001e in row students for being our greeters this evening and passing these great traits so give them a hand thank you it's at one time was that Applause for me yeah it was it was the uh board met in close session uh in 2.1 on motion of board member Ferris and second and seconded by board member Mr Campbell the Board of Education voted to approve the resignation of Paul delbeck executive director of Salpa effective June 30th 2025 it was a unanimous vote and 2.2a in close session on motion of board member feris and seconded by board member Mr Rockwell the Board of Education voted to approve the selection of Amy self as the executive director of selpa effective July 1st 2025 and that was a unanimous vote 2.2 B uh in close session on behalf
002of on motion of board member Rockwell second by Mrs Campbell the Board of Education voted to approve the selection of Beverly Eubank as the direction of the Director of Human Resources effective July 1st 2025 this was also unanimous I'd like to give these a hand welcome and the board temporarily adjourned the special meeting and we will return back to close session after the regular meeting to finish the agenda no action will be taken uh once we go back in there so I'd like to call the order the regular meeting for February 20th and we will start off with the pledge of allegiance to the flag led by our vice president Mr Campbell ready begin I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the for which it stands one nation
003under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you we'll have a moment of silence thank you uh we'll move on to item number one adoption of the agenda no changes move on to item two uh good things do we have any comments there you go um I went to the girls basketball game last night and I know it doesn't sound like a good thing you know they lost but um that's an amazing feat to get to the quarterfinals anytime you have a a high school team that um it's a lot of work and um I'm just really impressed their coaches only been there a couple years and to get to the quarters I think it's her second or third year that's very impressive so great job to Burrows and U their basketball team
004last night yes that's good thank you Mr Campbell any further comments Mr Ferris yeah I I uh would like to share good things I I in touch with some of my kids is on lights on can can you hear out there okay some of my kids back east and they're sharing me pictures of all this snow covered Beauty and I said yeah that's great to look at and I point them to our beautiful blue skies and our you know 60 and 70 degree weather and say yeah but I like this better so that's my good thing thank you Mr Ferris anyone else we'll move on my good thing is we don't keep we don't take Mr Ferris very seriously most of the time and that as it should be move on to item three approval
005of minutes of the special and regular meetings of January 16 2025 any changes minutes will stand move on to item four programs and presentations uh 4.1 CTE presentation Dr safco good even there seems to be a theme tonight good evening president Scott members of the board superintendent Dr Moore staff and Community as you may be aware February is Career Technical Education Month and so we wanted to take this opportunity to share a lot of good things and a great opportunity uh for our students that is is on the horizon so in our department we are significantly interested in how things are funded so um we have a local commitment we choose to support Career Technical education pathways through our elcap goal one action three when the state was reducing CTE opportunities our board and Community
006remained committed to this for our students we also fund CTE through Perkins 5 and then we also um fund our Pathways and programs through our CTE incentive Grant so CTE programs focus on relevant um Career and Technical education and they prepare our students to be highly skilled especially for uh high demand jobs and so we have have eight broad Pathways at burough and this slide demonstrates the various classes you would take to be a CTE pathway completer and I would like to show you a CTE Sizzle video that our Film Production crew the students and teacher produced last year w n w n and once again we want to thank Mrs arietta and her Film Production crew for producing this so the most exciting uh opportunity that we've had in quite a while is we've
007got a gap in our apprenticeship component of CTE and so buroughs high school in partnership with South Bay Workforce investment board b3k prosperity and the Kern County Superintendent of Schools we're launch launching a pre-apprentice program funded by a grant um the program aims to prepare our Juniors and seniors in that last um component Project Lead the Way engineering pathway for careers in the Aerospace industry through aeroflex uh apprenticeship model and if you're interested in learning more you can simply search for or Google South Bay Workforce investment board and type in the aoflex free apprenticeship and you'll see that that's uh goes on around the country so the aeroflex pre-apprenticeship program is uh in three tracks and so this spring we're launching track one and it is what you would call the soft skills of uh
008workplace so that is um communication um and uh resumé writing and mock interviews because it doesn't really matter ultimately what you know if you're not able to convey that to your team and and collaborate with others in your industry when the students uh complete the course it's online um they receive a $300 stipend and also a certificate of completion and that makes them eligible for the next track so track two is anticipated for next year with some industry specific Technical Training Dr Moore is in some consultation with Partnerships to support this and then track three is work-based learning do you have any questions would you like us to highlight any information for you Mr FFF not a question just a comment I was able to go to the tour of the CTE Pro buroughs and
009it it is really impressive and it was also exciting to see there there were students from almost every class there as well to kind of share what their observations were and it uh really reinforces uh why we do what we do and uh just impressive the breadth of the offering that is being provided appreciate the hard work everybody's doing to accomplish that any further comments or questions thank you Dr safco uh we don't have any public hearings we'll move on to item six report and Communications uh 6.1 student board members report Brody has an excused absence tonight so uh Mr Campbell will fill in for him okay um Murray Middle School we are pleased to report that our students continue to excel in academics Athletics and extracurricular activities our basketball teams have been performing exceptionally
010well showcasing their skills and teamwork throughout a successful season their dedication and sportsmanship are a testament to their hard work and commitment the robotics team continues to shine having won their last two tournaments including the Kern County Championship their success reflects not only their technical abilities but also their problem solving skills and teamwork we are incredibly proud of their achievements and look forward to seeing them continue to thrive academically academically our students remain focused and engaged third quarter progress reports will be going out shortly allowing families and students to asset their assess their progress as we move closer to the end of a school year we continue to partner with Monroe in preparing students for a smooth transition to channel Lake Junior High School discussions and planning for next year's class schedule have already begun
011to ensure a seamless experience for our students additionally We additionally after school clubs continue to grow providing students with opportunities to build meaningful connections with their peers ASB activities have also been instrumental in fostering school spirit and strong sense of community on campus thank you for your continued support in making Murray a place where students can succeed and Thrive mosqu continuation high school we had five more graduates beginning bringing our total to 19 so far this year and a few more are on the horizon in the coming weeks to inspire students to engage in the Arts after after graduation a guitar duel brought by our Rich Crest chamber music Society played for the students and spoke about music production careers due to low participation mosquet was able to partner with James Monroe and in your
012current school to ensure families who wanted the opportunity had unpriced dental cleaning through our community schools Grant in addition to our normal activities like pizza for golden dragons last week ASB had some kindness activities for students and many wore red for Valentine's Day the Chamber of Commerce did a presentation for students about local employers and how to be prepared for today's job market last year students increased the rate per student credit acquisition by 80% and increased it by another 90% on top of that so go dragons show them show them how you soar burls high school we we are now in February and burough has a few things to let you know about our winter our winter sports finished up their seasons and did well our girls basketball team finished second in league and have
013had an impressive playoff run they won their first game against St Bonaventure High School on the 13th and beat Great Oak on Saturday last night they played in the elite eight against serritos but unfort unfortunately fell short our spring Sports have been practicing and their season starts this week week our Cher team completed at Nationals for the first time this weekend and performed well Sierra green miluk lutu comp competed at CIF wrestling last week and also did well we held our winter rally at the end of the last month which coincided with the King of Hearts dance congrat congratulations to Zion Ortiz for be for selected as the King of Hearts ASB is hosting our honor roll lunch on the 25th as we recognize students who raised their GPA during last semester all four of
