001Welcome everybody to the regular board meeting. This is the April 16th meeting. Welcome back from spring break. We are going to call to order. >> Thank you. >> 506. The first agenda item is Miss Ellen Ellander. Is there any uh public to address the board on close session agenda items? >> No, there are not. Okay, great. Uh with that we will convene to close session. Oh, it's so funny. But you're not on camera. >> Your laptop is >> just the back side of it. >> Yes. And then you get into that shock. Yes. Yes. >> Hey, bang it. >> If everybody could take their seat, we're about to begin. Again, welcome to our April board meeting, April 16th. The time is now 6:16 and we reconvene to open session. Um before we do the call
002to order flag salute, I would like to say that trustee Bruno unfortunately uh is not able to attend today's meeting. He's leading a school trip out of state. So with that, a call to order and the flag salute, please. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> There is no report coming out of the closed session. Uh, agenda item number seven, uh, comes the approval of the agenda and the consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda and consent agenda? >> Um, Dan, did I did we need to do anything about the um was that thing is in the con consent agenda? >> This is different. >> The bylaws are a
003different agenda. >> No, this is a um >> Yeah, I I will clarify. Um >> uh it was let's see uh item um there is a uh let me just double check which item it was my apologies um it was uh the contract uh with Alder SMCE Alder uh for teacher residency uh there was a typo within the um contract it had uh three parentheses two uh it should be three parentheses three. Uh we'll work with the alder to um uh partner with them for up to uh three teachers for next year. >> So knowing knowing that uh can we still then go ahead with the motion? Okay, great. >> I move to approve the agenda and the consent agenda. >> Great. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Okay. All those in favor?
004>> I Okay. The motion passes 4 Z. At this time, are there Miss Ellinger, are there any speakers wishing to address the board on non-aggenda items? >> Yes, President CS, we have um two speakers on non-aggenda items and one on item 18. Okay. Um for item number 18 for that one person just I if they can we we'll do it before that item 18 >> at that time. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Unless there is a reason why the why they can't uh do it at that time. >> Okay. Great. Just so that other people might want to comment on 18. >> All right. So first we'll have Shandra Mcu and then Lisa Fehee. Good evening board superintendent. My name is Shauner Mchuan. I'm an eighth grade teacher at Nesvet, a former parent in the
005district. My daughter was a proud Puma from kindergarten through 8th grade. And a madeup word, I'm a native Belmontian. I've lived in Belmont for 35 of my I know hard to believe 54 years. I've also been a taxpayer in this district since 2006. I emailed the board on February 5th um expressing my concern about staffing and enrollment if a decision was not made regarding the closure of one of our two small middle schools. Since the decision to remain status quo for three years was made, both seventh grade teachers from San Piper have taken new positions in the district for the fall. From experience, I can tell you that filling middle school positions that require a multiple subject credential is not easy. Personally, I'm working on my TK units because of the uncertainty surrounding the still
006potential closure of one of the small middle schools. At the same time, based on the first enrollment numbers following parent tours, shadow days, information nights, our community continues to signal that it prefers one small middle school and a traditional middle school. I would also like to ask about the transparency of the district advisory committee focused on middle school marketing and enrollment. How will the work of this committee be shared with the broader district community? The information should be communiate communicated publicly beyond board meetings so families and staff can stay informed and engaged. As I've been out in the community over the past several months, one thing has stood out. People consistently stop to ask me how I'm doing, how my colleagues are doing, and how we're feeling after months of uncertainty surrounding a possible middle
007school closure, followed by a decision to remain status quo. Our site admin team, Ryan and Christina, have shown tremendous care and support throughout this time. Community members have checked in again and again. Yet, from the leaders whose non-decision has prolonged this situation, the silence has been noticeable. Thank you. I'll see you again for item agenda item number 18. Okay, Lisa. >> Good evening, board members. Over the past two years, BRSA has consistently come before you to speak. This tradition was started by our past president, Barbara, with the goal of strengthening communications between the union and the board, creating space to share perspectives, concerns, and ideas for improvement. We believe that effort has made a difference. We have felt heard. We've seen you visit more school sites, ask thoughtful questions, and work better to understand what
008is happening in our classrooms. This matters, and we do appreciate it. This will be my final time speaking this year, unfortunately, because my open house falls right on the May 9th, the May 21st night. So, I know you're going to miss us. It's fine. Um, from the beginning, we committed not only to raising concerns, but to highlighting what's worked well with our glows. One of those bright spots that we've highlighted multiple times this year is the increased counselor supports across all of our sites. It's been so impactful and it continues to be true. Our counselors are helping students navigate emotions, build relationships, and feel supported at the school. This investment has truly made a big difference. And this year, much of our attention has understandably been focused on the middle school decision. But tonight, I
009want to broaden our lens back up to return to school and district-wide concerns. And something that we've heard consistently about over the last few years in general, student behavior in classroom. It's becoming and still is an increasingly huge challenge for us teachers. We are seeing more students who are disregulated. Students whose behaviors can be dr so disruptive that teaching and learning must come to a full and complete stop. In some cases, students have become physically aggressive towards peers and/or staff. And too often, a single teacher is left alone while during this whole time to manage on their own loan and are responsible not only for that student, but 25 or more other students. What's especially concerning is that these students, many of them, do not actually qualify for formal supports like a 504 or an
010IEP. And not because they don't need help, but because they don't meet the narrow criteria required. At the same time, the SST process, while important, can be slow and repetitive. Try a strategy for six to eight weeks. Let's meet again. We'll adjust. Repeat and repeat. Meanwhile, the needs in the classroom still remain as urgent as they did from day one. Teachers are doing everything they can, collecting data, documenting behaviors, attending meetings, and implementing multiple strategies. But too often, the message they receive is simply, "Keep trying." This is not where This is where one of the many frustrations lie. If a student was asking for math, we would not just say, "Keep trying, you'll figure it out," without actually providing support. Yet, that's what's happening to us teachers. Um, the systems that we do have in
011place do work, but only for some students. They are not working for all. And when they don't, both teachers and staff and students are left feeling without the support they need. So, the question becomes, how can we do better, especially for our youngest learners? In neighboring district, grade level para profofessionals provide additional classroom support for the entire grade level. Managing behavior, facilitating small group and allowing teachers to meet a wider range of need. This type of support could be transformative particularly in the earlier grades. Classroom of 25 or more students can be overwhelming even on the best of days. Every student has the right to learn in a safe supportive environment and every teacher deserves the support necessary to make it possible. Right now, all too often that is not being met. So, thank you
012for your time and your willingness to listen. And I hope we can continue this conversation on what we can do to help and support all students. >> Okay, >> that's all the speakers for non-aggenda items. >> Thank you. Um, so now we go to the the board of trustees report. um to see what has been going on in our community the last month. Would you like to shine? >> All right. So, I hope everyone has had a chance to rest and recharge over this last spring break. Coming back super refreshed and ready for a strong finish the year. Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. All right. So, um, so this past month I attended the Sam Piper third grade wax museum and that was really, really fun to see. The students did a great job of bringing
013their projects to life. I also had the pleasure of going and participating in the Sandpiper Science Fair. Um, it's I I love the science fair because you really get to see what drives those kids and what where their curiosity takes them. Um, and um, I also participated in interviews for our principal candidates, which is always super important and a great part of making sure that our leadership in this district is strong. Congratulations to our um, new principles. Um, and finally, I just wanted to encourage everyone to come out to support Celebrate the Music April 26th. Um, we have performances from our elementary third to fifth grade music, from uh, middle school jazz and the Carlmont drum line. And I understand a battle of the bands between Carl Mont and UC Davis. >> It should be
014super cool. >> So, come on up. Support the uh, support the music, celebrate it, and >> over to one of you guys. >> Uh, thanks, Trusty Tang. Um, so for my board report, I wanted to do something a little bit different this time. Um, so I actually just wanted to shout out some of our students. Um, so there was a um, district-wide science fair and so I just want to give some recognition to our students who um, placed in that science fair. So these are all middle school students. Um, so with honorable mention, we had Adella Chung from Rston. Um, with second place finishes, there was Christopher L'Oreal. Uh, Lauria, sorry, if I butcher every anybody's name, I'm so sorry. Um, Christopher Lauria um, from Sam Piper, Lewis uh, Gao from Sam Piper, Dallas Zang
015from Nesbit, and Katherine Bez Bezadinski. Um, shoot, I didn't write her school down. I think she's from Rston. And then, um, in first place we had Lyra Bloom from Sam Piper, Andrew Park from Sam Piper, and Kishva um, Xen from Nesbbit. So, congratulations to all of our students um, for placing in the county um, in the district in the county science fair. Sorry. That's it. That's it for me. April, would you like to go? >> Thank you. Um, so I also again just wanted to highlight uh school force celebrate the music as uh trustee Tang mentioned. Um, it will be a new location this year uh at Rston Middle School on uh Sunday, April 26th. I'm reading from school forc's website and it will uh start at 11:00 a.m. and uh end around 5:00 p.m.
016Uh there will still be food trucks as there have been in the past. There will still be all of the all of the things you know and love. Um and also as well um there will be uh performances from third grade chorus which I believe is the first time um that third grade is performing. Um I could be wrong and uh anyway so there uh there is that and um so please come out and support and celebrate our music. And then um I also wanted to mention sorry I'm just going to the calendar here um yes before our next uh regular board meeting which will be in May. Before that we will have a special board meeting on uh Monday May 11th which is a board trustee info session. So, there is an election for
017the board happening in November for three seats and three areas. I should have gotten that part of the website up as well. Um, but uh the district has added that information to our website as a dedicated page of um which areas will be up for election. If you go to school board, it's been under November 2026 by trustee area election. Um so anyway, so um encourage everybody to uh find out more and think about running for school board and uh we would be happy to uh let you guys know more about it and and welcome everybody's participation. Great. Thank you for those updates. Um I'll I'll just keep it brief. I was kind of looking through when I did things. Sometimes the dates all merge together, but uh it was a couple of things that
018I was excited to go to this past month in our community. One was one of the brown bag lunches for the students was at Nesbbit and uh just great to get a nice variety of students were kind of engaged and in addition to being able to eat some delicious pizza really kind of gave us some very uh kind of spoke very candidly and very eloquently to kind of just tell us what their likes and kind of dislikes were and just in general how things were going. And so, um, that was a a wonderful, um, way to kind of just stay in tune because this is why we do it, right? We do it for the students. So, I want to thank them for for for coming out and representing themselves and their school and their
019teachers. So, well, um, the other thing which was impressive um, was right before the break there was a fourth and fifth grade at Nesbbit Science Expo. um my and uh it was quite incredible and a lot of hard work to put on and I want to commend uh the fourth and fifth grade science teacher um Mr. Derek McGovern for really putting together such an outstanding job. The kids were so passionate. I learned a lot about lava lamps. I learned a lot about density. Um those lava lamps bring back a lot of >> flashbacks to like college time and things like that. Um, but this is definitely a little bit more PC. So, it was really great though. Um, and again, even making banana bread. There was some stations making banana bread. So, um, M didn't
020burn down. So, that's good. Um, and again, just it was a really wonderful way. Um, science is one of those um things where kids can do the creativity, innovation, and and it's just made for these kinds of projects. So, thank you to teacher um Derek McGovern. Finally, I will end with we had our first district advisory meeting which is an agenda item um with the on marketing awareness and enrollment, middle school marketing awareness and enrollment. It was a great first meeting and I will we will um trusty Deng and I will reserve some comments for that agenda item later on in this meeting. But um just a great a lot of energy, a lot of um hard work um and and as Trusty Northrup said, a lot of fun events going on. I will give
021a big shout out and thank you to School Force. I attended the auction event. Uh Superintendent D um Duo was there, Trusty Northrup was there. And so really appreciate um it was a great fun auction. great always to get dressed up and kind of look silly and in in the costumes and just kind of let off some steam after a hard work week. Uh and always for a great cause. So we are very close to meet meeting this annual um kind of contribution. So hopefully please come to celebrate the music um and let's finish the year strong. Um with that that's what I have to say. Thank you. >> Great. Uh good evening everyone. Uh lots of dates on on my update. Uh first I'll just start with celebrate the music. Uh it's coming up
022really soon. Uh anybody who's listening to that, we are looking for volunteers. Uh it's going to be a great event really uh showcasing uh the talent here in district uh chorus uh instrumental music um as well as an art show. So we're partnering with LEAP uh to highlight some of the art that uh School Force graciously sponsors in all of our classrooms. Uh it should be a great event. It is free. It's at Rston this year. Uh we encourage everybody to come out and uh celebrate um with us. Um a couple of date changes uh sorry Lisa uh with trustees that also have kiddos at uh schools and open houses. Our meeting was moved to May 14th. So the way week before uh that was on consent agenda tonight. Um so we'll get to see
023you then. That's because we didn't we miss um uh couple other shout outs uh on the consent agenda tonight. Um we passed a couple of resolutions via the consent agenda. Uh one was for the day of the teacher which is celebrated on May 13th. Um it's the statewide recognition uh for teachers on May 13th. Um and the second resolution that we passed um is the week of uh classified staff which is Mayh 17th to the 23rd. Uh you might wonder a day um a week um that's how it's recognized um at the state level. So we support that as well. Um I just can't go without saying um that um everything we do is um a tribute to our staff. Um, our kiddos would not be as successful as they are without the day-to-day hard
024work um of everybody in our district, whether it's our custodial staff, our office staff, our teachers who are doing the heavy lift in the classroom. Um, my thanks goes out to them. Uh, thank you for all the hard work uh day in and day out. Um, so much happens in our classrooms and it's because of your hard work and dedication. Um we celebrate uh we started a tradition a few years ago um of a district-wide barbecue um where cabinet and board uh cook hamburgers and hot dogs and veggie burgers uh out in the park. They did get the park renovations done in time. So we'll still be out at Twin Pines Park. Uh we'll send that announcement out tomorrow and um have a celebration. Hopefully it's beautiful weather um on May 6th. Um, also in
025the consent agenda, when I talk about amazing staff members in the classroom, uh, we have an amazing staff member, uh, that was, uh, just officially via the consent agenda, um, uh, recognized as our next principal of Cypriyani Elementary School, Caroline Baldonado. Congratulations. She's joining us tonight. Um, uh, goes goes without saying. She's 15 years in district at Redwood Shores at Sandpiper. uh she has uh taken on many leadership um roles in instruction in MTSS. Uh she knows BRSSD's ways um through and through. Uh she was our extended year extended year ext uh ESY extended school year principal uh this last summer and has just been doing some incredible work. Uh so we're really excited to promote somebody inhouse uh to the next principal of Cypriyani. I will share just a kind of a little story.
