liability. It's really money that we didn't have to spend in that year. Well, we've done that for 11 years, and the number has actually grown to over $4 million. That is money that was sitting there that could've been taken out each year. So now we
068know what to do, and we're going to make sure we address that in the future, but it did reduce that liability in the current year by 4.2 million. And because the books are closed for those past 11 years, we had to have a balancing entry that reflects that, and the balancing entry is effectively a reduction in our workers' comp expense for the current year. So our workers' comp expense will be our real expense minus that $4.2 million. So we actually will end up with a negative workers' comp expense for the year, which logically doesn't make sense, but that's the accounting necessary to address this specific issue. You want me to take questions on that right now? Because I suspect there are some. Okay, then I'm happy to move on. Yeah. Why don't we go on?
069Because there's a number of these. Sure. But we probably should pause after 25, 26 and ask questions. Absolutely. Okay. So they don't all pile up, because I already have a lot. Go ahead. Yes. So the next one is similar, but in the opposite direction for health and welfare. And in this case, what's happened over the last five years is that we have actually been under-reporting our expense and not putting enough into that liability account, that the invoices have been paid from that liability account, but that ended up resulting in a negative liability, which is not something that should've happened. So again, the solution in the opposite direction is that we recognize that expense in the current year of $2.6 million. That clears out the liability and gets it where it ought to be. And again,
070going forward, we'll have a process that will actually make sure that those liabilities are getting closed out annually based on the actual expected numbers. The remaining three adjustments that we'll be talking about are on the revenue side. So in the 2019-2020 fiscal year, we had calculated that we thought we owed the state government a return of about $1.9 million of our EPA funds in that year. And so we recorded a liability to the state for that purpose and reduced our revenue in the 2019-2020 fiscal year to reflect that expectation. That said, that money was never collected by the state, and so that money is in fact ours, and it should be reflected as revenue. And so the fix this year is to reduce the liability down to zero and recognize that $1.9 million in revenue
071in the current year. The next two are really based on last year's adjustments that were made at the end of the year. Again, last year, we ended up booking a negative liability, which is actually the opposite direction of what should've happened to offset an expected reduction in EPA funding. And that resulted in us increasing revenues in the EPA account last year incorrectly. So again, this year, we're removing the negative liability, but that ends up being recorded as a negative in our revenue for 2025-2026. And then finally, in this past fiscal year, we recorded the expectation that we would be getting additional LCFF funding. The intent was actually to offset the EPA funding, but we ended up recording them both kind of in the same direction in two different accounts. So that additional LCFF funding did
072not in fact come in. Again, correcting the error this year requires us to remove the receivable and reduces our revenue for 2025-2026. So this year's revenue will net be down by that $1.9 million. Sorry, $1.8 million. With all that said, this is where we expect the estimated actuals to-- or well, this is what the estimated actuals will look like in the budget adoption documents in a few weeks. You can see that we do still have a total deficit spending across the entire Fund 01 budget of $10.6 million. We expect to end the year with $18.4 million almost in total ending fund balance. Of that, you can see that we have about... You know what? I apologize. Keoki, would you pull up the revised presentation? This is actually the original presentation. Scroll down just a little
073bit there. Maybe refresh, because I don't see it on there. That's the original. There should be a second. In my link, there's a second one that says Rev1. I'll take over, Keoki. There we go.All right. Sorry about that. So as you look then at the estimated actuals, again, as we get down to the bottom, you can see that we have a reserve for economic uncertainties of $6.2 million based on our total expenditures in the current year. And we actually are able to hit that number, which is a significant improvement over where we were at the second interim report, where we were showing that we would not be able to meet our reserve in the current year. We actually end this year with a little over $250,000 beyond the minimum reserve requirement. We focus just on
074the unrestricted side of the Fund 01. Again, you can see that we are still deficit spending to the tune of about $6.3 million in the current year. Again, that's an improvement over the $8.2 million that we were proposing at second interim. And again, that's out to that $253,000 left at the end of the 25-26 fiscal year. And now I will pause to answer questions about that chunk of the presentation. Okay. We're going to limit it to just questions because we'll have public comment on it. Trustee Blackmon. Thank you for going through this. I did have a question with regard to some of the other slides that we just reviewed before you went into the charts. You said that in some of these cases where there were, I guess, buckets of funds that had been set
075aside to address potential liabilities that we couldn't quantify. But at what point did those amounts get quantified back? In other words, if we have excess funds, do they stay in the bucket, or are they recouped back into the general fund? If we have not enough funds, when do we actually assign more funds to cover what's in the... So I'm just trying to get a sense when you do say that we're going to resolve some of these, when does that happen in the summer? It should happen at closing of the books. So when we close the books each year, that would be the opportunity to make sure these are actually closed out correctly. So we would see this essentially as part of the chart when you're looking at beginning balance for next year. We would actually
076see the outcome of that reset, if you want to call it that. So that reset is already baked into the numbers today. Right, I understand. But- Yeah ... what I'm trying to get at is that we would not see the impact of any of those numbers during any of our estimated actuals negotiations. We would only see that at the very end when the books are closed. So it would basically fall into this chart when we're looking at the end of the year summary. I think I understand your question. So I think what I would say is that, let's imagine with the workers' comp liability, for example. Let's say, again, maybe if this year's total number is $2 million for the total cost of this, well, that's what we're going to get invoiced by AXIG, our
077insurance JPA. And it turns out at the end of the year that we have held, through just applying the percentage to every dollar of payroll, we've held $2.1 million out. Well, we would then make that $100,000 correction at the end of that fiscal year as we close the books to get it back to exactly the $2 million that we were invoiced by AXIG for workers' comp. So each year, you would see that trued up to the correct amount. Right, but it's at the very end of the year. So what we're talking about now, none of these processes that you're discussing are anything that occurs earlier than at the very end of the school year. In theory, when we know when we've made a significant increase in salaries, that would potentially be an opportunity to recalculate
078the workers' comp percentage, for example, and take a little bit less from each payroll going forward. And so that would be something that we could do to tweak that so that we're not setting aside those dollars throughout the rest of the year. So that is something that we could do to tighten that process up. Okay. Thank you. Outside of that, not really anything else we could do to get that just exactly right. Thank you very much. Okay. Okay. I have some questions. If you go to slide five. The $3 million. So I want to make sure I'm clear. This was the grant that's been sitting in our restricted fund, and now you're moving it into the general fund. Is that correct? So we're moving the costs out of the general fund and into this grant.
079So we're using that grant, which had up to this point not been used, we're using that grant to pay $3 million of the unrestricted general fund's expenses in the current year. Okay. So we've had this grant. We've been holding it in the restricted, deciding what to do with it- Mm-hmm ... and then we're using it to pay for salaries and benefits. Correct. Okay. On the next slide, so now you're at restricted items. On the first two, it says salaries and benefits, but the shift to curriculum spending is not a salary and a benefit, right? Right. The header at the top, these are not all salaries and benefits. That's absolutely correct. Yes. Okay. So the first two are. So that header just is unnecessary. Correct. Okay. Yes. So these are all things that have adjusted and
080shifted with restricted. Yes. And then that curriculum spending is that specific lottery money that must be spent- Correct ... on curriculum, correct? Yep. Okay. For the accounting adjustments, so what happened this year that didn't happen the past 11 years that caused us to see this, to change this, and what is the process that will be enacted to ensure that we don't go another 11 years, but it happens every year? It's been a very interesting thing because it's something that we've not looked at. When we brought it to the county office's attention to say, "Hey, are we reading this correctly? Is this, in fact, a problem?" They were shocked that they had not been looking at it. So it's been a problem with nobody really paying attention to these liabilities and payables as closely as they
081should have. So going forward, it's going to be part of our closing. I already know from the fact that several other districts are now addressing this problem, that the county office is now doing a better job of reviewing that as well. Okay. So they're stepping up their oversight to make sure that these things aren't left untouched either.But it will become a regular part of our closing process to make sure that those are examined closely every single year. Do we have that documented? I understand your team is still here- Mm-hmm ... but you are retiring. Is there documentation for this process so that- There is not documentation today for that, no. Will there be documentation? There can be, yes. Okay. Because I know with the other issue, there was a process. Mm-hmm. We had it on
082the agenda so we could see it. I think it's important with these that there's documentation so that any new people that are coming in, they know how to properly- Yep ... close the books. If we can take one as an example to help me, so the accounting one on the screen. So this one, we had a green arrow, so this was a liability restatement that helped our numbers. Effectively improved our bottom line, yes. Improved the bottom line. So were we stating for something like this, was this in the general budget? Was this in the restricted? Where would we have been seeing this in last year's? It would've been in both. So it would've applied to all labor dollars. Okay. So some of the labor's in restricted, some's in general. Yep. Okay. So when the year
083ends and we have our final numbers, we would've said that this was an expense, but we didn't actually pay it. Correct. We expensed it, recorded it as an expense, and set the money aside in this liability account to pay the invoice eventually, the invoice that never came. Okay. So this money has just been sitting there- Correct ... in this account waiting for it. Mm-hmm. And now we have this money. We're effectively freeing it up, yes. Okay. Versus others were on the negative side, so it seemed like it didn't fully balance out, but it didn't end up being some sort of big- The net of all of this is about $200,000. Yeah. Okay. All right. So then these others, same thing, sitting in an account to pay. So this one, explain how it's negative. So the
084other one, it's money sitting in the account. This one is... So this one really wasn't the money. It was a negative liability, which is, from an accounting perspective, not something that should exist. And so there's no cash there. But there was this negative balance. But to get the books square, we have to bring that negative balance back to a zero balance, which is where it ought to be. Okay. All right. That's the end of my questions on 25, 26. Trustee Blackman. So I appreciate going through each one of these slide by slide. I would really like to understand a little bit better if you could coalesce all of them together in maybe one chart. From my point of view, I understand you're very nuanced in some of these, but when we talk about money, I
085understand the accounting adjustment one. Obviously, we owe something, we didn't put money in the bank to pay for it, so we've got to make whole. But understanding all these categories where we put aside, rightfully so, monies to address future liabilities, which we know will come in large bills, so to speak, that have to be paid. I understand how that functions. But what we're discovering here, in a way, it's almost like a self-audit, is information that, to me, each individual piece on its own, I would like to see collectively brought together so I can understand how all these changes and shifts, as you mentioned, result in a number. So when we discovered money, then we owe money, going back and forth, to me, this is great information. I just want to see it coalesced in one
086document before we jump into the estimated actuals of restricted, unrestricted. Because to me, I need to understand how does this plug in, especially if we're talking at the end of the year, we're making ourselves whole again and cleaning out some of these accounts that won't be carrying forward. So I would just need one of those charts. That's just me. I would agree. A table that could list each one, positive, negative, restricted, unrestricted, so we're really clear where the money was sitting. Yes. Trustee Martinez. On top of that, I think that just with all these accounting corrections, and the transition of leadership, that I'd also like to see what reporting systems we could put in place just to make sure that for next year, that the board can closely monitor the financial situation going forward. Okay.
087Trustee Blackman. I have a slightly different question. So the beginning of the year, some of these potential liability accounts, you mentioned that you basically create these accounts by taking small percentages from each paycheck. Obviously, the adjustments after our salary increases would occur, but at the beginning of the year, we need to have something in our account to basically address if that bill, whatever it might be, shows up at the beginning of the year. So do we actually fill the account with something just as a cushion, and then re-correct as we begin to take funds out from individual paychecks for some of these items? I'm trying to figure out, because I know that you sort of have to plan for the start of the year having something to address some of these if there is, in
088fact, charges. Yeah. So workers' comp, for example, we get billed twice a year for, and it's basically halfway through the year and then towards the end of the year. So it kind of works out that if we are holding that money from each paycheck, then when the first invoice comes due, we've already collected for ourselves the correct amount to pay that off, and then again for the second half of the year. So. Is there anything- And then the health and welfare is actually a monthly bill, so it should actually track with what we're pulling out each month. I appreciate it. I was just curious if there was anything we have to start the year off with. I- No. Okay. Thank you. All right. Shall I move on? Let's move on. Thank you. Okay. We do
089a document where we expect all of the restricted ending fund balances. Thank you, President Speck, for reminding me that we should be including that document with each of these reports.And so you can see we have a total of $11.8 million at the end of '25, '26 in our restricted ending fund balances. So as we move on to the '26, '27 budget preparation, again, we implemented the reductions that the board had directed us to implement back in January. A couple of exceptions to that. The first is the board did authorize us to maximize our use of instructional aids. However, on further review of the ed code, we realized that was not something that we could actually do. The ed code actually, I would argue, suggests we can, but the CDE made it very clear that their
090interpretation was not the same as mine. And so we did not implement that. The board had authorized reducing educational specialists. However, the net result of that was zero after the TA with Dublin Teachers Association was implemented, and so there you won't see that reduction in the final numbers. And you recall that the board ended up not including summer school as part of the final motion that was passed by the board. We have also, of course, incorporated all of the cost as we expect them to be for the settlement into the budget and the years going forward. As you know, obviously the salary side is fairly straightforward to calculate. We also have, though, the cost of health and welfare as the district's contribution to that single family coverage or single coverage increases over the next year
091and a half. Initially, and what we reported out as part of the AB 1200 process to pay for the cost of that settled agreement, we proposed using what at the time the governor had proposed for a discretionary block grant for next year of $6 million to cover the budget deficit that resulted from the tentative agreement that we had come to get passed. So that solved the immediate problem in the budget year of filling that hole in the unrestricted general fund budget to get to a budget that had a 3% reserve. However, remember we talked about needing to do an ongoing reduction of $7.2 million in the '26, '27 year to be implemented in the '27, '28 year in order to achieve that. That's what the board ultimately decided to move forward with. That's what we
092reported out to the county, and that's where we were at prior to the governor's May revision. Happily, the governor's May revision was frankly shocking to me. I did not expect it to be nearly as good as it was for school districts, and that's fantastic news for all of us. But every district in California is going to do really well under this. So the key points that came out of the governor's May revision is in addition to fully funding the now 2.87% statutory COLA. With April behind us, we were able to calculate that and know now that the statutory COLA is 2.87%. The governor has proposed enhancing that, a super COLA, as it's often called, of an additional 1.44%. The combination of those changes is another $2 million in LCFF revenue compared to what we showed
093you at the second interim report. Even more important, in my mind, is the governor's commitment to start making a dent in funding for special education. The governor had already proposed in January an increase to the base special education rate to $999. This year's rate is $915. So that was already a decent little bump, and we would've seen about a million dollar increase just based on that next year. However, in the May revision, he proposed that base get moved not to $999, but to $1,340. That is another $4 million on top of the million dollars we had already baked into our assumptions for next year. Finally, the discretionary block grant that he proposed that would've been worth about $6 million to us in January, he increased that by 78% to $5 billion overall from 2.8, and
094that's going to mean an additional four-plus million dollars to Dublin Unified, if it all comes to pass the way the governor has proposed it. Now, that's always a big if. We don't know exactly what's going to happen when things get hammered out with the legislature. Again, last week or so was not bad for CBOs in California, because we went to the School Services of California presentation last week. They do, of course, the big annual workshop on the governor's May revision, and I really appreciated them including this slide. I don't think I've seen anything quite like this before from their presentations. And they basically give a handicap of what do each of these look like, what are the odds of them getting all the way through the process and becoming part of the enacted state budget.
095So the 2.87%, they say the risk level for that's basically 0%. The additional 1.44% investment, also nearly zero risk associated with that. I'll skip the DBG for just a moment. The Learning Recovery and Emergency Block Grant, you may recall this was a large grant that was part of the COVID dollars that came into districts and that got significantly cut before we saw all of the money. Well, in '25, '26, the governor started making good on his promise to repay us for the money that was taken from that grant initially. We got a third of that money this year. His intent had been to give us another third of the money next year and another third the following year. He's actually proposed back in January to just pay it all off in the '26, '27 year,
096so we'll get twice what we got this year. Again, School Services is saying that there's low risk to that particular one. Lots of support for that, and he didn't make any changes in the May revision for that. Again, that special education base rate, that's worth more to us than the 1.44% is.That again, school services is predicting low risk. So while I'm not thrilled, and you know I generally am a pretty conservative guy when it comes up here to making predictions about what funding is going to look like, this helped me sleep a lot better at night, seeing that some of the experts in the field are thinking there's actually a pretty good chance of those coming to fruition. Now, I skipped over the discretionary block grant. Again, discretionary block grant's going to be worth over
097$10 million to Dublin Unified if it all comes in the way the governor proposed. That's where school services kind of feels like that there's going to be horse trading that happens between the governor and the legislature. It's going to be around that. So I'm confident we're going to get something from that. I don't know that I would be able to predict exactly how much we're going to get from that process. But starting from a point of 10-plus million, even if we take a shave on some of that, it's still going to be good news for the district, especially in light of all the ongoing funding that the governor has proposed through the increase in LCFF and the special ed grant. So given that, staff is recommending that the board adopt a budget that is nearly
098balanced in '26, '27. We'll show you how we get there using that new ongoing revenue, the new LCFF money of $2 million, the new special ed money of $4 million to actually plug most of that structural deficit. In addition, incoming superintendent Dr. Campbell is going to recommend using some of the new dollars to reduce some of the reductions that the board authorized previously. And as proposed, as what we're going to present tonight, instead of having to ask the board to adopt when we adopt the budget, a resolution of $7.2 million in cuts next year, at this point, we would be expecting to ask the board to approve reductions of just $2.2 million for '27, '28. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Campbell just for a moment to talk a little
099bit about some of the things he is proposing bringing back from the reduction list. Yeah. Thanks, Chris. As you know, as the board and the community knows, that staffing is a purview of district staff, in particular, the superintendent and designees. In my travels around the district and listening to the different school sites and what their needs are, there were something in particular that came up that I felt like because we were proposed to get additional money from the state, I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to increase some staffing. I'll explain it, why, but typically, this sort of staffing req wouldn't come to the school board, but I felt like it was going to add to some of the reductions that we're going to have to make in '26, '27. So I wanted it
100to be really clear to the board in terms of why it's going to be a $2.2 million reduction, and I wanted to explain it to our community as well. So, for example, I would like to see for us to add 4.2 FTE in certificated teachers. 2.0 those FTEs we'd use at the elementary level, and the reason why it's at the elementary level is because currently we have a couple of combination classes that I want to break up and the staff wants to break up, because the numbers are just a little bit too high. So in particular, there's a combination class, a four or five combination class at Amador, and a four and a two three combination at Fred that with this, it will eliminate two combination classes and reduce the class size in those classes.
