Special Board Meeting

001madam board president i think board vice president is here but needs to be promoted to a panelist esta carmelina then for those of you joining us for english if you can um go down on zoom and if you um highlight over the bottom next to uh the different options you have there you will see what looks like a world click on that and please go to english so that we um can make sure that you have the all the information and audio um that that you need for to join us tonight so if you're here for spanish carmelina gave the directions for spanish and if you're here for english please click on english thank you so much now we're going to go ahead and move on to roll call marielle can you help us with

002roll call please today is a special board meeting of april 29th 2021 at 6 00 pm members of the board in attendance president corina president vice president andres quintero president clerk here member linda chavez president member mim pham president members of administration superintendent dr bauer president great thank you um now if you can all join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america america to the republic of which it stands one nation under god god indivisible great um and just want to um uh focus today's meeting or um i know every meeting i want to uh start it with some intention and so today i just want to think of our youth who are struggling um for one reason or another um that they find

003uh balance and harmony and wellness that they get the help and support they need um any parents are out there that might be struggling with their youth know that their support in our schools um we have the social emotional uh learning specialists mental health specialists um available to support so please find the help that you need for your child if they need it thank you so much and now we're going to move on to item two public members who wish to address the board this is to inform our public that we will have an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on any of the items are listed on today's agenda so if you haven't prepared your uh speech yet you know and you want to address us this is uh the

004time to start preparing we will have that opportunity in the near future for you to address us on any of the matters coming up um and then with that um going to go ahead and open it up to our first agenda item uh item 301 facilities for purposing advisory committee update ms bauer is that something that you're going to present or do we have somebody else i will be introducing to the board and to our public mr vanessa sanchez co-chair of the facilities advisory repurposing committee and mr r han who was also um a support to the committee in terms of bringing some some parameters you know for the work that they needed to do so i'm going to turn it over to mr sanchez thank you great welcome thank you dr bauer i'm board

005president members of the board thank you for giving us the time to share this report with you before i get started and share the report i will ask uh mr art hand who was helping support the process um to share with us an overview of the work that took place over the last three months so mr ardhan okay uh can you guys hear me yes yes okay all right no video so just fyi um so thank you uh board members for the opportunity to come and speak to united and thank you for the opportunity to um be a part of the facility repurposing advisory committee or the frac as we like to call it uh in its acronym in its acronym form um for the past three months the facility repurposing advisory committee has met

00611 times with one community forum to discuss alternative school site use options exercise that's driven by the district's continued declining enrollment and the need to address the corresponding budgetary concerns that were created by the problem uh in support of this effort the nine-member committee was provided access to data important to their work and that data included uh 2021 demographics enrollment projections as prepared by schoolworks inc for the district facility specific needs assessment information uh going back to studies that pretend in the 2018 school year and reviewed all school sites uh facility purposing overviews including facility utilization five-year summary school site operational cost analysis and a comparison of repurposing options uh also presented to the committee facility representations facility repurposing information updates and finally additional facility repurposing information and considerations is necessary to help us bring

007the the process to a conclusion and throughout the process there was much significant debate uh that was centered on the decision to either recommend the closure facilities uh the development of income generating repurposing options or a combination of both in conjunction with um important community input very important community input the committee struggled to formulate a set of final recommendations that would assist the district in its fiscal management efforts in the end their decision was to recommended that no schools be closed but instead that aggressive efforts be undertaken to establish community program partnerships that result in income streams which could offset the need for the cost savings normally associated with with the closure of existing campuses a partial listing of some of these income generating options were health clinics daycare for all ages from infants to

008adults community support tech centers senior housing alternate education uses such as community college and higher education satellite locations community awareness and support programs uh specific health education programs community arts programs home for perhaps vapa programs sustainable chemistry opportunities through business partnerships teacher housing non-profit use opportunities and construction industry apprentice program and training sites that's just a few of the things that were mentioned uh in the uh the discussions are held uh by the committee through the the course of their three months of work the committee specific ideas are contained in the film report which of course the people will receive here in a few moments tonight but lastly uh before we go to that report i would like to just say that uh and commend both the committee and district staff as they serve with

009what i would call admirable and focused diligence as they work through this very very difficult assignment with that i'd like to turn it over to mr sanchez who will give you a review of the final report you're muted mr sanchez sorry about that that's okay if i can ask either uh maribel or avtar to please share the the report that i shared with them earlier if they can bring it up and i will walk um the board in the community through the report okay give us a second thank you you could scroll up a little bit thank you so we presented we shared with you this report and this captures the recommendations of the lmroc elementary union school district facilities repurposing advisory committee in the report you have an introduction that outlines the education code

010that defines the advisory committee its composition and its charge the committee was made up of nine members brandy salcido who is a district advisory committee member if you could scroll up to the next page araceli ortiz who represents dlac the district english learn advisory committee alberto torres who is part of spark the superintendent's parent advisory resource council jocelyn murse from area alumni educators association brenda sanders um csea california school employee association edgar gudiel teamsters local 150 maria martinez araa alam rock administrators association ray turner community at large and natalie ball community at large these were the members who worked with us through those 11 meetings um this was not an easy task um if you could scroll up um to the next section you'll see all the meetings when we met with individuals and as

011you can see we started this process back in january and we concluded just recently um this week so in here um you have the 11 meetings and one thing to highlight we did hold a community forum where we gathered input from the community and that was on march 25th if we could go to the next page as art shared with you um there was a lot of data that was presented um to the committee members a lot of different reports um all of that information was made available to them and to the public we had a a link in the district website where all that information was held people were able to access it videos of the actual meetings themselves were also there so that the public could access them if you could scroll up

012a little bit through the discussion um we talked about and brought the names forward of many schools uh for possible repurposing for possible closures for partial uh repurposing or for full repurposing and the list is right below that if you could scroll up maribel so all of these schools were discussed right for either partial repurposing or full repurposing and this was part of the discussion um through all those meetings next page we also had a list of different repurposing ideas that were brought up um and i shared some of those already with you health clinics um at the time homeless shelters day care facilities community support tech center senior housing alternate education the possibility of selling properties discussion around sustainable income streams opportunities through business partnerships teacher housing nonprofit use working with the construction industry

013all of these things were discussed as possible ideas for repurposing um at the end we came to the committee came to our recommendation if you could scroll up please and i will read this uh recommendation in full um and starting with a based on the current projected declines in enrollment and the extent of underutilization and operational costs and impacts to the district's budget and financial resources the advisory committee recommends that the board of trustee declare consider declaring the following sites or portions thereof as surplus all sites that have unoccupied space which can be for alternative purposes closing the facility to school use priority list of use of surplus space and real property the advisory committee recommends that the board of trustees consider the following priority list of uses of surplus real property and facilities early

014start intervention programs day care for all ages including those of staff trade apprenticeship programs adult education classes technology support neighborhood empowerment evergreen extension classes other alternative education and fourth special education county programs as appropriate under section c limits of tolerance of use of space and real property the advisory committee recommends that the board of trustee consider the following limits of tolerance when considering the use of district surplus and real property do not sell properties do not allow vacancy that would permit charter school takeover no homeless support activities follow board policy regarding lease options for any surplus property parentheses no long-term leases no adult industries liquor sales cannabis sales no activity that creates toxic waste which could impact the community recommended uses of surplus space and real property the advisory committee recommends that the board of

015trustees that the district surplus property be used for the following use any unoccupied space at elementary schools for day care before and after school for all ages and expanded preschool offerings use other unoccupied middle or elementary school space for adult education trade school programs health care centers community college extension programs community agriculture garden programs and third maxa used as a community college extension program site and this was the recommendation of the committee in that report you will also find if you scroll up um please mariel the appendix a which is the the written recommendations that's provided by individual committee members and these were some of the ideas that individuals from the committee brought forward throughout the process so in there you'll have a collection of those and some of them have multiple iterations so they

016adjusted they adapted their thoughts their ideas and those were shared there and the last section appendix b is the final presentation to the committee uh which includes background data that was shared on multiple locations with everyone and we wanted to be able to provide a comprehensive report that really truly captured the work because there was a lot of work that was put into this um the committee members um put a lot of thought they had a lot of ideas and this is um what they concluded at the end so with that i close that section and i'll open it up for questions board thank you thank you so much before we open it up for questions concerns from the board we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment at this time carlos moran

017if you can help us with members of the public wishing to address the board at this time hello board president at this time we have two speakers first speaker is i'm sorry uh first speaker is liz sanchez liz sanchez please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi good evening members of the board i am a parent and family community member and also committee member of the arust ethnic studies program and i'm here to show my support um in in not in closer enclosure of the schools but repurposing um for the maxwell youth center to become a community college extension or something that enriches the programs that we already have in place and for the daycare programs to continue in the elementary schools so i am in full support of that and

018any other community who wish to continue to support that um i hope they do voice their opinion here tonight so thank you again for having this meeting thank you next speaker is adrian vane adrian vayne please immute yourself when you begin the timer when you excuse me when you begin speaking the timer will begin uh hello my name is adrian vane and i'm a teacher at george middle school and now is not the time to close schools we've already students have already been disrupted we don't want to disrupt them anymore we've seen through this pandemic how much our community needs us we need a place where parents can access technology where kids have a place to stay the committee has been meeting for three months and it's i would be extremely disappointed if you completely

019ignored what the committee said and decided to close these schools our kids have already gone through enough and you know they haven't been in school for a year plus and to have that uprooted again this is not the time you know we we what we strive to make things better for them and this is an opportunity to make things better for our community and i really think we need to think of this big picture of how the community how we can best serve the community and our kids and i don't believe that closing schools right now is the right time especially since we're not sure what the um what we're going to have to deal with next year what the class sizes are going to be currently i have over 150 kids i have 30

020kids in each class what if they say i can only have 15. if we close sites there's not going to be room for us to have those kids in only 15 kids in a class so i think this is not the time right now and thank you for listening to me i appreciate everything you do thank you next speaker is steven sarate stephen saratha you have two minutes please and mute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi there my name is stephen i am a parent to a student in fisher middle school i voiced my concerns in the past to the board and uh to the principal of the school and which i've realized and uh in person seeing how there has been a mismanagement comes down to facilities and uh housing

021is that we need a budget overhaul we need to understand what it is that we're spending our money on who we're contracting our uh work to and how it is that we're doing our business practices to better serve the children and the communities around us not just spending money to spend money and uh you know putting our allocations towards trying to uh in a sense uh stellar work to [Music] some of these charter schools um i must i will not be sending my child to learn songs as her suggestion [Music] i think that closed fisher middle school is a bad idea um or from many teachers themselves that just say what i spoke right now um some is going to be harming and i really hate to see this happen but if this is going