026Uh it all went out to Cypriyani staff. Uh it made its way around Sandpiper where she currently is now. Uh, and I was at PTA earlier this week and um one of the PTA moms from um from Cypriani was was excited that they they got notified who the new principal was and looking forward to it and said, "Dan, can we find some way uh to maybe meet her sooner rather than later?" And um everybody else was looking like, "Ah, I didn't know there was a new prince." And I and I shared uh Caroline's name with the larger group. There was lots of um Nesbbit uh families there or parents there uh in San Piper and they're like, "Oh my gosh, Miss Balden, you are so lucky." Um just the positive kudos from the parents around
027the table. Um honestly left uh the Cypriyani's uh mom her heart was melting. So um I know they are super excited to have you. I know uh Sandpiper is exh uh sad to lose you, but you're staying at a good place. So, uh with that, um welcome Caroline. And I think that is it for me today. >> Um sorry, I just have a a point of privilege. Um, Jerome, I don't know if it's just me, but my um Wi-Fi keeps going out. So, like it makes me sign back in, but it's not actually working. So, I don't know. Is anybody else having trouble? Okay. Oh, yeah, it did. Okay. Okay. Sorry. I just was going to use something later on in the meeting, but then if like the internet doesn't work, then but anyway. Okay.
028Thank you, So now we are on to the school spotlight spotlight which is always a welcome thing uh and look forward to this month is Central Elementary School uh with our principal principal Katherine Waters and welcome and welcome to your staff. principal of Central Elementary School. Good evening, board president COS and board trustees, Miss Tang, mom of our adorable kindergarten student. Uh, Miss Tang and Miss Northrup. Good evening, Superintendent Duara and members of cabinet. It really is a pleasure to be here tonight. This year has been especially meaningful for me as my first year as principal at Central. It has also been a pleasure to be in the company of so many amazing Central staff members. So, thank you for those attending tonight and your support. I've spent a lot of time listening, observing, and
029building relationships with students, staff, and families. Really trying to understand what makes Central Central. And what stood out very quickly is that this school that this is a school with a strong foundation. There is a deep sense of pride here. In fact, according to the US News Study released in November of this school year, Central ranked number 22 best elementary school in California out of a staggering 8,767 elementary schools in the state. What led to that strong rating is our number one 15 number 15 ranking in math proficiency and our number 30 ranking in reading proficiency. We have strong academic outcomes, a highly dedicated and long tenur staff and systems that have supported student success over time. So early on I found myself coming back to one guiding question. How do we maintain this level
030of excellence while continuing to grow, especially in the areas of inclusion and safety in alignment with our district's strategic plan. That question has really shaped our work over this year. And tonight, I'll be sharing just a few examples of how that shows up across our four focus areas. Teaching all students to be well-rounded learners, fostering belonging and inclusion, promoting community engagement and partnerships, and investing in our longtime future. One of our biggest areas of focus has been making sure we are continuing to support the whole child. Of course, academics and high expectations remain strong, but we're also thinking about social skills, emotional development, and student independence. So, the first highlight will be connected to fostering belonging and inclusion. Our existing counseling and seal programs championed by our counselor Miss Kim remain high quality researchbased and
031datadriven. So given that strong foundation of our current work, how can we continue to support the whole child? An example I'd like to highlight tonight is our first global school play day held just recently on April 1st. I like to pause here because when people hear play day, they sometimes think of it as a break from learning. But when you walk around campus that day, you see something really different. You see students negotiating roles, solving problems in real time, including others, and managing frustrations and conflict. What you don't see is teachers managing those behaviors. Teachers are there to play and enjoy as well. These are skills that is that are essential for students, not just for school, but for life. And they don't always come out in structured instruction. So, just to highlight some of
032these pictures, you'll see a twister mat, but what you'll notice is this interesting madeup game second grade students are doing with some sort of other card deck on top of the twister colors. In the top right hand corner, second grade teacher Gina Bruno is highly invested in this game that she is playing. not managing, not directing, not solving problems for students, but generally genuinely playing herself. We have a student who brought tents to school and is enjoying some relaxing and reading time. And then outside, this group of younger students brought pillows and blankets and squishies and board games and card games and had a picnic of learning and play, if you'd like to call it that. It was adorable. Global School Play Day was founded in 2015 by a group of actually in this area
033educators who recognized that children were experiencing a significant decline in opportunities for unstructured screenfree play during the school day. Its purpose is to encourage schools around the world to dedicate time for students to engage in childdirected play, problem solving, collaboration, and overall well-being. Today, Global School Play Day has grown into an international event, uniting thousands of schools in a shared commitment to preserve the importance of play in childhood. Now, Global School Play Day happens the first week of February. We weren't quite ready at Central for February. So, we did ours on April 1st, April Fool's Day, which kind of seemed because we're like, "What? We're doing what? We can bring what to school." It really fit um the the fun of that day. Next year, we would love to continue at the actual global school
034play day. I have a little video here I'd like to show you. This Miss Kim captured captured this in real time. Um, and it just shows some genuine fun happening. Do I have to press anything, Kristen? >> Very organic and sweet. Can I go off? Yeah. Another example is the transformation on our campus of a small space uh called the calming corner. Although all classrooms include things like sensory tools, flexible seating, calming visuals and calming spaces, there's limited space at Central outside the classrooms for students to regulate. The calming corner is a designated supervised space that provides students a short structured break when they experience emotional dysregulation or sensory overwhelm. Students may visit with adult support, whether that's a teacher, counselor, behavior specialist, or myself, and engage in individualized regulation activities such as deep breathing,
035movement, tactile input, or mindfulness exercises. As you can see, the environment is designed to minimize visual and auditory distractions using neutral colors, soft lighting, and lots of sensory materials that promote calm and focus. What's been really powerful is watching students to begin to recognize their own needs. They'll take a break, reset, and come back ready to learn without needing an adult to prompt every time. Now that I've described the room, the next slide shows pictures of the amazing transportation this year. Transformation this year of a small stuffed storage closet of PTA play and performance COVID sign, billboard signs um to a room that I just described. This is in first thank you to the um school force innovation grant program that provided the funds for this project and to our PBIS team and especially our
036first grade teacher Mrs. Schroeder for making this space happen. Central will continue to foster ways to support belonging and inclusion because we know that students do the best learning when they feel safe, seen, and connected. I'm going to skip ahead. I'll come back to these slides. I'll now move into a couple of examples of teaching students to be well-rounded learners and promoting community engagement. This is one of our most exciting areas of growth this year and hopefully beyond has been our environmental learning work. We started with a simple but powerful question. How can we make Central a greener place at the schoolwide level? The focus this year was on properly sorting your trash. Green compost bags had been purchased and they were sitting in the custodial closet for months and months. They were not being
037used. Students were being told to sort their trash in the green bin, but it never really clicked. Did they really understand why this was important? So we created a partnership with Recology to provide several interactive assemblies with our students and from there students really took ownership. We started using those green compost bags that actually went into the compost bins. >> At the schoolwide level, students support each other to sort their trash correctly. Students are recognized with dolphin tickets for being responsible when they're seen sorting trash correctly. But it did not stop there. Laura Better, teacher of our four five combo class in our audience tonight, is participating in the profile of a learner cohort this year facilitated by Cheney Mson. Mrs. Better's class is developing the skills that define our district's profile of a learner.
038Her class began gathering observations and ideas about how to make Central a greener school. They learned about green schools around the world and took campus walks to identify needs and possibilities right here on campus. This picture shows that they interviewed recology personnel on the day of the assemblies as part of as part of empathy interviews. They learned about the design thinking process and are now in the iteration and testing phases of that process preparing for their upcoming and central's first ever environmental fair. First week of May, students research their topics, refine their essential questions, and have begun creating their final fair displays where they will educate others about their ideas to make Central a greener place using trifold boards, prototypes, interactive elements, and how they will interact with visi visitors to their booth. You are
039all certainly welcome to en to join and attend Central's upcoming environmental um fair. What I love most about this is that students are stepping into realworld roles. They're not just completing an assignment. They're thinking like problem solvers, designers, and advocates. those skills and our profile of a learner. That connection between student learning and community impact has been really powerful. This is a picture of one of our students earning a dolphin ticket by being observed sorting her plastic singleuse wrapper into the landfill. We also have encouraged student no matter how many times in my weekly video we are working on sorting our trash and then I go out at lunch and it's all mixed together. We utilized voices of students created skits that were replaced me and other adults talking. So this is a sample of
040some of our student leaders um encouraging our younger students to sort their trash correctly. Action. >> Hey Central, have you ever been trash cans and wonder, "Wait, where does this go?" >> Every single day. Is this trash? Compost? Recycling? I panic. >> No more trash can. If we want to be a green in our school, we have to sort smart. >> Okay. Quiz me. Banana peel. >> Compost. Food scraps go into the green bin. >> What happens? empty it first and then recycle it. >> Oh, chip bag. >> That's trash. Sadly, not everything can be recycled. >> So, why does it matter? >> Because when we when we compost food waste, it turns into nutrient or soil instead of creating harmful gases in the landfill. >> Interception helps reuse materials instead of making ones from
041scratch. >> Exactly. Small choices, big impact. >> So, here's our challenge. Before you toss it, pause and sort it. >> Trash recycling first. You've got this. >> Let's work together for a greener school. >> Sorry, that was a little lowle on the volume, but you get the gist. They pay attention when they see students sharing that message. I'm going to go back a couple of slides and end with our final highlights. Another major focus for us this year have been strengthening our safety systems. And this is where we've been really thinking about long-term sustainability. Not just having safety plans in place, but making sure those plans actually work in practice. This year we have built consistent monthly drill cadences so that students and staff become familiar and confident with procedures. And those drills are more
042effective. This year was the first time during a fire evacuation drill that we've practiced using the actual fire alarm sounds versus just a PA announcement. We've engaged in student reunification training and even conducted a fullout simulation so that if we ever had to respond to a real situation, we're not figuring it out in the moment, but we're tapping into our muscle memory because we've practiced it before. This is a little collage of pictures. Um the top the three that kind of make an L shape those are from our January 5th professional development day. We had 25 students and their parents volunteer to come on a non-school day so that staff could practice and work with real parents and real students in all of the jobs and processes for student reunification after a major emergency. I'll
043talk about the little device in the top right hand corner in just a bit. This is a little overview of other safety preparations. Members of our incident command team have participated in continuous learning throughout this year provided by our very own Sonteo County Office of Education such as the big five safety protocol updates for 2526, our student reunification training and earthquake tabletop exercise training. In addition, just this Monday, we implemented our front gate buzzer system that was on the last slide to strengthen campus security during the day. If you know, Central, our main office is quite a bit inside the interior of the school. So, after many years of the front gates being open all day, they now stay closed. Right after 8:35 or so, parents, late students, visitors, the postman slide their finger up
044on that device, it beeps into the office, they're able to verify the identifi identity of the visitor, and they can be buzzed in from the office. Thank you to the district uh for making that happen for our site. Another aha this year is that of out of our staff of approximately 36 to 40 folks, only two were certified for first aid and CPR. As such, we allocated funds to build our own skills in this capacity. We never want to think about scary things happening to students or our colleagues, but it feels so much better that we have a solid team who can provide support when the unexpected happens. We will continue. So that being said, just yesterday from two certified folks, we had 13 additional staff members complete a blended learning option, three-hour course, 2hour
045in-person. Now we have 13, 14, 15 out of 36 who are prepared. Whether it's post major emergency or a student choking, we can respond in a safe and in a safe manner in real time. What's been most important to us is that this work is not just about compliance. It's about confidence. It's making sure that every adult on campus knows what to do, feels prepared, and can respond quickly and effectively. That's what ultimately creates that safe environment for students. This is about a two-minute video summarizing um our student reunification simulation. You will see all of the components um as provided by the county office for how parents come to the site and use that process designed to reunite with their child. It was a rainy day, but we did it. Miss Kay's role was called
046runner. That's the name of the position. And look how seriously she takes her role. Running. So as I reflect on this first year, I really see our work as balance. It's honoring the strong foundation that already exists at Central while being intentional about where we grow next. Whether it's expanding opportunities for student voice, continuing to build a culture of inclusion and belonging, or continuing to strengthen our systems for safety. All of it connects back to supporting our students in a more complete way. I feel incredibly grateful to be a part of this community and district and excited about what's ahead. So, thank you for the opportunity to share just some highlights and to answer any questions. I have one more slide that just says thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Skip ahead. Thank you. Okay. I guess
047I'll vote. >> No, no, no, no. Just put my mic on. >> Thank you, Principal Waters, and thank you for your staff and putting this very, very interesting presentation together. So, I open it up now to uh to questions from the board. Would anyone like to start? >> Go ahead, Trusty. Thanks. >> Thank you so much. Um, it was really great to see the presentation and I want to commend you on a first year checking all the boxes, making sure all of these these things that we kind of I I guess like CPR, AED training for me, I just kind of imagine that that's that's just something that we have. And so, so knowing that you're watching for that, making sure that all of these pieces are taken care of, it's very gratifying to see.
