BUSD Board Meeting 11/4/2021

001good evening i'd like to welcome you all we're coming back from our closed session tonight of the venetia unified school district's governing board's meeting um so i'm bringing us back from closed session and we're going to move down the line on our agenda i want to welcome everybody that's here it's nice to see faces in the audience because we don't we haven't had this for very much and um it's you know everybody that's watching at home hello we love what we're doing for all of your students or your children and um we we are here for you so without further ado i am to move into um to report on closed session items there were no items to report out on regarding that so we'll move to 5.2 this meeting is recorded for live streaming

002and archiving on the district youtube channel now we're going to go to our pledge of allegiance and i am going to ask gethsemane all of right united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right thank you for that um i'd like to see if we have the approval of the agenda as written i'll second it all right thank you so much uh are we still doing the roll call votes on everybody roll call yes yes justin yes trustee miceli yes trustee gross yes thank you all right thank you um we're moving on to highlight and i see a very special person in our audience here who's going to be sharing some information and i'm going to have dr young

003tee that up for tanya courtney if you would like to come to hi donnie courtney so tanya is our director of food services and does an absolutely miraculous job as a fun part of the board meeting where we are pretty consistent with starting off with a highlight of something positive uh many positives taking place throughout the district so this courtney love to hear about food and nutrition services welcome welcome good evening everybody thank you for having me over today i'd like to present a little bit of update at the food service department so um i'm gonna go try um georgina okay so i just want to give you a little update on what we are doing for 2021 for 2022. so this year all the children there are and under receive a free breakfast and

004lunch meals and as of today we have 921 applications that we process we have 877 students are eligible for free meals 231 students are eligible for reduced price meals and it's still 232 students that did not reapply by september 30 when their eligibility expire but we are continuing to calling the parents because we don't want them to miss out an opportunity to be received a discount of prices for their tests and applying for colleges and receive the pandemic ebt card which is a gift card that they can purchase groceries so point of service or point of sale or we call we um what we are doing for breakfast and what we are doing for lunch so benicia high school we serve at the student center at 8 o'clock to 8 30. uh we serve about

00560 to 80 students early in the morning then we have nine nine lines of service at the nutrition break which is a second chance for breakfast and we are serving between 260 to 350 breakfast during the day depending on the weather and if it's a cold weather the kids come more and that helps we want everybody to participate but not not all of them come and during lunch time we have 12 lines open and we serve between 750 to 850 lunches every day which is about 200 more than we used to dip before covet okay at liberty's um high school we do approximately 20 to 24 lunches daily and then we also deliver breakfast so they can have it the next morning a community venetia community they we offer every day but as of right

006now we don't have any students wanting to take any they know it's free we promote to them but that's their choice and you know what we can do is offer venetia middle school we open for breakfast at 7 45 in the morning to 8 15. we serve about 20 to 30 students early in the morning then a nutrition break also with a second chance for breakfast we have 10 limes open we open the third room and we are serving between 250 to 280 breakfast lunches in the morning and at lunch time we have 10 lines opens for service and we with one lunch we are serving 420 to 440 students every day is this is does not include the a la carte items then the students also have a choice to buy if you want

007to buy just a water or they want to buy just a cookie or just a big hit chips or something like that at elementary schools um for all the schools our numbers are higher this year also so joe henderson um all the elementary schools have breakfast from 7 30 to to 8 o'clock so there was uh joe henderson we serve about 90 to 105 breakfast per day per day and 280 to 310 lunches per day mary pharma 75 to 85 breakfast and 230 to 250 lunches matcha turner breakfast 50 to 60 breakfast every morning and lunch is 270 to 290. robert sample breakfast 50 to 65 and lunch 270 to 300 lunch lunches a day so are there lines long yes they are but we have an amazing team and we pros ask all the