022to be the prostate problem i think you're going about it the wrong way um maybe some uh ideas of what we can do uh he's the experience that we have in our communication that we're in now but again a terrible idea to close the school so i think that we can go about it a better way thank you mr sadate uh mr moran if i can just let mr zarate know it was a little choppy and we got the gist of it we got most of it um but he's more than welcome to also send his statement via email to us um just to make sure that we didn't miss any part of his statement i know the internet um you know these ways you can have technical difficulties so i just want to make

023sure to give them that opportunity thank you mr martin thank you board president next speaker is randy barber mr barber you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin dear board thank you for listening tonight i stand with the recent previous speakers and urge you please this is not the time to close down schools this is the time to be creative and to repurpose there are a lot of good ways to go about that you've got a lot of support in that area i truly am in the bigger picture of things uh afraid that it would be catastrophic to to close a site in the expectations of students moving to another recommended alum rock site i think i think what we would be doing would be accelerating our loss

024of students not staunching the flow so again i urge you please to consider the repurposing committee's recommendation for some creative repurposing uh you've got a lot of people in support of this and uh we really hope that that is uh where you choose to go with this so again thank you very much and i yield my time thank you next speaker is rosa sapolvada mr povera please yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi good afternoon my name is roses polvida thank you to the members of the board i have three children enrolled in the school district and i believe that it's completely inappropriate to consider closing schools down in the middle of a pandemic what message does the district want to send to our children and community members does the district really

025want to hold want to hand our children to charter schools on a silver platter do they want a mass exodus of children leaving the district thereby creating a greater deficit um where's the equity in the marginalized communities um with that being said you know it's important to consider that these schools they create a community and family environment they develop relationships and how are these relationships going to be maintained moving forward if our kids and families are being made to understand and believe that they really don't matter that their voices don't matter um you know what are the ratios of students to staff going to be um once the kids go back to school uh with with schools being closed down that's gonna create less space for our children to be uh able to maintain adequate

026social distance and you know honestly as a parent i'm concerned that you know given that i have a child with special needs i am worried that my child will get lost in a bigger school setting i don't believe that it's appropriate at this point to close anything down as other parents have said it's better for the district to consider looking at their budget and seeing what other areas can be trimmed and not necessarily in schools we need these schools as safe zones for our children for their after-school activities for their extended learning opportunities just please consider all of these all of these ideas that i've presented um in the interest of our children thank you thank you mr moran can i say something before we go to our next speaker i apologize for interrupting um

027just want to remind our community that we are on item 301 um and we are uh having public comment on the presentation that both speakers just finished recently um and in there there's no recommendation i think to close so just want to remind our our public that we are on item 301 right now and then we will be going to 302 um as soon as we're done with this item thank you next speaker is mrs castillo mrs castillo pl you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello my name is sonic spear i am a parent of fisher middle school i um compare a pta president also in spark meetings with uh mrs barr but um i just wanted to say um that yeah i agree with everybody

028else it is not the time to um close schools it's um better to use them in other ways because um for example my daughter would be very effective i mean going up epidemic having to not be able to see her friends go to a new school not know where any of her friends are going if the friends are going to be there having new teachers being in um more classrooms that are going to be more crowded because eventually the students are going to be more packing more classes um not knowing what is going to be expected how the school looks and the parents i'm kind of confused too it's like i don't even know what to do if i want her to go to renaissance or not um you know i don't know much of

029that school and if i had a choice could i put her in another school yes so then i would have to look into that information too i mean it's we already have enough to deal with this epidemic i mean they're not even asking either our kids cannot get back to you because they're underage so you're putting all these kids in other schools where they're going to be more impacted in we got to think about that too um yeah i it's not the time to close any schools and it's uh especially when when this epidemic is going on still it's not over you know we just got a cure yes but um it's not over yet and our kids cannot get the best scene that's another thing you gotta think so they're gonna be all impactful

030um they can get anxiety they already have it as it is i mean their expectations when they go back to school is to be able to see their friends and their teachers again and to go to another school it's like starting all over again for each one of them and that's just not the way to go back to school yet so thank you for your time and listening to my opinion thank you next speaker is miss loewy chloe you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin when you begin speaking the timer will begin can you hear me carlos hello yes i'm sorry to interrupt just really quickly um to president comments a minute ago so i just want to make sure that i'm clear on this this because this is a special board

031meeting um public comment right now is it or my thought is that or my understanding is that um any public comment can be over any of the items tonight over so public comment is not necessarily item per item but i just want to make sure that the list and we're clear on whether or not public comment in this section is to any item on the agenda or specifically each item will have public comment because i know in special meetings special board meetings it's typically at least testing um they could comment on anything on the agenda so i just wanted to get clarity on that good question but i know i did confirm with our uh council rojo ruiz um and we are right now just speaking to item 301 um the notice on two was

032just to alert the members of the public that they will have an opportunity to speak on the items coming up and so that's why that message was there but right now we are just speaking to item 301 uh the report that was given um from the uh committee so hopefully that clarifies that yes thank you for that party i'm sorry for the interruption no worries thank you again miss miss louie you have two minutes please mute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi um my name is kathy louie i teach at sheppard middle school um i was at pala the year that it closed um and i know we're not i'm i'm a little confused if we're going to be able to talk about 3.02 after this but i just want to

033mention that my kids went through a lot i was a sixth grade teacher there and my kids were went through a lot with that school closing um and i know some of them didn't end up going to shepherd i i went back to shepherd i started at shepherd and i went back after my year at pala but my sixth graders went through a lot of emotional um times during that year where when we knew that paula was going to be closing but at least they had each other the least they were together and the kids now that we don't like they don't have that kind of connection um i will say that i i think that the the facilities were purchasing the advisory committee came up with some really great ideas i would love to

034see more um stuff for the community suffer kids except for you know adults in the community i feel like that would really bring us together and bring you know alan walk together as a as a community that would um really it would be a really good thing for the community to have the spaces for child care for all of those things that the committee suggested i think it's i think those are all really wonderful ideas and i do hope that those are considered um and given a lot of weight thank you thank you next speaker is dilsa gonzalez miss gonzalez you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello can you guys hear me yes so thank you um good evening my name is isa gonzalez i am

035a community organizer but i am also a parent of two students attending almond broad school district i want to thank everybody that was part of this adversary committee because i know how hard it is to make decisions and to get together and especially understand budgets and deficits i especially want to thank um miss jocelyn marsh for her input and for defending our teachers and our students when we when there was a conversation about the closure of schools i do also want to recommend recommend that not only in this advisory committee but any other community that is designing the faith of the future our students to be a little more transparent i know that um the links were put in the in the um school website and that it was shared on youtube however we have

03689 of the students are english learners and low inc and around 80 percent of students are um low income meaning a lot of parents do not have access to technology or do not really understand technology so going into a web page going into youtube looking for an album broad school district page is hard enough let's use that in the apps that we have like um dojo square to actually notify parents of this meeting so they could attend and they could participate on them um i will be commenting in 3.02 later on when it's available and thank you very much thank you next speaker is mr springer mr springer you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin [Music] good evening board members president herrera loretta and alamar community i

037apologize for the noise i'm a special educator here at shepherd middle school where i work with sixth seventh and eighth graders and i do have to speak today in support of the presentation from the committee about their plan for repurposing the facilities um you know as bad as kobe has been in our community this is a fantastic time to be creative think outside the box and provide services for kids here in alamo who require more specialized special education programs that we already have and our facilities are a perfect place to make this happen they provide an essential space when the whole world is in turmoil they provide a home right this is an ideal time to provide that space and accelerate our community recovering from this pandemic thank you so much for your time and

038i yield the rest of my time thank you next speaker is veronica talton miss talton you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening board president and trustees can you hear me yes yes thank you i'm an itinerant performing arts teacher from lindell elementary and george middle school thank you to mr sanchez and the repurposing committee for your hard work and evaluating options for our school district i want to speak in support of the use of daycare facilities and community resources for families at our smaller school sites after more than a year of pandemic survival and multiple losses for many families including my own it would be least disruptive to follow this alternative the options presented seem to be those which would unify the community

039community and i'm grateful to jocelyn mertz and everyone on the committee who shared additional creative ideas instead of school closures lindell elementary is an extremely special school with a close-knit staff and family atmosphere my students at lindell have brought me joy in the midst of pain the idea of subjecting them to further trauma with the school closure after a year like we've all had is harmful to those students their families and to the staff and communities please consider the negative impact that school closures will have on everyone especially the long-term effects i thank you very much for holding this community public forum an opportunity to speak and thank you for listening thank you thank you next speaker is johnny nguyen mr winn you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer

040will begin um can anybody hear me yes all right um hello uh my name is johnny nguyen i am 18 years old and i am a product of this district i went to ben payner elementary and i went to shepherd middle school and i am here to voice my support for the repurposing of school buildings for community resources job training day care facilities but why what i am not in support of are those school closures our education system in california has already been ranked one of the lowest in the nation because of our um methods of funding it and even more so during this pandemic when kids are forced to attend virtual schooling and especially in the east side not everybody has access to technology not everyone has access to good broadband internet and we

041cannot afford to have these kids fall further behind schools should be made all about the children and especially after this pandemic we cannot keep jostling these kids around because of the decisions of a few adults and these kids after this pandemic our main priority should be to get these kids back into a safe learning environment as comfortably as possible for them and closing down the schools further would not be beneficial to their education or their social experiences in school i yield my time thank you last speaker is camille giannis pontania miss fontania you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timing will begin good evening board of trustees can you hear me yes good evening everyone my name is camillianis pontania and i would like to use my time tonight as

042a community partner as well as a parent as a community partner i want to stand in support of the repurposing committee's guidance and recommendations i want to thank all of them for their time and energy that they committed to this um as a community partner i actually spend quite a bit of my time talking about the work that's happening in lm rock the abundance of partnerships and the vision that the school district has with many of your partners and i find that investments flow when we have a vision for the use of our assets including our facilities and so i think many of the outlined recommendations are ways to generate revenue but truly to create that ecosystem that east san jose and the allen rock community has needed for far too many generations and so

043i think if you lean into the recommendations it will provide our community with guidance as to how we do that and how we can save our schools while creating pathways of opportunity for people within our community and i think that's the kind of investment that all of us are committed to as a parent i also want to uplift that you know there is a very unique school community that each distinct school has and i was reminded of that today when we all called on to celebrate el nino when you're able to witness your children in the same space with other kids that they've known from kindergarten and that the parents know each other you know that you're part of a community and it is i think our responsibility to try to preserve those communities not

044only at our schools with the highest enrollment um but really look at our schools with the most inequities where families are being displaced where families are having a difficult time living and really ensure that we're shoring up those gaps because those are the people who are most affected um by potential displacement not only within their homes but now also potentially within their schools so i offer those perspectives um and i stand with you as always as a partner to continue to figure out how we can continue to strengthen um our school district rather than potentially put us at harm for having more charter schools um and and other things come into our district other i also want to specifically highlight two recommendations that i think are important sorry i mentioned our president speakers okay thank