048So, thank you so much for that. Um, I did have a question about the reunification training. >> The student reunification training. We had this table where the parents were checking in. You were checking for, you know, the emergency pickup person. >> Yep. >> What happens when we have an emergency s? Like, I mean, I imagine all those papers are printed maybe the night before. >> What happens when you have the emergency happen and those papers aren't printed and you don't have internet access? Because I know internet access is always spotty. What >> Thank you. Thank you very much for that question and that's where attending trainings that the Sanonteo County Office of Education puts on directly uh make you think through those scenarios. So for example, when you're a parent and you register every year
049and you you say my neighbor and my mother and you know my father-in-law, all of these people are authorized to pick up. We print those but we don't like we're not going to go into the internet and look in Aries about who. So, we print every single emergency contact card, but we don't just print one copy. We print about three copies. One is kept in um the main office. One is kept in like um I'm the incident commander. One of the teachers is like right below me as like a vice principal, assistant incident commander. A whole set in that person's classroom. And then we have an emergency shed in the back field. And we have an entire crate of those in there. So at all time I mean at all times students do come and
050go. Um you know they leave the school they join. So periodically we'll run new sets but we strategically have them in different portions of the campus because quite frankly at any point in time you not you may not be able to access where that box is in the office for example. So having one in the storage shed kind of at the back field um is vital so that we have the most current information at that time and clipboards and pens and all of those supplies and the signage all of that is prepared ahead of time. >> That's awesome. I had one other question. Sorry. Is it okay? Okay. One other question. Tell me about global play day. Like how does that happen? Like is it like a whole day of playing? Like they just go
051>> wild. Like the kids bring their own like you had the people brought like they just bring in their Yes. >> their toys from home. >> Yeah. So there's a resource guide that comes with registering your school or your district for global school play day. It's usually like I said the middle of the first week of February on a yearly basis. They don't specify how long. They don't like recommend it. That's up to each individual school. I brought this idea to Central after being a principal in a in a former district who did it for several years. We usually did a half day um which was longer. Other schools have done it full days and it's this big thing. For central we wanted to do more of a pilot just to kind of test it
052out and see how it went. So we did a 90inute uh time frame. So, every grade level or span of grade levels had 90 minutes as their um anticipated play day. Um the resource package comes with a parent letter that acts as a permission slip. So, it tells a little bit of background about Global School Play Day and how we value the the unstructured play and the skills that come from it. And then they fill out what their child is planning to bring. and they give parameters. No electronics, nothing that's has batteries in it unless it's like part of a board game where you have like a timer or something like that. Um, no, you know, swords or anything simulating weap, you know, those types of parameters. But other than that, the little girl brought
053tents, uh, race cars, uh, cardboard boxes to create things. One little student brought a Michael Jackson costume to play. I mean, and it they're so excited. Um, but they just need to have permission. So, they're not coming with all sorts of things. It's it's structured in that way. And so, parents believe in it. Um, the students had a blast. And teachers, it was a big a little bit of a challenge for our teachers who are very like this is what we're doing and this is what's expected. Um, and they really had to take a step back and not rush in to say and this is how it has to happen and no, you're not taking turns. The idea is you step back or you engage with them and play yourself. >> Thank you. >> You're
054welcome. >> Yeah, I had a question. Um, thank you so much for the presentation and also um, thank you to your staff and and thank you for all the work that you guys do. Obviously, I'm at Central all the time. Um, and just before my question, um, I just wanted to say that, um, I really appreciate, um, the environment that you guys provide at Central. And I know we're really lucky to be in a district where I think all of our schools provide a very inclusive environment for people. And just like personally for me um to see my son go from being a four-year-old non-verbal, you know, pretk student to now he is literally reading stories to his little brother at bedtime. It's like it's just so cool. And to see him in an environment
055where he's just really thriving is amazing. So thank you for all of your hard work. Um my question is on the um the trash um um and so I know that you said that like you were doing the talking and now you've made these videos. Do you are you seeing an improvement on campus? Oh, that's wonderful. and students have taken ownership of um kind of helping around the different tables and they'll kind of take three or four lunch bins and they'll kind of do the sorting like for their table and they've really taken a liking to making sure it's done properly. We have those little, you know, garbage picker upper sticks and so students will be like that's plastic that's got to go over there. Um and so yes, we've seen um a huge increase
056on students sorting their trash correctly and being proud about it. >> Yeah. Yeah. They had to understand the why. So Recology would show pictures of landfill and you know facts about use of plastics and what can be recycled and what can't and then took items from our own lunch program, the cereal containers and like broke it apart. The cereal goes here. The the tub can be recycled, but the plastic thing on top has to go in the landfill. So, one item you have to do three different things, but it made it real because it was what they're touching and eating every single day. So, that was a really great partnership. >> That's great. Thank you so much. >> So, I So, again, thank you. I have a a question. So this the environmental literacy and
057design thinking there was a lot obviously of thought and preparation from the partnership with reccology to really the videos and the assemblies and how does that I'm really interested in the evolution of how that occurs not just from the the idea but there's so much kind of is required right into into the calendar school year. So when did you kind of like come with that question and then how did you kind of because so much kind of was scaffolding and and and and supports the other but it's like where did you how did you find the time in the schedule to kind of bring this out and so that it's kind of given to the students in a way that they can kind of like assimilate it and kind of trickle it in because I'm
058sure it wasn't all done in one month and it wasn't it's been an ongoing process, right? That's correct. >> So, can you kind of just walk through how you're able to find the spacing into that? >> Sure. I would say our schoolwide focus with the partnership with Recology and the realization that we're using a green bin, but we're not using the green bags in the bin was kind of an aha. And why are we doing that? and why aren't students sorting correctly? I think that was more of an organic need that arose and allowed um some discussion and awareness for our students. So I think that was one level. The other thing that I highlighted was a classesspecific deep dive into into the design thinking process and how it relates to environmental thinking. And that
059was an opportunity that teachers across the district had an opportunity to opt into um as part of a a pilot program or a year-long program with a facilitator to help them create um a projectbased learning unit that tied specifically environmental literacy um to student learning. So a lot of things. So, I really highlighted one classes deep dive into that process. The reason I showed and highlighted that today is because we're always looking for ways to have students think creatively, foster their creativity, uh solve problems that connects to their real life. And so her deep dive and her student leaders and then kind of our schoolwide vision of how we can be more green and just one simple like dedicated trash sorting focus um really kind of matched our bigger idea of what makes um our
060school greener. But I want to point out that the work that Mrs. Veter is doing although it's tied to environmental literacy. She is teaching research skills uh content standards uh persuasive writing or information. There are so many standards. So it's it's it's all connected. We're doing something that's authentic. We're advocating. We're educating others. But there are so many standards that she is able to um support students in mastering within that active work and meaningful work. Um it is environmental literacy but project-based learning doesn't have to tie to environmental literacy. It can integrate lots of content areas and lots of focus areas. So it really painted a nice picture of highlighting our focus with environmental in a greener school. Um but that type of work in building those skills can be across the curriculum, social studies
061and science um math and I mean any content area can be integrated um in that way where kids are thinking creating products presenting to an audience and and that's where deep meaningful learning um happens. So, we're hoping through the work that I shared tonight that that energy and that type of learning and kind of the excitement for the teacher in leading that work will begin to permeate across our district, our school, and hopefully our district. >> It seems to be taking hold. So, >> yeah, >> I can see personally I want to thank the the video. I'm gonna get the link because I don't I can see how the students might not grasp it right away because I'm still looking. If it wasn't for the pictures on our bins at home, I'd be like, "Where
062does this go?" Like, I'm still learning. So, you know, it's not an easy task. Especially like you said, sometimes one object might have three different components to it. >> Right. These little kindergarters, they have like these tiny hands and they're holding things and they work really hard to do it right. It's really cute. One of my my second question was around the student re reunification simulation. What a great idea. Um was that done through like a prof professional development day at central? Is that how it came? So, we had a an offering here at the county office to learn specifically the best practices around hosting a or what the process should be for student re reunification. And we so we took that and we said we need to do the simulation because is it raining?