101In addition to the 2.0 FTE, it's also a 2.2 FTE in secondary. What's happening, and the majority of these sections will be used at the middle school level, including Cottonwood Creek. What's happening there is because we have the math pathways where there's a lot of different options for our students to go into, and because there's so many different options, and as we know, students don't come in packages of 30 where they could just neatly fit into a classroom. Right now, what is happening is, is that we need some additional sections to add some math sections so that we can reduce some of the class sizes in those particular... Excuse me. At those schools. And in addition to that, what is also happening is that some of these sections will be used to add zero period
102to the three middle schools as well, including Cottonwood Creek. Because what's happening is that because the staffing is so tight, throughout the course of the day, we have limited options, or the principals have limited options to have a zero period, which is impacting it. And so this is going to allow more zero period options, which is going to free up sections and/or classes later on in the day. And lastly, our high schools, both Dublin High and Emerald, will get a couple of sections based on this, and what that will do is it's going to allow to build some programs. So for example, at AVID, we're having a hard time having an AVID section at one of our high schools, and so then with a couple of extra sections, will allow the principals to build some
103smaller programs. So those are the 4.2 FTE. In addition to that, what I heard a lot in particular, I don't know where Allison is, when I was at Kolb, it was coming up about the concern about not having an AP at Kolb. And soWhat the board remembers, I just want to take you back, is that right now we have six FTE of assistant principals at the elementary level. We made the recommendation and the board approved reducing it of two assistant principals, so to move down to four assistant principals at the elementary level next year. So I want to add one additional assistant principal, so in essence to restore one assistant principal. And that's going to allow us to increase some AP staffing, in particular, have Colb have some AP, and also some other AP sections
104we can just increase the ratio. That AP is not going to be used at the high school level, only we're going to increase the staffing at middle school and elementary. All right. So before I move on to the numbers, I want to point out a couple of challenges that are now baked into the multi-year as we look out, not just to the budget year, but to the two years past that. The first is the parcel tax. At our current pace, we are using the parcel tax surplus to pay for parcel tax items, because we have a carryover balance in that resource. So at the current pace of spending, by the end of the '28, '29 fiscal year, which is the third year out in this three-year window that we'll be looking at, that extra money,
105that surplus, will be spent down. And so at that point, it'll be up to the board to choose whether to reduce services or to move cost back into, say, the unrestricted general fund. So that's a challenge that's coming at the year after this budget we'll be presenting. The Prop 28 arts and music money is in a similar situation, but its funding will be exhausted. If you recall, we did not spend any of those dollars in year one, so that allowed us to build up a surplus as we used instead the arts/music instructional materials discretionary block grant to pay for those services. So we started in year two of Prop 28, basically starting to spend that first year money plus some of year two money. And so again, at this point, at the pace we're going,
106at the end of the '27, '28 fiscal year, we are effectively down to not having any carryover funds in that. So that following year, there's about a million dollar challenge, which is how much we're spending beyond the Prop 28 money today on our arts and music program. The multi-year projection, the way I'm presenting it tonight, does include the assumption that that program stays whole. So those costs are shifting back into the unrestricted general fund. If the board were to choose something different, then that would adjust the amount of overall reductions that need-- Well, it wouldn't change the total dollar amount of the reductions, but it would specify up front what some of those reductions would look like. In our routine restricted maintenance account, you may remember that we have to stick 3% of our expenses
107into the routine restricted maintenance account every year. We've been doing that and spending that money. Again, we had over time accrued a significant healthy carryover balance. We are currently, again, deficit spending for that. Today, that carryover is adequate to actually get us through the '29 and '30 year. But again, I'm just trying to make sure that that is super clear to folks, that that is a challenge that exists. And of course, special education, I'm only highlighting because it's great that we're getting a significant amount of new funding. However, our contribution is still going to be $20 million next year for special education. And so it's still a significant burden on not just Dublin, but every school district in California to cover the cost of serving our highest need students. And it's because the state and
108federal government still do not fully fund that at a level that actually is necessary to provide them the service they need. So with that, the budget that I'm presenting tonight for discussion with public hearing does meet the 3% reserve requirement in all of the years. You can see that we get there to the tune of about $200,000 in the budget year. You'll see we actually end up with what looks like quite a bit of excess at the end of '27, '28 of $1.6 million, but that's because we know that costs are increasing due to medical in '28, '29. And so that goes away again as we look at '28, '29, and we are at just over $100,000 there. And that again assumes a board resolution to reduce spending by $2.2 million, not the $7.2 million
109that we suggested when the TAs were approved. And then finally on the unrestricted side, the numbers all work out to the same. The big difference you'll see is going to be here on the restricted ending fund balances. And what we've done here is we've, again, been able to shift. Instead of using the discretionary block grant to plug a $6 million challenge next year, we're actually only proposing using a million dollars of that to cover the additional staff that Dr. Campbell talked about earlier. The remainder of that one-time discretionary money, that money that is potentially most at risk of being negotiated up or down as the rest of the legislative process plays out, that is all in the ending fund balance at the end of '26, '27, which allows for some ability to absorb changes at
110the state level at that point. So what happens next? Well, June 15th, the legislature has to have passed the budget, and that should, in theory, be the budget that the governor signs. The governor, of course, still has line-item veto capability or could just reject it, but it's very likely whatever gets passed by the legislature on June 15th becomes our budget. The governor will have to sign that into law by June 30th.You, of course, have to adopt a budget by June 30th. And so our plan is to bring you a final budget at the June 23rd meeting that incorporates that final legislative approved budget on the 15th, so that you're not guessing. You're able to actually put in a budget that reflects what is likely to be the final enacted budget. Of course, any changes that
111might happen after the 15th, for example, if the governor were to line-item veto something out, then you'd have the 45-day process to make revisions to your budget, and make those changes. And then, of course, staff will be working through July to close the books and come back and talk to you in September about what that looked like. Tonight, we're asking that the board hold a public hearing on the proposed budget for '26, '27, and I'm happy to answer any more questions you might have. Okay. I'm going to open the public hearing. We're going to take questions from the board, and then we'll move to public comment. So if you're online, feel free to raise your hand. What questions... Trustee Reyes. Just a quick question on the Learning Recovery Block Grant. It says we got a
112third of it this year. How much does that mean, and how much is included in next year's budget? It's about $120,000, so it'd be twice that. Yeah. Thank you. 130 maybe. It's in that ballpark. Okay, wait. That was one of my questions. So can you build on... Is it in there? Yes. Okay. So $120,000. And is it in the restricted, or is it paying for things- It's restricted. Right. And we have some costs that are currently hitting that, so they're continuing. That is currently how we have an MOU with our inclusion and co-teaching, and so that is how we fund that particular MOU. Okay. So that money coming in just continues that work that's already there. It's not money that- Correct ... we can play with or do other things, or else we would have
113to- Yeah. It pays for that- Okay ... for that MOU. Okay. Did you have more, Trustee Reyes? Trustee Blackman. Thank you for the presentation, for spending time to walk us through all these different pieces and parts. I'm still trying to grapple with, in your proposed budget, obviously, we had been looking at other presumptions of what this would be looking like going into next year, and the recourse we would have sometime in March or thereabouts with having to remove $7.2 million worth of costs. Given what we estimate the state is planning to do, and I appreciate the chart you shared with us about the risk levels, although it's still risk, asking us to only approve, essentially to look at a proposed budget with rather than $7.2 million worth of cuts, 2.2, when we haven't actually gotten
114information guaranteeing, in fact, that the legislature has agreed with the governor is still risky, because there's still risk. What I would like to see before I could even commit to this is actually a summary of all- Should we be sticking to questions- Okay ... to the public comments? This sounds more like a comment. Sorry. Can I ask a question? Will you be coming back at the next review with potentially some responses with more detail about how much money the state intends to give us and how it parlays into our look ahead for this budget? So on June 23rd, we will have, again, the legislature's enacted budget, and the final budget that we present to the board that night will be reflective of whatever revenues the state is proposing at that point. And at that point,
115would you expect future Superintendent Matt Campbell to have a review with the board about the impact of potential cuts that would be revisited to assume that we would be looking at something, a smaller cut number? We would include, and I apologize for answering for Dr. Campbell, but the number that we would bring in terms of a resolution would meet the need to get to a balanced budget at the end of the '28, '29 year. So that might be 2.2, it might be 2.1, it might be 2.3. It's going to depend on what the actual passed budget looks like. Then my question is that at the point where you're bringing this back in a few weeks, we would not be discussing the specifics of what those cuts are, just the overall number. The resolution is just
116a generic commitment on behalf of the board that they will make those cuts so that the county can hold your feet to the fire when that time comes. Thank you. Yeah. And if I may, Trustee Blackman. Yeah. Just the staff isn't going to be ready for those specific cuts yet, because it's going to be a process, and I wanted to work with our union partners on those cuts as well. And so then that's going to be part of our collaboration moving forward in terms of identifying and having conversations about those particular cuts. Okay. I have some questions. On what we have up here, I need to understand what the COLAs are for each year. So for the '26, '27, you gave two numbers, so I add them together, I get 4.31%. Okay. That's the expected
117COLA. Yes. And that's what you used for these numbers. Yep. What COLA did you use for '27, '28? I apologize. I don't have those memorized, but they are the COLAs that were published in the school services dart board, and they're just over 3% in both years. Okay. I'll need those numbers. Okay. All right. So I'll just put greater than three. When I look at, there's a 5 million increase in expenditures for '26, '27. Is this all due to staff raises, class size reductions, or is there anything else in there that encompasses the increase? The difference between the estimated actuals and the proposed budget you're referring to? I'm referring to the second interim to the proposed budget. It was 203 million in the second interim, and now it's 209. Okay. Yeah, so the short version is
118the vast majority of that is going to be the negotiated settlement. Okay. You talked about the... So I see a large increase. I see like 3 million in expenditure increase to '27, '28, but a much larger one to '28, '29. Sounds like from what you said, 1 million of that in '28, '29 is just arts and music that was funded out of '28, but '28 will have exhausted the extra of '28- Correct ... I should say. Looking at the unrestricted, yes. Yeah. You're looking at the combined, they would be a wash, right? But in the unrestricted, it would show up as additional cost. You made it seem like we use more than just what Prop 28 is. Right. So we need an extra million dollars. Correct. What I was saying is on this particular table
119that's combined, because it's showing the restricted and the unrestricted- Sure ... that shift from the restricted to the unrestricted washes out and doesn't actually change. Where you see that increase would be more visible on this slide, when we're looking at just the unrestricted, and you're seeing that extra million dollars hitting the unrestricted side. Okay, but it still seems like it would hit, that million would hit both of them. Well, it would, but we don't have a slide just for the restricted in this presentation. Okay. The longer term concerns, I was aware of all the ones you mentioned. You did not mention the solar loan repayment. Oh. Is that also a longer, because it's a longer term- Yes, it is ... concern for me. Yep. It is. Absolutely right. So do you have a year when
120that ends? It's right now assumed that we would continue to use interest for the three years in this. So, I don't have a specific year when that would end, but it would likely be very soon after the end of this three-year multi-year. Okay. That needs to be added to the list. Yep. Okay. I have a number of comments, but I think that's the end of my questions. Are there other questions before we go to public comment? Okay. How many public comment do we have here in the room? We have nine cards in the room, and no one online has raised their hand. All right. If you're online, please raise your hand the next five minutes, and we will start with the ones in the room. Again, you have three minutes, and we cannot respond, but
121we are listening. Okay, our first three speakers are Arzu N., Allison Tomsic, and Katie Tombs. Sorry. My last name's Nasrabadi, by the way. Okay. So first, I wanted to talk about why sports aren't funded by the district. So I coach the girls lacrosse team at Dublin High School. We recently won Eball two years in a row, which is unprecedented. Yet we have to pay $7,000 of student funded money where they had to go out and find donations. And so that means they don't get any new uniforms, they don't get any team merch, and I have to drive a van to their away games, because we can't afford buses. And the boys volleyball team that you guys congratulated today probably had to pay their refs as well. So I think that teams that are playing under
122the district's name should get some district help. So that's just some food for thought. So again, here's my actual speech. So my name's Arzu Nasrabadi. I'm the AP Environmental Science teacher and head coach of DHS girls lacrosse team. This is my 10th year teaching and my fifth at DUSD. I'm here to implore the board to focus the governor's new budget towards its students. DUSD has gotten help from Sacramento, so by hiring more teachers, allocating money away from consultants and towards reducing caseloads, you will be ensuring that Dublin students not only deserve the best, but Dublin Unified remains the best. But there are more things you can do to allocate the budget. For instance, you can reinstate site budgets so Emerald High School can afford chemicals and glassware, and actually run a chemistry program. Also note
123that DUSD only has one oxygen probe for all science classes between both high schools, which is now broken, by the way, so we don't have any for an AP course. Invest in supporting ed specialists so they can help our most vulnerable students. And finally, reinstating courses at Emerald so students can actually take the classes they signed up for and not get pushed into classes they don't want to be in. And reopen Valley. So thank you. Our next speaker is Allison Tomsic, followed by Katie Tombs, and then Marni. I'm back. I am trying to find humor in everything. I'm really tired. I just got back from Texas for my nephew's high school graduation, which was great, but I'm exhausted and I want to go home. I'm sure you do as well. My name is Allison Tomsic.