045you um and now i would like to go um back to the board and uh open it up for any questions any comments at this time please raise your hand um and or this is on for information only so there's nothing then we will move on to the next item okay so i see nobody let me just confirm i think it makes sense for us to speak in 302 given the benefits very similar items that's what i'm intending to do okay one more time on the next one it makes sense for us to speak in 302 given the fact that it's the same exact same exact topic okay that's what i'm intending to do okay so seeing none um i'm just gonna say a few words um i want to thank the committee for uh

046meeting all those times as a parent myself and having been in many committees in the past i know it's not easy to give up your time um so thank you all very much for gathering 11 times um i know it wasn't an easy topic to discuss um and i appreciate especially the community forum that you all gave the community an opportunity to come and voice their opinions or thoughts um on this possibility um everywhere from you know uh the recommendations that are here all the way to the possibility of of closing some of our schools which is the reality that you all were dealing with in front of you and so i thank you for allowing our parents to have that time to come and um speak on that item and or you know just

047um hear you all um speak um again you know i know it's not easy um one just giving up your time and two the topic that you were all discussing so with that we're gonna go ahead and go on to item 302 at this time uh discussion on consideration and action to approve resolution 41 2021 authorizing closure of matheson middle school and consolidation with renaissance academy and medicine and closure of fisher middle school and consolidation with renaissance academy at fisher beginning the 20 21 2022 school year dr bauer thank you madam president this is a very difficult um recommendation that we're putting before the board and i want to acknowledge that these kinds of recommendations are never done lightly or without a lot of thinking on our part and after the committee's last meeting and

048not seeing any schools being called out for closure remember that the closure moment is when we are able to repurpose and so that's something that i want to remind the community that it's it is almost it's impossible to be able to um repurpose something if there is no surplus and so this first recommendation that i'm bringing to the board has to do with calling on all of us to understand how the process works this recommendation comes after uh reading the report after studying the demographic study after looking at our board uh our budget and uh knowing that within the past year we also have lost another 500 students so all of those kinds of things need to be considered when we bring something of this magnitude to the board and um specifically having been at

049fisher as a principal and as a community member of that community this was very difficult for me to do but i also have to honor the future of the district and other students and in order for us to continue to provide quality education for our students we need to address the budget and that's something that we have been bringing to the board again and again and again uh if you recall and i'm going to call mr chang in a little bit to remind the board about a resolution that you approved in the mo in the month of march regarding a savings plan that we must present to the county office of ed to be able to get a positive budget for next year there are a lot of things in the future of this district

050hanging in our process of getting a positive budget not only for this year for but the years to come one of them is the ability to sell bonds and so i want to remind everybody that in order for us to to fulfill a lot of the dreams of refurbishing schools of addressing the needs we must take some very decisions on our path this particular decision uh was done with the spirit of savings but also with the spirit of not um impacting the families as much as it would have been to move them to other places so please remember that this is about finances uh i totally understand we want to make sure that the transition for everyone involved especially for children and students it's considered and in order for us to start that path the

051board needs to take action uh mr cheng would you please um refresh our memories and i'm asking uh you to help us uh explain uh i know the board is very aware of this but also to our community the need to be able to start this process sure um thank you dr bauer and good evening board members and alumni community um just a little bit of background before i get into the resolution um for those who have been following the district's budget um is aware that we have been in qualified status for over the last three years um being in qualified status meaning that we're um may not be able to pay our obligations in the current or uh subsequent year um so as a result of that the county is is not forcing but

052it's recommending that the board adopt a resolution to commit itself to do anything that's necessary to keep the district solvent in that resolution i want to highlight some of the issue that the county raised one of them is you know the highlighting of the district being able to stay afloat over the this year and the next year with one-time funds that we're receiving from the federal government as related to covet the pandemic in addition to that it also highlighted the exploration of our parcel tax uh starting in fiscal year 2223 um and just a reminder the parcel tax that we have right now um generate approximately 4.5 million of ongoing money um if that partial tax is not renewed starting in year 2223 um that ongoing revenue would be lost um in addition to that

053um the the one key highlight that i want to mention is that um in year 2223 um the districts will be facing a fiscal cliff um as i mentioned you know the one-time money is keeping us afloat but in year 22-23 we're projected to spend close to 14.5 million dollars in reserve in order for us to stay solvent so this year we were able to stay afloat because of the one-time money next year because of the one-time money again but once that one-time money runs out um you know we're having to dip into a reserve and based on our second interim um we're barely meeting the three percent requirement that is set that is prescribed by the state uh which which seems the district solvent so we do need to take some drastic cuts and

054make some difficult decisions um and i just want to finally i just want to read a sentence from the resolution itself um just to inform remind the board and also inform the community and it's one of the last paragraph on the commit on the resolution itself and it reads in order to ensure that the alum rock union elementary school district remains fiscally solvent the board of trustee is committed to reducing expansion expenditures in all budget areas including total staffing benefits services and operating expenses capital outlay other outgoing and is also committed to examining potential source of revenue including but not limited to the repurposing of excess facilities to generate facility use or leasing revenue the board of trustees is committed to taking appropriate action to begin addressing these projected funding shortfall with the adoption of

055the 2122 budget in june of 2021 thank you dr power you i just wanted to say with that i will i am asking respectfully that the war will consider the recommendation that we have been brought forward to you okay thank you and at this time i'm going to go ahead and open it up for public i see your hand um mr quintero i'm going to go ahead and i just want to open it up for public comment because i want to see how many are on to speak um yeah so i just want to open that up before i turn it over over to you mr quintetto so those of you that are here to speak on item 302 please raise your hand at this time um while mr quintero expresses himself go ahead mr

056quintetto so uh what i wanted to there was a lot of questions that were raised in uh the previous item and i think it would benefit us all if uh the administration could elaborate and could respond or not respond because could provide information that may elucidate and inform the public with regard to those concerns that were raised because it seems like there's uh there has been some postings online social media that simply flatly said the school's to be shut down however i would i would ask through the president of dr bauer the students that are there now that are entitled to an education at that facility in the future would they be able to continue to enroll at the same site maybe not the same name school but they would still be in the same

057facilities that they were in the previous year let's see if they were sixth graders and they're moving on to the seventh grade they would still be in the same site correct yeah they would be entitled to enroll at the same site and um when the the time is appropriate i would like to amend the resolution to make sure that the resolution has that specific language that uh the students who are currently enrolled are guaranteed access to that to that same school even if it's under a different name and so i just wanted to make sure that that was clarified for the public given the fact that that issue was raised as to the disruption of students that may have to go to different schools um that is not necessarily the case given the fact that

058the same students would be able to continue to from the same enrollment area would be able to have access to the same facility it just would be a different name and um and so that was it i just i i heard the comment continue to come up and i wanted to make sure that that was clarified thank you thank you board vice president um and maybe if you want to uh as your i know you have some recommendations in regards to the actual recommendation at the time um if you can maybe come up with a recommendation um so that we can continue this conversation um and make a recommendation um so that we can again continue on um and then also so that the public um knows what they're making a comment on you know

059depending on what you add to it oh okay did you want me to make the recommendation for the additional is that okay because i want to make sure yeah sure um so it would be a therefore be resolved and it would be a guarantee for the students of students who are currently enrolled are attending the enrollment areas of both lee matson and fisher would be guaranteed access to uh renaissance of madison or renaissance at fisher wherever their respective enrollment areas and i'll second that can i add wait can i add something um if if we dr bauer um if they if the parents because i hear some of the parents saying you know i heard earlier that they don't want their child going to that school are they open to going to any of our

060other schools in our district yes can we add that uh board of vice president quintero so that and or any other school within our district yeah yeah give and also i would add that per the district's open enrollment policy with middle schools students would be free to choose to go to whatever elem rock middle school they choose to attend okay um i'm sure dr bauer got that down in writing or somebody hadn't done it it's being recorded so i think we can go back and add that to as an edit and i'll second and for purposes of moving it forward thank you very much so we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment at this time um sorry about the president i think let's see travis had her hand up i see her

061hand see her i'm sorry i do see her thank you it's okay um just yeah i have a question because hold on one second one second trustee chavez um i just wanted to ask uh um mr moran how many hands do we have have up for public comment for total uh right now looks like we have six okay great so we have six for public comment um if you're indecisive please raise your hand up um because after trustee chavez then we're gonna move into public comment thank you so much go ahead trust chavez with the resolution reading like that wouldn't it be difficult to want to get into avelante since there is a prerequisite to get in uh isn't that don't we have to change the language a bit on that because that might be

062creating a problem later on down the road because of the they have to be dual immersion i'm assuming that's for documentary the opening not in prison go ahead the open enrollment policy already addresses that correct given that um it deals with those very unique situations such as bill emergency that's why i mentioned the open enrollment policy board president yes trustee chavez i just want pug to know that and the parents because they don't know the policy and they might consider that school and then later on get turned down get disappointed and go somewhere else that's why i'm bringing that up thank you okay so we'll go ahead and turn it over to public comment uh mr moran i'll go ahead and turn over to you at this time thank you board president yes we at

063this time we have speakers first speaker is brenda sandejas miss indejas you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening i'm brenda a parent here at lmroc i have two children here um i just wanted to make a comment for the repurpose repurpose uh surplus is any uh school whose ada had dropped and had classrooms that potentially could be used right for a lot of the recommendations that was given here just wanted to clarify that there is surplus there are uh classrooms that can be used that's what i understand and so you don't need to close the school to have surplus they're surplus because there's a lot of schools that have capacity of 800 that are have they have 200 students so that surplus is there um

064and another thing that i heard here you need to they're doing this or you guys are doing this because you need a qualified budget um so again our kids are the ones that need to save you guys because these options are being done here because you guys need a solvent budget again our students are put last i understand that what is being brought here you think doesn't affect people but it affects classified workers i don't know what principle is going to be in what school is the fisher principal out since that is a school closing is the renaissance principle coming in those are just questions that i have but we also have janitors and lunch ladies that will be uh displaced when you do these kind of of uh recommendations and so i just want

065to make sure that you guys know that um you know i think that we gotta we gotta really think about how we're spending because i heard the last meeting that we're doing great and now i'm hearing that you know this parcel tax might not come in and this was being told months ago so you guys need to think about a better way how to strategize our budget because i don't want to have to keep hearing that other schools are going to be closing down the line so that's all thank you next speaker is adrian vain miss vane you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello again um now is not the time to be tearing down our community now is the time to lift them up and