014our robotics teams have qualified to go to State and they will be competing in early March we held our fourth college career day on Tuesday the seniors enjoyed an orientation presentation by saroso students also worked on goal setting did virtual virtual tours of college and trade school program s our ninth graders worked on résumés and cover letters in their English classes our music program hosted a a rid Crest chamber music Society concert where the students were able to watch their teacher Mrs Peterson perform with three other professional singers on February 22nd our high school instrumental students will be participating in Regional scsboa solo and Ensemble Festival host at BHS students will be adjudicated receiving critique and a rating by an sc sboa judge finally the spring musical Annie is practicing and preparing for its first
015showings next month James Monroe Tiger basketball season is about halfway through and while all our teams have been playing hard and demonstrating excellent sportsmanship the eighth grade boys have proven to be worthy Rivals for our competitors ASB hosted the Valentine's dance in February which celebrated the last official court of James Monroe with a sixth grade prince and princess seventh grade Duke and Duchess and an eighth grade king and queen it was a super fun event academically Monroe student Caleb wender also the districtwide spelling be or won the districtwide spelling be earning the first place spot for a Monroe a second year in a row Monroe also had the science fair with various first place categories first place for group projects went to Joshua cardinez and Nathaniel Crutchfield first place for single project went to Lincoln
016karubi and first place for a stem project went to Kaden Gingrich and winners of the best overall project were Malia Mills and Sonia Ramirez and Russell grind staff to round off academics for this month yesterday our eighth graders enrolling in the middle college program offered through the desert High School worked with sosal College counselors to enroll for the fall during the advisory this morning soser present presented their early college program to all eighth graders which aims to inspire and excite students about their future educational Journey thank you thank you Robert move on to 6.2 reports from members of the board Mr Ferris oh so I I guess I just want to share that I did have the opportunity to attend the Masters in governance uh first module training along with h Dr Moore and Mrs
017Campbell and Mr Campbell I thought it was a really good event uh helping us remind us of first of all why public education the importance and value of public education the charge that we are charged with to educate all students and then an emphasis in an developing an understanding of exactly what our role in leadership and policy development and goal setting is uh for leading our districts so I felt it was a really good strong event thank you Mr Pierce Mrs K oh I was just gonna comment on um the Pierce launch of watchdogs for um the dog stands for like dads of great students and it encourages dads to come and hang with their child and be a role model for other students who need it um I'm just looking forward to seeing how
018that works since it's the first time they've done that so that's a also with a good thing this but yeah so looking forward to it move on to item three superintendent report Dr Moore thank you president Scott month five enrollment is 4,870 students and last year this time was 5,50 so we're down 180 although we have closed the Gap by 34 from last month our attendance rate is 89.2% and we continue with a focus on attendance partnering with schools and families to get students to school each day ready to learn earlier today we launched the process to fill the Schoolboard trustee vacancy that will be made with the resignation of Mr Kurt Rockwell effective March 17th at the special meeting on February 13th the board took action to determine we would use an application and
019interview process for a provisional appointment and those applications open today February 20th and will close on Friday March 7th and they're posted on the website we've put out a press release and parents square and Facebook message as of today interviews will take place at a special board meeting on March 17th at 6 p.m. at the district office we encourage all interested candidates to visit our website for more information and the application documents or they can certainly call and contact the district office for the remainder of my report I would like to invite Lori reri and Keith Weaver from government financial services jpa our financial advisers to present an update on the sale of the certificates of participation to fund the Murray expansion and on the measure Bond both presentations have been attached to the board
020agenda for reference and Lori and Keith we present from up here now um so if we can invite you you're welcome to sit or stand um but we try to have we've made it more of a conversation with the board and um we also have microphones if you prefer to hold one it might be a little more comfortable while holding a mic and clicking a slide and talking and paying attention might be a little much for me and I want to apologize if there's somebody in the audience who has a question you'll let us know so yeah we do need the microphone though so pick one of the three okay how's that okay does that work yep okay and everybody heard that if anybody has a question you'll stop me and okay fantastic so we're
021thrilled to be here with you tonight and of course I always like to start by thanking you for your membership in GFS jpa and I'd like everybody to know that one of the things the district committed to in joining the jpa was to be guided by Finance practices ethics and transparency which was not a challenge for this District this District already had those values so it was a very good fit and um we have some really good news for you tonight and before I start into it I want to say working with staff has been an incredible experience the the Murray Middle School Expansion Project financing was probably as challenging as the Murray Middle School Expansion Project has been and um the ability to just get somebody on a cell phone on a weekend in
022an evening because we're grappling with something and we want to get direction and make sure we're going in the right direction or should we consider do we need a meeting it's just been terrific there's just never a moment when I feel like I can't call or text and say we're we're working on this we need to check in with you and you know not everybody operates that way and um you know really puts the word servant in the phrase public servant so I want to thank the staff for that and and start in on our presentation so the first thing we're going to talk about we'll go to the next page is the certificate sale process oh well I got I had too many pages here okay we're going to talk about how how we
023sold the certificates we're going to talk about the results next steps and then we always include information for reference now what's on this page and I'm sorry something happened here with the the way it appears um I just want you to know it looks great on my version so trust me on that and the the correct version is online so you can see the cleaned up version for some reason when it transferred it didn't work I have the Oscar winning version right here we'll submit this to the academy so in any case one of the things that the district demonstrated its commitment to best practices why was by utilizing all of these best practices and our source for this is the government Finance Officers Association which is a National Association so we always run through
024these best practices with every financing we do just make sure we're thinking about them keeping them front of mind and using the ones that we can so we did all of that so congratulations on that and we'll go to the next page the district um had an a rating on its certificates of participation that's an excellent rating um any anything in the a category is good and so um that that uh rating emphasized that the district has sustained a healthy fund balance um historically Break Even operating performance a recent trend of positive results with grants and manageable debt and liability profile so that was a very nice rating review and of course staff is very involved in that in that rating our staff and the District staff so the next thing is how do we
025sell the certificates because this is a multi-million dollar Wall Street type financing um we actually did this with competitive bidding you'll remember we talked about this last time using that best practice and um one of the fun things that I don't think I shared with you last time we make the the bid do at 9:05 and you might think why 9:05 why not 9:00 a.m. well now it's all on the internet and the person submitting the bid they get help from the bidding platform not to be late but in the old days we had that human error where people would be late so we started setting our sales at five minutes past but when we were verbally getting people ready for the sale we'd say 9:00 but then if they were a minute late we
026could still accept an attractive bid and what's funny is you might say why do you still do that the bidding platform will tell them you know what time they need to do it it's because it's fun and making it fun and making it interesting for the biders is very important because on the sale day having a lot of biders is how we get low interest rates so the everybody who's bidding has other work to do and they don't have to be interested in in this District's or that District's you know anything there it's a national Market they can do whatever they want so we want to make make it easy fun um and have them feel that it's a good experience to bid even when they don't win and a fantastic experience when they do