124I am a third grade teacher at Kolb Elementary and also the DTA site representative. I have proudly taught at Kolb for 14 years and have been a DTA member the entire time. This year I stepped up to be our site rep because we have gone many years without a site rep at Kolb. And so many issues were often missed. So my goal has been simple this year, to help make Kolb a better place for our students and staffI'm here tonight to urge the district management to bargain with DTA before the '26, '27 budget is finalized so that this budget truly invests in students. Our schools are facing increasing academic, behavioral, and social emotional needs. The additional state funding presents a critical opportunity to respond to those challenges in meaningful ways. Our families, staff, and community
125deserve to see these funds used to strengthen the quality of education students receive every day. Investing in students means investing in the people who serve them. Competitive salaries, adequate staffing, classroom supports, and access to mental health resources all directly impact student learning and wellbeing. When we invest in educators, we create stable schools and stronger outcomes for students. That is why timing matters. Meaningful negotiations must happen before the budget is finalized. Once priorities are set, it becomes much harder to make real investments in classrooms and student support. Bargaining in earnest now ensures that the district's financial decisions reflect the actual needs of students and schools, not afterthoughts. This additional funding should not simply be absorbed into reserves while schools continue to face unmet needs. Our community expects these resources to be used intentionally and responsibly to
126improve the student experience and strengthen public education. I respectfully ask the board to prioritize transparency, collaboration, and a genuine commitment to reaching a fair agreement with DTA before the budget is adopted. Investing in educators is investing in students, and our district has both the opportunity and the responsibility to demonstrate that commitment now. I want to give a special thank you to Dr. Campbell for listening to Colb when we shared our concerns about the AP issues, and I sincerely hope that we are able to get somebody in there part-time. Thank you for your consideration. The next speaker is Katie Tombs, followed by Marni, and then Monica Lewis. Good evening, trustees and members of DSD management. My name is Katie Tombs. I am a Dublin High School teacher, DTA site representative, and our incoming DTA co-president with
127Brittany Neideffer. And being a union member, if you've never been one, is a source of great pride and joy for me personally, but also for our nation. 11% of workers in this country are members of unions. That's actually a larger percentage than those that serve in the active military. Union and labor organizing is deeply powerful in the state of California. Making sure that trustees are aware of collective bargaining practices is something that we can do. I don't expect every trustee to have this training, or even every management staff to have this training, but that is an expertise we can bring to the table if we're at the table. We're a collective bargaining unit, which means we have to demand to bargain. That's not us being bossy. That is us literally doing what is contractually asked
128to do, to be in a room on equal footing with our employer. Simply put, collective bargaining is when workers come together to have a say in the decision, the safety, the priorities, and the success of the workplace. Instead, we've been pushed here and there, and maybe these side conversations. Bargaining is where this happens. And to set up priorities in a budget without doing that is a false start. It's a false start leading to a knot that we worked so hard to untie in March, that we had to have a work stoppage to untie in March. This is the chance to do that cleanly and with partnership, but that has to happen at bargaining. When I come to the table, I come as an expert, and I consider these the experts in the room, not School
129Services of California. That is a for-profit company that our management staff have gone to trainings with to help produce. The slide came directly from there. The logo's still on it. There's nothing in this presentation that's from us. That's not collaboration. When I sit at the table, I carry the experiences of every member that I talk to, first year and second year teachers, and the ones about to retire, those that are sole financial providers for their family, those that are going through personal hardship and need professional support, those that are innovating in differentiation, establishing college-level rigor, taking on extracurriculars, researching and exploring solutions to the most challenging things that schools face. When I sit there, I sit with the questions they bring to me. How do I keep students safe without working keys during an active
130shooter emergency? Why don't I have the technology to accomplish what I'm being asked to do? How do I balance the state law timeline for IEPs and complete the necessary hours? How do I plan for next year's art classes without a budget? These are questions I'm carrying, and if you're not at the table with me, you can't hear them. Bargain with DTA now. Our next speaker is Marni, followed by Monica Lewis, followed by Mia S. Good evening, trustees, Dr. Campbell. Thank you for the opportunity to listen to us. Dr. Campbell, thank you so much for-- I know you went to all the school sites, but we really appreciated seeing you at EHS, and it was a professional conversation. We listened to each other, felt like we were heard, and that's what collective bargaining is. We have
131all these terms and stuff, but really, it's about talking to each other, listening to each other, and coming up with some sort of solution in a middle path, right? So I'm here to demand that management bargain with DTA prior to the budget adoption to ensure that money is invested in students. So Emerald, we're pretty excited. We're going to have our first full year next year, so we're going to be an official school. We are an official school, but there's something about having a full seniors all the way through that makes it just feel like we're super excited, and the kids are excited.Here's the problem. We don't have site funds to plan the stuff. We have new courses coming on board, training. I'm trying to collaborate with friends over the summer-- not friends, sorry, colleagues over
132the summer about the new things that we're... They are friends, too, but they're friends and colleagues. And talk about the ways that we can change the rigor up, make this a school where kids are being successful. But we don't have the site funds to do that, and we usually have at least a couple of hours over the summer where we can meet and go through planning. Also, too, electives are suffering. They're being collapsed. Now, I wrote this before I heard what Dr. Campbell had to say about the FTE, so I'm not really sure how I'll change this, but I'll just say what I wrote. So we have sections that are being closed. It was understood that the estimated cost of our contract would still include the smaller class sizes. However, we're creating a schedule where
133we're losing sections of electives, and we don't want to do that. So that means that EHS has some electives, DHS has electives that we don't have. So if we're talking about equity across the district, that doesn't look great either. So the question becomes, where did the money go, and how do we come to a resolution? We can't talk about this unless we sit down face-to-face and just have these honest conversations. Oh, by the way, teachers at Emerald are going to have to share classrooms. Not sure why that's happening. We're a new school, so that's a head-scratcher. So I just thought I would bring that up. Anyways, let's talk. We're all professionals. We care about our kids. All of us care about kids. And as I said earlier, negotiations are about finding a middle path. So
134let's talk. We're willing and ready to be in partnership with you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Monica Lewis, followed by Mia S., followed by D. M. I want to start by thanking the board members for asking the questions that need to be asked and for demanding more information. I can give you the COLAs for the MYPs. For '27/'28, it's 3.3%. For '28/'29, it's 3.09%. That's from School Service California, the same source that they used to find this. Our team knows this data point, knew it right there sitting there. I'm not sure why one of the highest people in the room does not know this information. I want to thank President Speck. Your summary of the discretionary block grant was spot on. You said, "We've been holding this grant, deciding what to do with it."
135That's what we want to avoid. That's exactly why we sent a demand to bargain these incoming funds for '26/'27. Let's make the plan together now for how we'll invest this grant money into our students and into our classrooms. It can even be contingency language. If we get these funds, then we will invest it in our students by X, Y, and Z. Management's past practice has been to list all one-time grants as restricted and keep it off the table and away from students as long as possible. This year, some of this money was used to pay for management's mistakes instead of being invested in students. Specifically, state grant money was used to pay for the error in paying CSEA's health and welfare benefits instead of being invested in our students. Thank you, Trustees Blackman and Speck,
136for your comments about the organization of this presentation. The presentation is just jumbled. Putting all the revenues in one chart and all expenditures in one chart, making the data clear and transparent would really help us all get on the same page. So the problems with this preliminary budget. This presentation admits a lot of errors without actually calling them errors. Accounting adjustments. Those are errors. More errors that take away money from our students. Pages of accounting errors. If you add together the $3.6 million error from December, the $1.1 million that were pulled from our site funds to pay for the utility bill they didn't budget for, the $2.6 million they had to retro pay CSEA for health and welfare, plus all the other accounting adjustments in here, we're looking at $10 million of errors. He said
137he would go over the estimated actuals, but there are no details about the estimated actuals. He spent most of his time explaining why the budget is more scarce than it previously was, right after the state's May revise tells us to expect $18.5 million more next year. This budget severely underestimates the expected revenue DUSD will receive next year. By exactly how much, we don't know because no clear revenue list is included, just a very large, vague slide deck of jumbled information. Every one of the estimates was lower than what was promised in the May revise, though, just by a little bit. Half a million here, half a million there. In last Thursday's finance committee meeting in response to a question I asked, Mr. Hobbs' response was, "$1 million is not going to make a difference in
138our budget." I severely disagree. $1 million is a lot to your teaching staff and to your students who are going without paper and pencils to end the school year because our site budgets were stripped. We need to bargain. We need a transparent and collaborative budget committee so that multiple stakeholders with different perspectives and areas of expertise can help create an accurate student-centered budget, a budget that is sustainable, but also invests as many dollars as possible directly into our students. We are here and ready to collaborate with you. You just have to call the meeting. Our next speaker is Mia S., followed by D. M., followed by Brittany N. Good evening, board trustees, DUSD management, and the community at home and in the room. I just wanted to go over a couple of things that have
139been happening in the past few months. So in February, the board approved nine cuts And by March 15th, there were 51 FTE that had to be cut. But now in May, so just today, all 51 of those FTE, except 0.6, have been rescinded. So those 51 FTE were actual educators, teachers that teach your children, that teach the community members, that have spent months in this state of will I have a job? Won't I have a job? While they see the amount of students not changing in front of them, they are wondering if they are going to have a job next year. It doesn't make any sense. And the reason why those 51 FTE reductions in force went out was because she did not know how to use the tie-breaking process that she helped develop. And
140so all of those people were in a state of just complete turmoil. Now, same day, we're adding four more teachers, one more admin, which of course is something that we want. We want our sites to be protected, to be safe, to have the appropriate amount of staff. But this is an increase for '26-'27, not 51 FTEs being reduced. We have this narrative of declining enrollment. We pay tens of thousands of dollars to a consultant firm that tells us we have declining enrollment. We are opening a brand new school, Shamrock Hills, that is actually having to divert hundreds of students. Where is the declining enrollment? Fallon Middle School, we are getting sections added to sixth grade. Where is the declining enrollment? So why is there this scarcity narrative? DUSD management pulled back site funds to pay
141for bills that weren't accounted for. Meanwhile, I have families literally bringing me reams of paper. Reams of paper. These cost $8.99 at the store. I have a family who brought me three. They spent $30 on supplies for my classroom. That's not acceptable. They're pulling paper towels for tissue in my classroom, right? We do not have the basic supplies that we need in my classroom to function for the rest of the school year, unless I purchase it or unless my families are donating it, and that is not acceptable in such an area as this. My students deserve better. Our district is getting an approximate 18 more million dollars for the upcoming year, and I'm just curious what commitments we have that we don't end up in the same situation. DTA's plan has been utilized in neighboring
142districts to help solve larger problems than ours. But why aren't we beginning that work until August, right? Why do we delay? We're still, as of tonight, finding similar but different problems in the budget with basic facts and figures that our people, middle school, elementary, high school teachers can see. So let's do this now, not later. Please partner with us on the budget, not just the cuts. Our next speaker is D. M., followed by Britney N., followed by Rose D. Good evening. I'm here tonight to demand that management bargain with the DTA prior to the '26-'27 budget adoption being finalized to ensure that the budget invests in students. The ongoing budget cuts driven by years of mismanagement have had a direct and visible consequence for both our student programs and our campus safety at our sites.
143The loss of assistant principals has significantly reduced our ability to maintain adequate supervision and respond effectively to student safety concerns. With fewer administrators available, incidents take longer to address, and preventative support is limited. This is especially concerning as Fallon will now house three special education programs without any additional assistant principals or behaviorist support. We are already experiencing campus lockdowns and a continuous daily need for behavioral and safety intervention. Without adequate administrative and specialized support, our ability to respond safely and proactively is compromised, placing both students and our staff at increased risk. With the $4 million in restricted funds allocated for SPED, I urge you to prioritize that money in an AP and a behaviorist at Fallon. Consider it at Fred too. Staffing reductions have also affected essential operational roles. The loss of our custodial staff
144and secretary support has disrupted daily school functions from maintaining clean and safe facilities to ensuring efficient communication and front office operations. Additionally, the decision to swipe our-- Sorry, sweep our site supply budgets in February had an immediate and lasting impact. Schools were left without the basic materials needed to support instruction for the remainder of the year. These funds were never restored, despite the district currently holding approximately $500,000 in unused budget funds for materials and supplies. This disconnect highlights a broader issue in a financial decision-making and prioritization, and these cuts are not abstract. They are felt daily by our students and our staff. They affect safety, learning conditions, and the overall function of our school community. Our community and DTA want the same thing, a stable, supportive district focused on student success. But stability cannot exist
145without trust, and trust cannot exist without transparency and respectful collaboration. Decisions that affect staff and school should be communicated clearly, consistently, and with genuine opportunities for input. Concerns should be addressed openly rather than dismissed or met with retaliation. Not reporting and partnering with DTA on the newly proposed budget does not build trust or stability. We are asking that district leadership take meaningful steps towards rebuilding relationships with staffs, families, and our community. That means listening without defensiveness, creating accountability at every level of leadership, and fostering a culture where people feel safe to speak honestly and work together productively. We all care deeply about this district and the students that we serve. Moving forward requires partnership, mutual respect, and leadership that prioritizes trust building over division. Our educators, our community, and most importantly, our students deserve nothing
146less. Thank you all. Thank you for your comments tonight. Our next speaker is Brittany N., followed by Rose D., followed by Jean Josey. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. So forgive me, I am very tired today. We are all here today because we believe Dublin students deserve the best educators, the best learning environments. It's why DTA members have been making phone calls to local decision-makers advocating for Prop 98 to be fully funded. And I'm grateful to Spec and Campbell, you guys invited me to meet with McNerney to advocate for that as well, and we're seeing that advocacy pay off. And because of it, we are expected to receive a significant amount of additional funding that was not on the table when we were bargaining back in March, and our educators had to make absolutely heart-wrenching decisions about
147what priorities we were going to give up to fit within our budget. Priorities that we knew would be life-changing for our students and for our educators. And now that money is available, and our educators now have no way of providing input on what to do with it and how it will best support our students. I reached out to different members at my site to encourage them to be here today, and was met with different teachers saying in different ways that they really didn't see a use in showing up, that management and the board don't care about what they think, they don't respect their opinions, and they don't see it as a valuable use of their time to continue advocating presently. And when our educators, who are the professionals who work closely with our students, don't
148feel that they have a voice in this decision-making process when the people in power and authority, they don't see them as genuinely caring, we have a really big problem. I did have two members that provided me with short comments to share on their behalf. One asked, "Where is the transparency? We are receiving additional funding from the state and budgeting that money before meeting with community stakeholders to discuss how the additional money will be spent. Why hasn't management already sat down with DTA leaders to discuss ways to prioritize the budget to invest in our students, and why are we still telling the community that we need to make funding cuts when the state budget is telling a different story? How are we as Dublin parents, teachers, and taxpayers supposed to trust this board and this management
149with these type of funding decisions when there's no transparency? Trust comes down to transparency, and our district leadership is not demonstrating that." Another member asked why we are further defunding our sites. Teachers were told today that the content teams will not be able to receive paid collaboration days over the summer to align curriculum and talk about ways to meet the needs of our students, which is particularly concerning in this new kind of landscape where our students are thinking differently than they did before, they are learning differently than they did before, and they are seeing jobs that they once thought were their ultimate goal no longer being available to them. And so our teachers need to have paid time to sit down, align content, and figure out how to meet the needs of our students. Thank
150you. Our next speaker is Rose D., followed by Jean Josey. Hello, everyone here and in the room and watching at home. I'm Rose, an education specialist who's worked at Dublin High for the past seven years, and I'm here tonight to demand that management bargain with DTA prior to the adoption of the '26, '27 budget to ensure it invests in students. In my role as a bargaining team member during the strike and at various points throughout the past couple of years, I've heard district management point to budget crises, lack of state funding, rising costs of special education as their excuses not to move forward with changes to our contract that would benefit students. Now with the governor's May revise, we have an additional $18.5 million directed to the district specifically, $4 million of which is dedicated
151to special education. Given the district's history of mismanagement of funds and repeated and ongoing similar but different accounting issues, there's a lack of trust that those funds will be utilized in a way that maximizes benefit to students. Listening to that budget presentation was like watching a shell game of "Where's the money?" with millions of district dollars. That's why in the spirit of transparency, repairing trust, and improving collaboration in support of the students that we all serve, DTA has issued that demand to bargain. I've spoken quite a bit this year and previously about the excessive demands of my workload, and while we did accomplish some wins around reducing caseload following the strike, none of it would have improved my working conditions this year. This past month, I had six and a half open assessments at the
152same time. By the end of this school year, I will have completed 12 and a half academic and transition assessments. That's really like 25 assessments. These kinds of assessments require one-on-one time with students to complete testing, time to go into their class to observe them, and time to write up a 10- to 14-page assessment for academics, a 10- to 14-page assessment for transition, along with the entire IEP. Throughout the entirety of the school year, I was frequently required to be in two places at a time, in class or in IEP meetings, preparing for class or doing this one-on-one testing or in more IEP meetings. This means I have less time to prepare for and deliver actual high-quality instruction and services and support to my students in the classroom. I'm not the only one facing these
153challenges. None of that was discussed or addressed in the recent contract negotiations, and this reality needs to change. Dublin students deserve the best. Bargaining with DTA is the way to ensure that they have what they deserve. Trustees, please direct management to honor DTA's demand and meet at the table and ensure this investment from state leaders reaches our students. Thank you. Our final in-person speaker is Jean Josey. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. My name is Jean Josey, and I think most of you know I wear several hats in Dublin. I want to make very clear that I'm speaking to you today only as a community member and a current employee of Dublin Unified, and that's it tonight. I appreciate the information that was in the budget report tonight. I hope
154that you all understood the adjustments better than I did. I understand how you can put money aside in a fund and sort of forget it's there if the bill doesn't come due. What I don't understand is how negative liability can be put on the books for an annual item that never gets billed. So I don't quite understand that piece, and I hope you all understood that a little bit better than I did. I want to thank you all for the service that you give to the school district and to our students and our staff. I know you are each making the best decisions that you can with the information that you have in front of us. There's certainly some cause for celebration with the information we saw tonight with additional money from the state. I
155understand we don't know exactly how much that is yet. There are some decisions that can wait and some decisions that cannot wait when we're talking about cuts that we may be able to not actually make. So what I really want to talk about tonight is to urge you to immediately undo doing away with Valley. I know there's an idea to lease out the space. If that were to happen, then we have no options. I don't know if $1 million or $1.3 million is really the right amount of what Valley costs us every year, but the cost of not having Valley will surely be higher than that. The idea is to have a cohort at Dublin High for only 20 students, this year's rising seniors that are currently at Valley. There are quite a number of