063Is it where do we have to go? And you can think through well we put a table there but how would parents walk up? It just it goes through so you just go through so many hypotheticals. So we said on the January 5th professional development day that for part of the day we would host a simulation using the best practices as identified by the county office and go through this is what you do. This is what you do. These are the roles you need. this is what the role does. You need an inside location, you need an outside location, you need back. We went to the tea as we learned in the training. So during that professional development uh day with teachers, we all met as part of our meeting and we went through the
064protocol. I had done some work about where those locations will be, what signage we need, clipboards and the papers and the immer like we did all of the prep work. Um, and staff learned what the roles were and what they were assigned to that day before you saw the video. So, within an hour, we were doing the simulation. We had 25 students and their parents come and we had a system of dropping the kids off. Parents had to go away and come back in a half hour so the kids could be moved to the back. We could set everything up and then parents came and they knew they had to follow the signs and go through the process. Um I I kind of planted a couple of moles. I had one parent I said you
065have to be sassy and say you know me and and she's well known you know me you know who I am I don't have my ID and our the front you know that job was like I'm so sorry miss so and so but this is our process what you need to go and get your ID and come and she acted it up acted it out but that's what you need because you're in like fight or flight and that's what you need to like stay true to the protocols. Um I think we had another parent who wanted to pick up Oh, um Dan actually said that I could pick up his kids too and and they're like, "Nope, sorry." And so embedding some kind of real life scenarios was was helpful for our staff to kind
066of feel that push back because, you know, parents are coming to get those kids. Um, and so it ended up being great. Like I said, that muscle memory. And then after we were able to say, why do we have to do this? And this form was a little tricky. And so post uh simulation, I actually sent that video to the lady here at the county office who did the training. And so we have a time this spring where I'm going to provide my feedback. And so what's cool is what we did at central and the feedback that I can provide about what went well and suggestions can actually shape processes for the entire entire county moving forward. So it was time well spent. And >> did you feel that your staff um with professional development
067did were they did they value that time? I know it's it's precious the time that we have for professional development. So was this wellreceived? >> Yes, it was wellreceived. um everyone jumped in. We knew there would be bumps like this didn't work well and we need more people as runners. And so we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't have tried. >> Um and so it was good that they were all um experiencing it together and then could provide their feedback later on how it could work better and run smoother, etc. >> Great. Thank you. Thank you. >> Any other final questions? I have a question. So if you know for sure who that person is like I mean I can see a par I can see me as a parent going like >> come
068on you know who I like what is the reasoning and the logic behind that piece of it. If you know 100% that this mom belongs with this child and that they are a family and that they should go home. Why? Why the insistence on you must go home and get your ID or my ID? It fell into a ditch during the big earthquake. I don't know why. It's like what? >> I know. >> We practice following the protocols as established by the county office of education. Um so that's what we practiced. I would say in real life, we're going to use our best judgment and take care of families and kids. We don't want to hold your your child, you know, overnight. Um, so we will use our best judgment in real time. >> I'm
069I'm sure I'm sure it's >> but it is very important that parents know. >> Yeah. >> So so and so is not going to try and pick up your child like we are going to hold the line with um providing appropriate verification. >> Yeah. >> But >> that makes sense. But I mean like for someone else to pick up your child but like for Thank you. >> Thank you again and thank you for your time. Sorry. Yeah, >> thank you. Um, thank you very much. Um, just a quick question related to the um child reunification. um what strategies did the county office recommend for, you know, helping the students, you know, not in a simulation or in an unfortunate actual situation. Um where the students are waiting to be reunified with their parents, what what
070strategies did they recommend? Did you guys were you guys able to try out for helping the students not be stressed out? Thank you for that question. We have um two kind of two phases of an emergency situation. One is direct after an emergency and all staff have different roles. So we're looking at first aid, we're looking at um large student supervision groups, we're looking at sweep and rescue, we're looking at initial parent communication. So all staff have a set of roles for that initial um kind of main evacuation emergency. When it's stable and we have a plan for student reunification and get that messaging out to parents, um staff kind of roll into the roles that you saw for student reunification. So I'm going to explain that because we have supports for students in both
071of those. In the initial student supervision, we're very mindful of the staff that are overseeing the large student supervision. We have a lot of kindergarten teachers for large student supervision because older kids, middle kids, and younger kids all grasp towards who they had in kindergarten and create that softwar space. Miss Kim specifically and our school psychologist and some of our specialists have positions if students with sensory um needing supports with dysregulation issues that they have um specific roles to really provide directed support to those students who need it. Um, we also have a lot of students that have IEPs or have one-on-one paras. And so we have those um specified who is their primary like adult with them and who is a backup adult with them. That's all in our safety plan. When we shift
072to the student reunification process, students are maybe waiting for a long time. Maybe their parents work across the bay and they can't. So, we're mindful in having bins and we're not fully like stocked here, but the plan is there will be bins whether actually in both locations that will have things like paper and crayons and like comforting picture books and stuffies and fidgets and things that can somewhat distract them um during those uh longer weights and ways to kind of get their head out of that moment. So that's that's something that's recommended. And then again, Miss Kim, the kindergarten teachers, they have those roles that are mostly tied to students who could benefit from those like traumainformed practices. They know how to kind of support a child and keep them calm and comforted. >> Awesome.
073Thank you very very much. And thank you for everything you've been doing and thank you to all of your staff. >> Thank you. Okay, with that we move on to agenda number 12. I will point out that we are with CBO Matsumoto from agenda 12 to 16. So this is definitely a treat. We are first talking about uh the public hearing uh preliminary 2026 2027 budget. This is an action item. I will um hand it off to CBO Matsumoto to give us an introduction. >> Good evening, trustees. Uh welcome to the Reasonathon uh version 10.0 at this point. >> Um so as always, I like to start off with uh kind of the three main things that you need to know, right? Um >> CBO Matsumoto, what what just one moment. Um it is a
074public hearing tonight. Thank you. >> Uh for the budget. So if you want to open the public hearing uh CBO Matsimoto will provide uh some information about it. We can accept any public comments and then close the public hearing after that. >> Okay. So we so with that so what do I do? >> Uh so just formally open >> I'm form okay fair enough. Thank you. I'm formally opening this is a public hearing on the the budget 2627. Um, see, do we have any comments? What? Oh, and the time. Yeah. 7:29 p.m. Thank you. CBO Matsumoto, do you want to continue? >> Thank you very much. Sorry for that. >> As I was saying, as always, I like to start off with kind of the main things that you need to know. So, one, you
075may have noticed that this is happening earlier than it has happened in the past. And the reason for that is we have moved up all of our budgeting processes so that we have more knowledge about what positions we're going to hire earlier in the year and that allows us to go out into the market and you know hopefully get better qualified staff for the positions that we need and have less vacancies for the next school year. Um as this is the first budget presentation of two uh typically we have first this initial public hearing and then the formal adoption in June. So we'll have this now. There can be some adjustments between now in June. Um although it's very likely to be minor. Um and lastly probably the most important point here is for next
076year we are forecasting a $5.4 4 million deficit, but as you'll see on this presentation, it's going to say 5.7. And the reason for that is we recently got a notice from the state controllers's office that Janentech had uh basically filed against the taxes that they had um been levied from 2000 to 2005. uh and the states controller office uh and then basically came to an agreement where um some of the money would be paid back in the amount of $20 million. That $20 million is split up between all of the San Monteo County districts um and our portion of it is roughly $250,000. Now, as part of that, the county of Sonteo has actually um chosen to, you know, go out against that and see if they can get uh that that decision reversed.
077So, we're in a little bit of a limbo right now. We don't actually know if that $250,000 is going to be taken out of our revenues from next year or not. But for the sake of being transparent and making sure we account for everything, that's what I'm showing today. Cool. Okay. So, as I mentioned before, we have moved everything up. Uh so, this budget public hearing is happening now in April instead of typically when it uh would happen in May. Um the only real thing that that ultimately affects uh is the state comes out with the governor's may revise in May. Um however, since we are a basic a district, uh whatever comes out in there doesn't necessarily apply to us. But if we were an LCFF funded district, that would kind of be one
078of the last pieces that we would need to kind of formulate the puzzle of our revenue. This slide I've shown uh a number of times before, but ultimately it's our strategy for spending down our surplus that we've built through the COVID times. Ultimately, the largest driver of how we are going to get out of this deficit is the fact that we have declining enrollment, right? And what declining enrollment means for us is that we are able to keep our expenditures relatively flat while our revenue catches up. And that's how we're going to close the deficit ultimately, right? Um I'd like to show this slide just because sometimes it's a little bit hard to kind of see exactly how we would close it. Um and visually easy to see that we'll close the gap over time,
079right? And of course, as part of this, it's going to take effort on a part of our district to make sure that we make small measured cuts every single year as our salaries increase every year. Right? So there's it's twofold. One, we need to make sure that as a district we are operating as efficiently as possible and two uh it means that you know we're making those small measure cuts so there's no quote unquote fiscal cliff at the end of all of this. One of the questions you may also have is well why does it look like our revenue all of a sudden just kind of really starts increasing at an increasing rate towards the back half of this chart? And the reason for that is well one there's been a lot of funkiness as
080during the 2022 and 2023 school years we're flip-flopping between LCFF and basic aid. And also in the past two years we've received some one-time funds from the learning recovery emergency block grant and also the student support and professional development block grant. Surprised I can remember the acronyms for both those. Um, but that's basically what's contributing to some of that flattening of our revenue line before it's increasing. Without those grants and without some of the uh weirdness that is happening with the supplemental um taxes, those lines in 24, 25, 25, 26 would be lower. Great. And because we have declining enrollment, even though we are keeping our expenditures flat, it means that we are able to increase our per pupil expenditure over time, right? And that is the whole goal. So even though we are keeping
081our total expenditures as a district flat, we want to be able to continue pouring resources into our students and into our schools to make sure they can be the best that they can be. Now, this last slide here before I kind of go into some of the more specifics on next year's budget is just showing us where we are relatively to some of the other districts in Sonteo County. Um, now you may notice that this is weighted budgeted total expenditures. Now, uh, this is going back to some of the work that I did at my former district where we worked with a a a consulting firm called ERS to come up with waitings for each district. And the waitings basically mean that when you have students that are English learners, students that are unduplicated, they
082require more resources than let's say another general ed student, right? So, they may count as 1.1 of a student or 1.2 of a student, right? So all this is is doing is taking the budgets of each of the districts within Sanonteo County, dividing it by their ADA, which is their average daily attendance, and then mult or then multiplying it by the number of oring it basically by the the student need of each district. So for example, a district like Ravenswood, which has a higher unduplicated population, they actually have more funding per pupil, but that per pupil number comes down because their students are more needy. So when taking into account need, we are still closer to the bottom quartile of districts within Sonteo County for per pupil spending. Um and again all of this is
083just to contextualize that even though we are basic and we are doing well overall in the landscape of Sanonteo County districts, we are still on the bottom end of uh spending per pupil and revenue per pupil. Okay, so going to some of the more specifics here. Uh, I like to show this slide every year because this just basically shows what the state is funding at this point. Um, so earlier this year, the governor's budget came out with the cola for next year of 2.41%. Um, if I had to put my thinking cap on and a little bit of my fortune teller hat on, it's likely that will go down. Um just for some context, it's there's been some talk on the legislative level um about potential further cuts to Prop 98 funding. Um, basically there's
084a small provision in the legal writing of how Prop 98 is done that the overall California government can basically take money from Prop 98 and give it back to them in the future without any interest added upon it at all. which is really problematic because that basically allows other parts of California's government to take away money and put it back in 50 years, 60 years when that money really is just pennies on the dollar, right, to the Prop 98 then. So, we'll see how that goes. But again, most of uh most of what this slide is trying to say is that it is very fortunate that we are a basic a district and that even though there's all this kind of fuzziness happening on the state level, we can ignore for a large part most