008kids to serve all the kids at the high school from 10 to 12 minutes so the kids have plenty of time to eat and then um as just a pictures of the the lines of the students but we position ourselves and some point and then we time outs ourselves to see of course in the beginning the year was until the students find out where they go what to do but right now we are 10 12 minutes everybody already have lunch okay so we are preparing we show even though we we're in a pandemic we're still trying to prepare homemade meals so we do breakfast homemade breakfast burritos we do ham and cheese crust sandwich we prepare the eggs egg cheese sausage english muffins we do omelettes with hash browns and we also have a variety

009of cereals muffins bagel yogurt so plenty variety for breakfast and lunch we have homemade items that we make use lasagna we have chicken alfredo penny pasta marinara we have a new one this tuscan pasta which is a combination with alfredo and marinara sauce then we prepare over there we do some items with the as a vegetarian and some of those we put chic chicken also so they have both choices we do that nachos cheese tacos enchilada orange chicken teriyaki chicken we have sandwich so we have salads we have burgers a variety of items and then i just have a few pictures of the thing items that we serve every day so those some of the hot meals that they put together and then some of the cold options we do fresh wraps every morning and

010as you can see there we have items of her kids that are vegetarian so there's no bead in it so they have choices there's again more salads more cold items and this is a little picture of the room what we call the paws room at the high school with the kids can come both sides and they enter their numbers and so they expedite their room used to do close to 200 now we are doing almost 250 kids within 10 to 12 minutes so so we are trying to expedite and have as fast as we can so they have enough time to eat and socialize this year we have two grants that we receive from the usda for fruits and vegetables uh organic fruits and vegetables and fifteen thousand each which help us a lot because

011the food costs increase about 20 percent since the shortage of supplies so that's going to help us out we have challenges with shortage of staff we are trying to hire as fast as you can the candidates there that they qualify but at times where they find better opportunities we are um we don't have uh employment for too many hours because we are busy at lunch time not during the entire day so when people find jobs with more hours they don't stay with us you know but we're continue to you know looking for candidates every day we also have a major challenge this year with the supplies we have um a shortage of the paper goods and we have a shortage with the food supplies then to the point like i i order and the day

012before i receive i get a list of items then i'm not going to have it and i have to game change plane b cd and have another item on the menu you know but we always try to make the best we can to have the good choices for our students one of the uh no that's that's it yeah one of the things i had to do at the high school because we run out of paper trays to put so the kids can carry so and we kind of went and get the plastic sandwich trays to make it work and so we did get some supplies on hand so now we have some emergency supplies to for those dates and so basically our focus um this year is that we understand that the connection between the

013healthy students and their ability to learn comes from us is the food so we need to make sure that we are always there for them no matter what so we always will try our best to provide for them what they need so our mission is able students to establish and maintain long lifelong health habits through food food the food we serve and prepare support nutrition education and physical activities create wellness partnerships to our school and communities so we are always here for our students no matter what so that's we're here for and um if anybody have any questions i just want to give you a round of applause you you are a forward-thinking woman and you're able to like pinch hit when things are not going your way and i so appreciate that that you're

014flexible like that and working with so many kids so thank you so so much thank you many questions no way everybody have a good evening thank you for having me here i wasn't even on mike sorry um i have alice wells from liberty high school she's going to share information about the school things that going on so good evening president zeta superintendent dr young and fellow trustees and cabinet members like you said my name is alice and i'm with liberty and recently liberty has partnered with the solano food bank and will be having a canned food drive we have a barrel delivered and earlier this week and we hope to fill it by the holidays if anyone would like to drop off any non-perishable or canned foods we would gladly take your donation we are

015excited to announce we have our first early graduate we're proud of angel and we wish him the very best [Applause] yesterday many students met with sustainable solano is a grassroots organization that promotes the creation of sustainable regenerative gardens and spaces i think they made one on first street we appreciate their partnership and we hope to get liberty students involved in their program you want to give a shout out to our mentors they have been working with many of our liberty students and we appreciate their support they have been a great addition to our campus lastly we would like to congratulate mr pounds advisory class they won the overall october advisory competition liberty the eagle will now reside in the classroom till next month's competition because i suck at jenga so thank you have a good

