Special Board Meeting

001further acknowledges with respect and reverence the molecular ohlone people tribe of san francisco barrier or their stewardship of these lands uh we'll go ahead and proceed with the pledge of allegiance if you have a flag near you please face it [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty for interviewing and selecting bond council funds uh we've got some dialogue but let's go ahead and have the administration remind us of the process that has been uh agreed on so thank you i'm going to be asking mr colbert assistant superintendent of business services to read the process for everybody's benefit great thank you um good evening board president members of the boards and superintendent dr bauer a

002little bit of a background and also over the process of the interview as you may recall um the district issued an rp for bond council services and receives five proposed in a name uh read the name of the firms that's submitted and these are in no particular order um the first firm is org the second firm is hopkin delafield and wood the third firm is jones hall the fourth firm is straddling attorney of law and the fifth firm is quint timing llp in terms of the process as you can see you invited a representative from each firm to be able to witness um how the order of the interviews will be determined um names of the firms have been placed in this envelope and will be later pulled by ms patricia tovar to determine the

003order of anything [Music] once the order is determined the first to be interviewed first will remain in the boardroom and all other firms will be placed in a waiting room uh each funds will have a total of 15 minutes for the interview the first part of the interview will be a five-minute interview opportunity for the firm the second part of the interview um where 10 minutes will be allotted uh for the board of trustees to ask the total five questions um each board member will have will ask the total one question each and each board member will ask the same questions to all of the firms in terms of um how to submit their scores the board will have two options they can submit their scores after each firm is interviewed or wait until the

004end until all the firms are interviewed and submit the score all at once um board member will score each firm between one to five with one being the least desirable and five being the most desirable uh the firm receiving the highest total score total score will be selected as the fine list and will be subject to the girl background checked in the event that there is a tie with the top finalists the board will have will consider two options uh first option is the board members will rescore the finalists that are tied and the second option is to reinterview the tight finalist if the final list is not clear background checks the runner-up will be selected as the finalist and will be subject to a thorough background check this process will continue until the finalist

005clears background check and at this time i would like to invite patricia to for the names of the firm to determine the order huh which okay number two is [Music] third is total foreign at this point we would um request that other than um to remain in the board room um the rest of the firm can follow patricia to the waiting room can i ask the question president uh well first of all just just fyi i don't know how this is on other people's end but um any of the microphones there in the boardroom are fairly difficult to hear i'm not sure what the public is hearing right now but at least on my end it's pretty difficult just a little fyi um secondly did uh mr chain did you mention that in the event

006of a tie that we re-interview the tied candidates and if so is that with the same questions the same five questions or do we need to discuss that in the event of the tie the board will have two options the first option will be to rescore the finalists and the second option is to reinterview the tied finalists so that would be the poor decision in terms of how it would like to proceed um i mean if i could i don't know uh board president how you feel about it i know in the past there have been some scores that are kind of close and so um in the name of transparency i think maybe we should just be clear on especially that um reinterviewing process if we do end up getting a tie and if

007we do re-interview just up front i think we should establish whether it's using the same questions or or whatever that process may be so that if we do get there it's transparent it's clear and it's known to everybody [Music] the consensus here uh uh c3 headshaking uh racecore is anybody really really not interested in responding you want to go through an entire review process can you repeat that president quintet i'm sorry i can't hear three of us over here in the boardroom that uh uh the rescoring process is preferable rather than going back to interviewing so we can if if there's anybody who's opposed to it please speak up now i mean i'm i'm willing to go with it if that's the consensus of everyone there i just i wonder what would be the impetus

008to change a score in that rescoring process if it's if we have the same information at the end of the interviews i just wonder what we're going to change those scores based upon well it looks like there's a there is a desire to go with risk scoring for i'm assuming the sake of simplicity so unless you want to proceed and make a case to go and reinterview then we'll proceed with rich warren um i mean i don't want to spend any more time on it so can we say that at least i'll agree in principle but can is it possible to leave it open for discussion if we do get there at that time instead of spending time talking about it now of course it'll be the will of the body uh do we have

009a comment from uh board member travis i i think that once we have done final interviews and if there is a type there's and it stands out most okay so i'm comfortable just scoring it again all right yeah you can always bring it up at that time but at this point we'll proceed with the intention of just one so that we can move forward okay thank you and one more question i couldn't hear the announcement of the the order can you just for now just say the first candidate just so i can get the scoring thing ready yes the first uh firm to be interviewed eric harrington and sutcliffe all right um so we can go ahead and move forward with uh the first um [Music] so [Music] uh the first portion of the interview

010is a five-minute presentation to the board um as you can see the time clock is on the screen for your reference and when you're ready um for president to take it home all right so ready to start the clock yes good evening and thank you for having me um i thought it was going to be such a great opportunity to watch some of my competitors on this process sent your video in and then i realized that the video is behind me and i'm gonna lose my denial of my thinning hair if i watch it so but uh my name is donald field i'm with laura carrington and sutcliffe close orrick has been in public finance for over a hundred years we've financed everything from the golden gate bridge to school houses all over the state

011i've been with the firm for 22 years i lead up our school finance practice i work on all kinds of financing that school districts do from tax and anticipation notes i run the csba tran pool program to go bonds to lease financings as well as land secured financings that some school districts do so at broad experience about 85 or 90 depending on the year uh is all school finance i also do some work for some cities and counties in california um i i have to tell you i watched the the uh municipal advisor interviews and i decided that i didn't want to distract you with a a powerpoint presentation because the five minutes goes quick and i really wanted to just talk to you about my approach and helping your school district proceed with your

012financings um [Music] public finance is a complicated area and school districts typically don't do it every year some don't do it even every couple of years i've worked with all sizes of school districts from the largest being lausd to school districts that have just one or two school houses um and everything in between the very wealthiest community schools to some of the struggling school districts so i've experienced all sort of sizes and and uh financial wealth uh as far as the school districts and um my approach is really to sort of make sure that the school district is fully uh informed and understanding about their finance process because uh as as you probably aware um more and more these days the the communities are they want transparency your process reflects that um but they also

013want to make sure that they understand things a little bit more in depth and so you as uh board members and also your your cabinet members are gonna often get questions and so my approach is to to make sure that you're comfortable with me asking the questions uh that sometimes you don't want to because everyone thinks they need to they need to understand things um i want to have a uh open conversation and make sure you actually do understand both the uh the legal provisions of your documents but also the the reasons behind them things are getting more and more complicated especially in bond elections the last several election cycles with legislation making things more difficult for um getting bonds passed adding requirements to both the ballot questions and other legal requirements there have also

014been some quite a few bond measure challenges by uh various taxpayer groups and so i really uh see it as my job just to navigate to make sure that you know you've made a lot of progress in the last uh four years i i noticed that you have you have several years of being qualified but have two successive interim reports as being positive i want to help you with that positive movement going forward to make sure that you don't have any missteps on what you're doing with your bond financings it's a complicated area both for the state laws and also the federal securities laws and tax laws um there's a hundred or so bond lawyers in my firm um so not only do you have me but if something were to come up that is