027win so we really give them a lot of service and so one of the interesting things is in order to accomplish that at GFS jpa we have the people that you know that come here to the district and get familiar with the community and work with you but we have different staff that are focused on on what's going on on Wall Street and that's that's good because they can take their perspective and understand how do we make good for them so there's a national um uh bidding platform called parody everybody in the municipal Market who's you know regular participant Banks from all over the country investment Banks they sign up for parody and then they get notified what's coming and then how to bid and it gives them advaned notice it gives them a link
028to get download uh information there's it's a lot of service for them and then we also Post in the bomb buyer newspaper and you probably are not familiar with the bomb buyer and I will tell you that many decades ago when I moved my office from downtown Los Angeles to um uh Sacramento I was shocked that I could still get a paper copy of the bomb buyer delivered to my office because I found out that papers like that they hire the local paper to print their paper and deliver it um that's just a little piece of trivia now it's all online um I can read the bomb buer on my phone um but it is a newspaper and so any bank or underwriter that is licensed to trade in municipal bonds could bid I I
029mean honestly someone I guess could submit a bid if they weren't licensed but we wouldn't they wouldn't even know about this okay and our goal is more competition so what were the challenges that we faced we'll go to the next page first of all it this district is so interesting and as you can imagine um all across the country people hear Sierra Sands where's that what does that mean Sierra Sands right we have to explain all that and we have to show them where it is and there is a high level of scrutiny on the collateral of the financing you know as you know we have school sites on military bases so that's not good collateral for a lender um and then of course we're located in a seismic Zone and um aside from our
030own experience with that in California when we're dealing with people in a national Market they can be very con even more concerned about seismic safety than we are because they don't have any experience with it right I mean I I think tornadoes are interesting because I've never or a hurricane I've never been in one right they think oh my gosh seismic that's scary so um we had to do a lot of talking with people um there are Bond insurers that will ensure that the payments will be made on time to investors there's two firms they declin to provide an insurance policy so that's that East Coast perspective you know and we did our best to overcome them it was not and then we wanted the option to prepay in three years and you're we going
031to see some of the things about the structuring but as you know and we talked about it last time we were here the repayments very important because we have all these other sources that we want to use and we wanted to preserve flexibility well flexibility for the borrower is not something that the lender prefers right so these were challenges to still make this something that people wanted to Bid And so um our director of Capital Market Services her name is squin Weaver and you might notice The Coincidence of the last name with our Direct dor of member services Keith Weaver they are married to each other so um I actually find that I have to check in with them to see what they're talking about together when I'm not around so that I get the
032right information um about what decisions are being made but anyway squin had a great idea she said we're going to take this to Market when there's light Market activity people aren't busy we're going to get their attention because we're going to be in the market when nobody else is and then the level of communication with Underwriters and potential biders she ramped that up to a very high level to make sure that people knew we wanted them to bid and the thing about knowing that we want them to bid that's the power of the joint Powers Authority because there are 56 other public agencies in our jpa and these biders are seeing us every week in the market so when we let them know we're going to be disappointed if we don't see a bid from
033you they they want to they want to be good colleagues too so we really relied on that and um so the next thing I want to share before I turn it over to Keith is more from the um bomb buer newspaper and I'm sorry this doesn't this the Oscar winning version is right here on my desk and apparently on your website um but there was only one other sale that week and it was very different type of financing so we were able to talk to the biders that buy School District cops and make sure they understood what we were doing and what the value was and when they're not busy with other things they'll take the time to listen to something that in the industry we call a little bit of a story Bond we
034have a story to tell it's not the normal thing that they see because of that three-year call option that was something unique and also our our real estate situation so with that I'm going to turn things over to Keith okay so Lor described the process and I'll have the opportunity to share the results on how things turned out so we end up getting four bids uh this is great this was a lot more than we anticipated and especially given the challenges we were facing with this financing real nice amount of competition um so you can see we had uh one from Milwaukee one from Boston and two biders from New York and here's the um the the positive results in the dollars so our interest rates on these bids ranged from about 4% all the
035way up to 4.4% uh the difference between bids ranged all the way up to about $800,000 so that's the the value of our competition here is that uh we saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by going with the winning bidder the winning bidder in this case was fidelity Investments and also share when we presented last time back in November we shared with you an estimate of how much we thought the district's budget for the payments that estimate was based on a 5 and a half% interest rate and so to come in at close to four is a really outstanding result and then here's how the budget numbers turned out as and where we landed on actual so proceeds for projects we were budgeting for 14.5 million to fund the expansion at middle school and we
036got 14.5 million so that was great um you can see all the costs we generally came in across the board much lower on costs than anticipated so some nice cost savings uh Lori mentioned we didn't get bond insurance so we did transition from uh what we had thought was to pay for bond insurance and pay for shity Bond we transitioned to what's called a Debt Service Reserve fund so we borrowed money we funded that Reserve fund and the nice thing about this Reserve find is it comes back to us at the end because it'll be used toward our final payment so even though it is an extra um part of the financing here um it's something that we get to use at the end of the day it's not just an expense out the door
037and so we did end up borrowing a little bit more 171 175 was our final borrowing amount about 695,000 more um than we had shared at at budget now here's how the payments turned out so the payments came in excellent you'll recall that for the first um 10 years or so of this financing uh we were budgeting to pay this back from Redevelopment revenue and so um what's shown on this graph in blue is our old cops from 2010 the new payments don't start until that financing is paid off and then we get to start with our our new financing and we've maximized that Redevelopment Revenue so we can take full advantage of that Revenue Source put that to work toward our payments and it helps accelerate our payoff of this debt to help lower
038cost C and then once that Redevelopment Revenue uh expires you can see we've lowered the payments down to about 750,000 which is much lower than estimated and that helps reduce our risk to the general fund now of course the hope is we never get to the general fund because our hope is that we're going to prepaid this early uh with our state funding from this cic mitigation program um total savings on this was about $65 million compared to the budget so really good news there and so next steps uh congratulations the financing has been completed that funds have already been deposited with the county the district already has the money to spend toward Murray middle school so that is excellent that happened on January 29th and then we have our ongoing Administration including monitoring our
039receipt of our state funding with the hope that we'll get to pay off this financing early so thank you and happy to take any questions Mr Campell I just I just want to tell you thank you for your hard work um all all good news is what it sounds like so really appreciate all that you guys did for this great thank you it was s it was just a real team effort District staff and our staff working together nights and weekends because of the unusual nature but everything went our way and what do they say about you know um preparation meets opportunity right any further comments or questions again thank you it's always nice to come in with a uh lower interest rate expected especially at this day and age with interest rates teer much