016night oh that was a great report thank you for all that next i have ali ballinger is it ally or are you are you marie yes oh i'm so sorry i don't okay anyway it's marie marcus who's the asb vice president over at um the high school all right well i am marie marcus and so last week at the high school we had our red ribbon week so i wanted to say thank you to the friday night live club for hosting our lunch game on thursday and then on friday we had our annual halloween costume competition and many students walked away with a new class shirt or spirit wear and then our staff team that won was the english department and they dressed up as inside out characters and then upcoming so this week we've

017been holding the intramural volleyball signups and so we wanted to hold the sign ups all week but we have already reached the maximum number of teams which is 16 teams wow so starting november 15th the that's next monday we will be having our tournament during the lunch and then tomorrow is senior night for the football team and the student section will be class colors so freshmen will be wearing black sophomores will be wearing white juniors will be wearing blue and seniors will be wearing gold and then lastly most of so the fall sports have kind of come to an end so a lot of the winter sports have been holding their tryouts this week and i think monday is the projected like the official start date for the new sports okay thank you for that

018wonderful report we always appreciate you guys being here and sharing with us so that we like i know i'm going to get some non-perishables and we'll run them over to liberty so yes you're welcome um so you guys are welcome to head off and do your homework and get your life in order whatever you're doing so thank you so much for being here of course okay um we're gonna move on to the next item which is the superintendent's report so dr young thank you good evening board uh good evening everybody who's have a opportunity to join us tonight and folks that are watching just uh quickly from me just want to continue to thank everybody all of the employees in the district as we continue to work hard on behalf of all the kids i

019know this continues to be a challenging time in school districts for sure and so i know we have a very dedicated staff that commits to kids every day so um from the superintendent of the board certainly we we want you to know how much we appreciate that um then we continue to manage to cove the covid cases um you know we continue to manage that and unfortunately in solano county it looks like uh we're a little bit ahead of the surge um but we're cautioned from the solano county health director dr matyish you know you know thinking about heading into november and into the winter months to be to be mindful of that so we you know we'd like to keep where we are right now with this so i'd like to thank everybody's work

020around that uh and the other thing i wanted to point out very quickly is we had the meeting i think it was either this week or last week uh with benicia reeds and it's an effort that was dr beetson and i started talking about it she took this fabulous lead on it and it's a partnership with the city and we're re-engaging that partnership and cultivating this effort around literacy for our kids within the within the community so we had nice representation there from the city and the district and we'll keep putting information out on that so i think that's that's a very exciting uh effort for the school district and the partnership with the city so that's it from your superintendent tonight awesome thank you so much for the update i'm looking forward to the

021read program uh getting back to what we thought it would be so that's awesome thank you um now we have board reports so do any of my colleagues have anything to share no no uh you you can buy and of course okay i attended the um the district curriculum committee the other night actually mrs zeta was online with me as well so just a couple of quick highlights and then if she has anything she'd like to add um feel free so we talked about some upcoming professional development dates for the district staff and district office and which also we can be invited to participate in we also talked about a curriculum matrix looking at where the adopted materials fall along with the supplemental materials and we also had a lengthy discussion about support for new

022teacher training and what that could look like and moving forward what that will look like so um i am assuming that's probably happening in her groups right now and we'll probably get a follow-up at some point so i know sherry that's all i have you you got it all of it it's good thank you and i thank stephanie for stephanie rice for putting that together and bringing us all together to hear what they're they have to share so thank you for that um the next item up is um comments from members of the public and i have a stack here so must be a lot of you guys in the audience that want to talk so i welcome robert johnson up to the podium please oh i'm sorry can i read one thing before you