015more you know novel or complicated i have 100 other lawyers to look to to help me navigate things um so that is my approach and i think my five minutes is over here so thank you um the second portion of the interview um you will be allotted ten minutes um to answer five questions that will be asked by each board members and at this point i'll turn it over to board president to call on the board members to ask their questions good evening uh so what would you do if you don't agree with the recommendation to the district from the fiscal advisor and can you provide an example of when you've had to do that or when you might have to do that sure that's a great question and often there's a little bit of

016back and forth if you have a good team you want strong members and all your positions on your team um because uh it's if there's any if there's one member that's stronger than the others then you may not end up in a result that is best for the district um there's a number of times where um [Music] for instance the financial advisor will put out a schedule and we on the legal side will look at the schedule and figure out that something doesn't work we want to make sure that your bonds are going to the market at a time where no new information is coming out because your your obligation is that you don't have any material misstatements in your disclosure or permissions and so if the schedule sets forth a time period where you're

017publishing your disclosure document but we know your budget is coming out the next week we want to adjust that and usually it just takes a discussion with your financial advisors i've worked with all of the major financial advisors including the dale scott folks and so um who was i think selected at your uh last interview process um so we we have some back and forth but it it ends up in a better result uh both as far as legal issues and other things um that we often run into for example a structuring question where um we could we could do something legally that could help a uh financial advisor structure the thing structure the bond deal so that it it makes it a little bit more efficient or cost effective for the district um so

018i don't see it as a good thing it's just disagreement among the team members i think it is a positive thing um as long as it's done in this spirit where we're working together uh trust even [Music] okay thank you um has your firm worked with districts that have had challenges similar to alum rock if so what was your approach to set them up for success what if anything would you do differently with alum rock given the specifics of our recent history and our community sure thank you yes i've i've worked with districts that have had um [Music] financial issues coming out of financial issues um getting into sort of positive territory um the key thing for public finance is to make sure that your disclosure is accurate um you want to have comp you

019want your investors to have confidence that it's accurate and you don't want to run afoul of the the securities laws and so um we always make sure that there's a process in place where we help you draft the disclosure documents but it takes involvement with the school district um there's a lot of times where you'll have a financial team that will tell you that you don't need to do anything to get this transaction done it's not true these these disclosure documents are the responsibility of the school district and so you are the ones that will will be looked at if something is not disclosed something like a settlement with teachers on the salaries and the financial impacts of that could cause problems if it's not fully disclosed and so the process that we go through

020is just a thorough uh discussion on the securities laws and and how we are going to go about making sure that everyone understands what needs to be disclosed um so that we we have a complete document thank you board rest president okay thank you mr president um well thank you very thank you very much for coming tonight mr field so my question to your firm would be in the current environment of interest rate instability uh what do you see as the most significant legal issue that alan rock will face when the district offers bonds for sale so this is a more of a financial question but um you know as far as when you sell bonds the higher interest rate that you pay [Music] the more interest costs you're paying and so if you're going

021up against your legal limits on a tax rate for prop 39 bonds the more interest you're paying means the fewer bonds that you could issue for projects up front and so if you're going for a november election you know we're supposed to go through a number of interest rate hikes this year but um if we're still in an interest rate an increasing environment we want to get to the market as quickly as we can and making sure that all the legal requirements are done so that you're getting more dollars for your projects and not spending them on an interest cost thank you very much mr thief thank you board member what are the three biggest mistakes districts do when they do not take the advice of their counsel well the the sort of the the

022biggest mistakes i think are getting rushed into something that you're you're not fully betting and understanding a lot of consultants will want to get a transaction done that's how they make their money and [Music] school districts once the thing is closed has to live with it sometimes for 30 years including for example a bond election measure your project list is going to be with you for eight maybe 10 years depending on how quickly you could issue bonds to those projects and so vetting it out and understanding that things are going to change over time is very important so the critical thing for me is is making sure you spend the time up front to get things done correctly um so that you don't have to worry about those issues later after the thing is closed

023and you can't change it uh has your firm ever been the subject of or been involved in an investigation that resulted from your work with the claim no i'll i'll answer this because i know that everyone gave a quick answer at the fas and so i with a firm with 1500 relatives and so we are not aware of anything any investigation with some of our lawyers um but this to be completely uh transparent there are certain things like there's state bars in every state that we practice and some attorneys have like not completed their continuing education or something like that so there have been those types of investigations but no um you know like with the stc or like a government agency we're not aware of any uh investigation of any of our attorneys and

024i could say for myself that i i have not all right thank you that uh concludes our questions well thank you for your participation in this interview process at this time ms tovar will uh escort you to the waiting room and bring the next firm out um ms toboy the next forum will be hopkins delafield and wood thank you [Music] sorry am i supposed to go now to the thing right him okay all right at this moment i'm going to go ahead and call for public comment while we're in the process of is there a public comment um i do not see anybody um raising their hand for public comment what president i i don't either how do i do it just increase okay so seeing them yeah so right here [Music] good evening again

025board president um so this next storm to be interviewed is hawking delafield and wood um just to remind you of the process there's two parts to the interview the first is a five-minute presentation to the board uh and i'll hand it off to fort president to allow you to start whenever is the time ready go ahead and proceed when you're ready okay great thank you so much um first of all thank you so much for allowing us to um join you this evening we really appreciate the opportunity to interview my name is diane quan i am a partner in the los angeles office of hawkensteel of field and wood where i've worked for 20 years now literally um 20 years ago april i started at hawkins um before that i was a securities and governance

026lawyer in the silicon valley so this is a bit of a homecoming for me um so a bit about hawkins we are more than 165 years old our experience covers the entire breadth and depth of public finance we have worked on all manners of financing um in particular trans uh transportation financings education financings of all sorts healthcare financings general fund financings we have worked with issuers large and small i in particular have done have worked on every state deal for at least the last seven years we also work with a number of counties such as l.a county san diego county we do a lot of work with the city and county of san francisco we also work with a number of cities such as san diego la um but i think of particular interest perhaps

027this evening is our work with education um entities such as the lausd where we have been either a bond or disclosure council for over seven years now um we also work with long beach usd as well as a number of schools in the san diego region so that actually covers three out of four of the largest school districts in the state um but that's not to say that we only work with large entities we also work with much smaller entities with very diverse um student bodies such as compton usd um we work on all types of securities from general funds to land secure deals um general obligation bonds obviously we are keenly aware that you are on a schedule we make ourselves available as you can see we have a pretty deep um and diverse

028bench that is to say that you are not relying just on me or any one of us you can always call and there will always be someone available who can answer your questions um and and i think that's important for any sort of financing where you're on a schedule and you want to make sure that you get the tax um the you know sort of the interest rate window that you want um last but not least as i mentioned before um we have a very diverse team um we think that it's important to bring different perspectives to financings and we like to mirror in large part um our client base which is also quite diverse um and i you know i'm glad to answer any questions you may have in the meantime i'll turn it

029to russ who will introduce himself hi my name is russ miller i am a tax player um i'm probably the only tax player that you'll meet tonight uh i have been doing this for close to 40 years um so i am the gray hair or no lack of hair uh and back in the 90s i actually worked on four of your transactions and wrote the opinion for those transactions three geo bots excuse me three cop issues and a geo bond issue um so i do all uh almost all of the work for uh tax work for hawkish delafield west of the mississippi and with that i'll turn it over to kyle hi i'm kyle reynolds uh i'm an associate attorney at hoffman cell field and wood and as you can see i have uh proportionately