040higher so sure absolutely thanks sure oh yes yes yes okay we'll keep going well I think maybe that can come down and anyone can go up right oh it's all connected okay so a lot of reference in here if you're interested we are measure dou a okay well I can't say enough good things about measure daa I'm just so pleased for the community to have had a successful election and it was a lot of communication that you all did and that people in the community did and a lot of questions that needed to be answered and um and here we are and so um 5655 uh percent was the um winning uh ratio and you know I will say I think politicians call that a landslide um and for for us it was it was
041certainly enough because we only needed 55 so um very happy that the community um supported the district and now in implementing measure daa I like to think of us as the agent right and you you're you know you're trustees right we're we're trusted with implementing this well so that's what we're going to talk about so if we look at uh the next page roughly the tax rate and it says roughly and that's why that's an approximately equal sign is Debt Service divide by The District's assess value so what that means is the county sets the tax rate and um Kern County will set it for both counties and sardino county will take what they provide and they'll determine a rate now the reason it's not exactly Debt Service divide by assessed value is there's all
042kinds of assessed value so you might get a question somebody owns a store what about the inventory that I have somebody oh I have a mother-in-law unit over my garage whatever if people have questions like that um I call them the grocery store questions CU that's where you get them just make sure that we get them and we'll provide information for them um and then another thing that a lot of people think is that they're thinking about their home value their property value in terms of market value we pay taxes based on assess value and if anybody wants to know their assessed value they can look it up on the treasure Tax Collector's website it's very easy so if you're in the grocery store you can show them right then on your phone if you
043have it with you I like to look up everybody that I'm going to see before I go to a party and I'm ready because when they start complaining about taxes I I say to them well how how much taxes do you pay and most of them don't know and then I say well I know what you pay um now people um and also people often don't know because they may have their taxes paid in a um by the mortgage holder they have a um a a payment system that pays their their um property taxes for them so there's reasons why people don't know I think one of the reasons that people in California don't know is because they're so low compared to other places um we have some of the lowest property taxes in the
044state so I'm not embarrassed to tell people what they're going to pay on measure doublea I think it's a bargain um and as we talked about when we were thinking about putting a measure on the ballot it's a huge um Boon to property values to just not even before you even spend the money there's uh an impact on property values from school districts that have a bond so anyway if anybody wants to talk more about that um we'll be happy to talk with them let's go to the next page and we can see how the property tax has grown and Keith is trying to click it over to the next page but I'll I'll keep going till we get there you might need Jenny's help in the back to advance there we go there we
045go okay and and we've Advanced it and the chart looks little not not what you see is what you get so um what I'll say is that our our history over a long period of time since 1998 our average growth has been 4 .2% but last year it seems consistent with that it was 4.17 but the year before that it was 7.1 and so on and you can even see that during the recession Great Recession years there was some negative years so here's the thing to remember that the entire tax base as a whole every property if it was not improved or transferred if it didn't trigger an individual assessment everybody will be reassessed at a Statewide rate that can never be more than 2% so people say oh tax go up at 2% well
046they can't go up at any more than 2% but um it's based on last year's California Consumer Price Index and everywhere the chart at the bottom is pink that's where the Statewide reassessment rate was less than 2% and you can see in 2010 it was actually negative and and people's assessed value went down almost everybody in the state the vast majority of properties in the state were reassessed down and I don't remember any parties or tax holiday excitement and I have yet to find a single headline on that if somebody finds it I'll be glad to see it but the point is that's the value of Prop 13 which is article 13A of the Constitution which is it limits those reassessments but what we're concerned about is the future and we're concerned about where is
047the assessed value going in the future and we want to be conservative because the purpose of projecting is to be able to project tax rates and we would rather be wrong and have them be lower than we expect than be um you know be wrong the other way which is that they're higher than we expect so that's why we use a lot of conservatism in our projection and you can see our assumptions in the Box the inset box we're assuming net local security ass set value grows at 3% and all other types of zero is 0 per. what that means we're expecting the entire tax base to grow at slightly less than 3% which is conservative and that's important because we want our tax we know we can't project the tax rates perfectly right there's
048a lot that can happen that we don't know but we we want to plan our debt repayment such that we keep tax rates within expectations now another part of that um is where interest rates going and um I just love the creativity of the computer and where it puts our information um so one of the things that you might be aware of is that interest rates have gone up and that has happened in the municipal bond market they have gone up a little bit since we uh created our bond plan but the good news is we budgeted for interest rates to go up and that was another conservative step if interest we don't need the budget for them to go down I know what we'll do if they go down that's easy right but what
049we're concerned about is what if they go up and and and I have seen fond plans in communities where a district is told oh you can't sell your bonds because interest rates went up well why wouldn't we assume they go up right they have a good chance of doing that so we are still well below the increase that we assumed for selling selling our bonds and the other thing is we are planning to sell our bonds in two series we assume more uh more growth in the in the interest rate the further out we get because our assumptions are based on historical volatility and there's more time between now in the second series than now in the first series so we build in a bigger budget for further down the road does that make sense
050to everybody and as we get closer we we update the information so on the next page we can see the two series of bonds um we're still budgeting at 21 million for each series uh in 2425 and in 26 27 and we do have some improvement from our pre-election projections because as we had an assessed value growth rate that was higher than our assumptions that means we have more tax Bas to pay back the bonds and that means we can actually pay them back a little faster right think of it in your home mortgage if you have a little bit more income you have an option maybe to put a little more and pay down your mortgage faster and the great thing about paying principal down faster is we owe less interest on it right
051so there's two things that we get to do one is we pay it down faster but the other thing is our bonds will not go at at one interest rate there's a yield curve and so the more we can move to the shorter end of the yield curve the cheaper the whole repayment is so we can go shorter and um um faster so um that's good news and then finally finally for me then I'm going to let Keith talk is where we're projecting tax rates and we're right in line we we have um very similar projections as what we had before the election and the next time that we'll update this is after we sell the first series of doublea bonds so that may bring up another question how often do we update well when
052the debt service changes so after right now we have zero Debt Service from measure daa when we sell the first series of bonds we'll do it then then when we sell the second series and then down the road if we are have opportunities for refinancing that's when we update those those circumstances and then there's one other circumstance which will come up for us which is every year we have new assess value so we update the model at least once a year um we update when we have new information but doesn't need to be updated every day so with that I'm going to let Keith tell you how we're going to implement our plan okay so you can see we're very much on track with our measure measure daa plan and so in terms of implementation
053we have the same set of sale methods that we did with Murray middle school expansion which is one we can do a competitive process and go out to bid or secondly we can pre-select an underwriter bank and negotiate with them and again we look to the best practices we look to our history and given the success we had on this on the Murray Middle School financing given the success we've had on prior financings our recommendation is let's let's stick with the success and so we're suggesting we have a competitive bid process um we've had a lot of healthy competition we've had hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings a million half savings you mean in total yeah yeah I was saying 100,000 per bid which in total uh is well well over a million and