156rising seniors that are not currently at Valley that could use Valley. More to the point, there are a lot of rising juniors that, if Valley were an option, would clearly be best served by going to Valley. As you know, in my job, I work with the students who are not necessarily academically thriving. And I have quite a number of current sophomores that I'm working with that in normal times we would be looking at their age, looking at how many classes they've failed, figuring out is Valley the best option for them, and right now, that's not an option. Over my decade plus with the district, I have seen Valley numbers, which started, I believe, over 100 students in my first year here when we had around 2,200 students go down to 40 students now with twice
157that number of high school students. Those percentages don't make sense to me. And the way we use Edgenuity for credit recovery is not serving our students well. So I urge you to take action immediately before it's too late for this coming school year to reinstate Valley on its own campus for the students who truly need it. Thank you very much. That is our final in-person speaker. We will now take our speaker online. Niyati, please go ahead. Hi. Give me a thumbs up if you can hear me. Hello? We can hear you. Go ahead, please. Oh, excellent. Thank you. Okay. We're going to give her a minute to get back on, but we can start some discussion. Let me know if she gets on in the next two minutes. We'll wait to close the public forum
158until we have that. Is there questions or comments from the board? I know we had questions, but is there other comments? This is our time to give the comments. The full budget will be in roughly a month at the end of June meeting. Trustee Blackman. I'll get started. I wish I could share all of the information I have in front of me. But a really amazing statement was made by CSBA President, Dr. Debra Shade, she's our president for the rest of the next six months, analyzing the information that was parlayed out to all of our districts about the upcoming budget, what the government expects you can do. And just for numbers that you can grapple with what we're talking about, and I sound like a broken record, but she states that the overall state budget
159is about $350 billion. Yet within the Legislative Analyst's Office in November, and I think I say this from returning from a December event, said that in the 2027-'28 year, structural deficits are estimated to grow to about 35 billion annually. That's a $35 billion deficit. 10% of our state budget will be a deficit. So although we're all really happy about additional funds coming from the state, when you drill down into exactly what each fund is and how much it is, a lot of that money is earmarked for things. It's not open to be spent on whatever we want. They did an amazing job about six pages going through every single piece of that wonderful document and information from our governor, and not a lot of it is really great news. It's a lot of money, but
160it has to be used for very specific things. So whereas we think there's millions upon millions upon millions of dollars we can spend anythingHe's actually tagged it. It's earmarked. So I would like us to take a little bit of a breath and realize that when the governor's budget actually negotiates with the legislature and they agree on what these numbers are, we're going to have specifics as to exactly where the wiggle room is and what money we have to spend on what. But if they keep going down this path, it is not going to be all rosy. There's going to be money that's going to have to be spent in a certain way. So I would like us to just pause for a second, wait until the state legislature has negotiated with the governor, and we
161actually have real numbers, because we can't act on money that's just a promise. It would be really helpful if we actually had the real numbers and we knew what we could use them for. Then discussions can begin. So please give us a little bit of breathing room. We've been doing this for a very long time. This is not an unknown process. I went to school where one of the best ILRs exist in the country. Working with unions was actually part of our courses that we took, so it's nothing new. Process is known. I also appreciate some of the comments that were provided. I do believe that we will work together to find the best use of the funds we receive. But please also recognize that the members of the board here were elected by the
162family members and their parents to basically allow us to represent their needs. And so when we come to the table to you, we are actually representing not just the constraints of our role as a board member, but also what those families and those students have expressed to us their wants and desires are. So you'll be hearing a little bit of give and take. Thank you. All right, we're going to go to the public comment. Kyoki, go ahead and put our speaker through, please. Hello. Am I audible now? Yes, go please. This time? Okay, thank you. Appreciate that. Okay. Okay, for our speaker, we do hear you, I promise. Just don't hit any more buttons. Just keep talking. All right, why don't you go ahead? We don't hear you now, though, so we do need you
163to unmute. Hello? Yes, we hear you. Excellent. Thank you everyone for your patience. I should have learned technology in the last five years that we had of COVID, but clearly, I'm on a learning curve here. But good evening, and I really appreciate the time the trustees have invested, and for the district leaders to talk about the budget. I want to speak specifically about how the budget decisions are impacting our educational equity, and especially STEM opportunities for classes of 2028 and '29. These students, when they were in their middle school, were denied accelerated math, an opportunity that was available to classes before them and has since been restored for younger classes. At that time, many students and families chose not to accelerate in sixth grade because they trusted their counselor, the guidance that multiple pathways are
164available later. Now, those same students are facing barriers because dual math enrollment, which was a crown jewel in DUSD's coursebook, has been scrapped. It is limited due to class capacity, specifically starting this year due to budget cuts. This is true and happening at Emerald High. As a result, students who followed district's guidance in good faith are losing the ability to catch up academically. This is not simply a scheduling issue. It is a resource and budget priority issue. If our district values STEM excellence and college readiness, we must ensure there's sufficient staffing sections and funding to support our qualified students who want to pursue math pathways. And I repeat, say, not advanced math pathways, just pure math pathways. It's especially concerning if access differs between Emerald High and Dublin High School. This creates inequitability across the
165same district. This is not fair. If this exists across at Dublin High, too, and we've scrapped dual math enrollment for Dublin High as well, it weakens our district's competitiveness. I urge the board to prioritize funding and capacity, and allow solutions that restore fair math pathways for our class. Students should not be permanently losing opportunities. And mostly, I do want to make sure that I want to challenge a growing narrative that students are somehow too academically focused. This is not true. Our students are thriving not only academically, but also across athletics, arts, leadership, and activities. Emerald High was winning at BVAL across multiple sports while balancing rigorous academics. No one, and I repeat, no one should be deciding what our students' career interests, ambitions, or educational goals should look like. So as you discuss about budget
166and how these allocations would happen, I urge you to prioritize funding for our capacity and solutions for restoring fair math pathways for our impacted classes of 2028 and 2029. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, that's the end of our public comment. Are there other comments from the board? Trustee Sherrer. Thank you. Mr. Hobbs, thank you very much for a great presentation, as always.I've been on this board for quite some time now, and when I first got on here, no one understood the budget presentations at all. And now they're very clear, and it makes sense. People may not like the numbers. I understand that because the huge reserves we used to have are long gone. But it is great to get the good information, and I really want to thank you for uncovering some of the accounting
167irregularities, many of which you inherited, and have resolved those and straightened them out. It sounds like some of these are also in some of the other districts, and it's only through your attention that the Alameda office was able to find those and reach out to other districts and make sure that was the case. I know we're all talking good news here, but the budget coming up for the long term and out at least one year, it's still showing we have to pass a resolution, be it much smaller, which is great. Sorry. And I think that's great, but I got to think really strongly about what Dr. Campbell wants to do to add 4.3 FTEs, when with $2.2 million of reductions we're going to have to do in only about nine months. Should we be really
168adding people when we have to just turn around and lay off more? I may go ahead and approve the budget, but I'm going to have to give that some thought. Thank you. Thank you. I'll give my comments next. So opposite of Trustee Scherer, I had a difficult time following this presentation. The slides you added today helped, so I appreciate you listening to my request to add those. I'll reiterate, I need to see restricted reserve details for every budget presentation. I think to me, it's a matter of transparency when we have these large amounts on there to be able to clearly identify what we have in the reserve and what's actually available to us to do something with, like these grants, and what is sitting there because legally we have to spend it on a certain
169thing. So I want to just reiterate that I want to see that in every budget presentation. It's important to have the COLA listed for each one. I write it in for there. It's already a pretty busy slide, so I don't know that you can fit it in, but I think that would be great if there was a way because it's important to see how that changes and to understand what's going into these numbers. I am in favor of adding the FTE. I think that there is good rationale for it and reason on it. I do have concern adding FTE when we also are seeing that we are projecting a budget cut, but I do recognize that there's a potential of a very large amount right now in that restricted, that I'm going to optimistically hope
170absolutely comes through. So that makes me feel better about it, but I think that the rationale that you gave on those would be extremely value added to our students and to our staff. I know for the secondary, some of the ones that we talked about was adding in zero periods at the middle school level. And I can say personally through my own kids and a number of kids I've seen there, that makes such a huge difference to have the option of zero period as an eighth grader because it allows you to take a language, which really frees up a class at the high school level. But also keep that thing you might be passionate about, whether it's band or choir or maker space, but to keep that. So I'm in favor of that. I would
171like to hear comments from trustees or superintendents on Valley High School. I know when we discussed it before, there were some trustees who had desired to keep it if money came available. Those were the comments made. I very much see the value in Valley High School. However, I very much see how few kids have been taking it, and I understand the concern on ingenuity. But as I've talked to parents and as they get to make those education decisions for their kids, that's what many of them are choosing now. I've talked with a parent in particular, I can think of, that I tried to convince their child really should be at Valley. I think that they would get the best at Valley, but that's not the choice that they were making, and we just have so
172many that are not choosing it. And so, I want to make sure that we are considering what to do with these students. I understand the plan for the senior class, but I still want to understand better what is happening for those sophomores who now don't have that as an option. And is it just throwing them into ingenuity, or is there something to actually give them better support than that?I'm left with a lot of questions still, so I'm going to reach out to you to set up some time with you and Connie to go through. I will copy you if you want to attend with me, because I just want to understand some of the decisions made into these, which I think is too much to get into here at this board meeting. All right. Trustee
173Reyes, and then Trustee Martinez. So I guess, before, as we contemplate approving a budget in a month, the one thing that I think it's so impossible to understand now until things start to materialize, but I do feel like that when it comes time in a month for us to approve a budget, we need to understand really what the incremental revenue is that we'll be receiving, because I'm obviously hearing lots of different accounts from different groups of what this revenue is. And basically breaking that down, right? Let's say, I'm just making up a number, we get $8 more million, and is that ongoing or one time? Being able to communicate with not just the board, not just the leadership, but also with all our stakeholder groups on what that $8 million is going to be spent
174on, I think that'd be really helpful so people kind of understand that. Just to kind of keep that separate, because we've been looking at the different budgets kind of as the time has gone and obviously we've heard these news. We're still trying to understand the effects of it. So, it is no easy task, so I completely understand that, but I do think as we get closer to having to approve a budget, it would be a good idea for us to kind of quantify this is the money that we're... This is the assumptions of the money we are getting, and this is the assumptions that we're doing with this money. Because obviously we're adding some people back. The proposal put together today was adding some money back for some FTEs and reducing our out year by
175$5 million. Does that add up to the amount of money that we think we're getting, or are there other things being contemplated or done, or assumptions or some conservatism kind of being applied to that? So I just think that a little bit more there would really help, not just us make a decision, but also help everybody know kind of what's happening, what we're thinking and what we're contemplating when we're trying to make these decisions. I do want to echo a lot of what folks said today. I do agree, and I know the district is offering time to collaborate with our employee groups, and I wholeheartedly support that. I know it's happening. So I'm confident and have a lot of faith that the groups can sit down with leadership and be able to discuss what's being
176contemplated. And obviously this is something where, as a whole, our community needs to collaborate on this stuff. So I want to make sure that it's being done, and I believe it will be. Thanks. Trustee Martinez. So I don't want to duplicate what was already said, but what I do want to ask is that going forward, that the next budget is presented a bit easier to read. I think it's really important that this presentation be presented in a way where families could look at this and be able to translate it. Where someone unfamiliar with the budget could sit here and be able to translate this for themselves. With no background of a budget, just be able to look at this and understand what's happening within the district. I think it's easy to present this to us
177because we're approving this, but this goes on our website. This is for families to absorb and to understand. So, it's been said here at the dais already. I do think that it's important that we get that additional staffing. I think that it's important for our school sites to have that additional staffing. I know it's kind of kicking the can down the road, but I think it will be beneficial. As far as Valley, I did already have some questions about kind of the Rising Star facility use agreement. I think that the possibility of us taking a moment to reevaluate that, maybe holding off on closing Valley, to take the time to collaborate with the community, with the leadership there, even if it is an additional year. We should take the opportunity to maybe just take a
178beat, and really see what can be done. With these additional funds that could be coming through, I think we have an opportunity to take a breath and to take the moment to meet with our partners and to do that. And so, I think we should take that opportunity. I think that you've been doing your budget in this particular way for a really long time, and I'm wondering if it's a great time for you to take the opportunity to present it a different way in. So maybe, for this last one, just be able to show us in a different way these line items that we need to approve this next time around. Thank you. Dr. Campbell, did you want to go next? And then Trustee Blackman. Sure. I want to just talk about Valley for a
179second. So Laura, I appreciate Lori and appreciate Jeanne coming and talking about Valley. Lori and I have talked about this before. I think that when you're presented with an issue, then there's a necessity to think differently about some things. And so I think that what is presenting itself with Valley and/or moving the Valley students to the Yorick Alternative Learning Center, it's competing philosophies on educationThe students at Valley, we deeply care about, and the services that are provided at Valley with Jen and her leadership and the staff are important. They see those students on the daily and support them. But the continuation model is a continuation model. It has pros and cons. There are some school districts that have gotten away from their continuation model school or their continuation schools. It's not bad. It is what
180it is. Moving to an alternative school provides additional flexibilities. And so I'll make the recommendation that for Curtis and I to go back and look at it, and so that we then can provide you with some options and some recommendations in moving forward. And Valley, we do have some time, and we can present to you, and I think that we have done that before in the past in terms of the different educational model. And I think that we have to decide as a community, what do we value? And can we provide the necessary supports and services to the students that show up? They both have pros and cons to them. And so then we're going to then have to make a determination. I will come with a recommendation, but we can also make a determination
181in terms of how to move forward. I think that what's happening is that looking at the York Alternative Learning Center, it's a brand new way of looking at an alternative setting or alternative schooling. And so I think that there's some fear in terms of the unknown. We've never done it before. So I think that that's the competing interest that is happening. But if the board wants to give the direction, we can definitely take a beat, as you said, Trustee Martinez. And so then we then can look at it and then come back with a recommendation. Okay. We're going to wrap up comments on the budget. Trustee Blackman. One, I want to thank Dr. Campbell for that statement. I really appreciate hearing you saying what you did about taking chances and trying something different. I don't
182think we progress without doing something and trying something a little different. If we're at our discomfort level, it's usually a good sign. The information you presented today on the budget, I know that it doesn't have all the backup and the files and the fine grain detail, but we've gone through these documents many times before. The one thing I haven't seen in a while is that beautiful document you produced many years ago that I think we won several awards for year after year, which was a really wonderful document explanation of the budget that was written in more standard common language where individuals could look at and read information about how monies are distributed in districts, some diagrams, a mix of things. It was a phenomenal booklet. I think it really made a difference in helping our
183community actually understand how budgets are created, how balances are done, et cetera. I know it's a lot of work. I don't expect you to do it, but I was thinking that this is something that we should probably pursue in the future because it was so instrumental in helping our community understand budgets. To that extent, I'm a little concerned with us making some assumptions that we can leap forward and make cuts without really understanding everything in its entirety. I do believe we have $7.2 million of cuts that we have to make next year. The idea that we could reduce that down to $2 million sounds great, but I am concerned with us adding staff back when we know we have to just take more cuts, and we're already down to pretty-- I don't know where the
184balancing act is. Again, those conversations need to happen in the future. One thing that does have me very concerned, and I heard it at several comments, it's something I actually want to bring here, is that we have made reductions in offerings to students. And I think that's a real shame. When we actually look at all the progress we have done to date in trying to focus on literacy at meeting third-grade reading levels, at our ability to meet our math pathways to offer great opportunities for students. I know the state is coming back to us demanding that we teach language at the middle school level. All of these things are wonderful things so that we produce these brilliant minds that go out and can pursue their careers. The fact that we get within 100 yards of
185the finish line and we have undercut the ability for students to actually complete pathways and courses and careers and areas of focus that will get them to where they want to launch when they leave us is really a shame. When I heard tonight some things that were brought up, and I've actually talked to many people at different sites, I'm understanding that, yes, we have budget cuts, but the first thing that I would do is reassess. If we have a largesse of students that are demanding courses in a certain area, that's what we should be turning on. If that's what our students want, that's where we go. Because that's how we're student responsive. It's not so much I know we have issues with paper and pencils. We can ask our families to donate. They did that
186for over a decade. But when we tell a student, "You can't pursue that goal. You can't try that course," we are not serving them well. So I want us to flip the discussion around from what we don't have to go back to what did we miss? They're talking to us with their course requests. How can we go back and look at what we've undercut through this process and return back to serving those needs? Because they're talking to us. It's how well we listen to them. So I'm okay with us returning some staff, but it has to be that level of justification. We thought we could make these cuts workAnd they're really hard. Looking at another $7.2 million is just, I can't even imagine how we would get there. So I'm grateful that there may be
187more money coming, but the reality of it is that to turn to a student who has one or two years left in our school district and to say, "We just don't have that course for you to finish your pathway," or, "We've just eliminated another section, so I'm sorry, we won't be able to offer it to 30 more students," is where we fail. So I would like us to pivot from just looking at any additional money we have coming back to seeing what can we do to give those students the opportunity they're looking for from us. Thank you. Okay, we are going to take a quick break. Yes, I am going to close. The public hearing is now closed. And then we are going to take a quick break for six minutes. We'll be back at
1888:55 and be on to item J1. Okay, it's 8:55. We still have a number of things left on the agenda, so we want to continue. Our next item is J1, our new assistant superintendent of business services employment contract. Dr. Campbell. Yes. This is part of a procedural where, for assistant superintendents and superintendents, we have to read the contents of a script that President Speck will read. So President Speck, I'll give it over back to you. Okay. This item is the board's discussion and possible approval of an employment agreement with Amy Nichols as Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, the Chief Business Officer. As required by law, the following is a verbal summary of certain of the key terms of the proposed contract. Ms. Nichols would be employed as Assistant Superintendent from July 1st, 2026 through June
18930th, 2029. Ms. Nichols would be paid $258,035 annually, working a positive work year of 220 days. Ms. Nichols will receive paid holidays as set forth in the Education Code and any local holidays declared by the board or that are specified in the classified collective bargaining agreement. The assistant superintendent will receive dental, vision, and health benefits to the same extent as other management employees. Sick leave will accrue at a rate of one day per month, but the superintendent will not be entitled to cash payment in lieu of sick leave. The district will permit a reasonable amount of release time for the assistant superintendent to participate in professional growth activities and shall pay necessary travel and expenses with prior superintendent approval. The district will also pay for subscriptions and memberships in professional organizations with prior superintendent approval.