030as much hair we've been practicing around five years but i it's been a good five years at hawkins isis diane and other partners with uh public financing for school districts cities counties other public agencies but i think my day-to-day work regularly do a lot of school district financings again as diane noted many school districts of varying size in san diego in l.a in particular we are a farm council for lausd and i think just throughout that work uh i think we have a very good idea and and i am particular in working with a lot of the school districts i've got a sense for you know the differences in in work style and in in communication and the effort to put into a financing to work with issuers of varying scientists including small issuers biggest

031viewers and the kind of flavor that you have to put into a financing for um one issue might be different than another and i think you can be very attentive to that just given our experience these various sizes so thank you so the second part [Music] you could give it a total of 10 minutes to answer a total five questions each board member is going to ask you one question each um at this point i'll give it to one president to call on the board members to ask the question all right uh we're going to start with board member [Music] good evening hi what would you do if you don't agree with the recommendation to the district from the fiscal advisor and can you provide an example of when you'd like to do this um

032so just to clarify you if your municipal advisor um proposed a particular structure or an investment that um and we just agreed with it is that the question um so i will start first and i'll let supplement um in terms of what is a better deal for the district that's really the municipal advisors um you know field um we only speak to the legality of it so so long it's as it's legal when we determine it's legal um you know whether it's a risky proposition not a risky proposition um how great of a decision that is you know we don't make those qualitative determinations we are here to help you determine um the scope of what is legal um and we can tell you because we work with so many school districts who have you

033know such different backgrounds and we can tell you what we've seen in other deals and what we've found to be helpful in other deals but at the end of the day i don't think we would you know provide any sort of sort of financial advice we would provide sort of the legal background and the perspective from our other deals to help you make a decision um anything you'd like to add well i agree with everything you said however on the other hand i will say as a tax lawyer and working on many different financings for many different issuers and borrowers for many years throughout the country um i feel it's my obligation in fact almost my job to tell you whether or not i agree or disagree with your with the advice that your advisor

034is giving um i really won't say whether an interest rate is good or bad but if they're suggesting a particular structure that i've examined uh or that i i'm aware that for example the irs is examining i won't hesitate to disagree um i feel it's it's my job to tell you and to give you my opinion uh based on my experience and uh and expertise sorry i couldn't get myself off of a commute okay um has your firm worked with districts that have had challenges similar to alum rock if so what was your approach to set them up for success and what if anything would you do differently with alum rock given the specifics of our recent history and our community right so um we've as i mentioned we've worked with a number of school

035districts so um perhaps one's a little closer to you i mean so actually in terms of financials in terms of um the challenges whether you're a large school or a small school district they're pretty they're they're pretty uh there are certain challenges that are the same such as reduced ada at the same time that you have a higher av so um for example i have served as underwriters council for the west contra costa unified school district for a number of years now um they have similar issues lausd has similar issues san diego schools have similar issues um i think that that what we have done is similar to what you've done here which is we've looked for ratings from moody's in particular so what moody's does is um instead of having the issue and the

036issue rating be the same they separate it with the with the understanding that a general obligation bond is repaid from property taxes and so long as your av continues to go up and so long as you're uh and you have a cheater so in this case you're always going to get um the proper property taxes that you're due so in that respect your general obligation bonds are are very secure um and what moody's does is provided you you give them a bankruptcy opinion they uh they do not take the issuer rating which is how they view your finances your general fund your balances they don't use that as your issue rating so i think that in large part that's what we would do um for a general obligation bond we would focus on the security

037and and we would help um any rating agency understand um right what the risks are attending to that security which are are very low um and we would obviously go into some of the issues that various school districts face like lower adas um you know why are we issuing uh new money bonds when you know student enrollment is going down we address all of that um in the official statements the idea is you don't want to shy away from it because a bondholder is going to ask a potential investor is going to ask and you want your underwriters to be able to point to a particular page to show them that you've given given it thought and that and that you have an answer um and that you were thoughtful about the process um anything

038anyone would like to add i could just supplement it with just the statement that just to echo just careful careful thoughtful disclosure is is important i think is what we would go through and having conversations with the district and district representatives as far as like making sure the right information comes out making sure that that's incorporated making sure that there are no questions that go unanswered um you know obviously ever you want to tell the district story and you want to tell positively and all the good things that the district accomplishes so like as diane said just focusing on that disclosure and on making sure that you're open and honest and forthcoming with information so uh thank you okay thank you mr president good evening uh thank you for uh you know um putting your

039application in and you know and being a part of this process uh my question is in the current environment of interest rate instability what do you see is the most significant legal issue that alan rock will face when the district offers bonds for sale right so um we actually um have that issue currently a lot with refundings as you might imagine refundings are wholly based on what the interest rate is right you want to hit a particular interest rate window so that you're able to refinance at a you know sufficiently lower rate so that you meet your debts um debt service policies and and your savings policies i think that would be the same for a new issue bondage a new new money issuance in your case i think it would be very important to

040ensure that you have your resolutions in place whether you decide to go with a competitive process or a negotiated process i think it's probably best if your resolutions allow for both so that um at the time that we're ready to you know quote unquote push the button you can decide which of the two you would like honestly um there have been various pricing difficulties in the last couple of weeks where um where interest rates had gotten so high that they exceeded the um the ceilings that were put into various board resolutions so i think the notion is given this environment we build in as much flexibility as possible so that and and have your disclosure ready so that when the window hits were able to hit it um and it you know it may be

041two months after where we're ready with the documents and maybe one day after we're ready with the documents but the notion is to be ready and to provide you maximum flexibility so that you can hit that window thank you very much what are the three biggest mistakes districts do when they do not take the advice of their counsel i'm sorry can you say that again what are the three biggest mistakes districts do when they do not take the advice of their um okay so i'm gonna take it from sort of the bond perspective and then i'll let russ speak to the tax perspective um because honestly from the bond perspective um uh you know the biggest mistake is sort of on the legal front right um what you are able to use as your security

042the types of structure um i think the the largest mistake you saw was in um you know the richmond school district what is now the west contra costa unified school district where um the structure was deemed to be illegal um and um and they went to court and they lost and it turned into sort of a seminal case um so our our job is really to tell you what the the sort of landscape is and to help you maneuver um within that landscape and to let you know what the risks are um you know to the extent that that it's too risky we will tell you as the rust says um at the end of the day it's your decision um but we want to make sure it's it's it's legal um and and that's

043the most important part from a bond perspective the biggest mistake a district can make is not to follow the advice of its council but beyond that what particular mistakes do districts often make and that is not following up with their council after the bonds have been issued for example uh you need to follow the rules for the entire period of time that the bonds are outstanding which could be up to 30 years and many things happened over a 30-year period boards change schools are you know their use of schools changes districts expand or contract and the use and ownership of those finance facilities change uh and so it's important and it's imperative for the district to keep in touch with its bond council and tell them in the event anything changes and to follow their