054a half um so yeah let's let's keep at it and so that's our recommendation um so in terms of accountability uh just to give you some some context there are five methods of accountability described in law one is the citizens oversight committee the board did establish that on January and that's a very important method of accountability there's also performance auditing and financial auditing uh just to distinguish them the performance audit audits the projects making sure that they are measure AA appropriate projects and then Financial uding looks at the dollars making sure the dollars are spent on the appropriate projects and then in addition there's even a couple more serious forms of accountability which has to do with court restraint and prevention of expender of funds if expenditures are found to be unlawful and then finally
055law enforcement pursuit in the event of Al or use of bond funds so you can see there's sort of a whole structure here set up to help ensure that the measure daa bonds are spent appropriately via these these oversight methods and so in terms of next steps uh so just information tonight and then at the April board meeting we'd ask the board to consider adoption of resolution to authorize us to move forward with the measure a doublea bonds and then with your approval on May 8th we'll have that competitive bid process we'll lock in interest rates on May 22nd we'd have closing and the funds would be available to spend toward our measure daa projects and then in an upcoming board meeting uh we'd be back to share with you the results of how the
056financing turned out so thank you again and happy to take any further questions any questions not a question just a comment I I think maybe we've had so much good news in this category tonight maybe we ought to uh note this specific date so we can refer to it in other times that we aren't necessarily receiving such great news yes any further comments or questions thanks again okay truly appreciate everything you guys have done for usate it thanks okay we'll move on to item four a report to the board from data I've got note that data will not be here this evening so we will move on to item five report to the Board of Trustees by the California School Employees Association syia hello board president board members superintendent Dr Moore staff and Community as
057you all know we have huge changes coming next school year with that we have lots of questions and concerns and lots of fear due to not having all those answers questions answered and the end of the school year quickly approaching with only 63 days left of school but who's counting uh there's lots of confusion about where people will be next year but also how some know where they will be and others do not and so those people question how they know where they'll be going and others don't and uh they were told that they will have to reapply for their position there's just so many unanswered questions last month I reported that we had 26 job openings for classified staff and since then we have had 19 but one was added this afternoon so 20
058job openings at our chapter meeting we again brought up why do we have so many job openings and we all agree that it is because of our pay we haven't we have seen lots of money being spent on Contracting out jobs which I have stated before is disheartening to our classified staff change in our pay scale needs to happen we keep losing employees and having such a huge turnover rate and a majority of it has to do with our pay I have been asked many times this year are we getting a raise and I reply I I hope so um that is what we are negotiating and also have been asked for a while why an employee should stay here and work for the district when they can go work at fast food restaurants and
059make more money it has been brought up about total compensation with this district is better than fast food restaurants and as a full-time employee with Benefits I can agree to app Point not with my pay but with the health benefits however that only applies to less than half of the classified employees you must work 7 and a qu hours to have benefits most of our employees are less than that our biggest job classification are peras and they work 5.5 to 6 and a half hours and it is hard for me to justify to my members who are less than seven and a quarter hours to stay when they can go to Panda or McDonald's or any other fast food restaurant and start off at or above $20 an hour hoping when we head back to
060negotiation negotiating table next week we can continue to work on our pay scale since at the moment we are not even competitive to other comparable districts or fast food and we will continue to have employees leave and add more work to the already overworked people who are still here since we are short-handed thank you thank you syvia move on to item 6.6 Communications from the public the board will provide time during the discussion of each agenda item for members of the public to comment at this time members of the public May address the board on an item not on the agenda comment should relate to items of public interest within the board's jurisdiction the law prohibits the board from taking action on items not on the agenda if appropriate your comments will be referred to
061staff for response when addressing the board please state your name and limit your remarks to three minutes in accordance with the board bylaws the board will limit the total time for public input to 30 minutes those wishing to address the board beyond the 30 minute time limit may do so at the end of the scheduled meeting agenda I'll open up public comment at 652 hello board members I am a school bus driver for the district my name is Cody Hansen and I just have a small issue with the going on on my bus really quickly who has children here in the district do any of them ride the school bus that was quick um so my issue is there are a high population of the Gen Ed in the secondary schools that refuse to wear
062seat belts now I know parents at home are not teaching their kids it's okay to be without a seat belt I actually got in contact with CHP I'm sorry I only have one copy I can give it to you guys pass it down you just give it to her and she'll share it with us thank you I have been basically told if we get into an accident and we tell them to where their seat belts and then they choose not to we are still held liable every day I get into a school bus and a student does not wear their seat belt my job is on the line my license is on the line that I worked hard to get to in the two short years I'm in the district um and I hope that
063you guys can come up with a plan I don't think I have a plan Beyond riding bus tickets every day dozen bus tickets every day to hopefully protect my butt even with the bus tickets CHP told me I'm still liable if you guys can help us come up with a plan to get the secondary schools students to stay seat belted for the 10 to 45 minutes they're on the bus I would appreciate that because I don't want to lose my job thank you thank you seeing other takers we'll go ahead and close public comment at 6:55 uh item seven educational Administration we have nothing under seven oh we'll keep it open we'll open it back up at 6:55 I'm sorry about had a lot you see the kid uh good evening um board and teachers
064and the uh crowd I came up to request that you guys readjust the curriculum because with everything that's going on well actually to start from the beginning I didn't know what can you say your name in oh Charles Williams okay I um didn't understand what a curriculum was or how it coincided so while I was at work I did some research the curriculums that get standardized on the state level is basically saying the what then you guys established the how and these teachers implement it right and most of it coincides with and this was something else I had to research industrial revolutions basically what is about to be the way that people eat for the rest of their lives right and not me not realizing that one of those that happened while I was in
065school was called the internet boom where this caught most of the people the generations ahead of us by surprise where a whole industry came up to where now we call them social influencers or ticktockers basically and most of this stuff is also feeding back into our children but when we were coming up our parents hadn't even been familiarized with a computer let alone now we hear words like algorithms and don't fully get the gist of what that means or even how people make money off of our data now with what has been rolling out as far as artificial intelligence it's just it was a hypothetical I'll say that but now artificial general intelligence a hypothetical also threatens jobs that we had Lear we knew of when we were coming up from programming all the way
066down to trades and with that being said the curriculum that we have going on now rather than teaching most of the kids from a early age outside of just using tablets or Chromebooks how to use this in how to use this as a tool is actually teaching them how to socialize basically and what whatever as far as chatbots go as far as also researching because they aren't allowed the proper way to know how to research they'll trust this artificial intelligence over what bibliography is and this is the going Trend as of right now AGI hasn't rolled out yet but the two people at the head of creating it one has said that this is the beginning of the singularity which is another theoretical right just like smart watches were theoretical on Power Rangers oh excuse
067me and another one has said that it should once it hits the market it'll start off as a app this app will be a agent the agent itself through going through all your data the theoretical stuff again well know you better than your mama knew you basically it'll be able to design a whole world based off what you like what you know and all that extra stuff what I'm three minutes is off I need you to wrap it on up here could you guys consider using this um curriculum to teach children how to use it as a tool instead of allowing the it to use them as a tool is what I'm requesting all right thank you thank you good evening my name is Katie and I'm here tonight because um I was here at