023start talking please stand though um this is a mouthful and busd has moved to in-person board meetings we ask that members of the public who wish to attend including those who wish to address the board wear a mask at all times all functions of the board meeting including public comments will take place in person members of the public may address the board at regular at a regular meeting on any item within within um any any item you wish to speak to submit a card to the board secretary the board president will call an open session public comments not on the agenda during god bless you um during the public comment item comments for items on the agenda will be called during the specific item comments are limited to no more than three minutes per speaker

024or the board may limit a total time of people speaking to a total of 20 minutes by no look by law no action may be taken on any item raised during the public comment periods and matters may be referred to staff for placement on the future agenda of the governing board please be reminded to keep your comments respectful as there could be students watching um so i thank you for following those those rules i just had somebody drop one off another one off of me but i think we're good i'm robert will you it's nice to have you thank you sure uh hopefully everybody can hear me um i'm a 40-year venetia resident um raised three daughters here already and i have a some questions about the school district uh what specifically has been a

025unified school district tasked epoch to do for the district for school for the school year with regards to building equity for students of color and to kind of drill down on that a little bit to just wanted to emphasize what specific programs beyond training will be implemented this school year and secondly what practices are being adopted with regards to hiring diverse staff and uh we all know that's well for for most of us that's a that's an urgent issue and uh i will await your answers and and i understand that won't be today yes i'm sorry we're not able to do it the question was sent to you yes yes i appreciate that we appreciate that thank you so much thank you all right i'm going to be calling up kashana harman lee if you

026would like to come up to the podium okay so which what is your what's the other one yeah i switched him look at that i'm i so easy magician um okay so it's janie varanth veronica lewis okay thank you so um i'm here sort of with this group of of interesting people and people that i i know well and i'm also here to address just some concerns and thoughts i've i have on some of the curriculum matters going on in the district um i know that the state department of education and many districts in the state now are have really committed their funds and committed some funds and emphasis this year on social emotional learning which i think is a wonderful thing to be doing and um a lot of that has impacts from covid

027and and and some important curriculum piece that we all need to be having and i think i applaud the district for continuing to do that too i'd also like to make the point however that the social emotional learning and equity based practices in many ways intersect with each other and i think are part of a bigger two parts of a bigger whole so i'm hoping that the district will find the way to combine the efforts they're making in social emotional learning with equity-based curriculum that needs to be happening as well we know from the statistics on on covid that many segments of the population were were negatively impact we we've all been impacted in some way or another but some some parts of the population more severely than others and i think in particular we

028know that black and brown families have felt worse outcomes because of the the pandemic than others so my questions tonight with this in mind are has the district looked at how covet and its impacts have disproportionately impacted black and brown students here what specifically are are you doing to focus on equity and social emotional learning for black and brown students and what supports are are the district giving first for teachers in in delivering that kind of curriculum and that kind of program so i think in closing i i just want to urge the board board members to be absolutely clear with district leadership and leadership yourselves too that that the money that we're spending on social emotional learning which i know is being funded through the state department of ed also needs to include equity-based

029programs and practices that we all know need to be taught as well and my big concern is that this be done in a timely way i know we have a lot of good training a lot of good services from epoch that are coming into the district but workshops and forums and training and and discussions are all good but they only are good if they translate into action and i i feel strongly that we can't take several years learning about the problem we know what the problem is with equity in schools and i would urge you as a as a district leadership group to um to make those those practices change now and not later thank you thank you um also going to just make a little announcement that we do need to keep our masks

030on and i didn't know pro no problem i just want to remind to remind you um our next person up is kashana harman lee welcome good evening my name is kashana lee i have been a resident of benicia for over 13 years and i've had five children attend schools in busd as an active parent and hands-on parent i have had the honor of being a listening ear to my children as well as their friends sadly many times this was after they had experienced rts which is racial traumatic stress on a busd campus black and brown students have been and are repeatedly traumatized year in and year out by racially and traumatic incidents brought on via by peers and sometimes whether it is intentional or not by staff what dedicated social emotional learning programs do you