044advice regarding compliance with tax securities and the bond documents [Music] i'll factor in some of some of the board members questions that'll be a little mine's quick have you have you ever been subject off or been involved in investigation no we have not all right thank you that was your question great thank you so much [Music] thank you uh patricia can you um take the form back to the waiting room and the next room to be interviewed is jones hall yeah thank you just so everyone knows i'm deciding to keep my camera off tonight because i noticed that when i'm turning it on i'm continuing to have those technical problems so unless there's a specific need i'm gonna try to keep it off and not get bumped out of this uh this zoom thank you

045for letting us now okay sure thank you board president uh the next firms to be interviewed is jones hall um i believe jones hall has a slight deck that will be presented on the screen and shared just as a reminder there's two parts of the interview the first part you will have five minutes to present to the board and then the second part will go after you're done with the presentation thank you good evening president of the board members of the board superintendent and assistant superintendent my name is courtney jones i'm a partner at the law firm of jones hall and it's a pleasure to be here tonight to familiarize you with jones hall and how we can best serve you as your bond council and disclosure council i prepared a short presentation to familiarize

046you with the expertise and experience of jones hall slide one focuses on a real general overview of jones hall we are a single office law firm based out of san francisco however we service public entity issuers throughout the state we work with school districts throughout the state and in every county of the state but we also work with all types of issuers counties cities housing projects sewer system projects and whatnot we're a group of 12 partners we have four associates and a sufficient staff to support our practice our firm is focused exclusively on public finance we do not have other practice areas so when we collaborate on our deals we are able to focus on the details and the nuances of bond law state law federal tax law and that is our entire practice we

047are what might you might call the boutique fawn council law firm and we're very proud of the fact that the number of transactions we do annually um even though we have a single office is on par with some of the larger law firms that practice bond law in the state of california um we have we've for example we have a very very high volume of practice we've closed over a thousand financing over the past five years and the name of jones hall is very well known in the bond investing community each bond issue when it's issued must have a legal opinion signed by a law firm confirming the validity and tax exempt status if tax exempt of the bonds and jones hall is a well-regarded law firm in that regard by bond investors which will

048serve the district well we collaborate with one another um the the district would be represented by myself i have over 25 years practicing bond law at jones hall i would also collaborate with another partner there because we always have a practice of checks and balances and we also collaborate always with our federal tax expert dave walden who has many years in the industry as well as he used to work with the us treasury department and he's drafted several internal memos for them so we would certainly have the expertise to guide the district in its future bond issuances on the third slide tonight i wanted to give you a sense of our school district expertise we have represented school districts throughout california on many many bond measures as you can see myself on the past two

049election cycles i i represented school districts in california on over 45 bond measures we averaged 10 school bond closings per month in recent years and we have a local presence in santa clara county i've worked for eastside union school district for many years on their disclosure and bond deals along with my colleague chick adams i also work with a grove school district for many years as well and also campbell union high school district mountain view los altos union high school district we're currently working on a financing right now so i know the staff at santa clara county and we um they're very familiar with our offer and finally on the third slide i wanted to spend a little time really on topics that i thought might be relevant to alum rock um or just that

050are they're hot topics in the school finance area currently obviously covent has really highlighted the importance of facilities and also the new legislation regarding tk instruction so certainly when i'm turning to draft ballot measures with districts i'm always aware of maybe things that we should be thoughtful about in the facilities planning arena as well i don't just focus solely on the bond area i try to really collaborate with the district and raise questions that are thoughtful about what maybe you might consider adding on the project list is at least as a consideration one of our really great achievements over the past few years is the teacher and staff housing bonds that we have led as the count as their council there have been two voter approved geo bond issues in california and we've taken the

051lead and done the legal analysis for those issues jefferson union high school district um presented to voters a a teacher and staff housing bond and we were the bond council on that we were part of the team nationally recognized for accomplishing that project we were very familiar with the legal analysis for housing bonds we also led soledad unified school district recently on their housing bond and they were successful with that and now they are in the planning stage of their housing project they had a need to fulfill in not enough housing available for their their local teachers and staff so that filled that and for jefferson union high school district it was more of the void of too costly by the cost of having sorry that's very distracting but thank you for your presentation um

052the second part of the interview you'll be allotted 10 minutes total to answer a total of five questions that will be asked by the board each board member will ask you one question each um at this point i'll hand it off to board president to call on board members all right uh we'll start off with board members good evening uh what would you do if you didn't agree with a recommendation to the district from the fiscal advisor and can you provide an example of when you've had to do that let's see if i um um if if a client's physical advisor you mean the financial advisor or someone within the district for clarity oh your financial advisor um or physical let's say any any advice okay one of the persons on the team um i

053would be proactive in um brainstorming solutions that the client should be mindful about um and try to present options that would be um legal um and prudent um sometimes things are legal but they might be you know there might be other considerations that need to be taken into account so i i think as a group we would need to vet what what my concerns would be possibly with the proposal think about alternate solutions and really describe the risk ultimately the decisions a client makes are provided that we are 100 competent in the legal analysis we can sign on at the direction of the district and sometimes there's alternate routes to take but there are gray areas in the law at times and we have to present those gray areas to the client and we are

054clear when we do not feel comfortable giving our legal opinion um so i think it's really important that we communicate and are transparent with our concerns with our clients um trying to think about an example readily when something of that nature has happened well recently i was i was presented with a refinancing opportunity for a client but when i and i was asked to expedite it but when i dug into the documentation i saw that there was a legal issue that i believe was overlooked so even though the client had been given some assurance that we would be proceeding and presenting a documentation to the board i had to call the financial advisor and i said you know this is a legal issue please look at it again because he was an expert he's an

055expert in the area as well and i think he appreciates that he certainly was gracious that i spotted it early instead of you know maybe after the board had been presented with the information closer to closing or something of that nature would have been not good so we're very good about doing our early due diligence on our deals and try to avoid any um unplanned and unwanted results [Music] thank you has your firm worked with districts that have had challenges similar to alum rock if so what was your approach to set them up for success and what if anything would you do differently with alum rock given the specifics of our recent history and our community yeah that's a great question i'm really glad you asked it because it was one of the bullet points

056that i didn't quite get to um i uh when i received the rfp i did look more closely at alum rock and i the first thing i noticed was that you hadn't issued since 2016 which for a district of this size and with the bond measures i had to dig a little deeper to understand why that might be although i can understand when i saw the history of the qualified certification and the county um i can see that when um i do know that when um there are qualified or negative interim reports and the finances need some attention with maybe revenues and expenditures deficit spending that legal hurdles then become obstacles because there are restrictions in the education code about issuing debt under those circumstances so um i've had several clients lately have um thick

057mac proceedings that i've had to review all the all of the reports and write-ups and i've had to um for the purposes of disclosing it to potential bond investors the circumstances i've been working with up late have been not preventing the issuance yet nevertheless it's something that we have to include in investor disclosures so i'm very familiar with reviewing those proceedings honing in on what the material facts are making sure that there's full transparency to investors meeting the securities law standard of disclosing all material information to investors for them to make an informed investment decision and um so i do have experience um in that regard and i was happy to see that the you know that you have a parcel tax measure on the ballot which should um help and that that the recent