068the last meeting and I was listening to the results of the testing and the standardized test and that kind of stuff and after 3 years of being in this school district it has been very concerning to me that I don't see any major difference really in the uh standardized uh results I went to the first meeting was in Fowler and I saw their test results and it doesn't meet my family halfway and that is you know uh very discouraging ing to me when I come to the meetings and I hear you know the staff talking about getting raises and you know fixing schools but I don't see any adjustments like he was saying to the curriculum I don't see any conversations about how are we going to get these kids to be literate so that
069they can be critical thinkers when they grow up and are adults and that's very concerning to me as a parent so um you know as a stay-at-home mom I am very fortunate to be able to take responsibility for my son's education uh we recently did a standardized test at home and we saw he's actually in top 1 percentile for his grade and I don't think that it is fair for me to keep him in your schools when we have these kind of results coming up out of the schools and he's not getting the support because other kids need the support and he's getting getting you know called out in class because he's talking because he's distracted because he's drawing and I get a call at home and I'm just saying well there's no challenge for
070him so he's going to talk and he's going to challenge his teacher because he doesn't understand why he can't talk in class if he's done with his work he's he can't draw in class if he's done with the things that he needs to do and it just seems like there's a disservice happening in our schools for our children and I get you know that you guys are placing the funds as best as you can but there should be you know um some sort of order for these children that need IEP there's children in in the schools that are interrupting the classro because they don't have the proper behavioral skills and I have a son again in the 1 percentile that I'm I'm wondering why do I keep sending him to school every time he comes
071home and he's telling me about all these crazy sto St that I honestly I can't even believe that this is happening in the classrooms there's no control in the classrooms there's no uh community in the schools and I hear the capturing kids Hearts program and the um uh I think it's called um sorry what is that what is that thing called Caleb that you guys do in school Shine Time shine time and it's just not enough so I hope that you know that you guys will you know do something to keep your students in the schools because I for one am withdrawing my son from your public school and I'm going to take responsibility for his education homeschool and you're wondering why you're losing kids why people are you know not enrolling anymore to your
072schools this is the reason why they don't feel supported kids are getting bullied at school they don't have the proper curriculum and they don't feel like they can be successful in life so I hope you guys can uh figure it out thank you for your comments any other for public comment we'll actually close public comment at 703 nothing in educational Administration we'll move on to item eight policy Review Committee 8.1 approval of updated policy board policies and administrative regulations thank you president Scott the board polic policy Review Committee reviewed these and found them to be in routine nature and have moved them forward for consideration and potential adoption this evening happy to answer any questions move approval second we have a motion a second any questions or comments from the board staff or Community all
073in favor signify by saying I I I any opposed that's unanimous move on to item nine personal Administration 9.1 notification of salary compensation for confidential employees for the 24 25 school year Mr Al ah there we go uh president Scott superintendant Dr Moore members of the board community and staff uh each year the district and the three bargaining units engage in collective bargaining to negotiate articles in each of the association Collective bargain bargaining agreements while a number of Articles can be opened uh or how many articles can be opened varies every year we open salary and Health and Welfare there are two classifications of employees who do not have an exclusive representative or they do not belong to the union that is management and a group called confidential employees like our classified employees the district
074confidential employees belong to calers the proposed confidential salary schedule will clarify for calp pers that the longevity stiping will qualify as pensionable compensation because the new salary schedule has the longevity compensation embedded and therefore is considered a part of the employees pay rate um the challenge that we have uh encountered is that they were um Cal pers was um evaluating that as extra pay instead of a part of the pensionable pay there are no financial implications it is uh recommended that the board approve the additional adjustment of salary compensation for confidential employees commencing in the 20242 school year presented second we have a motion and second any questions and comments from the board any questions or comment from staford community all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed it's unanimous move on to
075item two report to the board quarle report of Williams uniform complaints Mr uh before I start I'll say that there there are no complaints and this is for information only anybody have any questions or comments we'll move on to item three revisions to the classified management position Director of Finance and budget Mr Al so the Director of Finance and budget um position was modified last on November 16th 2023 due to Personnel considerations at the time the supervision of the business office P Personnel was removed as one of the responsibilities however those conditions have shifted and now it's in the district's best interest to have the Director of Finance and budget supervised business office clerical and accounting staff there are no financial implications the revised job descriptions included in the board packet and the only changes
076are notated in red font it is recommended that the board approve the revisions to the classified management management position Director of Finance and budget as presented move recommended action we have a motion and second any questions or comments from the board staff for Community all in favor signify by saying I I I any opposed that's unanimous and final one no it looks like you're coming back in a little bit uh item four approval of non- reelection of certificated personnel with less than a preliminary credential as a result of a decision of the California 5th District Court of Appeals Mr all so Ed code requires every Public School District to notify all of their temporary staff and by temporary I mean teachers that are on a um one-year contract because they have le less than a
077preliminary credential uh they are not guaranteed employment for the following school year um this is done every single year must be done before March 15th um this is something we do in uh cooperation with data uh we hold a meeting uh which was held last week where all of the the people impacted were invited so that we could discuss and talk about this process the district then has a responsibility to go and recruit highly qualified credential teachers we must demonstrate that we've done that in good faith um however with the the ongoing teaching teacher shortage um it has been necessary to um hire and employ teachers with less than a preliminary credential and we anticipate that we would hire some or many of ours back but we have to go through that process first um
078the financial implications are are unknown there's potential for additional unemployment insurance costs to the district as a result of this action and it's recommended that the board approve the non- reelection of the the 50 certificated employees employed by the district for the 2425 school year who are uh who have less than a preliminary credential as presented second we have a motion a double second uh any questions or comments from the board staff for Community all in favor signify by saying I any opposed that's unanimous move on to item 10 General Administration 10.1 authorization for board member travel Dr Moore thank you we have a board protocol that requires us to take or the board to take action on any uh board travel and so we have an update of two different events coming up one
079is the winter dinner of the Kern County School boards Association that will be held shortly and we have three board members interested in attending and then we also have the California Charter authorizing professionals conference so since the U board has authorized uh the opportunities for learning Charter it would be a good opportunity for board members to join District staff in learning about what that takes to be a charter authorizer district and we have one board member interested in attending that so those are the two items that are recommended for approval um and they're well under the um authorized budget that the board has set for board travel which is up to $30,000 and we have spent to date 9,700 so we have plenty of room for that but I'm happy to answer any questions move