031have or have planned to address this problem also have you made specific initiatives to recruit hire and train black and brown professionals with sel funds i've emailed my questions as well to the board members and i equally eagerly anticipate your response thank you and have a great evening thank you so much all right our next person is is it shawn henderson thank you hi i'm sean henderson i am a parent of a middle schooler and a recent bhs graduate i'm also strongly invested in our community school system and i want to say i'm grateful for and encouraged by busd's recent embarking on equity and opportunity initiatives i've watched dr beatson's board meeting presentations and i was also a participat participant at the recent community forum with epic consultant dr erica brown this improvement and transparency

032makes me really happy as a parent but i have to say the forum was a disappointment besides dr beatson's presentation on the reasons why busd isn't marketing embarking on equity work i found the rest of the forum lacking substance and it left me with a lot of questions i'd really like to know more about how busd will use epic education to create a more inclusive and equitable educational system for our students my questions today center around center around what busd expects from staff in regards to epic training one what specifically will the district do to support teachers to ensure that they benefit fully from epic training two how will the district evaluate if administrators and teachers are using new equitable and inclusive practices per their training and lastly what steps will the district take to

033ensure that teachers will adhere to epics consulting and what actions will they take if teachers are not compliant um like everyone else i will email you my questions for your convenience and i greatly um appreciate your response and eagerly await it thank you thank you so much for being here and sharing next up is laura cohen good evening everyone i'm laura cohen i'm a parent of two children who go to robert simple a fourth grader and a first grader and i am an active member in the school community as well first off um i would like to continue to recognize the intentional work that the district has put into place surrounding equity and opportunity for all of our students and their families i would especially like to express my gratitude to our district leadership team

034and to all the teachers and staff members who have made a commitment to attend anti-bias training and for those of you who actively seek to attend ongoing training on your own time as you know that anti-bias training is not a one-on-one course but it is a lifelong training that requires consistency and dedication over the course of time not session thank you to those teachers who are learning how to engage our children in conversations around equity and inclusion and who are actively teaching truth in their educational practices each day by utilizing books materials and narratives that represent different cultures and different lenses and different life experiences the path forward sounds very promising as our district leadership team has recently hired epic a team of consultants who specialize in the area of diversity equity and inclusion training

035my question is what metrics are being used to gauge how effective epic training is for example will you seek to see how epic training affects the equitably disciplinary and referral rate of black and brown students how you evaluate if staff are using their training in their teaching practices and their interactions with their students in their everyday life i personally was able to attend the epic community forum last month along with many other parents and district personnel i feel that these kinds of forums can be very effective and can be a powerful tool for change if there is a safe space of trust built between the district and the community if there is consistency with how often these important dialogues are happening and if the community feels that the input that is provided in these forums

036can truly be heard and therefore transitioned into action items that lead to real systems change real practice changes what is the measurement system you are utilizing to collect your data on these actual changes i would also like to inquire about the district equity task force team that has recently been created which we were informed consists of one teacher and one credentialed staff member per school site what are the areas of focus within this task force what are the objectives will there be an evaluation of practice and programs will there be opportunities to analyze and add materials to ensure we are engaging in culturally relevant practices will their focus will there be a focus on providing consistent staff development anti-bias trainings will the focus be on social emotional health for our students and is this task

037force involving input from our parents and from our greater school community please be transparent transparent in what this task force is going to achieve and what the measurable objectives look like thank you for your time thank you laura and next is andrew miller hi my name is andrew miller and i'm the parent of two children in the busd school district math science english and history not some 1619 howard's end nonsense at the last meeting i again asked you to end your relationship with epic education i told you that i was able to have a one-on-one time with dr brown from epic education and when i asked her to show me how the company that she works for is helping kids improve their performance in the areas of math science english and history she was unable