058certifications were positive so it seems like um that will be a positive picture for finally being able to issue these bonds that have been authorized by your voters thank you uh board russ president obama mr president so uh thank you very much for coming here uh today uh my question to you is in the current environment of interest rate instability what do you see as the most significant legal issue that alan rock will face when the district offers bonds for sale well in a raising um in a rising interest rate environment one of the first things i think of um in for geo bonds which is likely to be what the district would issue imminently is the tax rate projection there are certain tests that must be undertaken when bonds are issued and [Music] as

059as interest rates rise um it will mean that there's a possibility that the principal amount to be issued will have to be constrained a bit if if um by the tax rate limit of thirty dollars per hundred thousand dollar of assessed valuation so um well i don't think the interest rate environment would uh prevent the district or or stop the district from issuing it's just that rising interest rates unfortunately are just will make borrowing more costly for the district and also possibly constrain slightly how much can be issued imminently did that fully answer your question yes thank you very much all right uh what we were traveling what are the three biggest mistakes districts do when they do not take the advice of their counsel the three biggest mistakes um [Music] so i've been very

060fortunate because i think when uh issues have been presented to me in certainly in recent years of memory um that that typically mark my clients are um interested in the legal advice and generally want to do the right thing um and i think i see my role as as i kind of alluded to earlier of describing the law and when there are gray areas describing the pros and cons of certain interpretations um so um in general they listen if they um if they decide to go another course we obviously if it involved our firm rendering and legal opinion you know and we disagreed with it we would have to um let them know that we could no longer represent them in that regard and there is something called opinion shopping which is not a very

061good practice so it's nothing i would recommend but we do try to when our clients we try to be problem solvers so um it it seems like most times we can come up with a remedy regarding the financing options that satisfies everybody on the team and that's a real important thing to have a good team and i see you're going through this process with the financial advisor interviews and now tonight's and um it's really great when you have a good team that communicates well and works well together because everyone wants to feel good about the financing and be transparent and um not stay up at night worrying about anything regarding the financing all the t is crossed and all the eyes dotted thank you um has the firm ever been the subject of or been

062involved in an investigation that resulted from the work with the economy no all right thank you that concludes uh the questions of this process thank you paul for your participation at this time miss patricia tobor is going to take you back to the waiting room and patricia if you can um invite clint and simon um to come to the portland for the interview thank you thank you so much thank you [Music] nice it's like your maintenance i know right i'm like okay just the notes so that i can you know make sure the information every time i went through my morning walk and then i realized all right thank you bro president the next firm to be interviewed is quentin timing um just to refresh you with the process there's a two-part interview process uh

063the first part is a five-minute presentation that you'll be presenting to the board and then we'll go the second part when we get there um at this time poor president all right uh please go ahead sir okay good evening and thank you very much for inviting us uh to be here my name is brian quint he's my associate adam timmig and we are from the law firm of quentin timmig um our firm just last week celebrated our 25th anniversary so we've been around a little while our firm is a municipal bond council firm we don't have any other subsidiary areas of practice we're not litigators we we don't go to court if we went to court we did something wrong so we we try to not do that our practices is very diversified we are

064we represent cities counties school districts special districts in all kinds of financings for whatever they need for school districts we are we represent the school districts and financings that are cops or other lease financings general obligation bonds of course uh we have done trans although that's not very popular these days because there's no way to arbitrage your your investments and we've also done some cfds for school districts but not too many of those again our practice is diversified as bond council we also sometimes serve as an orphanage disclosure council my associate um adam here uh generally assists me in doing the disclosure council work he's very um adapted preparing all the necessary disclosure work that rep that deals with the school district about their uh laf llcf information and uh on general obligation bonds relating

065to this assessed value uh information um we have a staff that is uh what we call closers they help us with the closing transactions they are experts or that what they do is all of the uh logistical work and making sure that documents are prepared and executed by the by the issuer and we as i said for 25 years we've been doing this successfully we have been doing this my job is to do the legal work and one of the key aspects of our firm is that when you hire our firm and you hire me to be your bond counsel i'm going to do all the work i'm going to draft all of the documents i'm going to be on all of the telephone calls and i'm going to be the answer to questions we

066don't i don't have to go back and consult with anybody else because i'm a partner in the firm and i have the ability to make decisions and this way you're not we're not delegating the work to a a person who's not uh an expert in the in the area um so that that's in a nutshell that's our transact that's our our firms the way our firm operates um adam did you want to add anything to that uh we've just been doing a lot of work with um school districts around this area the campbell uh school district is one of our clients and uh we have a few others including los altos school district a lot of bay area school districts so we keep up to date on all the public finance interests and school districts

067and everything that's been going on we've reviewed um prior to this meeting a lot of your official statements and audits and continuing to store your obligations as we would if we were selected um but we try to get ourselves familiar with the alum rock school district so we've looked at the outstanding bonds you have a pretty large number of outstanding bonds about 100 million i think um and so we we try to get a little as much information about you as we could before we arrived here so we're you know happy to answer your questions when that time comes up so i i don't have anything else at this point in introduction so i thank you very much well thank you for your presentation um in the second part of the interview you'll be allotted

068a total of 10 minutes to answer total five questions from the board each board member will ask you one question each and at this point i'll hand it off to board president to call on the trustees all right we're going to get started with uh board member good evening what would you do if you didn't agree with a recommendation to the district from the fiscal advisor and can you provide an example of when you've had to do well obviously the roles are different the financial advisor is has a role to provide financial advice to a district our role is to provide the legal advice to the district so in general we don't get involved in a decision a financial decision because the financial advisor is usually the expert in that area however if the if

069the financial advisor was advising the district do something that we thought was wrong or not to the advantage of the district or detrimental to the district i believe that we would um raise the issue with it with the district representatives and let them know that we um we disagreed with that with that answer that was given by the financial advisor and when it comes to the securities disclosure side of the practice we believe fully open and transparent explain everything that is absolutely the standard um so if the financial advisor advised against disclosing something about the district that we thought was it was material to an investor we would we would raise that question the the what we've experienced that we've had in the past is the thing that you omitted from the disclosure is the

070thing that will get you in trouble down the road so if we if the advice from the financial advisor was you know don't put that in the offering document you don't want to tell them about that we would disagree completely in our role as disclosure council because again as adam indicated the idea is to be totally transparent and make sure that all information that an investor might know want to know they know because if the transaction went wrong that one thing that you admitted is what they're going to point to thank you uh thank you has your firm worked with districts that have had challenges similar to alum rock if so what was your approach to set them up for success what if anything would you do differently with alum rock given the specifics of

071our recent history and our community um we've been working with a city in southern california that was a part of the state's high risk audit program we've obviously been reading the news about ellen rock and in that case we fully disclosed everything we included links to the state audit report in uh the official statement for the bonds and we uh worked with the city to set up a website where investors could come to get updates as the city dealt with the issues raised in the state's high-risk audits so again we fully believe disclose everything the more open and honest you can be and then talk about corrective measures for any issues that might have happened uh we think is the way to go we think the investors will understand and appreciate the candor also with