085of it. Okay, so um getting into a little bit of the nitty-gritty here, right? So, uh thinking about our revenue streams, there are really four main ones. one uh it's called LCFF sources, but for us really it's basic aid. And then we have federal revenue, state revenue, and local revenue. Um in terms of our basic aid, we're mostly projecting that out at kind of the historical rates uh that we've seen our property taxes grow over time. For our federal and state revenue, that is largely uh due to the number of pupils we have of specific unduplicated groups. Uh and then for local revenue, uh a large part of that is our parcel tax. And as always, uh, I'd like to say a large part of it is from School Force. Uh, and I'd like to
086also just make sure that we take a second to thank all the hardworking volunteers of School Force who go out every year and raise money for our district. It's not easy to raise roughly $3 million a year. Um, and you know, the School Force members work extremely hard to do that. And without their hard work, our deficit may be even slightly larger for next year. So again, taking a moment to thank them for all their hard work. Okay. Uh, as we look at our expenditure sides of the house, a lot of these are roughly very similar to what we have this year. Um, the one part of this that that really stands out is kind of our salaries, right? So um overarchingly our strategy is that as our enrollment declines we make sure that we
087are staffing appropriately and that is kind of counterbalanced by people's annual raises and the agreements that we come to with our bargaining units. So overall our salaries aren't moving that much but know that there's a lot of movement there right there is both kind of a decrease and an increase which kind of cancels out and overall after you take into account our revenues minus the I guess nebulousness that's coming with that genentech finding um and also our expenditures uh this is coming out to a $5.7 million deficit for next year. As we look at our other funds, um, fund 13, uh, as always, there's been a contribution from our general fund over into fund 13. Now that we have lunch masters for this school year and moving forward and we've seen more eatership, uh it
088is likely that we'll be able to uh hopefully not have to contribute as much into fun 13 to run more of a costneutral program, but we'll see how this year ends up uh before making more aggressive uh projections for that going forward. Um in terms of our other funds, um largely these are staying the same with the exception of fund 21, which is our bond program. um a lot of that money has already been spent or actually a little bit of that money has been spent and most of that money will be spent in the next three summers um when we're doing all of our projects. So look forward to that. Uh and then lastly here is uh annually we have to make a public notice of vacancies uh if any of the vacancies of
089either bargaining unit exceed 20%. Uh there's a long list of things that can happen, but I'm happy to say that uh our vacancies for BRSFA is 1% and for CSEA is 11%. Uh and a large part the CSEA vacancies are for custodians and uh par professionals. I believe with that I conclude my presentation. Um, at this time I'd like to o continue opening it up to the public if there's any comments on the budget. >> President Aos, there are no public comments for the public hearing. >> Thank you, Miss Ellinger. So, with that, I then open it up to the board um to ask CBO Matsumoto. Anybody like to start? >> Trusty Tang. >> Um, I I had a question and apologies. Um, can we go back to the slide with where we're low on
090the list of Sanonteo County? The orange that one. Um, and yeah, I'm so sorry. And maybe it's because um I I can't like hear very well. I think um could you go back and help me understand? So, what what are we looking at? The the weighted This is unduplicated students. Now, this is basically taking every district's total expenditures and dividing it by their average daily attendance to get the expenditures per ADA. So, basically, think of it as spending per student. Now, where the waiting comes in is just every district has a different amount of unduplicated students, right? And so basically if you have more unduplicated students it means that your money per pupil is actually lower because you have to spend more money for each of those individual students. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Okay. I
091see. Thank you. >> Yeah. I have a question but I want to open No. Okay. Um, so with the the the Janentech payback, is that a one-time one-year thing or is that an ongoing 250,000 per year? >> It's a great question. As of right now, it's a one-time thing. It sounds like Janentech is also going to pursue trying to get back some of their taxes also paid from 2010 to 2019. But ultimately I think it depends on how this initial one turns out whether they'll feel like they they well whether they'll feel empowered to do so or not. >> So whe this this um settlement represented what years do you know? >> 2000 to 2005. >> So just five years. Okay. Um and then as you mentioned in previous presentations like the middle school alignment
092that it's always tradeoffs. So now that we have this bump in the road, um what is the can you explain can you go in a little bit into as much as detail as you know it, but has there been any discussions on how to mitigate uh where where is the trade-off going to hap happen as far as you know for the 250,000 for >> Great question. So if this actually comes to pass, right? Um, as you've mentioned, it's trade-offs, but luckily the thought would be to spread this out over multiple years, right? So, it's not necessarily one given year that feels the brunt of it. Um, but it may mean that some of our discretionary money may go down a little bit um for the next couple of years. >> So, you're kind of amortitizing
093it over the next few years. >> Yes, exactly. >> It's a great way of thinking about it. >> Okay. Um, and then I noticed on that chart with the pers and stirs contributions, do you have that chart where you actually have the percentages? I don't know which one that was. Yeah. So 19 and 29% for the employer rates. That's pretty significant. And we and so is it is what's driving it? Obviously, that's the shift from the employee to the employer, but I feel like that's been going on maybe not in education, but I know the shift away from pensions to, you know, self-funding for retirement has been going on for a while. The education environment is is different, but what is driving those that higher percentage? So historically um stirs which really is the certificated
094pension fund right has remained relatively constant and again for point of clarification this is basically the employee's contribution to an employee right so let's just say an employee makes $100,000 that means that on top of that $100,000 we also have to pay out $19,000 to calsters and that employee has a little bit taken out of their paycheck every month as well that also goes goes into stirs and that's what comprises their retirement. Now ultimately uh what is comprising like why the rates are going up on the pur side well there's been a lot of volatility uh I think pre pandemic pers was actually in a place where they're a little bit worried about their their coverage by coverage I mean if their current estimates for how their fund would grow would be able to cover
095their retirement obligations. I think there was some question about that. Now, PERS actually performed quite well during the pandemic and they're able to cover more of their obligations. I believe it was something like 70 or 80% which is actually quite good for a retirement fund. Um, ultimately I think when you look at some of their increasing rates over time, it's a reflection of increasing um increasing salaries in conjunction with inflation. As we've seen over the last couple years, inflation has been quite high. And so I think PERS is trying to get ahead of that and as part of it they are charging employers larger rates. Now if you look at some of the rates here it's been fluctuating a bit but next year's projected rate is actually quite high when you think about the other
096ones. Um typically when the governor's budget first comes out they give a a much higher rate because they're trying to be conservative and then when the May budget revise comes out it comes down quite a bit. So um overall it's something to look out for and it's something that we're calculating when we think about our future um you know our future salaries etc. But unfortunately, there's only so much we can do. You know, I think one of the points that you brought up is preunding, right? Um there are only a limited number of companies that allow preunding. Actually, Kalpers is one of them. >> Um but not necessarily for future pensions. uh is mostly for kind of future retirement uh benefit payouts that we have for employees that you know stay on uh some of
097the district's health plans for an a few years after they retire. So that's really at this point the only kind of kosher thing that we can preund and not necessarily kind of the pension obligations into the future. >> Okay. I was just curious if it was a more of like the mutual fund companies if the providers of these of this retirement funds if it was their fees going up or or what was happening or if the state just is doing more unfunded liability and therefore they're just putting it more on the employer. >> No. So Kalpers and Calsters have their own investment team. Yep. >> And they have people that make millions of dollars to basically oversee this huge fund, probably as large as some of the private equity, larger than some of the private
098equity firms out there. Um, so ultimately those people are getting paid large amounts of money to make sure that they don't screw up and make the whole fund go away and then no one has the pension. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Thank you for that explanation. Really, >> no problem. Happy to talk about it. It's really interesting. Um, >> any other questions? Sorry, I had a very specific question and I thought I was on the right slide but I'm not. Um, it was uh something where there was a transfer between BRSSD and SUSD >> here on the expenditure slide. >> If you could explain what that is please. Um so we have this system called um interd district transfers uh where if a service is prefer uh performed by one district where we basically transfer
099over the expenditure that way we actually partner with um Sequoia Union High School District on a number of things um from transportation we actually uh pay Sequoia Union for transportation up and down Rston um as well as some services that they provide for our students that we don't have in-house. So ultimately that's what it is. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Of course. >> Can I ask a question about that? So the transportation So are you talking about the SAMR transportation? >> Uh no. Uh there I believe Sequoia Union provides Tinsley transportation for us. Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. Um I close the public hearing part. Yeah. >> Yep. So I with that I closing the public hearing on the budget at 7:50 p.m. Um now I go on go on to the
100action item because it's an action item. >> Is it just >> the action item? Uh there's no other action public hearing. >> Okay. >> Um with that uh we go to agenda item number 13. the award of the lease lease back services and approval to enter into a pre-constructor service agreement with roadm builders for the Fox MUR modernization project. Uh this is an action item with more detail on that. Back to CBO Matsumo. >> Good evening again trustees. Um so the next three are uh ultimately an award and then two amendments to our lease lease back contract. So this first one is pertaining to the Fox MUR project. Uh we went out publicly to bid uh for a uh general contractor a lease lease back partner uh for the Fox MUR project. Um after receiving
101all the bids, we reviewed everything. We believe RHDAN is the best to go with uh in terms of price and ability to meet our deadlines. Um ultimately this is to approve the pre-construction services which allows them to uh basically go on site um start performing any uh surveying that they need to do uh and get everything in place. Uh ultimately the full contract will come by the board uh likely in the next board meeting or in June. Um we'll have uh the guaranteed maximum price for all the services for the summer. >> Great. Um do I have a motion to approve the award of the lease lease back services? >> I move to approve the award of lease leaseback services uh with Rodan Builders for the Fox MUR project. Thank you. Do I have a
102second? >> Second. >> Great. Um, all those in favor of approval, >> I Great. There are no naysay, so it passes four to zero. Okay. Um the next one on the agenda is the approval of amendment number one again a lease lease back agreement with Rodan Builders for the district-wide HVAC project uh with more details. CBO Mats. >> Good evening again. Uh I promise I will try and make these titles a little bit shorter for you. President CS, >> it's a very long time. Um ultimately the last time we talked uh we approved the pre-construction services uh for the district-wide HVAC project. Um they Rodan builders went in um took measurements of everything, looked at all the plans that our architects put down and they figured out exactly how many units we need to purchase
103for the summer to make the summer HVAC project happen. Um this amendment is to allow them to go out and actually purchase all the units that we need. Unfortunately, HVAC units actually have quite a bit of a lead time. So, uh, doing this now makes sure that we can get our units by the summer. >> Great. Um, do I have a motion to for approve amendment number one? >> Question. >> Oh, sorry. >> I have a question. Um, will we get to see the units that they're or can I can I get specifications on these units that they're purchasing? Yeah, if you would if you would like, I can have uh our architect and our program manager send you the specs for the units. >> And if at that point I don't like the things
104that they've selected, what would happen? >> If you don't like uh what has been selected, you can give the district guidance on um how you would like it to change and we can have a discussion with our our program and arch our program manager and architect. How will that impact this vote here today to approve the purchase of these items? I've asked multiple times to be able to see the specifications of these HVAC units, and I would really like to see the specifications of the HF vac units before we we purchase them and before we install them into our schools. >> Okay. Uh ultimately I believe it's up to the board to approve this or not. Um if you would like to wait before having this ultimately approved then I >> No, I mean is
105there the flexibility to change this number depending on what happens? Like I mean if it's if they are not sufficient HVAC HVAC units I I don't want to buy them. >> So my understanding is that there one aren't that many units available just generally that can process the I forgot what we're basically the highest level of MV minus hospitals I believe for filter strength. They're really only Bard and Carrier, I believe, are the two largest suppliers of HVAC units that we can order from. Should we decide to delay today? Ultimately, we can take a look at the units that have been selected by the architect at this point, but I think it may put the project in a little bit more of a tight timeline because there is a lead time for some of these.