080approval we have a motion and a second any questions or comments from the board staff or Community I just I noticed that the uh the second travel item was a good opportunity for learning for Mr Scott so I appreciate that that's the first one I I'll learn something at the uh other meetings here you'll eat well we have a motion a second all in favor signify by saying I I I any opposed that's unanimous 10.2 California school boards Association delegate Assembly Election Dr Moore and I do have a clarification on this one um but we have four seats available in four vacancies in our area for csba delegate assembly there were two candidates and so we mistyped um that in the header there are actually four seats but two candidates at the time of printing
081um and happy to take direction from the board as far as how we would like to proceed Mr President Mr Ferris do you have any recommendations I do I I do recommend that we uh move forward the two c candidates that are listed they have both served already and serve well and would like to continue serving and then I would further like to recommend U that we write in Paula Van Aken of the uh Panama buen Vista School District i a a fellow board member from that same district reached out to me Keith werid and asked that we consider moving her forward uh uh to serve Keith had previously served as a delegate so he knows the the job and as a region this still leaves us one short but at least fills one of
082the vacancies and we have more strength and more support the more we get so I would suggest we do write in that name and her name I properly pronounced it wrong her last name is v n capital Au U Ken and I'll get that information to you but that uh I recommend that we uh move all three of those names forward second we have a motion and second any further questions or comments from the board no Mr feris truly appreciate I I I I know you have the insight and track on on who would be a good representative so I appreciate that uh any questions comment from Stanford Community all in favor signify by saying I I I any opposed it's unanimous Mr Scott if I could just comment I I do appreciate I have
083to to say I can recall a time in this board's history whenever this item would come up we would all look at each other because we know we knew no one uh in our region at all and I think it's a very different world for us now because we have built relationships with other people in our County and I think it makes a big difference for how we can affect the overall governance of schools so thank you for the for being a part of building that thank you move on to item 10.3 approval of school safety plans for 2425 Mr all every school in the district has a comprehensive school safety plan developed in accordance with Education Code requirements and that follows the guidelines set forth in the state emergency management system uh in addition
084uh recommendations are made by safe schools a planning guide for Action prepared jointly by the California Department of Education and the office of the Attorney General in accordance with board policy and administrative regulation 0450 and Ed code each school is reviewed and as needed revised and updated its school safety plans plans were reviewed by staff School site councils the site Safety Committee and First Responders the revisions were approved accordingly at the site level the school safety plans meet the requirements of Ed code and BP 0450 and are being submitted to the board of education for approval these are very lengthy documents and as such have been available and will continue to be available for review at both the Human Resources office or at the individual School sites there are no financial implications it is recommended
085that the board approve the 20242 school safety plans as presented approve to recommending action second we have a motion in the second any questions or comments from board staff for Community all in favor signify by saying I any opposed that's unanimous item 10.4 approval to contract with s how do you say how you pronounce that CIS to uh provide site based school safety equipment and incident alert Solutions Mr so our district was one of the first in California to implement the cix crisis alert system throughout the district um as early adopters we implemented implemented the first version of the system and like most platforms or Solutions the technology is improving and and hor has been enhanced consequently newer versions of the platform have been released as you know the New Richmond Elementary School site is
086set to open in August 2025 to be fully operational we must contract with with cinic to install the hardware necessary for the crisis alert system to function uh in working with CICS to install the hardware at Richman we've discovered that they have a version two uh all of our other sites are are version one we've been able to um add on to our version one in small spaces like offices um and so forth but to bring on an entire School the size of Richmond um they they no longer would support version one and of course version two and version one don't talk to each other so because because we were an early adopter and because the current equipment was not failing meaning it's only a year and a half old we were able to negotiate
087with cix and the equipment upgrade valued at approximately $96,000 was waved in addition to adding the Richmond campus and upgrading equipment at all their sites the new contract will be uh for a 5-year term uh the equipment labor installation and annual contract renewal quotes are attached for your review and just um for your information some of the upgrades with version two one is is that um each classroom and office had to have uh a Gateway that was uh plugged in and uh somehow as uh as life would go it was always in the the most popular uh plug so that is no longer necessary they will be we'll be removing all of those uh in addition to that the strength of the Bluetooth network is greater so that when we have faculty and staff across
088the street at a park doing um you know after school pickup the range will be significantly improved and then finally uh cic's recognized after working with a number of school districts that school districts don't typically have have great school Maps um especially for older schools and so they've developed a product that will create excellent Maps because they need that to be able to install their equipment and so we will benefit from that as well financial implications the total cost for adding the New Richmond School upgraded equipment at and the other District sites and a 5-year contract is $534,500 the contract will be funded by onetime funds followed by General funds if needed it's recommended that the board approve the contract with cix as presented second we have a motion a second any questions or comments
089from the board Mr FIS so we all know a half a million dollars is a lot of money uh but school safety is one of our key responsibilities to provide for our students and our staff and um as I reflect on probably the most common remark you hear after any school crisis is we never thought it could happen here and I know we all have a general sense of safety in our community but that can only be reinforced if we put in place the key elements to keep it that way um I don't want to be one of those ones on the news that said we never thought it could happen here so um I it it's clear that this is a a good product we've experienced it for over a year um and M
090money well spent I believe based on what our key responsibilities are I I would add to that you know obviously in a serious uh crisis it it would be it will benefit us to have this but also on the day-to-day um depending on the School site and the culture at the site um staff teachers peras campus supervisors many of them have come to really rely on that the students know what it does and so there are times when they're going to push the button you know well if you force me to I'll push the button and they know that that there'll be a response we're able I mean that is the primary uh goal of cinic or any crisis response is to is to shorten the time and that has happened at a u a
091pretty significant rate and that's for things just like disagreements altercations and so forth so it's for the big stuff but it also helps the day-to-day you know I was in um the district office one day talking with um April and um it went off and it was amazing how fast the the she had gotten the call that it went off and the and the police were just on their way just it was boom boom and ended up being a false alarm but but still it and it was outside you know so that's the amazing thing that impresses me is you know you might not be around a phone you know anyone just boom and it works and so and it is taking effect um I know my sister-in-law Virginia they just approved it at their
092um District over there so it's it's going everywhere there there are a number of states on mostly on the East Coast that have a state law that requires requires that their public agencies have some type of Crisis alert system just disappointing that version one doesn't speak to version two but I truly appreciate you guys putting forward the effort in negotiating that almost $100,000 off that makes a difference I agree with everything Bill said you know safety is Paramount in our profession any further questions or comments from the board Stafford Community sure we did AAL that who are you wa wait wait and also we want to make sure you get on the recording thank you Johnson 900 Royal um the question I have is looking to the The Proposal looks like Monroe is still on
093there as an active school um when that goes not as an active School in the future will that costs go away their maintenance cost yeah we we won't update minro with new hardware and the service plan won't be and the second question I have is with the New Richmond um it can't you use the dod grant money for the 80% match since that's an ter Force protection for that school unfortunately not because this is a annual contract it's for not for the equipment we're paying for the service the licensing service so that would not be covered by the construction Grant so the equipment's free the equipment is what they've waved cost on because we already had purchased equipment for our initial but not for that school so I I I just I'm just thinking look