190The assistant superintendent will be entitled to reimbursement for actual and necessary expenses incurred in the scope of her employment. The assistant superintendent will be provided with a laptop, a wireless service plan, and a hotspot. This concludes the summary of the contract. A copy of the proposed employment agreement is available upon request and is available on the district's website. All right. Are there any questions? If not, we just recently did this for another assistant superintendent. I will take a motion to approve the employment contract. I'll move to approve the employment contract for assistant superintendent of business service. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. We will move on to item J2, first reading of the revision of Board Policy 1260. Yeah. Thank you, President Speck. This is Board Policy 1260, the Educational Foundation. You've seen
191the changes. They're minimal. They are CSBA recommendations, and in essence, Keoki, if you can just scroll down just slightly. In essence, the change is that educational foundations do not get access to student records except with parental notification. Student directory information may be released when appropriate, but in essence, that is the change moving forward. Okay. Any comments from the board? Trustee Blackman? I'm letting you know that I will not be supporting any changes because I do not feel that the way we've been working with a foundation or any foundation, there are many foundations, is anything other than skirting the board's authority to oversee when funds come in, how they are used. The funds recently from the foundation were earmarked. Our earlier discussions was that this would not occur, that the board would actually determine how the
192funds are used and working with the superintendent. That didn't occur, so I'm not supporting this. Okay. Seeing no other comments, then we will move on to our DUSD strategic plan for multilingual learners. Thank you, President Speck. It is my privilege to invite to the podium Dr. Ventura, along with Casey Nissen. Casey Nissen has done an excellent job of doing outreach and updating the strategic plan for multilingual learners. This is an item that needs to be board approved, and so I'd like to invite to the podium Dr. Ventura and Casey Nissen. Everybody knows Dr. Ventura. Casey has come before the board on a couple of different occasions. She is a coordinator that oversees our ELA and our English learners. Good evening, Superintendent Campbell, Superintendent Funk, President Speck, board of trustees, and community members. We are excited
193to be here tonight to present and request the approval of the strategic plan for multilingual learners. Mrs. Nissen is going to share a two-year process and the work that went into developing our plan moving forward and how it's going to support ourMultilingual learners and our English learners. So I'm going to turn this over to Casey. All right. Yes, you can. Okay. Good evening. President Speck, Vice President Martinez, Superintendent Funk, Acting Superintendent Campbell, Board of Trustees, and our Dublin community. It is my pleasure to share an overview of the district's strategic plan for multilingual learners with you this evening. This plan addresses how to meet the needs of our multilingual learners, specifically a subset of students, our English learners, who are simultaneously building English proficiency and learning core content instruction. This is complex work, and it
194is supported by our dedicated teachers and ongoing efforts to align systems and supports that help students succeed. This plan reflects two years of collaboration and is grounded in research, best practices, and our commitment to equity for all students. We are looking for the board to approve the plan for multilingual learners this evening. The purpose of our strategic plan is to align all educational partners, teachers, administrators, support staff and families, and of course, our students, around a common set of practices and supports for our multilingual students. The intent of the plan is to build a shared understanding of English learner programming, services, and support that are asset-orientated and needs-responsive, both of which are guiding principles in the English Learner Roadmap of California, align with the roadmap principles and the current research, update the district policy and
195practices, the last update was in the 2017/2018 school year, and create a user-friendly and accessible plan for all, and of course, support our students, our English learners. Having a plan in place allows us to work toward a cohesive, systems-wide approach to equity and opportunity for every English learner. In Dublin, this includes 614 of our 12,887 students, which is 4.8% of our student population this year. The plan is organized into eight focus areas that together form a comprehensive network. These areas span the entire student experience, from identification and placement to instruction, assessment, and engagement. Each area includes detail on the processes and strategies to support multilingual learners in reaching English proficiency and academic success. The first area, which is in bold on the slide, is initial assessment and identification. The goal here being to identify the
196students who need English language support. We ensure all eligible students are assessed using standardized tools. This is the initial ELPAC, English Language Proficiency Assessment of California, and that data is used to guide placement and support right from the start. This foundational step sets the tone for responsive instruction of our students acquiring English. Programming and access ensures that students have full access not only to classroom content, but also to designated English language development. We are committed to integrating language and content learning, making sure students have access to both during our first best instruction during Tier 1, universal instruction. In elementary, support may be in the classroom, pull out with an ELD specialist if more substantial support is needed, or a combination. While in secondary, ELD is part of the student's daily schedule. ELD instruction involves both
197designated and integrated ELD. You'll see the slide has a description. Student needs access to both high-quality core instruction and English language development. High-quality instruction is central to equity. At each level, we utilize research-based programs to support language development and foundational literacy skills. Differentiated supports allow students to build both language and academic skills simultaneously. As part of the plan, we now have a universal document to be shared with teachers and specialists starting this fall. This document will be populated by our ELD specialists and shared with staff in order for students to be identified, and includes linked resources such as appropriate scaffolds and supports based on students' English proficiency levels. For the next slide, one of our ELD specialists at the elementary, Charisse Poston, was going to be here to present, but she has young kids, and
198she wasn't able to stay. But I just want to give you a minute to take a look at the slide. She was going to share some examples of what happens at the elementary model, because designated ELD and integrated ELD are part of our system where it's not just an ELD specialist at the elementary level that should be providing that instruction, but in partnership with the teacher. So these are just some examples of what that looks like. Okay. Ongoing assessment helps us monitor progress and make informed decisions about support. The summative ELPAC, administered each spring, provides data on English proficiency levels in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This data helps us determine placements and supports, and identify students who may be ready for reclassification. In addition to the summative ELPAC, staff may also use curriculum-embedded assessments
199to gauge student learning. Our goal is to not just measure, but to act on what the data tells us to support each learner. Reclassification is a key milestone-In a student's language journey, we use multiple criteria and alignment to current state guidelines, including the summative ELPAC, teacher input, academic performance to determine readiness. The goal is to reclassify when students are prepared to thrive without additional language support. Students are monitored for four years following reclassification. Once a student reclassifies, they are no longer eligible for English language services, but could still access school-wide supports through school support systems like COST. Our goal is to ensure that every family, regardless of the language they speak at home, feels that their culture is celebrated and their voice is heard in Dublin. Opportunities for family connection and engagement include our advisory
200committees, direct communication with ELD site specialists, activities planned by the district, and many opportunities that are planned through the school sites. Professional learning opportunities have been and will continue to be offered to staff in this area. This includes structured literacy trainings that focus on developing proficient readers and guided language acquisition design, BGLAD trainings, which focus on integrated ELD strategies. This year there were five after-school offerings in addition to online modules for a small group of secondary teachers who work with multilingual students. Several data systems you'll see on the screen allow us to monitor instruction and track student progress effectively. Reclassification rates are also a good indicator of program success and how we are doing in terms of student support. Our 2024, 2025 reclassification rate was 33%, and although reclassification rates on Data Quest have not
201been officially computed since 2021, we have typically fallen above the state average. With this being said, we are focused on further refining supports for students, particularly our long-term English learners and our dually identified students. We believe our updated plan reflects a commitment to equity and collaboration in serving our multilingual learners, and yet there is still a lot of work to be done, including sharing key aspects of the plan with educational partners, continue to build system-wide alignment, and curating additional resources to support students, specifically our dually identified students, newcomers, and our long-term English learners. We live in an area made special by its incredible diversity, and rooted in the immigrant experience. We have multi-generational families, as well as families and students who are new to the country. Here in Dublin, we are committed to creating environments
202where multilingual learners feel that they are seen, and they are supported. By fostering this sense of belonging, we give our students a strong foundation to thrive at school, in our community, and in their lives ahead. Tonight, we are asking for the board's approval of our updated strategic plan for multilingual learners. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you tonight, and we will take any questions or comments you have at this time. Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? Okay. Questions or comments from the board. Trustee Martinez? Thank you. Is reclassification the only data set that can be reported back to the board annually on how student outcomes are going year by year? Well, reclassification, we could report on that, and then on the California dashboard, there's a lot of information on
203how our English learners are performing. Is that what you're referring to? Can you be a little more specific? Yeah, I'm just wondering if we can have reports back yearly on outcomes to ensure that the plan is working rather than just adding another layer of process to school sites. I would say it's not necessarily separate. We get the CAST data, and that could be broken out by English learners. The California data has, if we're looking at the gas gauges, they have information on our English learner performance as well. Okay. So I think that may be the information that you're looking for. Okay. But if there's something more specific you'd want, you could let us know and I'm sure we would be able to pull- Yeah, I'm glad you asked that second question, Trustee Martinez. That's what
204I was going to say. Is there something in particular that you feel like would be pertinent that we can report back to you? Specific to this plan, I want to know whether this plan is showing us outcomes that are not adding more processes but are showing specific student outcomes that we can report back on that are separate, or is this just bringing those test levels up, or are there student outcomes that are specific to student success that are separate? I think you want to know, is the plan working. Right. Yep. When we implement the plan, is it going to work? Mm-hmm. And so for us to report back on that. It's so multifaceted. We want to make sure that we're identifying our students correctly, that they're getting the supports they need, they're getting the classes
205that they should have, and then, of course, we want to look at student outcomes as well. So if there's specific things that you're looking for within the plan, because even as I went through, we're talking about family engagement, we're talking about student success in their class, we're talking about identification, we're talking about reclassification. So if there's specific outcomes, we'd be happy to get that data for you. Yeah. But more specific information would be helpful for us to gather. I think it would just be nice, how would you tell us it's been a success? Mm-hmm. What data would you give us to say, "Hey, my plan has been a success"? And I think that's what we're- I would say the reclassification data would probably be one of the strongest indicators. Great. Thank you. And then my
206other question is, do you have a gauge on what you think the biggest barrier students are seeing within the district for multilingual students? Biggest barriers. It's very complex. Just imagine that you're going to a foreign country and you don't speak the language, and then you're put in math class, and you're put in science class. So that is very difficult to do. So I think there's a lot of things going on, and there's a lot of different types of English learners as well, our multilingual learners. We have kids that have interrupted schooling. We have kids that didn't have the same foundation. They're not proficient in their primary language. So there's a lot of things. So I really think it's a case-by-case basis. Secondary is a good example. Secondary ELD students have one class period of ELD
207that's based on their proficiency level, and then they have English, and they have math, and they have science. So just being able to do all of that, I think is very difficult. We have very talented teachers, and we're trying to support them with strategies to make sure kids have meaningful access to the content, because they need to have meaningful access to their grade level content, right? So I think it's very difficult for students to do, and we're trying to do our best to build up those supports. Trustee Blackman, and then Trustee Reyes, and then I have a question. Thank you for the presentation. I really think this is important given that 5% of the students in our district actually need these services. Mm-hmm. And you provided a chart, I believe in the document- Yeah ...
208that shows essentially to get to proficiency, if you start off, it's like a five-year kind of timeframe- Right ... we assume. Uh-huh. So when we talk about students who are in secondary, especially students who come in either at the end of middle school, beginning of high school, how are we helping those students when we know that the coursework is so much more advanced? We're not asking somebody to learn their ABCs and 123s. We're asking them to learn about biology and chemistry and upper-level math, and to read piece of literature when they're still- Right ... just learning the language. The question I have is, how are we ensuring-- Is there a faster, more accelerated version of getting them on board with English? Are we altering the level and the opportunities to take electives and other courses?
209How are we meeting them where they are so that they have the same level of opportunity as our other students? Thank you for the question. So it takes about five to seven years to learn a language. So when we're looking at our long-term English learners, that's when we're seeing them in middle school and high school. They haven't had that time. So a lot of that is just the integrated ELD piece. So we know, based on research, we don't want to change the curriculum and have a sixth grader working at second-grade material, but we want to take that grade-level content, and we want to provide some scaffolds and differentiated supports. And that is one of the things I spoke about tonight, this notification form that we want to use has, okay, I have a student that
210may be at a level two in my class, so they might need substantial to moderate scaffolds. And then here are some examples of things that I could do in the classroom to help those kids have meaningful access to grade-level content. So those are things we're trying to provide more readily to teachers to support kids in these content-level classes. So the reason why I was asking is because we live in an era with technology and AI. Right. And AI can take whatever it is the teacher's saying, if they're listening, and translate it so students can hear, see, watch, but also get this maybe in their native language, sort of a equator where they can basically balance between the two. I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing, but I'm just wondering how are we integrating
211technology, because technology is becoming so much more advanced. Sure. Are we using it to help our kids? It's in the plan, too. I didn't have it in the presentation, but students, especially our newcomer students, our level ones, all of our ELD specialists have translation devices. At the elementary school, they're iPads, and at the middle school and high school, we have iPads, and we also have these translation pens, so they're not as bulky for students. And there's a lot of different languages. And in those, we have guidelines on appropriate use, because we don't want students to have this as a crutch. We want to be practicing language. Oral language development is the foundation to learning any new language, so we need to be trying that out. But we do have access to some of those devices.