106Can I ask a just a so it sounds like from what you're saying there's there's there's only a few um of these high quality HVACs right up up for discussion. Would you say that there that from your from is it Rodan Builders who has kind of been doing the analysis and the due diligence in accordance with you as well and your >> That's correct. >> Okay. And would you say that we we've hired them for their due diligence and their attention to these items? >> Yes. And also not only has Roan app on it, but also our architect and their subcontractors as well, their engineers. >> Okay. Go ahead. Trust. >> Um, so I definitely um appreciate uh Trustee Tang's um uh question. Um, I don't know because this doesn't mean a lot to me,
107but just in the um in the uh supporting information that uh CBO Matsumoto provided for us uh on that agenda item, item 14. Um this is available to the public as well. That PDF um now I'm going back to it. Uh, I believe it's on page nine of the PDF is where it starts to mention specific equipment. And I understand um if trusty Tang if this is not enough information um or if you haven't had a chance to review it yet um in which case I would I would ask us to just if we could take a five minute recess to review this information if if uh if that would be sufficient. >> I feel like I need to talk to the engineer. I it doesn't say anything in the document about air changes per
108hour air changes per minute. I don't know what what what uh what are they called? Um which standards they're adhering to when they say this is sufficient for our schools. There are very specific guidelines that have come out that are not necessarily approved here in the United States, but like just general general guidelines for what you need for a school, right? And I am very passionate about air quality and I just want to be sure we buy the right thing. >> Okay. My again I don't know if I can make a suggestion if I may. So next week Thursday during the board study session we will have both the architect and the program manager out and they are preparing >> will they information will they will they know enough about the HVAC system? Most people
109don't know enough about the HVAC. >> If you have specific questions I think it would be helpful for you to send that along so they can be prepared to answer your specific questions. So, >> but sorry to continue my suggestion. Um, I think ultimately it makes sense to approve this and we can then go back to the AR. I can I can if you send any questions to me right after this, I can send those immediately over and if I believe if we decide or if there are questions about it, we can hold off. But if this does not get approved today, it will pushed back this for another month. So even in the case that it is decided that this is okay, we would not have the approval to go forward with it for
110another 3 weeks after that. >> Would we be able to approve it conditionally so that it's approved? Just making sure. >> What was the Can you repeat that in two? >> Can we is it possible to approve it conditionally? like we approve it for now BA and wait a couple days for them to answer the questions and then if they are not okay to sure >> CBO Matsoto can I just um clarify so um we are approving the lease lease back agreement um at this point in time they're coming back to us with a guaranteed maximum price in May is it at that point that it becomes finalized or is it at this point >> this is only enable ling them to begin acquiring the equipment. So, if we accepted it today, that would give
111them the ability to do so. Um, as part of this though, I don't believe that it actually locks us into having to purchase it. It just says that in the case that we do want to move forward with this, we it has been approved. Again, I think we still have time to ultimately if we decide that this is not the route to go, there's still time to change. But that would end up being a brand new thing brought to the board in May. Now in the case that we do take a look at these systems and we do decide okay this is an acceptable way to go if this is not approved today then we will also have to wait to May which will push back the project. I think in the case where you
112know we decide that this is not the right word way to go and you know fine we have to push back to project we have to push back to project but I think in the interest of keeping the project on schedule and given the fact that there are not a whole lot of alternatives from my understanding I think my suggestion would be we approve and we can take a look at it next week when we have the architects and everyone come out to answer questions >> so there is the possibility to pull that >> trusty tang does that seem reasonable >> thank you Yeah, Trusty Northup, did you want to add? Okay, great. Thank Thank you for the robust conversation. >> Yeah, thank you everyone. It was very helpful. >> Um, okay. So, with that
113in mind, at this point, um, do I have a motion for the approval of amendment number one, lease lease back agreement, um, for the districtwide HVAC project? >> So moved. >> Well, I guess I just made my motion. Okay, second. So, okay, great. U, all those in favor? I >> I Okay. Uh the motion passes 40 >> and uh Trusty Tang, we will make sure that at our retreat we spend sufficient time uh digging into those areas. >> Great. Um the next item is also a lease leaseback agreement and this has to do with the district office renovation project also with Rodan Builders. >> Great. Um, I believe this will be less of a hot button topic uh for today, but um ultimately as part of our permit approvals um for the district office renovation
114project, uh we have to submit a bunch of we have to submit a check ultimately to um the city for approval of all of these um permits. Uh ultimately that office is only open I believe from Monday through Wednesday uh from 11:00 a.m. to 2:30m or something like that or the permitting window. Um and instead of us having to issue a check which could take us you know as a school district potentially a week if not more and then try and meet that small window to get everything permitted uh we had Rhdan ultimately just pay for it upfront and then this is us paying it back. Any questions? Any any areas of discussion? Okay. Uh do I have a motion for the approval of amendment number two? >> I move to approve uh amendment number
115two, the leaseback 25-01B with Rodan Builders for the district office project. >> Great. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Great. Thank you. All those in favor? I >> I Okay, motion passes 40. Next item on the agenda is the partial tax oversight committee term renewal. Uh this is an action item. Um CBO Matsumoto, would you give some context for this one? >> Um so ultimately we have uh two oversight committees. Uh we have the bond oversight committee and the partial tax oversight committee. Um this specifically is for our partial tax oversight committee. We've had a few members whose terms have run out uh and they would like to extend for another two-year term. Uh and those people are Megan Striker, uh Dan Hardman, Jeff Goldman, and Ben Bartell. Um again, if any member
116of the community would like to join, that'd be greatly appreciated. Um on this item itself, you can see some of our different criteria. Um, but ultimately I also just want to take a moment and and thank the the members of the parcel tax oversight committee. We meet at 7 PM. Um, and so these are people taking time out of their their daily lives to, you know, help make sure that we're spending down our our funds in an appropriate way. So, um, ultimately, thank you. >> I have a I have a question. um with those two vacancies does that is there a minimum by um by state legislation to uh that needs to be present? >> Yeah, ultimately the way that the state defines quorum is they think of these oversight committees as a committee of
117seven at full capacity. So as long as you have four members and all four members vote yay, you have quorum for any given meeting. >> Great. Um I guess the other question is is there any especially for item number four two members who are not parents or guardians how do we normally publicize uh for this committee uh is it through any like s Santo daily journal anything >> we do parent square um for other specific criteria I've gone to uh the community center and dropped off flyers um for example on the bond oversight committee we need members who are part of uh AP or another um I I believe a community organization like that. So, uh we post there. We post on Parent Square a number of times a year as well looking for volunteers.
118Um >> thank you. Well, we appreciate you going out into the community yourself on the weekends. >> Okay. Um and I'm glad that it's able to uh to continue and we do thank everybody for their service. Um so again, this is an action item. Do I have a motion uh to approve this partial tax oversight committee term renewal? >> I move to approve the parcel tax oversight committee term renewal. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Uh all those in favor? >> I. >> Okay. Motion passes. 40. Okay. Agenda number 17, district advisory committee update, middle school marketing and enrollment. Um, this is an information item. It was requested um as of the last board um to just kind of get a early update. Um, I'll pass it off to Trusty Tang Tang
119who Tang in a second, but I will say that we've we've had one we've had one board meeting and we have another one that's upcoming shortly, >> Monday. >> Yeah. Uh, thank you. Um, we did have our first meeting. Um, yeah, it seems like it was a long time ago. Was it was last month, huh? >> Uh, was at the end of March, I think. >> March 23rd. >> Yes. Um, yeah, I thought it was actually a very productive meeting. I think we had a lot of people in the room and so sometimes it can get difficult to, you know, there's a lot of voices, but I thought that, um, you know, all of the people that were approved to be on the committee were ready to get to work. Um, there was a lot
120of energy in the room, which was really great to see. Um we all kind of went around and talked about the reasons why we wanted to be on the committee and kind of came together to talk about working norms and you know just um some some brainstorming on kind of like what are the first things we want to start working on. Um it's also great to have a really diverse group of individuals. So everybody kind of has different strengths which I thought was really important for the um committee. Um we also elected our chair, co-chair and secretary. Um and I think the people that are in those roles were really good fits for the roles. Um so yeah, I I don't know if you want to add anything else. Um but we we're looking forward
121to um our next meeting which is this coming Monday. Um, and we have a a quite a full agenda, I will say. >> Yeah, I echo Trusty Deng. I love the energy in the room. I thought it was a very good um mix. Um, I certainly thought there was a lot of good expertise um when we selected them and it was a I think they're going to complement each other well. Expertise in marketing, market research, project management, education, civil service, um you know, computer science. So, I think it was a really good mix. I think people are excited to um to see, you know, knowing that, you know, a lot of this stuff that we've done so far um they were complimentary of it and also recognizing that really were kind of the the committees
122formed for next year, you know, to see like it's kind of some of the results. Um there's no influence over them. So, it's just kind of doing some analysis and maybe breaking off into some subcommittees. So, I think everyone recognizes that. I do want to um thank um the the elected chair, Greg Hamlin, um the vice chair, the co-chair, Kathleen, Hope I'm Cedarloff, um and the secretary, Ying Lee, for for um agreeing to uh take on the roles that they do and they're doing a great job kind of setting the agenda. And um I think the more organized it will be then again with all those voices in the same room um I think it will be very efficient. So thank you for um for all those who have volunteered on the committee. Um, one
123final thing I forgot to mention. Um, we did, um, talk about transparency and making sure that what happens in the board meet or in the, um, district advisory committee meetings does, um, get, you know, >> periodic updates to to the community at large. So, not just to the board, um, but also making sure that our community and, you know, everyone who is interested, um, has the information and knows what we're talking about. And, and I think Dan, um, the meetings are public. So, if anybody wanted to go to them and, you know, hear what we're talking about, um, they are open to the public. >> Uh, that is correct. Uh, like a board meeting, uh, we post, uh, in advance. The agenda is available on our district website as well as supporting materials uh once
124they're available. >> Good addition. Um okay. Uh any questions? I mean, yeah. >> Thank Thank you both of uh Trusty Deng and Trusty CS for uh joining the committee as well. And thank you to all of the uh other committee members. Um do you think there's any um any and I know you know with the timing we gave the committee we did not give the comm the committee that this board created um it was hard to give them a lot of time before the uh survey went out to uh fifth grade parents. Um, do you think um there are any things that the committee could help the district with just maybe as uh maybe people move into the district? Uh, because I think basically everybody who has a fifth grader in the district right already
125they've they've completed the survey. Um, were there any ideas about reaching out to uh maybe any families who are not in district for fifth grade but are planning to come to the district for sixth grade? >> So, we didn't discuss that particular group. And I'm actually I'm turning this way because I'm like, how would we do we know that in advance? Do people give notice in advance that are outside of the district that know they want to come for middle school? uh we have enrollment periods uh so as enrollment periods come we'll know who's um enrolling uh in terms of providing information about the programs we do have um information available uh from our um last sessions both audio recorded and uh flyer uh so we can provide that to them um in terms of
126of getting preferences I'm not sure uh I'm looking towards Jerome I'm not sure that we're going to send out the full formal survey again um as we go move through the enrollment periods, but nor would that data necessarily be um applicable because they didn't have access to many of the things we surveyed or have a background knowledge uh to answer those questions perhaps. Um but we can look and see we'll talk with the committee and see what information we can glean. And one thing that we did discuss um that we're working on is um and that was included in the survey that went out. We we did take time during that meeting to like discuss the survey questions and make some adjustments. And one thing that was um added was uh uh consent to interview
127families. So we're working on that. Um getting the interview questions together and then we'll go through um the families that have agreed to be interviewed. And I think that's going to be really valuable. Yeah, >> thank you. Thank you. And again for everybody um listening like this is the only time we can talk about this. Um so I'm like okay you told me that so now that makes me have another question and maybe I need to give more specifics. Um, so specifically I'm thinking of um, right, Belmont does have a few private elementary schools and some of the families that you that utilize the private elementary schools through fifth grade plan on enrolling in BRSSD for sixth grade. and they are probably less likely to know through word of mouth about the strengths of our
128of our smaller middle school programs. So, um I think as Superintendent Duara said, parents are enrolling like now with that with the district for sixth grade. Um and again, you and I thank you guys so much for being on the committee. Um, but again in kind of the like opting in, I wonder if for new families enrolling if there's a way while they're enrolling for them uh to indicate if they are they are open to being contacted by the committee to give them more information. Um, and yes, maybe they're not going to get the same exact uh preference sheet that current BRSSD fifth grade families got, but maybe they are going to be okay, you know, uh, take into account where they live, what their preference is um, for a middle school program. >> Um,
129I can I can take a look and see how we do um, preferences uh, for incoming families. I think we've gone multiple directions in multiple years. Um I will say yes, anything's possible. Uh I would have to direct staff uh towards that project if that's um something uh that we'd like to do. But I can see how it dovetales into something that we already do. If not, um it'd be something a new objective to complete. >> Well, I'm glad you brought this up about the private schools because I just for myself hadn't really thought about that avenue. So, I think that's really interesting. Um, and and and maybe just getting information to those families that we know are going to be coming in like just to get them like directed to the the um infoite
130things and whatnot. >> I would say we can do a lot. Um, and uh we work really hard to get that word out. Um we do rely on families who are attending our district to come to our central um information source which is our website. So um making sure that we're keeping that up to date which is is some things we need actually some tailoring on. I'm working with staff to get that updated. But um sometimes it is hard to get information out to other agencies asking them to distribute um rather than being the central source where people come to us. Um but we can of course uh look for ways to to always do better. >> Just is that kind of what you had in mind or was it also a little bit some
131some other idea? I would say real quick one thing I I will add I don't have a number anecdotally I um sense I know I have at least an N sample size of probably two or three um that I know because uh word has gotten out how we do middle school enrollment. They're actually leaving private schools um mid fifth grade if they plan to attend sixth grade with us so they can enroll in fifth grade, be part of that first um group of folks that get first choice um into the middle schools. I have seen that um happen um here and there. I won't say it's across the board, but I we have seen that occasionally. And again, apologies to everybody because this is uh the only time we can talk about it. Um I
132think another specific thing that I'm just thinking of um and maybe I could send these questions if I come up with them in advance, which I did not, but um I could send them to uh Superintendent Duara. Um is right. It's it's it's open house season for real estate, right? So there's there's going to be families that move into the district and as we as we heard from uh the community, right? When you're looking at your uh real estate app, it generally doesn't know yet that there's a middle school at San Piper at Nesbet, right? So that's what I'm thinking too. And again, do not want to give more work to the district staff. just looking for um a way that the the community members who wanted to volunteer on the committee could help like
133do they want with the district's approval of a of a pamphlet or something like that if it's the you know on the district website of this is this is about our IB program or this is about our design design thinking program would they want to reach out to realtors and say like please let families know that these exist. I mean, just things like that. Again, no more work for the district. >> Yeah, I I No, I I I appreciate that. I think that's idea generation and I think that's really um why we have the committee, right? Like uh to your point uh open house clarifying open house uh people are selling their houses and having open houses as opposed to our district open houses. Um uh so informing realtors that hey um here are schools,
134here are options. I think that's a a great idea. >> Yeah, thank you for all those ideas and I would say to like keep them coming like if you think of more. >> Great. Um, okay. The next item is is item agenda number 18, the CSBA board policy update February 2026 second read. Um, this is an action item. I know we have a public comment on the agenda and I thank the person, Miss Mcuan, for for waiting all this time. Great. >> I have a freshman in high school. She's at home by herself. It's fantastic. So, I'm going to start with some numbers. I'm no Reese. Um, with my numbers, I teach eighth grade math. Um, six zeros, 120, 240, 306, 31, 400, 463, 2,960. Those first six numbers represent the monthly compensation for various
135school boards across Sonteo County. And that last number, 2,960, that's the percent of the proposed increase to our board compensation that was discussed at the last board meeting. I do want to acknowledge that there are six districts in the county whose board policy ties compensation to California Ed Code. and I understand that this was part of the um conversation. I also acknowledge that this updated ED code was approved in October and went into effect on January 1st. I also want to be clear, I'm not opposed to an increase in board compensation, but a 2,960% increase is not reasonable. We've also heard from Ree that this increase is not currently in the budget and that funding it would require taking resources from somewhere else ultimately impacting our students. That is a decision about priorities. At the
136same time, the board recently chose not to close a small middle school, an option that would have saved approximately $450,000 per year. That too was a decision about priorities. If the reasoning is that compensation should increase that amount because other districts or other city councils make that, then it's fair to ask, shouldn't we apply that same comparison strategy to our salary schedules for teachers and staff? If that is true, then I have some salary schedules I'd like to share with you from other districts. Because ultimately, these decisions are not just about the numbers. They reflect what we value and where we choose to invest. Every one of these choices is a decision about priorities. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any more at this time? Any more public comments? >> That's all the public comment.