094there just huge cost and it'd be nice if DOD would pay for that since it's part of the anary force protection so okay thank you any further questions comments motion and second all in favor signify by saying I I any opposed that's uh unanimous and looks like you're done for the evening Mr old mve on to item 11 construction Administration 11.1 report to the board of construction activities and issues Mr Moore I gotta say does anyone remember that fold during their day that he's wearing I had one of those I recognized the colors of the shirt when he walked in oh yeah knew immediately what it was and I'm completely offended no one asked how I feel so I could just say I'm peachy I recognize the 80s 80s president Scott superintendent Dr Moore members
095of the board faculty and members of the community I'm Jeff Moore facilities director for the district and here are some construction updates New Richmond campus is coming together beautifully I say New Richmond because old Richmond is almost gone out of the old Richmond site on base all of the buildings are gone right now right down to the concrete slabs this is a picture looks like Godzilla's hairball but that's rebar they needed to take out of the thank you for laughing uh this is a this rebar they needed to take out of the concrete because if we were to pay to have all of this demolished concrete hauled off it would cost us a fortune however with an agreement with the base we're able to hire these crumblers that chew that stuff down to uh bigger
096than gravel but but smaller than the Big Blocks because they want to use it for base material for whatever yes please take it we don't have to pay to haul it off and it's a symbiotic savings to the district that we don't have to pay uh here's a picture of the Quad in our new school actually that was a picture taken just a few short months ago if I look now you can see the difference here uh we're going to put up a big beautiful tall Flag Pole right there in the middle of that compass rose and uh the the grass play area is already installed as I mentioned last month but where you don't see grass and things you'll either see plants or you'll see uh some Turf on different places the turf will
097be installed by uh the end of next week uh there are three main utilities at the campus water electric and gas and we've had water at the site for most of the job and you may remember the delays we had dealing with getting the electricity to the site with the switch gear you see the big beautiful gray paneling here to get all the high voltage switch gear in place but those are in and working great the gas has been a little bit of a struggle though uh to the left you you can see where our gas line of demarcation for the gas company is you see the spet stacking out of the ground let me get a better picture here here's a better look the gas main connection for the campus Supply was mounted too
098low for them to put in this concrete and so we had to get approvals from the gas company to lay the rest of the concrete however when we asked for all those approvals they needed to bring an inspector down just when the LA fires hit so we had to stand in line for some attention because it was all hands- on Deck uh our our construction management company kept after them and got them here and we got the permission if you can see the lower right hand picture uh they were not going to be able to move the the don't want to call it a valve but the the gas demarcation there so they allowed us to box it because it's theirs it's not ours and so we put a box around it laid the concrete
099the way that we had to for safety and and compliance and now uh they're going to be uh let's see as of earlier today they'll put the meter in next week and we'll be able to turn on the gas that means we'll have all three of the main utilities to the campus and things are going to be moving much faster uh let's see the remainder of the asphalt and concrete are going in this week and finishing around the end of the month which happens to be next week uh or or um the first week of March the playground equipment looks great oh let me show you something about that this this picture kind of excites me you say well why is that exciting look at the ground the reason I'm excited about it is because
100this ground is completely prepped now to have all the the the spongy rubberized uh safety flooring for the kids to play on in this if you see in the background you can see some of the decorative uh fencing this because this is the TK area the the little ones are are um kept out of just rever you want kids they're kept in a safe environment and um all of the fencing has been completed all of this uh rubberized uh flooring will go in uh by next week um any of the asphalt like in the bottom right hand corner you see some place where well that's a walkway yep asphalt is finishing next week too so um oh here's something now um please Pard pardon me I used Photoshop to put this purple star see Richmond
101has earned a purple Star Award that's for those who don't know that's the public school that's the most committed and best equipped to meet the unique needs of military connected students and family and so since Richmond earned it they they deserve to have it on the building I put it up here where or one of the locations where this has just photoshopped the picture we haven't got the the painting done yet it's actually going to go one square over and it'll be perfectly located where everybody who brings their kids in all the buses and schools uh the um traffic is going to go and and have a little bit of a location Pride there actually um either way we're going to be very proud to see that that they went into earning it long ago
102and and they they put it up there proudly uh let's see a hundred small things are happening behind the scenes from floor sinks in the cafeteria floor sinks yes floor sinks um to uh to drop ceilings and light I was excited to see some of the drop ceilings finally going in because all that means is that everything above it has been completed they're not going to put that in until all the work is done above it so we don't have to redo something afterwards flooring will start going in too in next week in the rooms that are ready to receive it finally flooring's been kind of important on my radar because I've already ordered our furniture and they need to put it in a place where they can assemble this and then start staging and
103put it in into our several uh classrooms and we don't want them put in concrete floor and then have to move back out and then then get the flooring so all of that is implementing now even as we speak the 21st century education Furnishings will be here um arriving before our next board meeting and so I'll probably be have some pictures of that being installed uh to present to you then we're still installing some of the technology systems everything from smartboards networks teacher stations everything and we I I should have brought you picture we're uh it was brought up by our community how do we bring kids from the Pierce neighborhood safely over that are are now part of our our reboundary safely over to Richmond we're putting in an actual walkway from the Pierce
104Community down through to where it's safe to drop off the kids now in my ignorance I said hey we could save a lot of money by dropping the kids off in the back of the playground but there's not enough supervision there so again like like you mentioned board member Ferris uh we got to provide the safest place for the kids so we had two locations we could bring them around where the bus drops off and there's so much traffic it's not safe for the little ones or we can bring them up right along the other side of the school and drop them off in the front where um it's the most propitious way for the kids to get from the Pierce neighborhood down to the Richmond Elementary place a dozen other things are going at
105the same time to make sure the school opens well and provides the students every Advantage we can provide them that's my February construction update thank you president Scott superintendent Dr Moore board and faculty and Community if there are any questions I'll be happy to feel them yes information only any questions or comments board staff community no Mr Mo pach your report it's exciting it's exciting move on to item actually item 12 no business administration move on to 13 we'll temporary adjourn to conduct the incurrent schools finance and Authority board of directors meeting a open up the in your current board of directors meeting uh item one adoption of the agenda any changes no changes only thing is to approval of am minutes of the regular meeting on January 16th 2025 any corrections no Corrections minutes
106will stand we'll adjourn that go back into the regular meeting we'll open up item 14 consent calendar we have a motion and a second all in favor signify by saying I I I I uh any uh oppose that'll be unanimous move on to item 15 future agenda any future agenda items see none we'll move on to launch I'll be doing the launch actually I was looking at um a couple one from Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali I settled with Martin Luther King he said if I cannot do great things I can do small things in a great way so move on to the next adjournment next regular meeting of the Board of Education will be on whoops we will not be a journey because we'll be going back into uh close section and there
107will not be any uh formal action taken in close section but for those who want to know the next meeting will be on March 13th