212And you're right, AI, teachers could go in there and say, "How can I scaffold this lesson a little bit more?" A lot of our curriculum materials have embedded scaffolds and supports in them, and then we're trying to provide some extra training and scaffolding on the side as well, in addition to translation devices for students that might really need it. Thank you for that explanation. My last question is, it's always a challenge when, as you mentioned, you come to a new country and you don't know anything about the language. Yes. But you always have your home. Your home base is your home language. But I know this is especially true in Southern California, where the language spoken at home is, in a way, a disservice to the students that are trying to learn English because the
213parents can't support the student when they come home with work. So what I want to understand from you guys is, I've asked this every year, are we providing English language types of courses to help the family members also become more proficient so that they can support their students? So at Adult Ed, so that Bill Branca runs, we do have English language development courses, ASL classes, they're called, that parents can enroll in and sign up for. So that is part of our overall programming here in Dublin Unified. It's not something that's necessarily under our umbrella in curriculum and instruction or my umbrella, but yes, that is a service that is provided by the district. Yeah, that's the vast majority- Thank you ... of our Adult Ed program that Mr. Branca oversees. There's hundreds and hundreds and
214hundreds of adults that are learning the language, and you're exactly right. A lot of them are parents of our students that are trying to learn the language as well. That's really cool to hear. Thank you. Trustee Reyes? Just reclassification. Mm-hmm. You said that you follow up, but for the next four years after that, I guess, are you measuring... Are people-- Can they fall out of reclassification? Are you starting to keep track of how many? And going off of what Trustee Martinez was asking, I was just wondering if you guys are tracking the progress of levels. You say it could take up to seven years, like the progress between levels one, two, three, and four. And I think that was the metrics that maybe she was getting at to see, to evaluate as it goes rather
215than- Right ... just use reclassification as the one metric. Yes. So, a couple things. So one, there is a bill that is going through legislature now, AB 2555, I believe. So we have a lot of different reclassification criteria in alignment with the state. But the state is looking to move to just the LPAC test because it's just language. We're just working on language, and kids will be automatically reclassified. So just, we're tracking that. So we'll update to align. It's a great question. Once kids reclassify, they could no longer receive English language services. But they can, through our cost process, they can still have access to interventions out at the school that are open to any student that is struggling. So that's still happening. To your point about levels, in a perfect situation, which we know
216there's no perfect situation, you would want to see students moving up a level a year. But that doesn't always happen. We have kids that get stuck, and that does happen. And so sometimes those become our long-term English learners, and that is something that you may have seen that we have been in the red on the dashboard in that area. It was a new metric last year, and for two years we've been in that. So we've been really working. What we've noticed in that data is a lot of our students that are long-term English learners are also our dually identified students. So they are learning English, and they may have a learning challenge as well. So we've been really working collaboratively with our special education department and making some really great progress about coordinating the supports
217for students. Like I said in the presentation, there's a lot of work that we could do. We're really trying to align system support. We're really trying to make sure that kids are getting equitable access at all of our site. But there's always more that we could do. And so we are always open to get suggestions and try to make improvements every year. I'm really proud of the plan and having everything in one place that teachers could go to, families could go to. It's a public document. Hopefully, we'll be able to post it on the website so anyone could take a look at that. But I hope that answers your question. My question was around-- Well, my question, but two of them you answered with Trustee Reyes. So on the family and community partnerships, I think
218you said when you reclassify, it's parent consultation, teacher evaluation, there were a number of things in there. Yeah. What level of communication do you have with the parents throughout a year? If I'm a parent of one of these students, am I meeting once a year with someone? Am I just getting up-- What is my experience as a parent? It probably depends on the level, but we have ELD specialists that are at the elementary. They're part-time employees. A lot of them, if they're 100%, they share a site. So a lot of that communication, in fact, all of that communication, especially on reclassification, goes through that ELD specialist. So they're sent information specifically on our English language advisory committees. That all goes through the ELD specialist. As far as a cadence of what that communication looks like
219for the ELD specialist, I wish Charisse was here because she would have a much better answer from you because it really happens at the site level. Okay. But that's who you hear from, is the ELD specialist at the site? Okay. Right. But also, just regular communication as a student. You could connect with a teacher as well. So it's not just the ELD specialist. The teacher is with them so much. Sure. And the ELD specialist is an additional support. Okay. Understood. Okay. Last one, Trustee Martinez, then we'll take a motion. Sorry. One more thing I always like to add is that I really think it's important to always give as much resources directly to students as possible, especially with English learners. I think it was mentioned before, parents are not always English speakers or can read
220in English. So even if a student is learning English, they may be the best source of being able to digest those resources. And so teaching a student how to find resources and to take those resources back to their family is probably one of the best ways to ensure that a family is well aware where to find resources and how to get resources. Thank you. Okay. Is there a motion to approve the strategic plan for multilingual learners? I'll make a motion to approve the plan for multilanguage learners. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Our next item is K2, the annual update on curriculum and instruction. Yeah. Well, Dr. Ventura, in case you aren't going to go very far, this is an annual update. It's a celebration of our
221curriculum and instruction department and the good work that they have provided to our educators in the district and all the professional development. So with that, Dr. Ventura, take it away. Good evening, President Speck, Superintendent Funk, Superintendent Campbell, trustees, executive cabinet members, and members of the community. With me tonight are members of the curriculum and instruction team, teachers on special assignment, Brandon Coffee, Emily Telosa, lead media support specialist Travis Chubb, coordinators Casey Nissen and Ashmeet SaniOther essential members of our team that could not be here tonight are Teacher on Special Assignment, JeeYoung Hong, and Secretary Kristen Werder. We are honored to be here tonight to provide an annual update from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Our work represents a shared commitment to supporting educators, strengthening instructional practice, and ultimately improving outcomes for every student we
222serve. Our work is grounded in our district priorities, high-quality instructional materials, and a multi-year professional learning plan, which starts with the understanding that excellent teaching is essential. Linda Darling-Hammond quote states our mission succinctly. To support that, our strategy focuses on three core principles. The long game, student growth takes root over years, not single semesters. Collective efficacy, the shared belief among our teachers that greatly increases student achievement. And our investment, professional learning builds this collective efficacy, investing in every student. The work of curriculum instruction over the last four years has been and will continue to be in alignment with state priorities. There are direct connections to the work we are doing, as you will see on the next slide, most notably in the areas of professional learning, instructional guidance, high-quality instructional materials, and summative assessments. These
223are not one-and-done tasks. Rather, they require ongoing attention and support to truly make an impact in an aligned system. Those state priorities come to life in our district through this framework. It's organized around four PLC questions that drive everything we do in Tier I instruction. The green box, "What do we expect our students to learn?" is the foundation of it all. This is where we establish a guaranteed and viable curriculum, ensuring that every student, regardless of which classroom or school they are in, has access to the same high-quality content and learning experiences. We anchor that in our district-adopted curriculum and high-leverage instructional strategies, the instructional guidance and materials piece you just saw. How will we know that they have learned it? Through the aligned summative assessments and proficiency skills we've been building out. When students
224aren't there yet, our MTSS flowcharts and targeted interventions guide our response. And for students who are already ahead, we are expanding access to advanced pathways and enrichment, such as the Math Summer Acceleration Program. To support all of this, the C&I team provided at least 50 professional learning opportunities just this year alone, spanning UDL, letters, CAST, and many more. This is the system, consistency, calibration, and collaboration, that turns those state priorities into real outcomes for Dublin students. Our goals can only be achieved by providing our students with high-quality instructional materials. We make sure we provide all of the students with the district-adopted curriculum by placing over 160 orders and ordering nearly 200,000 workbooks for elementary and middle school-level students each year. We also helped field and resolve instructional materials issues for many elementary and secondary teachers
225and secondary students to make sure that they had access to the curriculum online as well. Throughout the year, we successfully completed two Williams compliance visits to Frederickson Elementary and Daugherty Elementary as well. We also have successfully planned for a successful opening of a new library at Shamrock Hills. This slide highlights how we're building instructional leadership capacity at every level of the system. We kicked off the year on August 7th with a district-wide PD centered on a guiding question: how might we design and strengthen our Tier I instruction through the lens of inclusivity to foster belonging, build student agency, and ensure equitable access to meaningful learning for all students? Teachers and leaders worked through three core actions: identifying form goals and flexible means, designing flexible methods, and monitoring decision-making and reflection. That foundation set the tone
226for everything that followed. We used principal meetings as a genuine lab for learning, modeling research-based strategies that principals could directly take back to their sites. We provided ready-to-use spotlight strategy slide decks so instructional leaders could share with staff without having to build anything from scratch. And throughout every professional development session this year, our curriculum and instruction team intentionally embedded those same Tier I UDL strategies, ensuring that what we preach about inclusive instruction, we are also practicing facilitating adult learning. You can see that alignment in action across our work this year in letters training, where we bridge the science of reading with inclusive UDL core actions, and in our CAST professional learning, where we model flexible methods within rigorous science instruction. Inclusion isn't an add-on. It is woven into everything we do. One of the main
227focuses for the C&I math department this year was our middle school math pilot. To ensure the pilot went smoothly, we held professional development for all three curricula to enhance teacher understanding of the platforms and lessons.This was paired with a live question and answer document for immediate, in-the-moment support. During the implementation process, math PLCs were attended to help with implementation, answer questions, or field any concerns that the teachers had about the curricula. For each site, learning walks were also conducted with school site administrators to collect qualitative data and identify exactly what professional development would be needed for a successful rollout. At the end, a consensus meeting was held with all participating members to determine the six through eight math curriculum for the 2026/2027 school year using teacher and student feedback for all three curricula. As Ashmeet
228mentioned earlier, one focus of C&I this year was Tier 1 science instruction. I'm very proud of the work that our fourth grade lead teachers and elementary science specialists engaged in during our professional learning series on the California Science Test, or CAST. Over the course of three full-day workshops, teachers focused on performance tasks, a notoriously difficult part of the fifth-grade CAST. Together, we identified discrete skills such as analyzing graphs or understanding models that students must learn in order to tackle a performance task successfully. The participants created a resource bank of activities for teachers to utilize to explicitly teach those skills as part of their CAST preparation. This year, our team also provided direct one-to-one support to secondary science teachers who were new to the district so they could effectively use their Tier 1 adopted science curriculum.
229We filled in a gap for teachers who needed help getting started but weren't eligible for new teacher coaching through TVTIP. Finally, C&I continued an initiative started in the previous school year to align the standards by which we measure student performance in middle school science. A committee of science teachers from all three Dublin Middle Schools developed several common summative assessments for grades six and seven. Our team fostered rich discussions about the ways we can fairly and accurately assess our diverse student population. Mm-hmm. There we go. As we transition to literacy, I'd like to take a moment to review data that has been shared with the board when we first started this work. Take a look at the graphic on the slide. 95% of us have the cognitive ability to read. All students need and deserve high-quality
230literacy instruction to support proficient reading. Dublin knows this, and this notion is directly connected to Dublin's vision in a few areas, most notably when stated explicitly, students reading at grade level by the end of third grade, and more broadly with regard to equitable access. This is also goal one of the LCAP, improving academic outcomes for all students. Why is this important? Literacy is the great equalizer. Being a proficient reader is foundational for success in content area learning and opens up opportunities in school and beyond. Students who struggle with reading can improve, but early intervention is key, and our best first instruction during Tier 1 for all students is critical. What does solid reading instruction look like? When JeeYoung and I first started this work together four years ago, perspectives on literacy instruction were changing across
231the nation, so we knew that a shared understanding of the current literacy research would be essential to grounding our work. The simple view of reading, the graphic on the slide, provides that grounding. First, two big domains are involved in skilled reading: word recognition and language comprehension. Second, skilled reading is a product of skills. Strength in one area cannot make up for gaps in the other. In the past two years, JeeYoung and I have facilitated 51 full-day evidence-based literacy trainings. This has been a huge lift, but essential to establishing the groundwork needed to move literacy forward. True teacher support is ongoing and involves customized curriculum training, job-embedded coaching, and providing teachers with literacy resources that support the work they do in the classroom every day. We talk a lot about universal access for students. Universal access
232to resources and knowledge for teachers is also important. This is where the C&I website comes in. Currently, the website houses all the resources from our trainings. An example is on this slide. This particular resource our literacy specialist, JeeYoung, created was in direct response to a teacher-identified need, in this case, providing direct explicit phonics instruction, and this tool is ready to use for any teacher when needed on the C&I website. Since we started planning for literacy instruction with the end in mind, we had three distinct goals. Number one, improved first-best instruction for all students by working with teachers on research-based practices. Number two, build the same foundational knowledge of effective literacy practices to be able to look with a critical eye at new materials. And number three, provide ongoing job-embedded support for daily classroom instruction. This
233timeline demonstrates our comprehensive approach to early literacy instruction related to structured literacy training. Now, spring of 2026, we have nearly 100% of all of our early elementary teachers trained in the science of reading. This will positively impact students by the thousands. This learning can be applied to any instructional materials being used in the classroom, as we will be looking at new instructional materials for K five literacy as early as next school year, which would be the winter and the spring if we move forward. Secondary teachers went through a pilot process in 2022-23 for English language arts in middle school, and the board adopted HMH Into Literature in January of 2023. Since that time, a lot of work has been done in order to build system-wide alignment to deliver a guaranteed and viable curriculum. This includes
234all the work you see on the screen. Currently, we have a team that is working on revisiting the summative assessments that were first developed in '23-'24 and revising them based on two years of data. This collective body of work, with information and documents also housed on the CNI website, included representatives from all of our schools and was built in a way that committee leads got input from site team members in order to maximize voices. With a materials pilot for elementary on the horizon, we hope to continue this type of collaboration. The support from professional learning, providing resources to PLC team support is a critical lever for advancing our promise of a guaranteed and viable curriculum that will enable all of our students to succeed. As we conclude the detailed overview of our work, this slide
235brings our strategy back to the educators who implement it every day. The testimonials you see here are direct evidence that our investment in professional learning is working. They confirm the positive impact of the support we provided across every major initiative. This feedback shows a clear shift toward renewed enthusiasm, a deeper appreciation for effective instruction, and highly productive collaboration, all of which build collective efficacy we outlined in our foundation plan. We believe this feedback is the most critical measure of success, empowering our teachers to succeed with every student. As we transition to questions, I want to leave you with a final takeaway. This isn't just an annual update. This is multiple years of a strategic commitment to collective efficacy. By scaling structured literacy to 100% of our early elementary teachers, to embedding universal design for learning
236into our leadership DNA, and successfully piloting future forward math curriculum, as well as alignment of English language arts and science assessments, we are building a sustainable engine for instructional excellence. Our goal remains clear, ensuring every student has the tools and every teacher has the support to achieve their full potential. We are proud to share this journey with you and look forward to your thoughts. Thank you so much for a great presentation. Questions, comments from the board? Is there public comment on this? Okay. Trustee Blackman. Thank you for the presentation. I actually really appreciate it even more with the explanation, and I want to thank everybody for their parts because I think you did a great job. I want to turn to slide four. It was something that came up. Under the heading, the blue one,
237it says, "How will we know when they have learned it?" And it got me thinking. I think it's just as important that they actually understand when they've learned it. We often look at all of our assessment information for, I think, how we gauge how we're doing in getting students to where they need to be. But I find that there isn't as much emphasis put on providing that information to the student in a timely manner so that they can actually understand when they've made it, but also understand when they need to get help. And if we're not being timely with those assessments, even just grading homework, students feel lost. So I know you're thinking about this, but how would you address that when we don't really have a lot of control over every teacher's ability to
238respond and give feedback? And in the younger grades, there's a lot of work the kids get every single day. So how would you make that more real and relevant to students so they can see their own progress? Go ahead. So I just have one comment. So there's a lot of research on just retention data, right? So one of the strongest ways that we know that we've learned something is if we could teach someone else. So if I learned something and I could teach you, then that tells me that I really have understanding of whatever that content is. So that's just one idea that you could be doing in the classroom is, even if you're going in as a board member, asking kids what they're learning, what they're doing. If they're able to communicate that, that
239tells you they have a good understanding of whatever concept that they are being taught in class. Something else is also just goals. That was what Ashmeet had talked about in the presentation as one of those UDL measures for success is really reflecting on our learning and setting goals. So that's a piece of it too. This is my learning objective and this is my goal for the learning, and I could self-reflect and decide if I've met that. So those are a couple ways that you can do that with students, and the team might have some other thoughts. So when we started the year with August 7th PD day, one of the core actions, as Casey just stated, was monitoring and reflection of your own progress. And then what we also did, we built a PLC template
240for our staff where when they are engaging in these meaningful conversations within their team, they could talk about what are some opportunities they will provide their kiddos to engage in these meaningful reflection. So we have some data around that, but it's a work in progress. And we are hopeful that the PLCs will take that forward. Thank you. I appreciate hearing that level of thinking along the lines of how kids can actually do this on their own. Not every kid can understand it, but so I understand that those are differences. My next comment I just want to make really quickly is I've been reading this piece of research, it was really phenomenal. It talked about expanding the mind. We don't teach handwriting in schools, and this wonderful piece of neuroscience just came out, two different groups
241of students, one typing on the computer, the other one writing by hand, taking notes, and it was a phenomenal difference in terms of the level of understanding. So I just want to encourage that while you're teaching reading skills and understanding, that we also go back to very basic things like learning how to write and take notes. So I'll just share that our structured literacy training that we do, the last session has a writing focus, and we spend a lot of time on proper letter formation. Cursive is back in the standards. So we spend a lot of time in that one session on letter formation, writing fluency as well. Thank you very much. Mm-hmm. All right. I don't have any specific questions, but I appreciate the level of detail that you gave us and just having
242the whole team here and being able to hear from each of you. So thank you very much. Thank you. We are going to move on to item K3, the revised AR for artificial intelligence. Yeah. I am excited about this next item. In particular, I want to invite David Wilde, our CTO, up to the podium. Around this time last year, maybe a month out, we brought a brand-new AI policy in how we were going to integrate it into the classroom. It was somewhat revolutionary at the time because not many school districts had a policy. Dave put it together, and not speaking out of turn when I say this, I think Dave got some pushback and, frankly, some criticism in terms of not including teacher voice on the formation of that particular policy. And Dave has done
243an excellent job of leading the TAC committee. I'm really glad that Katie has come forward as well. She has been an instrumental voice in terms of how we are revising this policy anyway. So just with that, I just want to invite Dave to the podium. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Campbell. Superintendent Funk, future Superintendent Campbell, President Speck, members of the school board, and executive cabinet, tonight we bring before you revised administrative regulation 0440.1 on artificial intelligence. As you may recall, as Dr. Campbell had noted, in August of 2024, the board passed a board policy and administrative regulation on artificial intelligence. And at the time, ChatGPT had just come out, and we knew that students were using it for homework, for tests, for all sorts of different uses in the classroom. Teachers were concerned
244about plagiarism, about receiving work that wasn't truly the student's work, and we really needed to put together a policy and an AR that, one, recognized artificial intelligence, but also started to work on limiting its use or creating guidelines for its use within the classroom. And as we know, AI technology and its use was going to be rapidly changing. And so we needed to be committed to regularly reviewing this AR to ensure that it meets the needs of our students, staff, and community. And as we moved through the 2024-25 instructional year, it became clear that the AR that was created was confusing to staff, students, and parents. It raised a lot of questions about enforcement and use, and by the end of the instructional year, we knew we had significant changes that we needed to make.