072regard to that and that's the disclosure council side of it the mind council side of it is our role is to make sure that your transactions are completely legal and we are we want to be conservative particularly in the area of general obligation bonds because the bonds are being paid by the taxpayers and we want to make sure that everything is absolutely correct as far as that goes and we will let you know where we think something needs to be done that is we would advise you against doing anything that we thought was questionable uh we would always go on the side of conservatism we we are we're known to be um to be uh finding areas to be unique and to find the right way to do it but we would never offer anything

073that we thought was going to be questionable as far as the legal the law was concerned thank you uh board vice president thank you mr president and thank you for coming here tonight uh my question to your firm is in the current environment of interest rate instability what do you see is the most significant legal issue that alum rock will face when the district offers bonds for sale well the the interest rate environment is quite volatile at the moment although we are still in historically low interest rates uh in the last couple of months uh obviously events of the world whether it be covid or the war in ukraine have affected the markets in general so interest rates have risen recently as a result but again overall rates are still historically low our advice would

074be if you need to borrow money because you have projects you should go ahead and get into the market we would not recommend you wait and try to see if rates are going to go better or worse if you need the money you should do it you should go into the market and do it so that would be our advice on the other hand if there wasn't any urgent need then i would suggest that you you wait i mean the idea here is that you go to the if the if the district has authorized bonds because it needs projects i wouldn't hesitate to tell you to go ahead and issue bonds in that in this environment thank you very much uh board member travis what are the three biggest mistakes districts do when they do

075not take the advice of their council well in general in general they take our advice um i don't know that we've had very many experiences where the a district completely ignored our advice um i think that it would depend upon the severity of that that ignoring of our advice i mean certainly we would they do everything that we could to prevent them from going down that road like i said before our job is to make sure that the that our that your bonds are bulletproof to the extent that we can and if we thought that you were doing something that was going to be problematic for you or even illegal i i think we would say don't do it you can't do it and we would not be willing to render our legal opinion which

076is obviously a critical part of the bond transaction in order to close the deal i i can't tell you that i can think of the situation where a district completely wanted to go against our advice but as you indicated in that example well i think that we would do everything that we could to to talk him out of it and depending on the severity of severity of it we would we would decline to provide our opinion if we thought that it was legally questionable um we would just again we would do everything we could to talk to district out of it thank you uh has the firm ever been the subject of thank you at this time miss patricia toma will be taking you back to the waiting room and patricia if you can invite

077uh our last firm straddling thank you very much thank you board members dr brewer yes okay um hello everybody [Music] thank you president uh our last firm to be interviewed is straddling um and just a reminder of the process there's two parts to the interview uh the first part uh you'll be allotted a total of five minutes to present to the board uh the second part i'll cover that when we get there and at this point i'll hand it off to what president okay good evening everyone my name is carlos i'm a shareholder at straddling yoga carlson and ralph based in the san francisco office so i'll tell you a little bit about myself a little bit about the firm in our history with the district and then just a few highlights from the rfp

078response obviously five minutes won't be covering a lot of it um so for myself i've been doing public finance work for 14 years almost all of it exclusively with school districts and community college districts um doing a variety of borrowings for them general obligation bonds leases trans melloroos districts anything really that a school district might do i've done went to school at boston university undergraduate at uc davis i'm a fluent spanish speaker so that's available to the district as well um in terms of the firm uh straddling is a west coast based fund about 100 plus lawyers 32 of which practice public finance and that's representing public agencies of all sizes and shapes and persuasions so cities counties water districts the state of california again if you can think of any type of financing that

079a public agency might do the firm has experience doing that um we have been bond counsel to alan rock for over 20 years since the early 90s starting with david casinoka who is the head of our education practice and who unfortunately couldn't be here tonight and i myself have been doing work for the district for several years um and in that capacity we did a lot of different types of things for the district we wrote both measure i and measure g and have done general obligation bond issuances refundings leases we wrote your last parcel tax measure and i know that you have a renewal on the ballot so good luck with that as well as doing trainings for your bond oversight committee and sitting through numerous board meetings um so we do have all of

080the records associated with the district's bond issuances and are able to provide sort of historical knowledge of some of the prior decisions that were made um so in terms of highlighting a few of the things from our rp response really i just wanted to point out some of the rankings that are discussed in here specifically that we are the number two bond council in california based on the number of transactions you might have gotten some other statistics in the way earlier today those might be generated based on something else the size of bond issues or something like that but in terms of the number of transactions we're number two we're number one in disclosure council which is the preparation of the offering document for bond issuances again based on the number of transactions um and

081based on the number of transactions we also do more deals than any other firm in california the reason why i think that's relevant for you is that our experiences bond council and disclosure council doing so many financings uh has exposed us to a wide variety of school districts of all sizes different types of communities and districts that have different stories to tell every district is different and we do have a lot of experience on the disclosure side communicating the kinds of information that alanaka's likely have going to have to communicate when it does its next bond issue and our ranking as um [Music] underwriters council and bond council and disclosure council means that other participants in the marketplace so underwriting banks bond insurance companies they they understand our expertise in the area and rely upon

082it and i think in terms of effectuating deals efficiently and working well with the municipal advisor that you selected the underwriters that you might select um i think our experience in our sort of gravitas in the area i think would be beneficial to the district um so we have very much enjoyed serving as bond council to the district for so many years and we hope that we are able to continue to do so thank you for your presentation um the second part of the interview you will be allotted a total of 10 minutes to answer total of five questions okay each board member will ask us uh one question each and at this point i'll hand it over to what president to call on the board members all right we'll start with a board good

083evening good evening what would you do if you don't agree with the recommendation to the district from the fiscal advisor and can you provide an example when you've had to do this um i don't know that i've ever disagreed with a fiscal advisor um certainly there have been instances where they've recommended more conservative um approaches than perhaps the district was considering um so i think we would seek to inform the fiscal advisor as to what the district's reasons are for selecting a particular financing method or a structure uh because oftentimes um there are nuances associated with you know the legal constraints of districts or under or the types of things that the statute allows you to do that the fiscal advisor might not be aware of so we discussed in our rfp response how we

084sometimes have to be advocates for the district and we would do our best i think to convince the fiscal advisor that what the district is doing is is sound uh board member thank you has your firm worked with districts that have had challenges similar to alum rock if so what was your approach to set them up for success and what if anything would you do differently with alum rock given the specifics of our recent history and our community so we do have a quite a bit of experience working with districts and i guess i'll call it that have challenging stories to tell sometimes those challenges are fiscal in nature because the district is either facing insolvency or something like that and sometimes it's more operational or practice types issues so for example we represent inglewood

085unified that's under state trusteeship their principal problems are depleted reserves and declining enrollment we also represent sacramento city unified which right now has uh is potentially facing insolvency and um [Music] um a state trusteeship as well your story is a little bit different but i think the approach would be the same to work aggressively to tell the story from beginning to end so that the official statement that we produce shows not only where you started but what the district has done to remedy its you know practices and procedures thank you uh board vice president bob thank you mr president uh my question to your firm is in the current environment of interest rate instability what do you see as the most significant issue that alum rock will face when the district offers bonds for sale