066by closing schools and i understand you know sitting there saying oh but there's still going to be a renaissance well those schools have different focuses and we shouldn't be tearing down our community we should be lifting it up we should be lifting our students up we should be using these facilities to lift our community up to help the parents that need help to help the teachers that need help the more you close down our schools the less support you're going to get from the community and the teachers this is i understand that there's a budget and sometimes we have to look at the dark and dirty and i understand that but this is not the time maybe in a year and who knows what could happen this year because a lot of people have lost

067their jobs and there are some people that may not be able to send their kids to private schools anymore and so that they're going to have to use public schools a little bit more we need community spaces for a lot of the people that have lost their jobs and this would be an opportunity to give them a place where they can learn a career we need to think about our community right now we shouldn't be tearing our community down this is a time this is a beautiful time where we can actually lift our community up and do something good please don't disappoint our kids again i i know that you know they can still go to the school but it may not be the right fit for them to do renaissance thank you very much

068thank you next speaker is rosa sepulveda mr poveta you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good afternoon thank you again yes i am rosa sepulveda so again i still believe that it is completely inappropriate to consider schools consider closing schools down um as other other speakers have mentioned there's a different area of focus at renaissance at matson versus um matson renaissance at fisher versus fisher merging the two schools together would impact families would impact the students my question is with these schools merging what's going to happen to the personnel people are going to lose their jobs you know what is the ratio of the students to staff going to be are they going to remain the same will the supports remain the same for students with special

069needs um you know i as i mentioned previously i am the parent of a child with special needs and the amount of support that i receive at my child's school um would definitely be impacted if she were if her school was merged with another school um i don't believe that the same amount of supports would be there i as a parent feel very comfortable going to my school administrator speaking with the principal speaking with the secretaries getting an update if i need clarification on something i feel very comfortable getting that information um having the school merge with another school would raise concerns like would i have that same that same opportunity um i'll have to build that rapport once again with the administration you know in the event that i need to address or clarify

070something overall in the grand scheme of things our student success is important it's vital our children are our future thank you for your time thank you thank you next speaker is dilsa gonzalez miss gonzalez you have two minutes please then mute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening members of the board my name is isa gonzalez and i have a child in renaissance medicine um first of all i understand the deficit and i sure don't want to be in your shoes right now when we have to make these kind of decisions that is going to impact our children second i believe that even though this this is a preposition that will help us in the future is a too fast decision there is no parent involvement engagement or conversations with either

071or of these websites that we're talking about we have a lot of questions is renaissance are going to still become a a small school that that means that my students are gonna have to be in a waiting list what's gonna happen to our stu to our teachers to our staff to our community license there's so much um questions in the air that have not been answered and will not be answered if you guys take a decision right now and it's not fair for our students it's not fair for our teachers and it's not definitely um fair for for anybody in this situation i truly believe and i know that alumbra school district know how to engage parents and know how to bring them in community towns let's make that before we rush into a decision

072so parents can have their answers questions like myself and other parents are here i understand merging is a it's a possibility but i also understand that i have concerns as other parents too and let's not remember that in some point in the last years um students of renaissance and citizens and of officials on madison had a little rivalry right there even though they were in the same school they had a little rivalry so we have we are in the mental crisis with our students let's think about that before we merge schools and let's bring them to the table and let's bring parents to that table to really talk about what's happening and and answer those questions that are in the air right now thank you have a really good evening thank you next speaker is

073jocelyn mers miss murs you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin thank you um good evening i am glad i'm not in your shoes tonight um i did have the privilege of being on this committee um and i feel like we we accomplished what we were tasked to do and that was come up with repurposing ideas for the unoccupied facilities whether it was a room or a wing at a school regardless my question i i know that dr bauer earlier said that this was about finances and my question is and i know that you know you don't need to answer this and i can go back and look it up but i do think have you asked yourselves and is the community aware what is the cost savings

074that is going to be realized by the district by school consolidations um it's my understanding that you know what they'll be an administrative cost savings when they're sharing an administrator and possibly sharing the community liaison those kind of administrative costs but i don't know exactly how much that is that the district will realize and is it worth the potential effects that it will have ultimately on the students or the potential decline of enrollment that we may see by consolidating schools just something to think about when you make your decision tonight thank you next speaker is megan oh she's no longer there next speaker is miss lowey miss lowey you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi my name is kathy loewy and i am at shepherd middle

075school um i spoke earlier about being at palo when hello was closed and talking about how the students were really upset and i remember telling them you know we're going to be at shepherd together and they said that's it's not the same it's not the same these are sixth graders they hadn't even gone through half the school year at the time but they had already become you know felt that paula was their home their family and it was important to them i also was a member of atlas academy at shepherd and we built something that we were really proud of and we were really it was really important to us it was really important to our kids too and when we asked that that be something that we could continue permanently you were told no

076and we had to merge the school back together but for those few years that we had it and and avid academy as well it was very important to our kids and i cannot tell you i cannot express to you how sad our kids were when they found out that wasn't going to be continuing we a lot of the things that we built there some of them continued a lot of them didn't and they were really good things that we had going really good programs that we had [Music] and those were lost to that consolidation and i think that what renaissance has done what madsen has done what fisher's done what they've built a lot of those good things are going to be lost through this kind of a move and i i think that that's

077really unfortunate i think that we should repurpose spaces instead of closing schools and consolidating them because we'll lose a lot of important things thank you next speaker is mimona berta miss berta you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin miss berta please unmute yourself there you go hi um this is actually mr berta um namona's husband i both of us teach special education at fisher middle school i've been teaching there for six years my wife has been teaching there for eight years i wanted to first thank the community members and fellow teachers who do not actually teach at fisher matson who spoke on our behalf i also would like to thank the repurposing committee for suggesting no closures and i would like to remind the board that they

078should listen to those who elected them and who they serve i do like the sounds of repurposing the schools but i do want to echo what another person said and that that there are a few open classrooms and why couldn't we not start with those classrooms while we keep everything the same regardless of what people say some students will be displaced will there be free transportation provided to students who do not choose to go to the renaissance schools also renaissance is definitely not the same as fisher or madsen fisher was built in 1962 it's a cornerstone of the community it's a generational school that is not renaissance renaissance was not built in 1962 it is not a generational school that has served this community if you go out to renaissance renaissance and speak to those

079kids there's definitely a sense of entitlement i don't like that that's not our community we don't need the kids being entitled looking down on other kids that go to the same campus as them also there are no credentialed pe teachers out there they're running mickey mouse pe classes that's not best benefiting our kids i would like i personally would not like to teach at renaissance and if i'm going to be expected to just teach at renaissance i will not go for that so please i implore you board to listen to this community that you serve and listen to their recommendation and please if you do repurpose this the schools please do a better job than the state-of-the-art multi-purpose gym that we were supposed to get at fisher please don't let that happen again thank you

080for president last speaker is veronica veronica you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin great thank you and good afternoon bora and good afternoon to the community um and i'm here also to echo the same sentiments that you've heard already it is it is sad it is heartbreaking and it is also very frustrating it's frustrating because it was a decision that administration had to make but had zero parent involvement as parents we've been asking for transparency as parents we've been asking to collaborate together and that has not been the case there was a repurposing committee in which many of our community members attended as well and voiced their opinions and voice their concerns and their repurposing committee you know struggle as well and and did a great job

081in listening to the community the community said no closing of schools and that's what they came no closing of schools instead let's repurpose what schools have that extra space um and as a parent i think i'm also very concerned i have you know my trust just there is no trust because i don't know if in the next board agenda i'm going to find my children's school on that to be close i don't know if i'm going to find my cousin's school in the board to be close and without zero knowledge of that coming i also want you to think about the impact for the students okay they've already many of them have been displaced from their homes many of them living in now in one room where they were displaced from their other homes many

082of them going through a lot of trauma of losing somebody to covet to covet many of them getting covered themselves i want you to think about that transitional plan that needs to be in place before anything happens i want you to think about that transportation plan that needs to be in place before anything happens it's not just let's consolidate and move on there's more we're president there are no more speakers thank you mr moran at this time i'm going to go ahead and open it up for the board for any questions comments concerns and i'll go by your hands there are any uh board vice president quintero i think uh board member pham had his hand up first i want to jump in okay let's uh thank you go ahead trustee thank you thank you

083madam president thank you mr vice president uh you know uh through the pro through the ward president question to the superintendent uh could we we've heard through public comment that they're there you know and from the uh 7-eleven committee that uh that the suggestion was to one of the suggestions was to repurpose empty classroom space uh would the superintendent clarify how how do we get to [Music] repurposing that an empty classroom in in a school uh if if if the superintendent could provide a kind of a a nutshell answer to that please so that's kind of the point that i was trying to make it needs to be specifically said there is x number of classrooms surplus at any any specific facility cannot just be at all the facilities right and so that's one and

084i'm gonna ask mr chen to jump in also um to explain to the board and the community this whole concept of a classroom here two classrooms there uh that's not um the path that that we are that we would be able to follow and i'm going to let colvera address that piece just so that everybody is clear that number one we need to be very specific about which sites have how many rooms to be able to be repurposed that's just that's by law we cannot just say all the the empty classrooms in the district so that's one but then i'm gonna ask mr cheng to be able to explain to everybody about um thinking in terms of creating revenue streams from you know one classroom two classrooms in different facilities great thank you dr bauer

085um one thing i wanted to share with the board and the community is that um the one of the information that we shared with the repurposing committee was that there was a target amount that that the district was looking for in terms of amount that the districts need to generate in savings in order for us to close our structural deficit and that that target number was between three to four million dollars um in order for us if we were to go in the route of just leasing and not closing schools and leasing empty classrooms in order to generate three million dollars we would need to essentially lease one wing at about 12 to 14 of our school sites in order to generate that revenue ongoing revenue um the challenge with that is also you know

086finding 12 to 14 partners who are willing to work or have to need to rent those spaces out and are willing to rent those space out at market rate um as some of you may be aware of a lot we work with a lot of um agencies who we consider partners um and in those relationships um you know in the past we it's been very difficult for us to be able to charge them a market rate um so those are the things to also keep in mind and in addition to that um you know having to manage 12 to 14 lease agreement there's some costs associated with that in terms of running those lease agreement through legal counsel to be vetted before any of the agreements are presented to the board for um for approval

087um so those are just just some of the factors i wanted to share with the board and also to keep in mind as we move through through this process thank you okay so supplemental question to superintendent bower and assistant superintendent chang so basically due to due to legal requirements and logistics we so we just can't we we're unable to say you know there we have five classrooms that maths and for example and two classrooms at fisher that we could police out but rather we there we have to in a way uh you know uh for lack of a better term if we're going to lease out classrooms they need to be basically arranged in a efficient manner so that they're they're located in the least number of sites possible so i would going back to