137>> Okay. Um, so we have a lot of board policy updates within this for the second read. Is there is there discussion? And I know last time there was a discussion on the one regarding I'm going to say this slowly reuneration or is it renumeration re >> remation >> remuneration that one um to to kind of streamline this? I'm making a proposal that is there any other um board bylaw at this time that we want to bring forth for discussion from this list >> besides the besides >> Yeah. Besides >> 9250. >> Exactly. 9 besides Yeah. >> Yes. >> Other than that one I I say that I'm happy with with approving everything without discussion. >> That was my next point. So why don't we do that? Why don't we uh put forth that motion
138to approve all the others on the second read list and then we can kind of talk about the that one 9250. So with that um do I have a motion for approval of the board policy updates with the exception of bylaw 9250 for a second read? >> Uh yes. I move that BRSSD school board approve all of the board policy updates uh listed under agenda item 18 except for uh the board policy that is listed as uh BB9250. >> Second. >> Great. Um all those in favor >> I >> Okay, that passes 440. >> Okay, so with that we are um can't board policy update 9250 renumeration reimbursement and other benefits. Um then this is for for discussion. Um does anyone want to start the discussion? Thank you for bringing it up on the board.
139So I know last time Trusty Northup and Trusty Deng had a had a point that they raised. Do you want to kind of raise it again? >> Um sure. I mean I think for me one of the biggest things um biggest drivers is um you know the the whole reason the the state of California even uh approved this increase is because of the large number of elections that ran unopposed. Um and here in BS BRSSD we we had two of those elections last cycle um where you know there was only one person running and um you know obviously the state saw a a reason to increase um the compensation and I think that um you know it is reasonable to allow for for board compensation. That's kind of the the purpose of um of the
140ED code. And um yeah, I I stand by what I said in the last meeting. I know it's it seems like a a a big number. Um but it seems that way only because of how low it has been for the last 40 years. Um, so I mean I I stand by the points that I made and um and would be happy to to discuss if if anybody else has um points that they would like to make as well, but I definitely stand by um you know, it's it's really not about um you know like like getting money for something. It's really about making sure that this isn't just a hobby. It's not just something that you know people are doing as like a you know extra additional extracurricular extracurricular thing like this is very
141important business um and it's it's complicated and it takes a lot of work so um yeah I think it's important to to show um people who may be interested in running for the board at some point that you know that work does go um you know or there is some type of compensation for that work and I really think it's it's more about making sure that people who are spending their time doing that are are really the the the people that are going to be doing like good governance work. So I'll I'll leave it there. >> Did you want to add anything? >> Uh sure. Yeah. So, um just one thing I've uh I've thought about um to add to what we discussed um last time and I I think this is a good discussion
142to have um is we do have a wonderful tradition of volunteerism in Belmont Redwood Shores, right? Com huge volunteer base, school force, PTA, parcel tax committees, ballot measure committees. Um, and personally I've been involved in all of those and um, and did it as a volunteer and have been on the board as a volunteer. But also as a volunteer being on the board, I delayed going back into the workforce because I wanted to be able to spend the time that I felt was necessary on the board. and uh with my colleagues on the board, I I don't want to uh assume your your situations um but just in general from maybe what's on you know on our district website about what people do for jobs and uh what people in the past who have been
143on the board have done for jobs. It has tended to be stay-at-home parents or uh parents who um have a lot of flexibility in their in their jobs and um again personally now that I've gone back to work um I don't have flexibility uh in my job. I get paid hourly and for me to go visit a school, which I would love to do during the day, I am then not getting money from my employer to go do that. Um, I'm also not uh helping myself get further in my position if I'm like, well, gotta go to another schoolboard thing right now while you want me to be doing something else. Um, so I I I think uh I think we we still value the volunteerism and we really really appreciate it and of course
144we're still asking parents to volunteer and we are asking parents to donate. Um, but also, uh, I don't think we can, uh, expect parents, and it tends to be parents, but of course other members of the community are welcome to run for the board as well. Uh, we can't expect parents to have meetings until 11:00 p.m. every Thursday in January for $40 compensation a month. Do I have some comments, but I'll let you No. Do you want to do you want me to go? Okay. So, again, I think this is a thoughtful discussion and I want to acknowledge that there is definitely and I appreciate this. I there's definitely I'm going to just read from some notes I made, but there's definitely a a time commitment. I would say when we kind of have thought
145about it. Oh, I'm sorry. Why isn't this Okay, I'll bring it closer. Sorry. There's definitely a time commitment and I think we have to acknowledge that. Um and this will come out maybe more at our next meeting. Uh the but roughly I always say it's kind of on a on a regular month average it's probably 10 to 12 hours including these four five hour meetings 10 to 12 hours a month. I think there are times like the middle school alignment where we gave more of our time and service because and I think right for me rightfully so I I was able to to meet one-on-one. We had certainly more town hall meetings. I think that that's a one-off in the three years that I've done that. I think and so so for me I look
146at it philos sorry let me get I look at it and so I appreciate that there is a time commitment I I do um and and it depends I would say that that when I think about it um philosophically that for me this role is fundamentally meant to be to serve our our comm community our students in service of of our students and our community. Um, and I think it has been a form of volunteerism, while there is a and it should stay that way because while there is a nominal stipen for all terms and effect, this has been we while it's there historically since I guess 2010 or 2015 whenever this was last revised mo the members um have not taken any any any s any any stipen. Um, I think when you shift
147the conversation to what this role is worth financially, I don't a I don't think that's a healthy direction for our governance model or consistent with other key roles like the PTA foundation, uh, well, not the PTA leadership groups, um, the school force. there are many people who do even maybe more hours arguably than than than we do uh in service of the of the community. Um and I think for me personally I started out doing uh you know local things at Nesbbit but this was where my passion was. I wanted to kind of affect strategy and change and and I felt my voice could be heard by the larger community and in service this way. Um but I totally um re respect but I can't justify for myself that that my time is any more
148valuable than the than than what they do. Um I do think over a four-year term I will acknowledge totally April that there are natural es and flows in the workload. I will also acknowledge that we go through many different changes on a personal level as well. I know I have at and I know my time has definitely eb to sometimes being just the mandatory relying on this mandatory 5-hour meeting and then also um getting ready preparing for that and looking at our board updates. I feel privileged when I'm able um to go and engage in the community. But again, yes, you're right that that's flexibility, but that's my choice. It's not the obligation. The only official obligation is can you attend this meeting and not miss I think two in a year period. Um and
149even when others uh in the past other trustees have gone they posted notes on the hotel. So while it's challenging even committee assignments go out where um we say well what's the best time to get together is it the evenings sometimes it happens to be during the day but it could very well not be um so I think from that perspective I like the philosophy of service that has guided this board and I don't see that if on when you get into the enga engagement of money that putting a dollar value on time. You know, everybody is making very different amounts of money and I don't think we want to get into that. I don't want to get into that for for our board. I don't think it's a healthy thing. I think it's my
150fundamental thing is is in service of our kids and community and fundamentally I don't want to take money away because it is a trade-off and even if it's I wrote it down what the amount is but even if it's $250 it's 13,750. Thank you CBO Matsumoto and Superintendent Dire for the numbers but even if I did this on the back of the envelope that's per trustee and then also with benefits that might that the state allows us maybe to take it. I just feel that that's money that's going that's being taken away from our kids and given especially some of the unforeseen things like with Janentech like with the vehicle license recovery fee with the latest decision to keep two small school stu schools open and um keep the funding both smaller schools. I just
151don't think um I think it's a little um tonedeaf to just kind of not manage it. One of our co and the last thing I will say is part of our trusty obligation and I is fiscal stewardship and I think that this that going and asking more money of the district to put towards our compensation when honestly this is a role that we I didn't even know that it even got $40 honestly um when I when I decided to do it. I just wanted to to to increase transparency in the district and to serve the students because it was it was in in support of our initiatives. And I still think that's the philosophical um driver that I go by and I don't know I mean do you want to if anybody wants to add
152anything to that? >> Well, I'd like to respond. I don't know. >> Thank you for listening. Um, so I know you're saying um 10 to 12 hours on average a month with a 5-h hour board meeting once a month. And I'd like to just push back on that a little bit because um really in in order to come here prepared for our 5-hour meeting, we really do need to read the agenda and each item on the agenda. And so I'm not sure if we could bring up the agenda. And if we could just start um scroll up just Yeah. So if we start with number seven um and if you look and click into each one of these there are supporting documents for each one of these A through You don't have to click into
153them um Miss Ellinger, but if you could just So A through um if you could keep scrolling um A through U. So each one of those um items has supporting documents and we as a board are supposed to open all of those and read all of those documents in order to come prepared for these meetings. So I don't think 10 to 12 hours is really um is really a a good estimate of the time. I I could see if you know you you read the board update, you um you know take a peek at the agenda and come to the five-hour meeting and then maybe you um you know attend a committee meeting as well. I think that that's about 10 to 12 hours there. So um I I think it it's definitely at least
154double that if we're being realistic um with our estimates. So, um yeah, I I just feel like um it it is a lot of work and and we've we've heard from our community as well um even just tonight that they would like to see the board um out like being with the community, talking to the community more. So, I think that like if you're saying, "Oh, um it's okay if you can't take off work, um then just don't go to those things." But we're hearing from the committee. >> No, I'm saying that there's flexibility whenever a committee when we're on the committee, Trusty Northrup and I are on a different committee 2 by two, whatever it is, there there is a schedule going out, a desired schedule with where we can vote on times. And
155I I personally if if there's a time that a fellow trustee cannot make because it seems to be slant slanted towards the day, I'm perfectly happy to make sure so that that we can get that perspective in to change it for a different time. I think I was more talking about a comment from the last board meeting um that I think was directed toward Trusty Northrup about if she can't take hours off of work then people will understand Oh, I see. >> that she can't make it to those things. But I think that we've we've heard from people that, you know, it it is an expectation for board members to be um out in the community and attending these these types of events. Um and then also um to your point on um you know
156you know it's it's x number of dollars um you know for each trustee um that's it's it's optional. So if there are trustees on the board who do not wish to take compensation that's an option for you where you would just um you know wave that. Um similarly with the benefits. So, um, if trustees don't choose to take the compensation, then, you know, those funds would be back in the budget. Um, man, I had one other point, but I can't remember what it is now. Anyway, um, thank you, Trusty Deng. I I really, um, appreciate your comments. Um I I think just to go building on that as well, um I think I think for I think for a lot of parents, they may run for the board and and do it on a volunteer
157basis and uh that would be better for the district financially. But I don't want to restrict membership on the board only to people who it's not a big deal for them to take a day off of work. I I know there was some double negatives in there. Uh right. If if if you're uh paying for child care to attend the meetings on Thursdays, if you or your spouse or partner are uh giving up the opportunity to make more income because you're coming to this meeting or you're doing something during the day. If as a board member you're going to the CSBA conference in December, which I know is only once a year, but you're going to that conference and if you get paid by the day like most teachers do, or if you get paid
158hourly, right? Uh you're taking the day off without pay, right? or or or possibly you're with a with a understanding with your employer maybe they're letting you take a paid time off but maybe not maybe not um and anyway so I don't want it to be that um you that we only have people think about the board come joining the board um if they uh there's no there's no concern for them about paying for child care uh losing a few days of pay during the year. Um and and an example which anyway it's it's a not a perfect analogy but right donating to school force. We want everybody to donate to school force, right? We we would love that for everybody to donate to school force. Uh however, we understand some families cannot afford to
159donate to school force, right? Or they may donate a small amount, right? We know that I I believe we have about 15% of our families who are classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged. Right. So are we saying that those 15% of the families that really we cannot expect them to donate, we also expect them to do this for free. >> Sorry, if I may, I I remembered the other um thing that I was going to say. Um, and you had mentioned that um, you know, this has been volunteer since 2015 when the board bylaw was um, last reviewed or last updated, but it does specifically state right in the bylaw um, that it can be updated every year. So, it's not like if we did make a change to the compensation amount that could be reviewed, well,