245And then starting in August of 2025, the Technology Advisory Committee, which is a committee that is comprised of students, staff, and parents from around the district, began overhauling the AR. And you can literally say we threw it out the window, because if you look at the red line, there's not much left of the original AR. And that's not a bad thing necessarily, because through a lot of conversation and a lot of brainstorming and a lot of conversation, I think what the result of the AR that we bring before you tonight addresses some of the key issues that there were concerns about from its predecessor. And it will hopefully move us to a point where we only have minor changes that are needed to be made and addressed as this technology begins to evolve and as
246we see its use within the classroom and outside the classroom. So I'd like to bring up Katie Tombs to talk about some of the highlights of the AR. Hi. Thanks. Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, there's quite a bit of red line. I'll talk briefly, and then we can answer questions too if you want to dive into it. But I think one of the first things I want to call attention to, if you want to scroll down, is the tier system. So there's tiers one through five, and we wanted to be super clear in what AI use and how we can have a district-wide conversation that is... Oh, thanks. Nice. My bad. I didn't realize I was driving up here. Oh, right. But to be able to have district-wide and site-wide conversations about how AI use is
247showing up in different spaces. The two things I hear from parents most often, and even students, is, number one, "How do I make sure my student is college-ready?" Number two, "How do I make sure my student is career-ready?" Because AI is kind of seen as this inevitability.And I believe, maybe this is just my English teacher speaking, that fundamental reading and writing skills and critical thinking paired with solid social emotional abilities is what will make a student successful in an AI-driven industry. They're going to need solid communication skills. And what I tell my writing students is, "You have to be smarter than the tools, or the tools are using you." And so these tiers help teachers in all different things. But at the same time, at Dublin High, for example, we have an animation course which
248very much might need to use new and interesting AI tools. We might have programs in the TK through five grade levels that have these walled gardens, kind of these tutoring, kind of adaptive learning spaces. So we needed a policy that was able to change with the times, but also change with the setting. So the tiers are actually modeled off of pretty predominant universities. So UCLA, Harvard, Penn, Duke, Columbia, MIT, Princeton, Caltech, Stanford, they're all using this similar tiered function. And then they're allowing instructors or certain courses to determine, with clear communication to their students, what's expected. So tier one is the most open AI integration level. It is full faucet, use it however you want from beginning to end. No need to necessarily cite. What you create from your prompts is your work product. It
249is full open integration. And that moves slowly, kind of turning the faucet off and being more restrictive until we get to level five. And level five is like a no gen AI use. This is really what we would use in assessment settings, particularly I teach an advanced writing course. This is what we would use for that. And so making sure that teachers and course level teams can then determine a policy and have that clearly in the syllabus, and it would be language and tiers that students are seeing in multiple grade levels. So it should help build the fluency both between parents, students, and educators of what's accepted and not accepted. In here, I think I had originally built our first two columns and David brought in a bunch of examples of that. And I think
250the combo of those two things helps clarify as students read this or as parents read it, that there's some tangible examples. So it's a little bit different than a typical AR tone and writing style, but I think it's more accessible for the community, and that was one of the drawbacks of the other one. So those are some of the big highlights and major changes. Last time, the previous AR was a certain percentage, but we didn't have tools to measure that. And it was kind of unclear how and when and where educators would communicate this to students. So the idea here really is to streamline communication and have it be pretty upfront. I also like this because, for example, I have some seniors. Hopefully they're doing their homework and they're in bed. I have some seniors
251with their final project. They're writing letters to their future kids or to their younger selves for their final. And part of it gives them permission to AI generate whoever their little future human would be if they want to. But that is all. Then the writing needs to come from them. So this kind of language would allow me to tell them, "Hey, on your slide, on your visual device, go nuts. Tier one all the way. Your writing portion needs to be tier five." This is where we're at for that assignment. So, I think just like any policy, you want it to be uniform across subject matter and course-like teams to make it fair to all students. But I think this gets us a step closer to some of those things. Yeah. So those are some of
252the major highlights. A lot of the other language towards the end of the AR is pretty similar to what was in the original, some of the guidance for instructors, for security. I might have you speak on- Yeah ... security a little bit if that's helpful. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Switch it back over. So very quickly, because I know we're running out of time. So yeah, most of the commitments that we had initially outlined in the original AR in terms of security and maintaining data management, network infrastructure, all those kinds of things still remain in the policy because those are still important. We still need to make sure that we are keeping our student information safe, and that we are apprised when some of these AI companies are possibly hacked or information is leaked, things like that.
253And so we need to make sure that the information that's getting provided to these groups is secure, and also that we're only allowing students who meet the age criteria to be able to use certain tools. There are certain tools that are 18 and over, and they should not be using them. And as you go through the different parts of the AR, you can see some of the changes. Some of them are just more slightly, but in changing verbiage. But yeah, we're very happy with the current AR that's presented to you now, and we're here to take questions. Great. Before we jump to questions and comments, we are nearing our 10:00 end time, so I'm going to make a motion that we extend to 10:45. Comments from the board? I know we have a number of
254things, but our decision-making ability gets worse and worse the later we get. So I want to make sure that we proceed through this and get all of us home. I'll second. Is there a second? Is that a second? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Is there any public comment on this item? Great. Questions, comments? Trustee Blackman, and then Trustee Martinez. First of all, I want to thank you, David, for taking this leap of faith with this wonderful committee, very collaborative. I really appreciate the dynamic and how inviting and inclusive and engaging this process was. I learned a lot, and I think everybody else did too, and there was a lot of team building that went along with it. And I think it shows in how successful this was. So thank you, and thank you,
255Katie. I know you put a lot of work into this. Yes. So I really appreciate itA couple of comments I will make. Under grades TK to 12, a couple lines down, there's a phrase, "Review the Gen AI tier expectations for major assessments and projects in classes," just above the chart. Mm-hmm. My one request, instead of "for," can we turn that into "before"? Because teachers are always making adjustments, I think we have to understand, as you were explaining, Katie, that things are going to change. It needs to be fluid. But if we request that before every assignment, this is just reasserted again. Especially if it changes, I think that would be helpful, just as a hint. I really appreciate the way the chart reads. One thing that I would ask is if it's possible, during the
256conversations, there was a lot of ideas about tools and resources that individuals are familiar with and use. For teachers that are new to this, it'd be great if there was an appendix of tools that teachers could reference for certain uses, but also things that maybe students could reference as well. Useful AI tools, things that are not useful. Any kind of thing that we could attach, because I do think you're going out into an ocean of unknown, and if we already have some ideas, it doesn't hurt to keep building that list of things that improve and are better and better. The one thing I'm also curious about is you mentioned about citations for how we're actually documenting the use of AI, and we probably need some examples of that included in an appendix, because I don't
257think a lot of individuals would be familiar how to do that. Yeah, I think that's one of the major things. As someone teaching citations every year in MLA and APA format, I think even myself needs further training. I think it's an area of growth for professional development, or at least a resource for us to do. It's being built out a little bit, but I think the way it's written right now is that if you are bringing gen AI into your classroom or into a required assignment, there's two things to think about. What is the instruction that you're going to need to explicitly instruct for students to access that tool and cite it, but then also ensure equity? Some of our students have paid subscriptions, have stacks of tokens to AI tools, and other students do
258not. Sam Altman said he's thinking about intelligence like a utility, like electricity or water, and you would pay from the meter. And as an educational institution, we need to make sure that our students all have access to those things. It's not like some get nicer textbooks than the others. So I think there are some things around if I'm wanting to incorporate AI into my classroom, I think there's either a module or support that teachers are going to need and tools to resource. So yeah, it's a skill building for sure. Because we're going to approve this at some point, I assume the next meeting, if rather than letting an appendix or a link die with the approval and not have to come back a year later, maybe it could just be a link that goes to
259something on the district website so that- Yeah. We can definitely do that ... as collaboration continues, it can keep updating and maybe just send stuff up saying, "Hey, I've been updated. Come and check it out." Because this is fluid, and we need to find a way to make it adaptable as things progress. But great work. I'm really excited about how people will view this. So thank you very much for all the time and effort. I just wanted to comment about what you said. This is an AR, and boards do not... Right. So I understand. So, your feedback was wonderful, but this is not for a first reading. This is just for board's digestion of the information. My apologies. You're right. I just wanted to add a comment that under the students and family section, taking
260Matt's comment into consideration, may not fit either. But I just wanted to add that it may be something to take into consideration is maybe adding something about circumstances on adding personal information into AI, especially I know that with our seniors, a lot of the times doing things like adding a resume into AI may seem like something that would be simple, but you're putting in all of your personal information very quickly. Yep. And I know it says that we're giving families opportunities to learn, but there's circumstances that happen when you do that, and making sure is that families know, especially if they're under 18, that they are responsible for those when students are doing that. So, those are just things that you might want to consider. Thank you. I think that's a good point. One of
261the things we talked about on the tech team was thinking about a module being created. It just wasn't something we could accomplish right now. But a module of AI literacy and gen AI safety, I think, could be really helpful for students. Yeah, that's something with our smartphone committee- Yeah ... last year that they put together. It was quite extensive on our website, and that's something we'd be looking to do. Yeah. My comment, the table was great. That was very clear. I really liked the examples, so I could understand what you were getting at for each tier. And would just say, as someone who works in an engineering field in my day job, these kind of tiers are the decisions I'm having to make every day in my job. And so I think that this is
262really preparing students for what their future career would look like, where a teacher can help and assist them in, "Hey, this is the tier you're working at." Because it's enabling them. I don't have a teacher that's telling me which tier to be at. I have to make that decision in my job with each task that I have to do, whether I'm going to fully use AI, whether I'm going to partially or not at all. And so I think being able to see those different things is really equipping them for what they're going to see when they're out in the real world. Nice. Cool. Okay. Great. Thank you very much for all the hard work on this.Our next item is K4, the first reading of BP and AR 5141. Yeah, I'd like to invite our director
263of equity, inclusion, and student support, Ms. Whitney Dwyer, to the podium. Hey, y'all. Good evening, President Speck, Superintendent Bunk, Rising Superintendent Campbell, and Board of Trustees. I'm bringing board policy 5141.21, administering medication and monitoring health conditions, and its accompanying administrative regulation forward for revision. The revisions are based on CSBA suggested language, in addition to input from our district nurses. The board policy revisions are minimal, essentially outlining that the district needs to collaborate with local public health administrators in the event of a public disaster or epidemic. It also states that schools can provide emergency asthma medication. A major change to the AR is the addition of language around the administration of anti-seizure medication. This is a first reading. I'm here for any comments or questions you have. Trustee Blackman. So I appreciate this coming back. I'm
264a little curious about the asthma medication, because depending upon-- usually when doctors-- I'm very familiar with asthma medication. When doctors give a prescription for it, it's designated based on the child's size, needs, so there are different levels of medication. So how do we address that when we're providing the medication? Let's say at a middle school, and we've got younger kids and older kids. Mm-hmm. So we might have a range of what-- We might have two, three different sets of asthma medication. How does the health clerk determine which student should get what medicine? There's only one. It's usually albuterol, but we didn't specify albuterol in the AR, just in case we have a generic version of it. But there's not various amounts of asthma medication that we're providing or that is provided or that is allowed
265to be provided. It's essentially that. Right, I understand. But there's different actual levels of albuterol. Mm-hmm. So my one question is, we don't have it defined in here, so perhaps we need a little bit more information as to which level or quantity of the albuterol is appropriate for which... Usually it's weight or something like that. So it would be helpful if there was a little bit more information in here about how we make that determination when we actually go and access medication for schools. Thank you. Okay. All right. Then, I think you've got your comments from us. I don't have any additional. Thank you. All right. Thank you. We are going to move on to our third interim report. Mr. Hobbs. Good evening again. There is no presentation with this, and the reason for that
266is that most of the detail that you need to know about the third interim report we already went through as part of the budget presentation. And what I mean by that is that the third interim, which reflects our condition through April 30 and is a requirement because we were qualified at second interim, is reflective of our estimated actuals. And so for the 25-26 year, the third interim report and the estimated actuals for 25-26 are the same numbers across the board. The only difference you're going to see in the overall set of documents is in the multi-year projection. The multi-year was prepared prior to the governor's May revision, because again, we were looking at where we were at April 30. So all of the multi-year is based on everything I said about what we were assuming
267prior to the multi-year revision. So this is a document that is basically prepared in the way that the county expects us to prepare a third interim. It is definitely a stripped down version of an interim report. You'll notice it's much smaller, much more condensed than a first or second interim report would be. It does meet what the county is expecting. And like I said, other than the difference in the multi-year, you're going to see that things look very much the same between the two documents. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions the board might have. Trustee Blackman. So in this report, from the information you presented earlier this evening about certain funds that we were recouping or we owed money into, are those rolled into these numbers, or are those not included in
268here? So none of the new revenue that the governor has proposed in his May revision is included. And so because of that, the multi-year, for example, would still be assuming that seven-plus million dollar reduction in the out years. It would still assume the use of the $6 million in one-time discretionary that we saw at the January budget in the 26-27 budget. So again, all of those assumptions that we were able to effectively change with the release of the governor's revised budget are incorporated in this April 30 version of the budget. Sorry, I was more referencing things like when we were discussing the workers' comp numbers that we were- Oh, thank you. Yes. All of those adjustments were in fact made as part of the estimated actuals and the third interim report. So those are all
269incorporated in the 25-26 year. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. We do have a public comment, correct? Yes, we do. Are you ready for that? I'm going to ask one question, then yes. Is the county expecting that we would not include the information that came out in May from the state in the multi-years? No, they're expecting to see what we've prepared. Okay. All right. Let's take the public comment. Okay. Wishing to make public comment on this item is Monica Lewis. Good evening. Each time an interim budget report is made, DTA requests access to the budget data. We even ask for it to remain in the DAT format that it is prepared in, so the DUSD management team does not have to curate this information, just send it our way. So we requested, as we always
270do, the third interim in this format. We've spoken about partnership with our DUSD management team and how true partnership will require a change in behavior, not just talking about it. The DUSD leadership team responded to our request with, and I quote, "In receipt. Chris, if you can please reply all with the file after the board presentation, it is much appreciated." Assistant Superintendent Ms. Campos quite literally directed Mr. Hobbs to withhold information so that DTA could not complete a deep analysis of the third interim report prior to today's meeting, and Mr. Hobbs complied. This is the behavior that prohibits partnership, and sadly, it has not changed. This is the behavior our members object to, and this is the behavior that leads to our members demanding votes of no confidence in our management staff. Ultimately, it is
271our students who are harmed when our management team prevents collaboration on creating a budget that invests in our students. If you look at page 19 of this Sachs report, you can see under-projecting revenue, especially in the '27-'28 multi-year projection, which is always the case. There is always a crisis in the third year out, and if you take the time to go back and look through the data later, those crises never materialize. Even if the budget cuts made to address the issue are reversed silently, the crisis resolves. Proof of this was part of DTA's state-mandated impasse hearing materials that I'd be more than happy to share with you if you're interested in looking at this analysis. Other state revenue is projected to decrease between '26-'27 and '27-'28 by 24%. So they're projecting a decrease in that
272third year by 24%. This is the specific revenue line item that is always significantly under-projected. But wow, that's a really big reduction. Total revenue for '27-'28 is projected to decrease by 1.5 million from the previous year. I'm assuming this is based on the consistent projection of declining enrollment, but never in the past decade has our total revenue ever decreased. If our enrollment remains stagnant, which is much more likely, our revenues will still increase, as COLA is over 3% and additional grants from the state continue to fund our schools. These concerns point to why we need a transparent budget committee. I'm thankful that our partners on the board started the finance committee meetings. However, these meetings are not yielding results. On Thursday, we identified a budget line item that had a million dollars budgeted to it
273that hadn't been spent yet, and the finance team admitted that budget seemed high, but tonight that line item is not reduced in the budget report or any of the MYPs. We need a budget committee with board members on it so there can be accountability, and I'm happy to brainstorm with you what that budget committee would look like. Thank you. Thank you. Questions, comments from the board? Trustee Blackman. So I was looking at some of the ADA numbers, and it looks like we'll have a little bit of growth next year, but then where we are this year will basically dip down below where we are this year in two years' time. Is that correct? We're going to have a little bump next year, and then we're going to come back down, and that might affect the
274numbers. Yes, and that bump, if you'll recall, is due to that loss of 200 ADA this year because of the strike. We are still expecting to be lower next year in enrollment than we were this year, but the ADA is going to be increased because we're expecting to get our full 95.7% for the year. Okay, thank you. Okay. Is there a motion to approve the third interim? I move we approve the third interim budget report. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. All right. Our next item is L2, the facility use agreement between Dublin Unified and Rising Star SPED Academy. Do you want to have a conversation? Yes, we want to move forward with this discussion. Yep. However, in light of what we talked about with Valley, President Speck, I don't know
275how you want to proceed with this particular agenda. Well, I'd like to understand what this entails, and then I'd like to be able to have a discussion on the space that we're talking about and if there's desire to move ahead with it at this point, if there's a desire to pause, and what a pause would mean. Great. Well, I'm very excited to bring this forward tonight. With the vacating of the Valley High School campus projected for next year, we have been looking for the potential of getting a renter into the facility so that it's being made good use of. Dr. Campbell actually had a contact with the Rising Star Special Ed Academy, which is a non-public school. That's a school where students with exceptional needs beyond what we're able to handle in the district typically,
276or other school districts are able to handle within their districts, are able to enroll kids into these non-public schools to provide these really intensive services. Rising Star is somebody we've actually used for these services, I believe at their Hayward location previously. So they're an organization that we're familiar with. They are interested in expanding into the Tri-Valley area, and this property is a good fit for the program they want to be able to produce there. The lease agreement would be rent. They would rent the facility from us to a little over $30,000 a year, built an escalator over the next several years.So we would be generating income on that side of the ledger, which is fantastic. On the flip side, they would also, if we were able to place students into their program at the site,
277be able to provide that at a discount over their standard rates. Again, we're already paying the standard rates for at least one student in Hayward, so that would be potentially some savings on the other side of the ledger. And also giving us priority placement into their programs as we have need. So overall, we think it's a good fit for the use of the site. The site's already basically ready for them once we've wrapped up the moving of the Valley High staff, and the hope would be to get them in there on July 1. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Trustee Martinez and then Trustee Blackman. So I have a few questions. First off, the memo says operate up to five years, but then the lease term says three years with a possible extension
278for one year. So is it three years with the- Correct. We actually did end up going back and forth on that and adjusted the lease, but I apologize for not getting the memo- Okay ... corrected to reflect that. Okay. And then, can you talk a little bit about how the lease rate was determined? Yeah. The $2 per square foot is a little of an uncommon way of us doing ours, but it's actually, frankly, is a more lucrative fee than we're charging other renters at the moment, and it was based on the ability of the provider to pay that higher rent because of just the nature of the program they provide. Okay. And then, do you know if the cost of maintenance and utility is going to offset our revenue at all, since we're going to
279be responsible for maintenance and utilities? The maintenance and utility cost for that should be significantly less than the 300-plus thousand a year that we'd be generating in revenue. Okay. We're still going to be responsible for maintaining the building anyway, whether we have anybody in it or not. It won't have, obviously, the same level of wear and tear, but there's still going to be needs for us to be in that building regularly. We would of course, if we left the building vacant, we would save on energy cost. But the reality is that it's better for the facility to actually have it used regularly, so that as things pop up, we're informed of it because somebody's in there, notices a water spot on a ceiling, for example. That's far better than having it noticed four months later
280when real damage has been done. Also, is it just the main building in the middle or is it those additional lab buildings off to the side too? If you're looking at the front of the campus, it's that circular building that Valley occupied, as well as the two building wings to the left of that. Which I think we have a... Did we include the map in this? And the portables as well. Correct. So basically all of this space. So the round main building and the portables on the backside and the classroom buildings here on the left. Okay. And then not using the gym or any of the facilities that are used for the adult school. Okay. And then can the staff clarify on how the tuition discount structure is going-- There's not going to be any
281other obligation for placement, because I know that placement can only happen through IEP, right? We don't have to put anyone there, but if there's an opportunity that that's the right spot for a kid to go, then we would be able to do so with that priority and with that discount. Okay. But we certainly wouldn't be obligated to provide a certain number of students to it. Okay. Thank you. Trustee Blackman. A quick question about compliance with ADA access. I don't know the student needs that are coming to the facility, but your description led me to believe that we would need to make certain that the facility is ADA compliant. Is it? Our facilities are already ADA compliant. We aren't expecting to make any additional adjustments to the facility- Okay ... to get them moved in there.