088your example of one wing in every school for example it would be preferable to say you know uh we have three schools that we can lease four wings each for example that that that is a uh more logical way of approaching the repurposing is that right yes and it remember surplus and rogelio can join you know and help me explain um the it needs to be very specific right the board me there needs to be a specific whatever the amount is right classrooms by sight right we cannot just blanket and say oh you know we have more or less two in painter and four in ocala and two in lindel that doesn't weigh this works right it needs to the it has to be very focused about specific sites and so all of that generates

089the whole thing about what really will create a revenue stream who will be you know in terms of that who would be interested in saying you know i'm going to set up a daycare in two classes in in one of our schools so those are the kinds of things that that we need to consider as well and right now we are considering um consolidation also that that uh impact the least amount of families right and i totally understand they're different schools all of the schools are different because they have different people um so we will have you know depending on the board's will uh we will have uh a transition plan that we need to work with with the schools but you know just so basically before we could we could repurpose facilities for leasing

090the board would uh basically the the board must declare x school site surplus property whatever school property yes okay okay okay thank you very much thank you trustee fam uh board vice president quinteno and then i see with nano's hand up so um you know i think none of us signed up for the the day that we would have to go ahead and merge schools well the idea was to continue growth the reality is different and so we politically expedient thing for me to do would be to just sit here and start beating up on my colleagues saying i'm not going to vote for this because it's going to make me look good with those who've called in some members of the public uh the fact of the matter is that there's a job that

091we were going to do and uh as the voters went ahead and placed in you to make sure that uh we maintained a financially solvent district so that's stable and so with that said i i i was not going to be i publicly stated that i was not going to be supporting the shutting down of any school sites um and i i stand by that i do appreciate the recommendations of the committee um the folks that volunteered that went in there multiple times a week sometimes i appreciate the work that you've done and you brought forward a good recommendation of looking at sites and so i'm looking forward to seeing how it is that we can go ahead and use uh some of our our surplus facilities to to generate some revenue and get creative

092because i think that's what we have to do we have to we have to get creative and in order to help us deal with the situation and moved up we've been dealt but um i also am appreciative of staff's recommendation of coming forward with the um not closure but the merger and that's something that i can support because as i stated before i probably stated to members of the public not my colleagues that i would not be supporting any sort of closure of any of any school site and i'll stand by that i pass by and i see the old content site and i used to be an alum rock side you can pass by josef and um a key road that corner lot was sold out by former board former members of this board

093it was a mistake it's wrong for them to do that and i still stand by that uh selling off land is something that i'd not support and i'm not supporting any closures of our of any of our sites i think that the merger of two sites into one would allow us to go ahead and meet this very difficult situation in a way that makes sense uh given the fact that we stand in a position that we're in i was very heartened to see the recommendation by the committee uh when they mentioned that none of our sites should be going to charter schools i think that's an appropriate recommendation and i stand with them firmly in support of that right now every morning i believe and dr barry is correct i think it's about 4 500

094students that come to school and alan rock can go to a school other than alan mark's school district correct i think yeah the number again i'm sorry the ballpark i believe was about 4 500 students that uh go to charter schools within lm rocks and boundaries yeah so we wouldn't be facing the situation if we have to deal with privately operated publicly funded schools within our boundaries but the legislature sought to it to go ahead and institute this law in that opened up privately funded privately operated publicly funded schools roughly right around the time that alum rock was at its height reaching nearly 20 000 students and we've seen the decline since then so for us to say that it's not it's a demographic issue no we see the numbers and we have students exiting

095to these privately operated facilities that are publicly funded i was very very disheartened to see some of our county board of education members at rally with some of these privately operated institutions just on the 28th more disappointed was that one of our one individual connected talum rock closed off the rally and is now telling us right here at this meeting that we're the reason why these problems are happening it's unfortunate that we have somebody who's out there pushing privately operated facilities that are publicly funded and then comes to these meetings and blames a board for for this um it's inappropriate things wrong should be more honest with the public um but with that said i i'm going to be supporting uh the recommendation because it's not a closure the facilities will mean will be maintained

096uh we uh have it in the resolution then we will continue to go ahead and um and operate the facilities and the students that were there for example in sixth grade we'll be able to move in to seventh grade going to the same facilities that they were in in the previous year and so i'm very very comforted by that uh i know that there's been some uh reference to rivalry and that's unfortunate i hope that we would be able to go and move beyond that and uh and i'm sure that the rivalry is not amongst the students um kids are kids and then they can work with each other um and so i'm hoping that that somehow dissipates and we're able to have kids from uh from madison and for fisher being welcomed into some

097of our highest performing schools i think it's a benefit for both schools uh because the kids at renaissance will be able to work with their uh colleagues from the former traditional schools and um the kids from uh renaissance from from madison and fisher will be able to have access to these high performing schools and so i'm very very excited to see what the future holds for the children there i was concerned about some of the recommendations that were made um by the committee in particular the uh recommendation very specific recommendation of uh providing the former moxa site to san jose evergreen community college district i know that the college district was in the process of of working with the foundation for hispanic education to um enter into some sort of negotiation when everything fell apart

098in large part it was a jew because of one one board member's desire to preserve the facilities for voices charges that's something that came out very clearly and so i'm concerned that there may be ulterior motives uh in one way or another uh here in the the involvement of that particular board member should be concerned uh that they were very very clear about their hesitance to and their their opposition to have san jose evergreen operate at the former nhu site due to their concerns about impacting the charters so uh given the decisions that we're having to make today the um impact that we that's being felt by elm rock due to these privately operated publicly funded institutions i'm very very concerned about the connections that may exist between one particular board member of san jose

099evergreen and um and their motives uh because of the fact that they've been very clear about their support for basically derailed an entire process to bring a college education to nhu the former indian chu site once again um and so i wanted to make sure that that was a very clear i'm saying it right here in public that i'm very very concerned about that so i i would hope that my colleagues heed that concern and look into those issues and when things move uh move forward and when we have to take a big decision so uh thank you for the time uh once again i want to thank the members of the committee that were involved in the uh in the process that uh that uh very very long drawn-out process and i do appreciate

100uh your your involvement your support and uh looking forward to what the future holds for alum rock um this is not a closure but a a merger of two schools and uh looking forward to uh that uh the the work and the access to to the high performing schools that uh we'll have at uh renaissance of matson and renaissance at fisher if uh the board chooses to move that direction thank you so much trustee carano yes thank you um so i'll try to get through this stuff so first of all um i want to sincerely thank the the members of the committee for coming to the meetings i know there was 11 meetings over the course of about three months and meetings were anywhere from an hour and a half to a three plus hour

101meeting so i know the the work that went into the meetings itself plus preparation and all the work that went into that i want to also thank mr hand and mr sanchez for for trying really trying to facilitate the group to the kinds of decisions that i think we as a board were hoping to see come to us um i particularly want to thank also mr ray turner and ms maria martinez particularly in the later meetings for their leadership and for trying to advocate for some decisiveness and from the com from the committee in terms of the specifics again that at least myself as one board member was hoping to see um that reflected um the needs and wants of the community but also the reality of our situation um and so some of the

102stuff that i had as questions or notes coverage or dr bauer already addressed um just some of the comments that were made um during the public comment sections um with regards to kind of transparency and just the general operation of the district and the board i certainly take that feedback and and consider it and take it seriously but also i also lean on you know the reports that we get the data the the report that we got recently it's not everything but it does speak to the satisfaction of parents and students in a number of areas of the district and a very high rate of satisfaction always room for improvement obviously but i i look at that i look at the audit that we got last month that also it wasn't a perfect audit but

103it was a very good audit which demonstrates our our fiduciary responsibilities as a district as as the auditor looked through that so again that's not everything there are other pieces to these pictures but but i consider those things um as i also consider the feedback from from community members who may have questions in those areas um i do think i you know during when we had the demographic study presented to us i did ask the question specific to the impact of charter schools versus the demographic trends and you know it's kind of a gray area i guess to be able to to analyze that fully at least in the report that we got but i do think it's a combination of those two things that are impacting us but whether it's charter schools or demographic

104trends or whatever the reality is is that the impact is felt it has been felt year after year and that those impacts cannot just go um unheeded or unaddressed um i also i also understand the concerns brought forth by parents and community members about um how a decision here by us would impact current students current teachers current parents that's supremely valid and um a consideration the challenge however as as a board and as a district is that these kinds of decisions we feel them in the moment we feel them for our current situation but we also have to consider that these are decisions as many of you mentioned that are generational so we do have to consider the impact on current students but we have to think of the impact of our decisiveness or non-decisiveness

105in 5 10 20 50 years and so it's not just the short-term impact that all of us feel but we also as board members need to think of long-term impacts on the district as a whole um i also want to reiterate that this we're in it all of us are in this so it feels like this is us this is our district and we're having all these impacts but declining enrollment is a trend in many other places it's not just our district it's not just here we are more impacted in some ways because of the realities of our um our socioeconomic realities of our area but these trends of declining enrollment are being felt other other places and indeed other nearby districts have already started the process of closing schools and have closed schools already

106um so this is not unique to us as we've talked about before another thing that you know i i have many of the same hopes that many of the community members have brought forth and i also have a lot of the what ifs what if we can get you know these partners what if we can you know bring in these resources what if we can do all these things unfortunately again from a governance perspective it's very difficult to govern on hopes and what is we have to take um solid information that we have the best information that we can get including in um input from community and parents and incorporate all that into our decision but you know it's it's it's a very challenging thing to have to um govern with all these hopes and

107wishes and dreams that we have but also knowing that we're here to do a job as trustee cooper already alluded to and so for many of those reasons um you know i think that this this was being brought to us tonight is is a decent start um but given the reality of what we are facing i i don't think it's enough i don't think that this um i mean for tonight i will be supporting it because it's enough for tonight i think it's a good start but i think contrary to you know many of the comments that i've heard you know with the basically the word being this is not the time i i disagree i think i agree in that it's not the time for any of us ever to have to do this

108it's never the time to have to do these decisions but in terms of the business of the district um and just the cold hard reality i think this is the time we covered already mentioned you know a lot of the stuff that we are accountable to in terms of our budget and the county office of education and all of those things so this is the time we have to make some decisive decisions here and you know the the challenging thing about leadership or whatever you want to call it is sometimes that you have to you have to make hard decisions when it's tough when it's rough it's you know if if you really it's easy to come up here and just say the wish list of everything i want to have and i agree with

109everything that that people have said and i think you know one of the for me one of the positives that has come out of the the the committee is that a lot of the stuff that we have already been talking about um career training and dr bauer and myself and i think um andres and many of us have already for a year or several years have been talk going down that path early education all these areas we're in alignment with the group of what we would like to see for our district um you know i just i i was hoping to get some more direct guidance but i understand the sentiment and the you know what was brought to us i i understand where that came from from the group uh so with that all