086i think it will be uh working to secure a credit rating upgrade because interest rates are going up and so a higher credit rating will mean lower interest rates relative to um you know lower credit ratings so i do think the rating process is going to be critical to communicate effectively to the rating agencies what path the district has set itself on and i know that there was some confusion on the part of the rating ages in the past particularly when the district lost its um fiscal independence status was a lot of confusion about that and what it really meant so i think communicating effectively the rating agencies understanding that communications with them are governed by the same rules as the offering document federal securities laws um i think is going to be you know

087one of the things that we have to really focus on in issue bonds thank you very much uh what are the three biggest mistakes districts do when they do not take the advice of council oh boy that's a tough one um i would say not understanding that there are different viewpoints um uh on one particular financing so your financial advisor or your underwriter might say it's a great time to sell bonds interest rates are low but do you have the expectation to spend these bond proceeds in accordance with the federal income tax regulations um that apply so not not understanding that there are different viewpoints i think is one relatedly siloing yourself and only running a bond issue through one of the consultants and not involving the team i think lends itself to making decisions

088that can be a little bit myopic all right and has your firm ever been the subject or been involved in an investigation that resulted from the work with the equipment to my knowledge no the firm has never been uh the subject of a malpractice action or an enforcement action relating to work that we did all right thank you thank you uh at this time miss patricia tomorrow will take you back to the way while we talk about the score so everybody received a link from would you like us to invite the firms back into the boardroom when we reveal the score or after um what's the world board uh do you want to go ahead and proceed with your degrading and then have them come in after we've uh revealed the score they wanted to

089thank you is that how we've done it in the past good question i think so um i think last time there were some those afterwards uncertainty and so we probably don't want to go ahead and follow that process let's follow the process of the operation [Music] yeah like give them some time to oh got what was the suggestion justin was to go ahead and reveal it uh once again they're here to see it revealed so have them come in and then just do it in like in real time when they're all there that's what i understood yes yeah i like that thank you hmm we'll say i hit submit once and then it didn't give me the did it go twice no okay i hit it once and it's time to do it again i

090see you've done two three um yes well yes uh-huh i have two more left is that correct yes okay because i hit submit but it didn't on this fourth one well let's see there finally went through and then one left correct okay yes jose can you confirm receipt of my submissions i know there was problems last time okay just let me know if something doesn't go through but i've submitted all of them i think on my end [Music] yeah i submitted my score so i'm just waiting to see helping you know how the scoring will go oh yeah before we reveal it should be here from everyone i i got mine right here it's all right what was that i couldn't hear i can't hear what do you think can you repeat the thing you

091submitted for um lee southern okay let me try it again and john and jones hall okay i just did them let me know if they go through is going to take you a while to put everything together yeah oh no yeah would you be able to get them that way they can we just need do they have mine from quan hawkins which one is missing i just did the quan one which one is missing okay we're good they got it got all of them yes okay perfect thank you [Music] i'm walking down the hallways it takes one 30th and may 1st i'll send them to all of you guys hopefully you can make it yes they're gonna have us we couldn't we couldn't replicate the world cup because there's all kinds of you know they're

092they're finding like the biggest trophy they're calling you know [Music] so thank you all again for joining us in the boardroom um we wanted to bring you back in so we can display the scores on the screen right here so you can see for yourself and jose will you do the honor so those are the scores as you can see welcome to move up um it appears that jones hall scored the highest uh with 99 points so again thank you all for for participating in this process [Music] thank you for participating yes thank you thank you everyone thank you everyone all right uh we still have some business to take care of so uh we've taken public comments already during the course of this item and so we will go ahead and move on to

093item oh well no actually then formally take action to adopt this um the results of the vote do i have a motion to do it um give me a second do i have a motion to uh move forward with uh jones hall as our bond council motion to move forward with the appointment of jones paul as bond council i got a motion by board vice president second second from board member um is there any questions or comments from the board see none then i'll go ahead and call for a vote as i see you on well as i see you physically here on the screen board member uh board restaurant aye board uh member behind them hi uh board member and with myself 49 motion is unanimous all right we'll go ahead and move on

094to item 2.02 uh previous municipal advisor service to the green contract with yale scott and company dr bauer do you want to go yes uh dear board members this is as a result of the work that the workforce housing um community is doing and i think that dell is here if he i don't know if we can um basically this is a contract to call the community to be able to to see whether there is an interest in the community regarding the work called workforce housing and he is also going to call the staff to see if there's interest and um that's that's the concept for tonight all right so that's a pretty good explanation um let's uh board members want to hear from uh oh there you go um uh do you have anything

095further down uh than the dr dr powers uh description no i think that was exactly what is going to occur all right um all right i'll go ahead and change uh the comments this time those wishes please go ahead and indicate by raising your hand we're president i don't see anybody um raising their hand for public comment all right given that there's no indication forward uh with comments from members of the board any comments remember to reward on this item uh [Music] uh i think uh it's a great um move you know in the discussions that we've been having i know that um thank you trust me or by uh thank you board president quintero for bringing the idea forward um you know i think it's a great idea but i think it's definitely important

096to hear from those that you know would be um obviously uh housing or possibly you know um being the ones to to use the service and so i think um for that reason and many more it's important to hear from them early on and so i like this idea thank you um dr bauer and dell for bringing this forward um i will be supporting it uh okay restaurant yes and also yes i i want to concur uh you know let's face it the cost it costs a lot to live here and that we're going to be able to retain talent and you know keep our teachers from uh [Music] you know moving out of the district uh it's very important that you know we do what we can to support our teachers and you know

097in a sense uh you know do what we can to uh address you know to do the best we can to address the issue of the cost of living you know as a school district though i you know though it is something that uh you know we should have a definitely have a regional solution to it but you know in the absence of that i i think that outreach to our community is something worthwhile as we uh you know take our own steps in addressing a very serious need further comments from members of the board all right so you know that i'll go ahead and wrap up with my own comments i'm very appreciative of the fact that as part of the process in our discussion uh with regard to this item uh topic of

098teacher and workforce housing that we're uh ensuring that out of an abundance of caution and just out of the principles of transparency that we've adopted as a board that we are going out there and making sure that this isn't something that uh the board is driving but instead it is something that um the public clearly uh uh is supportive of as well as um that our uh personnel or staff for teachers faculty everyone um is uh that they indicate that they actually need it and that they are willing to participate in it and so when the information that we derive we'd be able to go ahead and determine if it's uh why it's important to move forward and so this is the reason why we're moving in this this fashion i and i and it

099i uh want to make sure that we you know make note of the fact that this is part of a a process that is somewhat different from previous uh actions that the the previous boards had taken in the past and that it's indicative of this new nature and new strategy new style of the almond school board that we're here tonight holding a meeting that in the past would have just been decided in a very very quick fashion uh but i'm very appreciative of the deliberate manner in which we're um we're dealing with things uh and uh making sure that it's being done out here in the public and so thank you uh for the board for for this opportunity to ensure that we have all the information that we need uh so we can know

100if it's the right decision to make it so looking forward to the findings so that uh the board can make a an informed decision if we choose to make a decision um and so with that said i'm going to go ahead and call you as i see you we'll go ahead and call for a call um yeah is there no okay we've got the public comment already um and so i'm going to go ahead and ask for a motion motion by uh board member uh do i have a second a second second the second by board member uh the motion i haven't been uh i mean and made and then seconded and i'll go ahead and call and call for a vote as i see you um board of vice president pump hi [Music] motion