160it should be reviewed every year by the board. And so then if there's another um time when people maybe disagree or there's a new board um it can be discussed again. It's not like we're going to make this update and then it's permanently changed forever. >> Yeah. No, and it is reviewed. We've Superintendent Aguire has passed passed by it. And you're right, we can we can review it. It's in it gives us flexibility for review. I think what I was saying with the volunteer, not that it's specific to be be volunteer, but that historically trustees have not um when Superintendent Duire has gone around and said would any trustees this year like to take um the the stipen as as mentioned um there have been no takers up to up to now. >> Yeah, I
161will um comment on that because I I did feel very pressured into not taking the stipend. Um, so I think like when when it's presented and then it's like um there is a stipend except for nobody on the board takes it. Would you like it? So then I felt like oo I better not take it because nobody else is taking it. Um but I just I just don't think that that's the right way to do things and and and it's okay. I think it's okay that we disagree on that. Of >> course. Um, but I just personally feel and I agree with Trusty Northrup that when we are saying that we we like it we want B br BRSSD school board to be solely volunteer that we really are cutting off part of our community
162to say sorry uh we don't want you to run for for the board. I have an interesting take on I appreciate that perspective, but for me when I was considering running for Go ahead. You want to say I'm sorry. >> Damn. I'm sorry. I'll raise it up. I guess to the point when I when I was considering um the running and I heard uh at that time the trustees speaking to the time commitment etc. and the kind of the the the main obligation but also the other stuff you know that was a personal decision where I um you know recognized and I that it wouldn't it take the support of like my family which is my village right or it might we might have to think otherwise and and um and so I also considered
163what that time aspect might be and like you said maybe it is double maybe it does fluctuate um but and could I do it. Um I do I do I and I decided that yes that I would do that and while it might there might be some es and flows um luckily it's been um it's been within within what I was thinking and some months I can do less and and and I think the community understands that because wherever we go especially with the middle school alignment regardless of that outcome people have thanked me for my service and I felt good about that. I would say though to the point of you know can we t demand can we have other people um take this as a volunteer role well yes you know if if
164I couldn't do it then that's that's the reality everyone says can they put the time and effort into it knowing um that it's in service of the community that again that's my philosophy we don't have to agree but the reality is if I didn't think about it because no there's been years where I I have a tutoring business. I have not been able to accept certain committee assignments or go to certain community events because I've have students just like you, right? If I don't tutor them, we're not getting paid. But that's the reality and and that that's what I signed up for. And does that mean maybe next time around I won't be able to sign up for it if I thought it was exceeded the e my original expectations? Yes. And I would say
165to the person the people that can sign up, thank you for your service. whatever your position, you have allocated this time and as long as I feel that you have kids in this community because I think there's a few things that need to be I don't think has to do with education. I don't think what I don't think what I'm doing I'm trying to be a good steward and governor of of our district. That's what I feel I was voted in for. I feel passionate because my kids are part of the community. I do think that that's a really um sound reason. Would I ever not vote for somebody in because they don't have kids in our community? No. If they were if they felt they wanted to serve, I wouldn't. But I also do
166feel that, you know, having parents, there is something to be have your own kids in the community and being a trustee and having your own kids. I know this is for another that May 11th meeting about, you know, the ideal person, but um because I feel like who's not going to be passionate for their kids and their peers if not for us, right? And I think that we do have that. I think that brings an interesting perspective. Outside of that though, I do not put myself up any higher than somebody else. It's a function of time and and I understand you go into this wanting to do it and then circumstances change. I do appreciate that, believe me. But to me it's still a philosophical thing and so but I do appreciate our discussion. Um
167I don't really >> Yeah, if I could just comment I mean I I appreciate the philosophical you know idea of volunteering as well. I I have volunteered a lot of my time in in many different aspects of different things and I think that's the whole kind of point of like if you do want to do volunteer service then you wave the compensation and then you are doing it as volunteer and so and I think it I really think that um and it may just be because of like you know where we are in Belmont California it it seems as though like well anybody could do this and be a volunteer but that really is just not the reality. So like if someone really really did want to do this but then they couldn't because there's
168no compensation and then they wouldn't be able to provide for their family but then they can't give their voice and and you know be a a diverse you know opinion on the board. That's what I'm talking about. You know it's it's great that like we can do that. Um but not everyone in our community can do that. And so by not offering compensation, we are telling those people that they do not have a place on our board. And so that's what I'm trying to convey is like yes, for me personally, because of the circumstances that my family is in right now, we're in the very real possibility of maybe not being able to live in Belmont anymore. Okay? And there are other people like our family on the peninsula and in Belmont that like they
169would not be able to do this even if they really really wanted to. And that's what I'm trying to convey is like everybody in our community should have an equal opportunity to serve on this board. We should give all of the people in our community that equal chance to to have a voice. And so that that's >> thank you for that. Is there any other discussion points before we >> um just going along those lines? Um I do recognize that um the the amount that the compensation is right now is $40. Uh to go up to what is legally allowed is a very large jump. Um, to Trusty Deng's point of we could review it every year. Um, I I would be interested in uh proposing that we increase the amount this year, but maybe
170not to the full amount that we could. Um, I totally feel that uh again members of the community, we want them to be able to serve. Um, and if if people can serve uh as volunteers, then they'll they'll decline the compensation. Um, but I do I do recognize that it on it it is a large jump from $40 to $1,200. Um, so I would I would be open to somewhere in the middle. Yeah, I I agree, Trusty Northrup, that I would be open to another amount as well. Maybe I will propose an amount. Um, >> can I just interject really quick? I think it's important at this point just to note um before we do motions and and voting uh that we are one trustee short today. Uh so that creates a little bit different
171dynamic. Typically a majority is um three on a board of five. When there's four present, this majority still is three. So um 22 um is not a passage um of a motion. So just want to clarify that uh procedural piece uh before we move. >> So is the recommendation to table this then until trusty Bruno gets back? Is that what the district would recommend? >> There's there's no no recommendation from from the district um at this point. It's a matter of board preference. >> Okay. What does the board prefer to do? Um, so we're talking about if we wanted to uh table this and then re bring it up again agenda for a later time when Trusty Bruno can be part of the conversation and and vote. >> Um, I I don't know. Um uh
172I think I think the uh I think uh starting with the middle school discussion uh members of the public are more tuned in to the board's uh happenings um which I think is which is great. Um, on the one hand, if we put it on the agenda for next month and it was specifically item whatever and it said board remuneration with a parenthesis of what that means. Um, because right, how often do you use that word? Um, anyway, and uh, and so then we may get more public comment. We we may hear more. we may get more uh emails to the board etc. Um and that would that would be great for transparency and discussion. Um I think also um I think also there is like a a timing consideration um which with with what
173we decided as a board to um keep all three middle school programs open and um to not uh uh utilize the savings that would have happened if we closed um one of them. Um so I think the the timing um is unfortunate. This is when this came to us from CSBA as part of other policies. As people said, the state recently changed uh what was allowed. Um this is a this is a going back and I'm I'm mindful of the time. Um, I believe approximately 2 years ago, I proposed uh raising the compensation to $240 a month with different board members uh before the 2024 election. Um, I don't remember if I don't think we voted. Um, there was some discussion about it, but it maybe didn't seem like it was going to get enough
174votes to pass. So then uh so then we dropped it. Um I would be very and I should look at the audience if I'm if I'm going to say this. I would be very comfortable voting for $240. Although that is to me not enough for parents who are not independently wealthy. But I would be very comfortable supporting $240 a month per board member per that they 11 months a year that they can opt to take or not. And then each of us as a board member, we do have to file a financial statement once a year. So you will see that uh you can see ours from this year and then I believe it's due in the spring. You would then so that would be what you would have for this upcoming election. Then we
175would file another one next spring. You would see that before another subsequent election. And you could see and if you see that I took $240* 11 $2500 and you would like to do this job for free then then go for it. But also if you see that I took zero or you see that someone who has mentioned that they uh um uh would would greatly benefit from this compensation and you see if they took 10,000 sorry they can't do that because we're I'm not proposing the $1,000 at the moment but anyway if you see that somebody else took 2500 like and that allowed them to to be part of the board. I would I would feel so badly if we had somebody resign from the board because of financial reasons. >> Okay. So, it sounds
176like we want to we want to kind of see where this goes. So, is there a motion on the >> I move to raise the board compensation from $40 a month to $240 a month. >> Second. >> Okay. All those in favor? >> Well, how do we Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. >> F further discussion. You're right. You're right. Further discussion. >> Okay. about the specific amount of $240 a month and if you do not want to take it, you decline it. >> Uh just a point of of context here. Uh so I understand there is conversation about the dollar amount. There is also um has been conversation about um benefits pieces. Um, I just ask the board to consider in whatever motion that we're clear about how we're addressing that. >> Thank you. >> For
177for what I've been thinking of it, um, I I've uh I feel like for um I feel I feel like, but I could be wrong that um the district is does not need to start providing health insurance. Um I I believe that then for the community um maybe people do get insurance through their employers or um if their employer doesn't provide it then they might be eligible for like medical or a lowcost health insurance. Um, and so I do not think it makes sense for the district to provide health insurance to the board members. Okay. So So this motion is right. So this motion is we're fine. We're saying kind of good with everything else on in in that bylaw. We're focusing on the stipen, the compensation element of it, which is the first row,
178changing the dollar amount. Okay. And so your motion is for $240. I'm sorry. Was there a second? There was a >> Yep. You motion you second it. Uh is there any further discussion on the motion? No. Okay. Why don't we do a vote? Um can we do this vote by uh in just to be clear by in by individual? We >> trusty Northrup I. >> Trusty Tang nay. >> Trusty Deng I. Trustee costs >> nay. So >> we have two nays and two eyes. So motion does not pass >> right in the original. So therefore it stays as status quo. I want to thank everybody for the discussion though. I I appreciate it. Okay. >> Let me sorry you're right. Okay. So then do you is there another motion or should I so so I
179make a motion that um the compensate the the board bylaw um is approved on the other language and stays stays status quo for the compensation amount. >> Second. >> Okay. Minger, would you do a in roll call? >> Trusty Northrup. >> No. Trusty Tang. I >> trusty Deng. >> Nay. >> Trusty Cos >> I. >> Okay. We have two nos and two eyes's. >> So now what? >> Uh so in that case uh the recommended changes for board policy or board bylaw uh do also do not go through and the policy remains stat remains the way it was in the past without any changed language. >> Okay. It'll it'll also um uh remain with the last updated version which um I uh it it would be dated uh the original adopted date would be 102215
180that will be uh left um alone. >> Thank you everyone for the conversation. Um now on to agenda number 19 uh future board meeting agenda items. Is there any one that wants to be discussed or or any agenda item that should be added? >> Uh so my that that is my cue there. Sorry about that. Let me go back >> uh to my assembly here. So f future board meeting items. Uh we have um our board study session coming up April 23rd. Uh topics are uh board governance uh special programs which is actually a holdover uh from uh January. Um director Kate and uh our SUPARE SULPA chair Mary uh will be joining us. Uh we will also have a con construction update uh which we will spend uh time talking about HVAC. Uh in
181our May meeting uh we have a special board meeting uh about uh uh running for board uh and uh the board info session uh which will be um broadcast. We will be getting the word out about that as well. We're also showing our May meeting uh which uh regular agenda items uh rston will be the highlight. Uh there's a public LCAP uh hearing for the LCAP. Two by two by two are city debriefs working with Redwood City and um Belmont uh working on rental rate increases uh from CBO Matsumoto. Uh declaration of need human resources uh and then advisory committee update. Uh likely I'm guessing the standing um update from uh uh probably Trustee Tang and uh President CS uh we'll need to determine when it's appropriate to have actually the committee members come and
182get that report. Okay, >> great. Thank you. Um with that there's no need to reconvene to close session. Um, so at 9 9:06 p.m. we adjourn the meeting. Thank you very much. >> Thank you.