282Thank you. Okay. I don't have any other questions. I guess I need to hear from the board whether we feel that we want to take a vote tonight or whether there's a public comment. Okay. One in the room. Is there any online? Okay, then let's take the public comment. Okay, Monica Lewis would like to comment on this item. Okay, last one, I promise. I just want to pose some questions and use some of this three minutes to leave some time for thought. So first, why was this not a topic management thought should be discussed with educators to get teacher feedback on the idea of bringing this private school to Dublin? Because the first any of us are hearing about it is here at this board meeting. The Rising Star Academy website states that they offer,
283quote, "Personalized learning enhanced with a Rising Star AI curriculum." Their About Us states, quote, "Rising Star SPED Academy is founded by highly experienced educators and backed by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with a passion in artificial intelligence." Is this what we want for our students? Sitting with headphones on a screen taught by AI? Are we not concerned that management will just use having close access to this NPS as an excuse to drain resources from our district's special education programsIf we send more of our students to this private school and use our district dollars to send them there, we drain funds from our school sites and potentially lose supports for our own special education programs. Is this what we want? Does anyone else see a conflict of interest here that DUSD gets a reduced rate if we
284send more students to this private, non-public school? So DUSD will get a lower tuition rate if we remove more students from their least restrictive environment and move them into a more restrictive environment? This idea requires a lot more time for thought and discussion. Thank you. We've seen these programs numerous times on our consent calendar. They are extremely expensive. So I would assume as a district, do not take it lightly to move a student to one of these because the costs are dramatically more than educating our student here in Dublin. So, it is rare, but there are times when we can't educate a student here in Dublin, and we would utilize this. And so this is a win for our Dublin students, the few who do need a non-public education and are driving every day to
285Hayward, to be able to do that here in Dublin. So regardless of whether it's in Dublin or whether it's in Hayward, we have a select few, and I don't know the number, but we see them on our consent when we have to approve it, that require non-public school, and anything we can do to help those families to make it more convenient, that are already going to go, I'm in favor of. Comments? Yeah. We have, I don't know the exact number, but probably a score number of students that go to non-public school settings in the Greater Bay Area. Mr. Hobbs referenced one. I think we have two students that are currently placed with Rising Star, one in Hayward and one down in San Jose. It is IEP driven, and this is where students, we cannot service
286their needs in the schools that we have in our school district. And the IEP team determines that this student needs a higher level of service. And so Rising Star is one of the NPS schools that we send our students. Trustee Blackman. I just want to also add, we're looking at this only through the lens of a benefit to Dublin Unified School District students, but there are other school districts in the area that are sending their students, probably to farther locations. So not that I'm 100% on board with this, but I'm just thinking from the notion of creating community among students in an area where they're closer to home seems like a really lovely way of providing an environment that's supportive of these students and families. Trustee Martinez. Do we know if we are even able
287to push out making this motion tonight? Would we put this at jeopardy if we didn't make this motion tonight, or can we push this to another meeting and have further discussions? Well, the board can make the decision they want to make. The expectation was if we got this done tonight, that they would be moving in July 1. I certainly didn't foresee that we might have a challenge with that, and so I have not had a conversation with Rising Star about what would happen if we needed to push this out to the next meeting or the meeting after. Trustee Blackman. So my question, the discussion was based on the idea of Valley High School. But we still have capacity and space at Dublin High School, whether it's a full Valley or a hybridized Valley. Is that
288correct? Or can Valley, as a standalone institution, only exist at this site? Yeah, I think Valley, if we want to continue Valley in its current iteration, then it would need to stay at the York site. Thank you. I'm for pushing this out to the next meeting so that we can get a better idea about what our options might be with regard to Valley. We did make a commitment when we were passing resolution to basically reduce our budget, that we would look at money coming back to support Valley High School. If we were to make a decision in two weeks, we're not shutting Valley down. Would we even have a junior class? We would have students that we would put in there? Is it even possible? I just want to understand if- Of course, it's possible.
289Then if the board decides to retain Valley, then McKenzie, Jen Nichol would work with the Emerald and Dublin administration and the counseling team to see about students attending Valley as juniors. I think that if the board wants, we can take a pause for a couple of weeks, and we can bring back a recommendation at the June 9th board meeting. So I just-We have a budget that has a 2.2 million reduction needed next year. We have potential of $10 million in grants coming. Now, one-time grants, but that could be used for things, and then we're talking about adding another million to do that. That's what the cut was. So, you're talking about- Yeah, that's correct. So, I'm... President Speck, if I may? Yes. Please. My frustration, and I've had many each year at my lean learner
290chat at Valley, my conversation with that staff has been why are we not bringing more students in? To have a continuation school of 40 or less students tells you one of two things, three things. Either that staff has not worked hard enough to advertise the benefits of coming to Valley, the counselors have put up roadblocks, not sending kids or recommending kids to Valley, or to the point that was made earlier, parents have found the alternative because they do not want a Valley diploma. So five years of 40 or less students, and there's been no increase. So to put a million dollars for 40 students, you're talking about $77,000 per student to run this program. No other program in this district gets that type of benefit. And so that's why we brought forward an alternative plan
291to support our students. So to continue having conversations about what we're going to pull off, not pull off, when you already still have a $2.2 million deficit, does not make a whole lot of sense this evening. Trustee Blackman. I have to say, I just was really enamored with the solution that you guys came up with, with the on-site and the flexibility of the Edgenuity program, for many students need that, and I just think it at least keeps students captured as opposed to going to online or independent studies. So I actually think it's really applicable to a lot of things. So I really like the presentation from the last time. My only thought was that we didn't know we were ever going to have any more money, so... Well, it would still be easier to add
292a .2, a .4, even a .6 FTE to Dublin High to serve the juniors, as opposed to maintaining Valley in its current iteration at Valley High School or at York campus. So there's ways to build juniors, sophomore, even freshmen, because under the alternative ed program, you can now serve ninth graders. Continuation, you can't. They have to be 16. So adding some FTE that we're considering now, that's the right move moving forward, not pausing and keeping Valley in its current iteration. Okay. I don't want to pressure everybody, but I just wanted to say that we have 15 minutes. Trustee Martinez. Just going back and what we had said is if there was additional funds, we would reconsider. What I say reconsider is there were current students within that program. We cut it short. We're moving students
293that were in that program and are now introducing them to a new program. New funds were introduced saying that we can now hold, take more time to reconsider a new program, allow those students to finish out what they had signed up for, take our time to introduce this new program and allow it to turn into what we want to see, something new. We have an opportunity to do that. It does mean we have to take a beat. I think that we should take the opportunity to see what that looks like. It does mean that we have to take a chance on it, though. So you're saying keep it open for just seniors? I mean- Keep it open so that we can meet with our partners, meet with the community, and see what a new program
294should look like. Okay. I know that we've had these 40 kids. I've heard for several years we want to get more kids there. We're trying to get more kids there. We know this is the right place for kids, and they're not going. And so I want to support these kids. I like the idea that especially the seniors, they're going to be cohorted together. They can still stay on their alternate graduation requirements. I want to see a path for others that need that. I know that we've put that now at York, so I want to hear more if we need to free up more, but it's so much money and I'm just not convinced that that's the best thing for our district. Trustee Blackman. I actually think that once you get this hybrid program going, counselors
295will reach to students and there'll be probably more people who will be signing up. I think the flexibility inherent in the new idea is really something very appetizing to a lot of students. And it's not just the million. We'd be passing up 300,000, right? Isn't that 30,000 a month, 10 months? So now it's 1.3 million, we would be- Correct. Yeah ... because we would lose that income, and then we would- It's actually 12 months of income per year, so it gets more than approaching 400,000 in the out years. So it's around 400,000.That's a lot of money that we could do things, and we can help more than just juniors and seniors. We can put more in. We could say we want half or all of that to be spent on the students that would've been
296Valley. We can touch more than 40 kids. I'm looking forward to the flexibility that you all could offer, in particular because it's in an alternative setting, and I think that we have the potential, if it's done right, to actually capture more kids, capture them earlier in the way that we have designed the program. So, I love what Valley has done, and I know it has meant so much to so many people. And I know that the staff at Valley have worked extremely hard and made this amazing place for the students that are there. And my feeling on it doesn't take away from that, because I've talked with families there, I know families who have graduated there and have valued that education, and I've talked with the staff there who are so supportive and love that
297program. But I've said my piece. I'm prepared to approve this, but if we don't feel like we have enough votes to vote on it tonight, then I think we either need to say we're going to push it off two weeks or say that we aren't going to do it at all. So, I don't know how others are feeling, but that's where I'm at. Does anybody else... Trustee Reyes? I agree with what you're saying, and I'd like to make a motion that we approve the lease agreement. I'll second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. No. Passes 3-1. All right. We have 10 minutes left. Can we jump to the consent calendar? I'm sorry, just to try to make sure. Is there any item that needs to be pulled from the consent calendar? Trustee Blackman? Number 13. N13.
29813. N13. All right. Can I take a motion to approve the consent calendar minus N13? I motion that we approve the consent calendar minus N13. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. All right. We're going to go to the LED lighting, and then we'll go to N13 if we still have time. Board of Trustees, executive cabinet, I'll try to keep this short then, since we're... Our lack of time. If you remember back in February, you approved a list of capital improvement projects, facility capital improvement projects. One of those items that was on that list was LED retrofits throughout the district. We're happy to bring this item to you. We're bringing it as a government code section 4217 project, which allows the district to enter into an energy services contract. We had solicited bids or proposals from
299three vendors to take a look at this LED lighting project for us. We developed some criteria for this project. In order to do this under the government code 4217, it requires first that the board open a two-week public comment period, and as part of that, make a finding that this project will more than pay for itself, will save more money than what we spend in carrying out this energy services contract, and that it's in the board's best interest to do so. That determination must be made at a regularly scheduled public hearing, with public notice provided at least two weeks in advance. This item is to satisfy that requirement. We've looked at the proposals. The best proposal that was given to us was by NRG Incentives. Their proposal came in at a total of 1,770,000 and
300some change. The next closest proposal was given to us by ABM, which was about $37,000 more than the proposal given to us by NRG. And then the next proposal was from JP Electric Incorporated, and theirs was about just a little under $600,000 more than what the last proposal was. We've gone through what they proposed to do. We've attached to this resolution an analysis of just-- And we just picked a 10-year period to look at it over, not anything further out than that, even though there will be other savings generated. We decided just to look at just that 10-year snapshot. We will end up saving, over that period, just under $2 million in energy expenses during that timeframe. What we're asking the board to do is to put this on the next board meeting, the June
3019th board meeting, to hold the public comment period at that board meeting, and then they can consider the resolution to enter into the contract Okay. Trustee Blackman, and then I have a couple questions. So you're not asking us to approve this right now? No. Okay. Just to put it on the next board meeting- Okay, that's fine. The one comment I would make is that on the memo, when we talk about fiscal impact, it actually does take an initial fiscal impact to our budget. We need to define where the funds are coming from in order to pay for it initially. I understand that we're going to recoup costs over a period of years, which is fine, so it's saving us money, but we need to actually indicate on our documents exactly where the funds are coming
302from and how much the initial outlay will be for this. Thank you. Yeah, the reason that we left that off of this is because this is just introducing the item to you. When we bring it back at the next meeting, it will actually have the fiscal impact and the information contained on that item. Did you have something else? No? Okay. I'll ask my questions then. Trustee Martinez, on the Exhibit A, which is at the bottom of what's on the screen, there's a line for portables where there's energy savings but no base cost. Can you explain how we're getting- Yes. This particular contractor, this was part of the proposal, but he was giving us those fixtures at no cost to the district. This was something as we were going through and developing the criteria for the-
303He was just going to put the LED- Bids ... for free in the portables? As part of their cost, yes. They're covering the cost of those- Okay ... TLEDs, yes. There's schools missing on here, but they're the newer reconstructed. Is that because Emerald already has LED? Yes. Okay. Because anywhere that there's already LEDs existing, we're not working on those- Okay ... particular sites. Though there are some small sites that have, take Frederickson for instance, there's two buildings that weren't touched during their modernization. Our maintenance department is taking care of those as part of- What about Dublin L? Because it's a mixture. You've got the third, fourth, fifth wing, and the kindergarten that's older, but then you've got a bunch of new. Yes, the remaining two buildings, the maintenance will be taking care of those. So
304the kindergarten buildings- So that's why that's not there ... the older ones. Yeah. All the rest of those buildings will be retrofitted as part of the modernization already. Oh, even the fourth, fifth, the CD wing at Dublin L? Because those aren't being touched as part of that- Those ones- ... the maintenance ... I believe when we did the analysis, those ones already had... I'd have to go back and check with maintenance, but I think they identified that those already had LEDs in the rooms. They're older than Amador, so I'd- Are they? ... be surprised. Okay. Yeah. I'd have to go back and double-check, but- Clearly- ... that's a small enough- ... something happened between Amador and Cottonwood, because Amador's on here and Cottonwood's not, so we've switched to LED, but they're older. I remember when
305Amador opened- Okay ... and that was already... I would have to check with maintenance. I went off of- Okay ... the information they provided me. Okay. So. And you can bring this back, but how will the board be able to monitor whether the projected savings and the operational benefits are actually being justified year by year? Will you be able to show costs from previous years to just year by year? Or is there a way that we're going to be able to show this long term as we go on- The savings ... within the 10 years? Yes. So that is something that we would have to take a look at our energy reductions and then actually compile those. I know that we do have a firm that does some of that for us currently. Yeah, what
306we would focus on in that would be the kilowatt-hour usage differences, right? Because costs vary from year to year and time to time, but the rates go up. So even if we have a reduction in usage, sometimes the overall price goes up, just like with your home electric bill. So we'd be able to look at as a baseline, we have great data on what we're using today in terms of kilowatt hours, and we'd absolutely be able to make comparisons after the change to show that these results are happening. The actual dollar amounts would be based on whatever the charge per kilowatt hour would be at that moment in time. Great. I think it would be good to follow that across that 10-year life cycle, just to make sure at the end that we're actually seeing
307those long-term obligations. Okay. Okay, sounds like we will see this again in two weeks, and that with the public hearing. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. We have two minutes. The item you pulled, Trustee Blackman, was there comments? Was it just that you wanted to have a separate vote? Well, there was a comment. There's an error on page four where we're actually showing that there is the requirement for the ethnic studies course is still being called out for the Dublin Adult Education Diploma, but in the chart, we do not call it out. So just under page four, item number eight, we didn't make that edit to the document, so it needs to align with the chart. My comment will be that our graduation requirements needs a lot of work. We've got a lot of disconnects and issues
308with a lot of things. Also, the fact that we haven't made it clear what courses are required at Dublin and what courses are required outside Dublin, and I think it's all over the map. And along with counselor approvals, it seems like there's nothing definitive, so individuals are making judgments as to what students can take outside versus inside. So anyways, just something to clean up. Those were my comments. Thank you. So I'm going to make a motion to approve the BP 6146 with an edit on page four to remove number eight, five credits of ethnic studies. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passes. All right. Yeah, the meeting ends in a minute. So, our next board meeting is June 9th, 2026. I want to remind everybody that we added the meeting in June as
309well, June 23rd. Yes. We have two more meetings left for the school year. I don't think we need a motion to adjourn. We can pack up, and it will magically turn 10:45. Thank you.