110being said i will be supporting this resolution tonight this item tonight um but separate from this item i do want to direct staff um and this is the hard part and and again these these are things that i would like to look into this is not to be very clear with the public in the community this is in no way shape or form something that i say is going to happen or we're saying it's going to happen it's something that i you know i'm directing to look into and get more information on so for potentially next year not this year um the closure of russo mackenzie the consolidation of kiratin into george as a k-8 or tk8 school the consolidation of painter into shepherd and the partial repurpose of ryan and lyndon i know that

111is harsh it sounds very um it doesn't sound it doesn't feel good saying it but you know i i went to ryan that's one of the three almost schools i went to my daughters went to russell mcintyre and shepard they graduated from shepherd i have very direct ties to these these sites i lived on the same street as lindale for many years too so i mean i'm connected to all these but when i look at the information that was provided to the committee in terms of the projected cost projected enrollment i consider you know the the charters in the area i consider trying to minimize families having to leave neighborhood schools as trustee um quintero leader to those are things that i'm interested in looking at because what's happening tonight potentially is not gonna cover

112what we need to do still so we still need to look at other this difficult decisions um to make we need to close up to like nine sites at some point in my opinion and i think that's what it's looking like um we want to have the least impact on students and families we want to reduce flights of our families to charters another district we can't guarantee that but that's a goal and we want continuity of programming where possible so just to finish up um you know doing doing something like that and part of my rationale is that that would open up painter and puritan to do some of these things at scale that we're talking about day care early education career training it opens up entire sites and it's as dr bauer and coverage

113mentioned it's specific that we could say we specifically are you know going to take action on these sites and then we can begin to work on bringing those partners that can come in and provide these services to to our community the consolidation of the two patron shepard and george and puritan keeps families obviously their puritan and painter families feature less of the puritan but they won't be in the exact same site but they will be very close so they can stay in a neighborhood school they can stay in um you know where their their family goes to and so i've talked to dr bauer and covera about what modifications would need to be made in order to prepare schools like that that's something that i want to have looked into with my request here um

114and these schools that i mentioned have some of the highest administrative and utility costs based on the information that was provided to the committee so taking these actions my thinking is that we will cut um some of those costs from some of the schools that have the highest cost there uh the last thing i i would want us also to look into making sure that if some or looking at as part of this request looking at um ensuring to build in facility upgrade costs to accommodate additional students so as you're looking into this staff um to consider the cost of upgrading leak shepard and george to be able to number one bring them up in areas that they're already deficient to the extent possible but also to accommodate bathrooms uh playground areas things like that

115that would um that would need to be there for for elementary students i would want to include in the in your analysis the cost to provide leadership training as appropriate to um to staff at these sites to be able to successfully transition from a middle school to a k-8 and i also would want to make sure that for for this proposal what it would look like or any proposal i want to make sure that we have i don't know what you turn the term is legacy naming in the fut for any future facility so if a site were to change purpose or um clothes or whatever whatever goes there i would want it to be like you know the i mean let's just if we had a school named johnson the johnson community center or

116if you have a swimming johnson the johnson clinic to to maintain that legacy that history that alum rock does have um so i have questions that i can give to the staff offline but um those are my comments and requests to staff i'll be reporting i mean supporting tonight this um item and i just want to thank you all for for everyone's work and difficult times and thank you for mr fam i see your hand up yeah was that from earlier or no no this is a yes so i'll you know madam president up i will say this is a painful choice i haven't even been in on this board for full months and yeah you know we it's a horrible situation that our school districts find yeah our school district finds itself in uh

117you know i you know i took the lit you know i took the liberty of uh meeting with the the principles of of madison and the renaissance principles that you know to get a feel of how the how things may play out and i i do want to say that after watching the uh repurposing committee meetings and yes i i there were parts where i had to pull myself out of there because that that uh i understand the pain of when when the school closes yeah i attended powell middle school the the founding school of this district and i graduated from there before going on to independence high school and it hurts when when the the founding school of this district closed uh for reasons that were out of my control at the time i

118was not on the board i was you know a young employee but it it hurts but this proposal i i think is the least disruptive to everyone involved and now you know the students who are attending still have an opportunity to attend to to attend the same same site even though we'll be under a different pro a different program and of course i'm gratified at the fact that that there is still the element of legacy naming uh lee matson and clyde fisher both played an important part in the uh foundation of this district and i and as trustee baejorano mentioned you know these are generational schools and uh i would say that this is one one chapter of it is closing exactly for and um and then there's an opportunity for a new chapter for

119maths and and for fisher all vietnam you know as part of the renaissance program and i'm grateful and i'm gratified also that renaissance is a high-performing program one of our one of the bright spots of our district's academic offerings and i and uh you know given the need to minimize the disruption of our community uh our students at madison and fisher are given this special opportunity to opt into the renaissance programs at their sites you know and uh i i want to commend the assistant superintendent chain for for putting out the the fiscal future of our district yes i know that there are one-time funds that will be keeping us afloat but we also have to think about the future once those one-time funds disappear how do we meet our obligations uh you know we

120this is a time where we are able to to prune away so that so that we can best use this this one-shot money here to ease the transition for this district into a much better i should say uh sustainable fiscal future uh you know uh you know this is a this is the point i know that this is not the you know the resolution before us is not the committee's uh recommendation but elements of this resolution uh were mentioned by con committee chair natalia ball and so i think you know there was you know there is there was committee input that was taken into account one administration uh wrote that uh presented this i should say drafted this resolution um you know and so for for those reasons i i reluctantly reluctantly will support resolution

121because it is the um it is the uh the best possible path for this district to take at this time uh recognizing its fiscal issues at the same time uh protecting as many students and families and staff to the extent possible um all you know on that note i'd also like to echo uh the sentiments of the board vice president now ladies and gentlemen if you've heard dr bauer mentioned that 4 500 students who live in the boundaries of this district are attending charter schools uh if those students were attending alum rob schools we would not be making this decision right now yeah you know uh i you know if there is there are board members or people with so with ties to this district who have uh ulterior motives uh in their dealings with

122this charter let me say that i i wholeheartedly condemn that i certainly believe that as elected representatives and or you know employees of the allen rock district we all have a vested interest in these sustainability of our district to serve uh children of this community for generations to come uh at the same time it also means that yes we need to move on the offense again to burn to bring children back to alum rock as well as to encourage those who are on defense to stay in allen roth so i i'd like to take this opportunity to uh ask uh to request an administration uh you know to do fast track considerations of uh partnerships for at least to the surplus property uh as soon as you know as soon as they come after the

123passage of i should say after the board takes action on this resolution uh and also to uh uh to seek partners who who may also bring uh curriculum enhancement so that we can expand upon what works academically in our district such as our such as our dual language immersion programs as well as what we can do to augment augment uh career technical facilities like we have at o'connor middle school for example and to uh and and to help scale up best practices that can be learned from uh lucha and renaissance so we can apply it to other you know other parts of our district as well as uh finding ways to you know using those synergies to make the best use of surplus properties going forward so on that note uh madam president thank you

124very much and i you the rest of my time thank you i see board vice president quinteto's hand up yes uh thank you uh madam president um i know that uh during these very difficult conversations it uh it sounds counterintuitive to say that the best days are ahead of us but i definitely believe that our alum rocks best days are ahead of us we've been going through declining enrollment at some point we are going to plateau um and so that's the unfortunate reality that involves declining enrollment but we still retain even in these difficult times and this is for the benefit of the public we still retain a comprehensive education something that many of our competitors don't they teach to the test to dedicate an entire month to go ahead and have the kids drill

125drill drill on testing so that they can have good numbers and we on the other hand provide music sports and things that others that our competitors have chosen to do away with because it represents an expenditure that doesn't give on the bank for their buck on the other hand we continue to believe in a good comprehensive solid education that involves things like music and sports everything else that we provide jeremiah that is not provided by our competitors and so while we're going through these very difficult decisions i wanted to make sure to underscore that for uh members of the viewing audience as well as all of us to to remind us that uh the difficult times have come and we've taken a surgical approach to retaining those things that we want to continue to maintain

126here at umrock as well as allow to regrow uh even when we've had to scale back so i'm appreciative of the fact that our staff has been has had the foresight uh to go ahead and and take those measures even though it's been very very painful uh we've we've not done away with everything else uh like some of our competitors have and many many other many of our other uh public school districts have done away with things like these um i was surprised when i when i went and learned that from other places so um i just want to make sure that uh remind us of that dr bauer would you be able to provide us a com madam president through the president of uh dr barr would you be able to provide us a

127comparison of our surrounding districts and where we're at in terms of our size their student populations just maybe one or two of the districts if you have that information off hand it doesn't have to be now but at some point in time i'd like to the public to have the knowledge um and be able to compare um so that they understand the decision that we have to take so thank you thank you madam president thank you i see trustee stand vegeta go ahead trust me yes thank you i just had a question actually for trustee fam uh with regards to your your pac most recent statement about fast tracking and so if i heard it correctly the request was for district staff to fast track um the pursuit of or or you know looking into

128bringing utilizing surplus properties um to bring in these some of the resources that we've talked about this evening is that accurate so far i think yeah for lack of a better better term but something like as soon as feasibly possible i i guess that's kind of key i think than what you just said the fees will be possible because also my understanding is that the mo the motion on the floor tonight i think we have a motion already it speaks to the consolidation of these two schools but on the same sites and there's nothing agendized for tonight and there's no recommend specific recommendation from the committee for um any surplus sites or surplus partial surplus or anything like that so i'm just wondering if maybe we're half a step ahead with that and having that

129fast track this kind of utilization if we haven't specifically named surplus property yet and dr bauer or anyone can correct me if i'm wrong in that assumption and i apologize because um there's my the the unit in my office is very loud and it's difficult to hear so you're talking about uh whether or not we have identified already specific sites with surplus well yeah because trustee family i understand why you know he wants we want to try to get moving on getting some of these services into any surplus that we have i think i understand the the intent of what he's saying i'm just wondering if we're able to do that um or if staff will be able to do that given that we haven't identified either through a motion tonight or through a committee

130recommendation or anything else we haven't identified any specific um surplus property so i'm i'm wondering how can we can expedite services on surplus property if we haven't yet identified that surplus property i believe that tonight's we're only the board is only able to entertain them the recommendation as it stands but it definitely that's something that may be brought to the regular war meeting in may um you know and and that you you guys know the drill you send us the request and then uh the president and i will place it on the agenda so that's definitely something that can be done for the mabor meeting okay so it's basically depending on a potential future action of identifying certain yeah i thank you rogelio for appearing go ahead mr reese can you help us answer some

131of that yes that is correct so on the agenda tonight is only the resolution for action is only the resolution which relates to the consolidation of the of the matson and fisher schools before the board or before the district or the administration can start looking into partnering with surplus or looking for partners to use the district surplus properties it would have to be an action by this board declaring which properties are surplus and we're not quite there yet that will you know that would the the committee's report which you received today was an integral process or an integral part step in in that part of the process thank you um and i trust each other i thought maybe i saw your hand up but i wasn't sure maybe not did i see your hand up