101passes 4-1 with chavez voting in dissenting all right i'll go ahead and move over to item 3.10 the approval of school sponsor field trip list dr bauer do you want to go and talk to us about this item uh very briefly um want to we're going back to some normalcy and we're asking the board to support these field trips that our teachers are preparing for our students we are gonna follow uh pretty much you know the the same um requirements in terms of getting you know buzz with a mask and but other than that we really are looking forward for our students to go to some bad back to some normalcy with that all right i'll go ahead and open it up for comments from members of the public do we have comments from members

102of the public if so please indicate by writing your hat go ahead and give it a few minutes or a few seconds all right seeing none then i'm going to go ahead and move forward with members of conference members of the board well remember yes thank you um i just had a quick question i guess for dr bauer i know there's been um an email or two i think one came in this afternoon that i didn't have a chance to read yet but i'm just wondering um if this particular item covers some of those questions that we've been receiving or are those questions um things that we'll need to handle kind of offline separate from this item uh that is a specific um question that we're going to be addressing with our management team and

103the principles tomorrow but it's basically along the lines so this is a a different field trip remember that um each school is gonna starting to prepare their own list of field trips as the year progresses so i believe this is um a specific field trip that is going to occur in april 13 which is the day before the board meeting so in order to be compliant and in order to be on time this particular field trip i brought to your consideration to um to adhere to the rules okay so whatever we happen to decide on this one tonight doesn't have any particular impact on the other situation not yet because those are going to be brought to the board later on okay thank you all right uh board vice president yes i'm you know thank

104you mr president i'm excited to see field trips come back i think it's a testament to the uh you know waning pandemic and you know the fact that we can safely uh allow our students to have uh hands-on learning experiences so i'll be definitely voting in favor of this item thank you all right uh board uh word clerk [Music] thank you um seem to uh vice president fam as a mother of a seventh grader you know i think i took for granted right field trips back in the days and do i go as a chaperone or do i not um so it's great great to be back here um and you know being able to talk about field trips um and you know definitely approving uh grateful for you know the parents and uh ptas

105and all of those that um fundraise and and you know get together to see what kind of field trips are gonna have and the teachers and administration thank you for your work because it's definitely um i think one of those outside of classrooms right where our kids sometimes learn more um or added to what they're learning um in class you know to have hands-on activities um so i'm happy to support and i'm just for transparency reasons and i know i talked to dr bauer and i know we'll be discussing it um i know uh board um member veterano mentioned already i know there were some questions about transportation and um having options and so i'm glad that we'll be discussing that in the future or that you know management already has that i know i've

106talked to dr bauer thank you for addressing some of those and thank you um to those who are uh looking out for the best interest of our children and our you know funds um so that we're able to to take our children to as many field trips as we can but yeah i look forward to supporting this as well uh board member travis uh dr bauer could you please um tell the public where the field trips are going to take place this particular one is on your um for the problem i i i just uh the backup and i apologize i'm in uh item port 3.01 which is posted on our website and it's freely available uh to go ahead and determine that uh so i think you have uh mr sanchez knows where the

107kids are gonna go and i apologize to the public i usually have my board dogs in front of me uh mr president i there's this rise uh you know everybody knows where our children at what time they're going to be there is probably not prudent um and if somebody really wants to know then they should come in and inquire or they can look on the website um and so i'm not sure um okay you know there's there's these are these are children they're traveling out to another site um and so but yeah if uh if there's an interest to disclose this then people can go go to the website it's publicly available there um i'm not trying to keep anything coming from here but you know to to uh to put it out there in

108in in uh in a manner that's on on the internet um maybe it's not prudent there are children that are going to be traveling out there and we don't know who's interested in finding out where they're at what time they're going to be there i'm not sure what the world's worth it's publicly available if somebody wants to see if they'll go find it thank you for president all right can i apologize uh board member um you know yes i just want i mean you know is it really necessary to do you know given you know given that you know we are talking about our children and there are you know sometimes there is a we don't know how some people will react i mean you know the question is you know this field trip is

109you know has been made public but you know i mean i'm just trying to wrap my head around why it's why trusty chavez finds it necessary to disclose the time of the field trip also okay can i say something uh yes um i didn't ask for the time the only thing i i guess i want clarification is if it's going to be overnight or just um a regular field trip during the day i didn't want full disclosure and everything like that uh we have to protect the kids my only interest was uh if it's gonna be an overnight one or a local one and if it's gonna be within the same day thank you that i can answer that's what i always wanted i thought you wanted to know where no okay so that is

110a local one it's not overnight okay thank you that's all i don't know and so just for full disclosure sometimes there's custody battles in their situations yes um necessity to protect their children uh all right um is there any further dialogue or comments questions from the board i've seen them then i'll go ahead and finish it off with some of my comments i'm personally excited for the field trips i've been lobbied by one particular elementary school student who has been uh very very excited about getting back and going on field trips that are you know i've enjoyed the chaperone in the past as well and so uh the energy is um actually you know very very um you know you can feel it you know that that bus is loud and uh it's uh it's

111it's more when we're we're moving on there especially appreciate the ones that we take full advantage of our local public transportation that you know allow children to sometimes who don't use it to now experience our public transportation here in uh santa clara county and so hopefully we have a variety of opportunities for our children to experience a lot of things that we have here a lot of the um the museums and stuff that sort that we regularly go to as part of our field trip so very excited um was there a motion did i take a motion i think not yet emotional proof motion by the war vice president uh second by uh board member chavez if there's no further questions or comments from the board then i'll go ahead and um call for a

112vote if they see you uh board vice president aye or uh clerk all right um moving on to item [Music] um item 4.01 the approval of contracts for professional services firms and organizations still have a motion to approve this item motion all right uh there's been a motion in a second i'll go ahead and i'll take my comments from members of the public is there any comments from members of the public if there is so communicate by raising your hand there's no um members of the police that wish to speak for um board president all right there be no members of the public wishes people go ahead and proceed back to comments from members of work any comments seeing none then i'll go ahead and i'll call for well let me let me close off

113with some comments uh we are approving the need and the use of a firm that provides uh alarm services and is indicative of the situation we face in east san jose and all of san jose that we're having to go out there and get a firm that's providing these services due to the fact that we're under attack our facilities are being uh continually uh burglars and it is leading to some serious issue with regard to our our operations uh the safety and security of our facilities and so this you know i think it uh speaks to the wider issues that we have here in the city and the importance for for the resources to be steered in the appropriate direction uh to ensure that we have a a community that's safe and secure and so

114um i am i am going to support this item and then we need a a firm that's uh out there looking out for our our facilities to ensure that uh the resources that the taxpayers are putting forward are being protected so with that i'll go ahead and call for a vote as i see um unless there's further comments members of the board female then i'll call you board vice president founder aye board uh clerk aye board uh board members aye board member i don't know hi with myself we're not in motion uh past unanimously thank you so much all right at this point uh i'll go ahead and i'll adjourn this meeting at 8 00 pm thank you have a good one everyone good night everyone