132no you don't want to speak okay so yeah he asked the same question but i do have a question on um one of the proposals that they asked at the committee okay one second because i wanted to stay on this before we went that's why i wanted to double check with you um on this specific item about the surplus and what to do next um and just to put it out there ahead of time i know we're not specifically talking about that today but i would like um we have many great ideas right and we can't do them all so i would like before we get there some additional work to do right before we say this partner um so i think i'm in agreement uh trustee vacarano i'm an agreement trustee fam we need

133partners you know but there's still a lot of work to do before we get there um okay trustee chavez yeah one of the things that the the recommendations was is that they were limiting uh the leases to five years um if you want a really strong partner to come into alan rock they're not going to want to invest millions of dollars for a five-year lease it doesn't make sense i was talking to that uh reference to dr bauer um and also i have always brought up the spending and the deficit spending at alan rock and that we have had a self-qualified budget and i came in knowing that when i got elected that one of the things that had to happen was consolidation of schools and closing of schools because we don't have the ideas

134and now we're tasked with this repurposing and it's basically we have to close more schools and i think we should also let the public know that this is not the only ones and there was some on the recommendation because i did see all of the facilities committees uh meetings and some of them that got brought up are not on this list and they are written down on the list and i'm wondering how come none of those were mentioned or that it didn't come to the resolution and i asked dr bauer um who brought the resolution and and why those schools so i did look at how many uh or what the percentage of capacity is in some of these schools and i think that that wasn't addressed because some of one of them that they

135were starting to mention to close it's almost at full capacity and there's several others that um are also almost at full capacity so why would you want to disrupt that many students when you know they're doing a good job and they're they have the numbers and and yes one of them is a small school but keep you know some parents want to keep it as a small school and if these costs to upgrade the schools isn't that much then i think that we those maybe should not be on the table and i think more considerations and more time and effort needs to be put in by the board to hear all of these uh recommendations that they had as well as the paperwork that all of the um committee came up with um also i

136i know that nobody likes to hear the word closing of schools but this is also an opportunity to improve the district and instead of struggling with the budget um we we need to do this and we need to do it sooner than later because like i said and like big mac i said figma the word f c m a t what that stands for is fiscal crisis management assistance team now they were here in the district before i ever got elected but they have they're still here because they're telling us we need to fix the budget and they've been saying it for years the scoe which is senate sccoe with the santa clara office santa clara county office of education have also said you need to watch your budget you need to watch the decline

137in enrollment we needed to watch all these things this is the can that got kicked down the road far too long and a lot of the parents are now saying that this is the worst time that good this could happen and i i agree with them because a lot of these families are hurting but i just want to say to all the parents that we appreciate all of your students we appreciate the families that come here we appreciate all the teachers and we appreciate all the staff and all the hard work that everybody's done unfortunately it's a reality that schools have to be closed and we have been thinking about this for a while nothing has been done that's true until now we're forced to do it in the last hour um we do need

138to close more schools i want to make that clear because a lot of the persons that i heard speak in other uh meetings said that they were surprised that they were not expecting to close schools they called it repurposing schools but that's another foreclosures so um i do like that we do have a resolution on the board uh agenda i just don't agree with those sites uh so is there another option or would we have to have another meeting to have another resolution on that or is that what we're tasked to do vote yay or nay and i ask that question dr bauer yeah i mean the the resolute the only sites that you are to consider tonight are the ones on the resolution thank you and we are voting on the uh um what

139was what's on right now to um vote which is those two um and i'm gonna i see trust if i'm with your hand up uh i'm gonna share a few words otherwise i'll be left with zero to say because you guys are all covering you know a lot of the information that i had i also see trustee chavez's hand up so we'll come back to you after trusty fam um and some of it bear with me i might repeat because i feel it's important to repeat you know it's that rinse and repeat um unfortunately it seems like sometimes um some of us forget forget where we're at you know and um only focus at you know the task at hand but don't see the entire picture and so i think it's important to see that

140entire picture to then understand why we're here um and as the trustees have mentioned this is one of the hardest decisions you know i can still count them in my hand which is great you know there's a lot of hard decisions but there's those hardest decisions and this is one of them um but as we know just like and i'm sure i've used this example before in my home family budget right as much as i want to splurge and you know just go and spend and have um i know that i can't otherwise at some point i would end up unhoused and you know all those consequences um and in this case you know obviously related to education if we continue to spend in the way we're spending we're gonna have some very bad consequences

141and we're like on the verge and we see those and we're getting uh the red flags up and you know the board presidents the previous board presidents won't allow me here to lie we've all received those letters from scowy telling us red flag red flag president red flag president it's like over and over and i can't just see that letter and just be like ah you know i was voted in to represent my constituents especially my the children that i represent and trust you because well generations to come so i can't just be like oh let's have all the all these amazing things now you know because my daughter's in the 12th you know 12 year old in our district or whatever reason i want let's just do it all now and who cares for

142generations to come i can't the decisions that i make today i know are impacting generations to come and i need to make those decisions now along you know with my fellow board members that are going to be the best for now and generations to come even though now it might hurt you know and i remember being a child not understanding this right like my mom's saying no i can't buy you that because we didn't have the money so now i understand a little better seeing the big picture um and so you know being a trustee i'm able to see that big picture you know but when my mom would be like no we can't go to mcdonald's every weekend you know it was once a month and it was with coupons and my mom would

143take a soda you know for her and then juice for the rest of us in her bag because we couldn't afford it and so it's those things you know to understand the totality at that time i'm like why can't i just get you know any drink or a slurpee on the way but now as an adult i see the total picture so with all that being said um you know i agree with our constituents who have spoken you know our parents do need to know this information as soon as possible which is why we have um we're having a special board meeting which is why we want our parents to hear what we end up coming up with today you know i know what i want but it'll be a vote um so that if

144impacted they have enough time for the next school year to then plan to be at the school luckily you know we're gonna have again reiterating a site there at the schools so that parents don't have to worry about things like transportation and and things like that and so i look forward to uh continuing to revisit all the great ideas you know amazing ideas i'm in agreement we have a lot of partners you know ready to come on and be a part of the work and i'm very proud of our alum rock community because that's the way we are we work together to make things happen so i don't doubt that you know a lot of these amazing um programs ideas will happen um and with this leadership too i trust that you know when we

145move in that direction and we make those decisions that it'll be great things for our community and so um with that just a few things i wanted to mention before we move on i will go i think i said trustee fam and then chavez and then i see board vice president trustee pam okay thank you thank you board president uh you know in in light of trusty chavez's remarks oh look i think i think we are all committed to fiscal solvency uh uh i was on the bond committee i read fake fake math for many years you know as vice chair of that committee i asked some very uncomfortable questions to the district and at to deltera at the time when they were the bond program management contractor uh that was the multi-year effort to

146clean up those issues of internal fiscal controls to get us to the point where uh we where we could talk about selling bonds again um you know so please do not doubt my commitment to fiscal solvency for this district right it is certainly an important part to make sure that this district remains the foundational k-8 educational organization of this community as i said when i was at my interview for my appointment that a community that can that cannot afford to educate its own children is a community in decline however that stated i um i state my disagreement to to trustee chavez regarding one of the conditions laid out i should say one of the uh recommendations laid out in the facilities repurposing advisory committee which was the uh issue of leases not longer than five

147years uh if we're going to lease something i uh as long as i'm on this board i want to see that it is to the best benefit financial benefit to this district when we engage in a lease it i understand that it is a way we can we can resolve our budget issues so that we retain the ability to educate our students and to take care of our employees uh you know i am not interested in a i don't think i am nor do i think this community is interested in something like a 40-year long lease with escuela popular where we're locked into uh rents that are i should say lease lease rates that that are in that are that put this district at an advantage um prices you know we all know that the

148prices of goods and materials and salaries change yearly and i understand that when we sign a lease agreement there needs to be some stability but but i think that something in the range of five years is a good principle going forward if we are to consider leases i'm not you know we i i'm not here to give sweetheart deals to to organizations wanting to make use of this district's property this is the property of the residents of alan rock and um gosh darn it i want to make sure that it is put to the best use of this community uh secondly please stop skip i mean i also disagree and that's why i made my comments in terms of uh taking using you know expanding programs that we have that many parents want now you

149know the whole point is to go out on offense here to bring bring families back to this district bring confidence back into this district i think you know it's irresponsible i think to con consider the closure of more schools before we've had a chance to go on the offense and get you know uh the the vietnamese dual language immersion program at painter is not has not even started yet let's not let us not uh you know uh smothered in the crib with tops of more and more school closures here i think i i think that yes we are taking some action today but also i there is where we can let's try to use some time to do you know to show the community that alan rock is is committed to providing uh you know

150just like board vice president quintero said a comprehensive education that's not only academically sound but also you know answers to the aspirations of our community uh you know i do i am not interested in i should say i think that it's a disservice to the residents of our community to to wade the white flag before uh before the before the battle was over uh statements like that give cover to to the kips the alphas the rocket ships and the voices charter schools and of the world around here uh i'm committed to fighting the charters i you know i completely agree with the recommendations of the of the repurposed thing committee that no we're not giving yielding anything to the charters we're not using anything that could be used to the advantage of charter schools uh

151you know if we're going to stay preemptively we're going to close more schools you might as well go to uh you know go go sign up and um you know be part of the marketing arm of these charter schools uh i wanted to state my commitment clearly to this community that uh you know this board you know i myself as a member of this board i help my colleagues to er er we stand committed to offering a good education to the allen rock community uh as we have done for the last nine decades that's not going to change as long as i still got a scene on this board uh i you know highly resent the fact that you know i'm as we're taking tough action let us not give you know the charter schools

152that's that inundate our district you know aid and comfort by scaring off our parents you know with threats of school with further threats of school closures come on uh for for once you know after this let's rally around let's do our best to get out of this pandemic open open for you know hopefully get to a successful fall reopening and let's see where we end up but in the meantime you know let's not let's not rile the community here with you know uh you know uh you know uh un you know with things that were posted in unfounded social media posts as well as you know certain websites that are openly pro-charter and opposed to the existence of alan roth thank you very much madam president thank you um and i think we said trustee

153chavez and then i think it was vice president guitero and then trustee him you're muted trustee travis i have two questions what is the exact number of students we have now could you tell me that and then i have the next question 8 547 i believe okay and the other question is um what is the cost savings if we do close these two schools would you give us that tonight chang can you please answer that question from trustee chavez at the cost savings on the closure of fisher and madison yes so it's um we estimated to be for both schools um close to seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars for the uh reduction in admin cost savings and i think what was the total amount you said that we had to come up to um

154submit the budget you answer that the target that we were asking the committee to achieve was between three to four million dollars okay so what would the other schools that we would have to do to reach that goal i'm sorry yeah i didn't catch your last question um okay obviously so if the savings only going to be 770 000 and you said that we need how much three million something between three to four million dollars okay let's call it four million okay so if we're only going to save seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars and let's be realistic here what else needs to happen in order to reach that number exact number four million can you answer that please i don't know if i can answer that in one sitting i mean there's plenty of

155options that the board administration okay the thing is is that we have to come up with that that's what the county is telling us that we have to come up with right so we're not going to do it and so if we don't do it the skull we make the decision for the board and they take over because they already have the bank accounts they're there because we are not being fiscally responsible when somebody takes over your bank accounts so does that mean that if we don't do it here and in the next meeting the skully take over that decision for the board can you answer that please no my understanding is that there's a process before the county office of ed um ends up taking those actions um and you know it the authority

156still lies with this board in terms of the decision that needs to be made in order for to present a budget that is solvent for current year and to two years out um so their role is to work with the districts um to ensure that all those stuffs are happening can i add about the last letter that i received um from the scoe and what can i just ask this question before i get derailed okay go ahead and you can you go by the steps the actions that will be taken by skully if we do not make these decisions okay go ahead corrina and i think it's i think it might be in relation to that good questions trust each other because i also thought the same things and in the letters they acknowledge that

157we as a board have already been making decisions like for example one of them you know is um this repurposing committee right to head in that direction so it's kind of like the boat heading in that direction for solvency um so they do acknowledge that we as a board are doing the work to get there and so um you know thank you mr chang for not saying hey you know this is what you're gonna do because that's what we're here for and some of the ideas obviously is based on today's decision on what we do with that land to them bring in money and you know other ideas that i've heard in the past right from other board members such as the solar system i mean these ideas that will eventually shift that for our

158district whether we agreed to them or not um but you know we obviously don't have that today and we are not going to be voting on that today um i'll go ahead and go to board vice president quintero and then i think you had a hand up i don't know if you changed your mind and then we'll come back to you chavez yeah so um i guess what we have tonight is the option of continuing to do what we're doing and eventually we'll get to a physical insolvency and then eventually a trustee would be appointed and they would have the authority to take action do whatever it is that they need to do to right the ship so obviously we're not i'm not interested in allowing that to happen because people voted for me not

159for a state appointed trustee uh to go ahead and make decisions on behalf so as tough as the decisions are i it's imperative that we take those actions and so but i do see uh my colleagues passionate position of uh not waving the right the white flag and i'm all for you but i also see the the concerns that are raised by by trustee so um i want to take us back to down memory lane and alan morack i was a new board trustee much like uh board member pham and um we my my concern was the bleeding the bleeding of students that was taking place at the time it happened and so this was before dr bauer came on board and so the previous superintendent had put forward some recommendations recommendations that were put

160out there and i wholeheartedly supported they were very unpopular it was to go ahead and shift the nature of the chavez mayfair site schools and the idea was to go ahead and take us in the direction of a k-8 that would preserve our kids um if we take a look at the harvard model we see that it's very successful in stemming the flow of kids to al far to other charter schools around the area and so using that it would have been a successful model unfortunately a lot of my colleagues at the time um caved i think i was the last one that still went ahead and voted and supported the recommendation everybody else said no no no i'm gonna go because there was a lot of a lot of passion speeches a lot of

161remarks by people who were very very concerned about the it wasn't closure it was shifting over and and doing something different in those school sites to avoid the massive loss of students that we saw who ultimately have seen that it led us to this date and so i would hope that my colleagues that all of us come on a unanimous position and then none of us go ahead and say well these are those two schools that i'm not going to touch and i want other recommendations because we've been here before actually you haven't been i was here and then my colleagues are gone the ones that were there at the time and they chose to disregard the recommendations uh it was it was a solid recommendation that i support at the time and uh the

162hubbard experience has demonstrated that actually would have worked we saw the success that we've had at hubbard and um and so with that said i would hope that my colleagues uh allow us to have a unanimous vote and it seems like we're going that direction i hope that nobody uh decides to back out and say well you know it's not pocketed we've already seen what happened it's approximately yeah it was a few months after i came out to the port it was a while ago and so i'm just trying to provide the the benefit of the experience that we lived through that time hopefully and in the fact of the matter that we need to take some action we can't continue to re relive this experience we won't um we will become physically insolvent if

163we don't take you trusted with haram yes thank you um you know i i'm not gonna lie we all know that it hurts man it hurts to have to do these things like i have chills on my arms right now thinking about all my colleagues comments and the community's comments because it's this is a super pivotal time like in the history of the district and it hurts um but you know as trustee action needs to be taken and we cannot continue to kick the can down the road to i i just wanted to um speak to a couple of comments trust each other has mentioned about what would it take my understanding and i i hope i'm corrected if i'm wrong i mean there's a lot of things that we could do that as covaria

164mentioned but we some of them are we need if we could get 8 000 kids to come back to our district because if you look at those reports that were presented to the committee were projected i believe to be at like uh like high 30 40 capacity in in in a few years and so you know we're built to to have a capacity of i forget the exact number but we'll need about six to eight thousand kids i could be off on that but it's a high number to to come to our district is it possible sure anything's possible but in the near future at least looking at trends that may not happen so that's one thing another thing that we can do is bring income you know trustee and i don't know what i

165mentioned the solar thing that made somewhere down the road maybe would be a reality that would help bringing in partners once we've identified surplus sites that helps um is it enough to the extent that it reaches these uh these amounts that we need to get to so i know and it's hard to know that right now there's too many unknowns with what that would entail and the other thing that the option that we have is is cutting things in the past few years we've you know enabled that and we've cut you know unfortunately the everyone else libraries we've put you know some some time of liaisons and all those things that were very difficult at the time but that wasn't enough and and you know at some point it has to be enough which is

166why i throughout my my um request for stock to look into those things and it's specifically because of what has been mentioned about i think trustee and i mentioned that she's received those letters and and office of ed is recognizing that we're moving in a direction so i think tonight's item sends that signal we're taking action we are a responsible board we are governing in a responsible way in a fiscally responsible way i think part of my intent of putting forth my inquiry to staff is to continue to even if it doesn't if none of that stuff were to happen it continues to send the message and to me it's very genuine that we're not just stopping tonight and then kicking the tan further we're continuing to look at what is what we might do

167in the future that um that will address uh what we need to address and then the last thing i wanted to mention in response to trustee um i appreciate his comments about not wanting to wave the white flag and i don't think any of us want to do that i think the difficult thing for me is the challenge between you know like fighting and doing what you can to try to fight with so many unknown variables um in terms of like getting partners in and trying to get revenue and things like that and knowing when it's time to have to make a call in the other direction and i get you know the risks that that brings with it at the same time i've heard and i take very seriously the comments from a lot

168of our public and i do think it's an area where we as a district have been i don't know about negligence but we might have taken a different approach is um you know calling out to trust each other's point calling out the the difficult stuff when it needs to be called out and just saying it and i think the public deserves time that's why i said this my thing would be not for another year but it allows for time for people to digest people to consider for us to tweak or look at other options but i think um you know for a number of different reasons whether it's the things that i propose as we look into those or whatever it may be i just think it's important that we yes do what we can

169to to fight but at the same time give our community and ourselves time to pl time to plan um and be very thoughtful and strategic about whatever moves we need to take next because in my opinion there there are further moves that we need to take if trustee china just found out or you know was told that the current item is three or four i forgot how many hundreds of thousands of dollars and we still need another you know couple million clearly further actions need to be taken sooner than later as president said earlier so those are my comments on those items right now uh trustee chavez that's one of the reasons that i've been wanting to have the budget at meetings because i wanted to ask a bunch of questions on the money what

170was needed to um keep the district solvent and to keep the education for the kids to give them a really strong program and i'm going to ask my colleague [Music] president corrina if the in the future um if you can the letters that you get from scoe if you can distribute that to the board sooner rather than later as well as i'm going to ask that of all the other colleagues when i got the letter as soon as i did get it i wanted to share that right away because i think that each and every board member should know what the response is from skully or if they're sending something out and also i don't look at it as a white flag i don't ever do the white flag you do have to step back

171though and to reflect and regroup so that you could come out stronger and giving the kids a better program a stronger program and cutting the the excess hearing that that needs to be cut in order to provide the quality education that these students need and deserve and that's what i'm looking at i'm looking at are we going to be able to provide the students with what they need and that's my number one focus is the education of the students um that's it thanks um can i just say something in regards to the request specifically from me i cannot agree to that uh because some of the information that i get is very particular to me so i can't agree that i will forward everything to you and or the rest of the trustees here um

172but i will take that in consideration uh for vice president quintero uh i would like to call the question or if we move to a vote i'll retract there will there'll be no need to call the question one more time i would like to call the question but if we go for a vote then i'll retract and there's no need to call there would be no need for me to call it i don't see no more hands up so i think we're ready for the vote um there needs to be a motion we have a motion and we have a second dr bauer i know it was long time ago so uh board vice president quintero uh motioned a nice second um maribel do you have that information sorry it's okay it was tough yeah

173no i appreciate it the resolution with the amendment yeah the amendment of the resolution was the one that um kristi kintel spoke about yeah thank you i'm sorry guys it's just tough right and it's okay i get it thank you and thank you for helping us stay focused and making sure that we don't miss anything um i just wanted you to know that rogelio crafted some language to the resolution that i wanted to share for everybody just the edits so that the board knows what's the edits on the resolution and the community does also so is it okay for maribel to share just those edits so that everybody has the resolution and it's just that everybody can see the edits to the resolution is that okay sure please thank you so as you can see

174this will go at the very end correct rogelio that's correct these would be added to the to the very end of the resolution and this is to address your comments as well as in consideration of member chavez's comments so thank you madam president and i just wanted to make sure that everybody knows what's going to be um considered sure and and i'll go ahead and read them out loud and then we'll go for the vote be it further resolve that students currently enrolled at madison middle school and families with students currently enrolled at madison middle school will be given the opportunity to enroll their students at renaissance academy at madison school and students currently enrolled at fisher middle school and families with students currently enrolled at future middle school will be given the opportunity and

175first priority to enroll their students at renaissance academy at fisher school and be it further resolved that students currently enrolled at mathson middle school and fishermen or middle school may enroll at other district schools per the district's enrollment policies thank you thank you okay and we'll go back to our screens just want to make sure we'll go ahead and go to the vote now i'll just call your name as i see you on my screen uh trustee vegano hi or vice president quintero hi trustee chavez hi bestie pham i and myself i passes unanimously thank you so much now calling to or joining the meeting at 8 48 p.m thank you thank you