038to do so she neither told me how they were helping or pointed me in the direction of some study that showed how their dei program was helping the kids improve their learning at all i also asked you board members if you could help demonstrate this to me as well as of today i have yet to hear back from any of you so i went online to try and find something that might show how dei was helping the kids and their academics and i found nothing there as well i did however stumble across a study entitled equity elementary diversity equity and inclusion staff in public schools and while it's too long for me to read in three minutes or less i will give you the highlights and send you a copy of it in its entirety

039for you to ignore at your leisure although i hope you do actually look at it the upshot of the study was this and a comparison of achievement gaps in districts with and without diversity officers it was shown that gaps are larger in districts that employed diversity officers in districts without a diversity officer the average black student is 1.9 grade levels behind the average white student on standardized test results in districts with a diversity officer the achievement gap is half a grade level larger with the average black student being 2.4 grade levels behind the average white student sorry this math study also concluded that diversity officers may be best understood as political activists who articulate and enforce an ideological orthodoxy within school districts they help to mobilize and strengthen the political influence of small groups of

040teachers parents and students whose preferences may be at odds with the majority of teachers parents and students the creation of diversity officers tilts the political playing field against efforts to remove the radical ideology of critical race theory from school curricula and practices thank you very much okay that seems to be the end of our um okay these are these are on different items specifically i did not don't worry there is one more general this one sorry robert crawley apologize i'm sorry came at the last it was given to me at the end so sorry no worries hey what's going on thanks for giving me a chance to speak my name is robert crowley and i'm a citizen of benicia recently busd hired epic to work with the school district to address the lack of diversity

041and equity for students and staff of color within the school system i got a couple of questions that i emailed to the board and i look forward to your response but i wanted to make sure i said them tonight so first what are busd's next steps regarding evaluating and adopting a new curriculum that teaches the true facts as it pertains to all students with emphasis on people of color does epic have a curriculum resource that will be utilized by busd in the classrooms is epic tasks to evaluate books and literature used within our curriculum and then finally is there a syllabus available to families showing how common core standards and frameworks will be met for each grade level thank you i look forward to your response thank you very much so now i'm actually going

042to move on to item number 11 our consent calendar all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the board to be routine and be approved by the board in one motion there will be no discussion on these items unless members of the board staff or public request specific items to be pulled and discussed so [Applause] do i have approval of the consent calendar as written i move that we approve the consent calendar is written you we'll move on to item number oh sorry oh my gosh president zeta yes christy moss yeah trusty furucci trustee macelli yes and trustee grubs yes thank you all right next item is uh item 12.1 it's the governing board we'll provide it will provide information on busd's district general obligation the go bond history the new go bond

043program analysis and i think um mr rajo are you going to start off good miss rahul good evening we uh have this this item for your information tonight as our district approaches the full expenditure of our locally approved measure s general obligation bond that's for school facilities our taxpayers and i believe it was 2014 approved the general obligation bond that we've utilized and built a variety of structures throughout our schools over the last few years during that process we also put a facility master plan together which had i believe at that time about 136 million dollars in projects which we knew at the time we would not accomplish all of those needs with that local measure s bond at 49.6 million so since then we've also um applied to the state and we're on track

044to get about 15 million dollars from the state so that will definitely help and we got a couple of zero interest and a low interest loan to do the solar throughout the district and so as um those funds are being used up and we've fully committed out those funds we thought it was appropriate to start the conversation with you tonight and provide some background information again on the history of our school facility bonds and what it what it entails when a school district wants to consider um a new local bond and so with with that introduction we have um our school district's uh financial advisor with us tonight john isem and he has a presentation that he put together that provides a lot of good information for us thank you welcome good evening uh it's

045nice to see you all this is this working can you hear me yeah there you are if i got a little a little bit closer okay um do i have a clicker do you okay thank you uh good evening as as was introduced my name is john isom i'm with isom advisors we've been the district's financial advisor for the last six seven years our role in working with school districts is to help districts access dollars for capital improvements so financing and there's a number of different ways and different options that exist but i wanted to kind of give you guys a little bit of your history and talk to you a little bit about steps going forward what the options might be and and to give you some of that some of that background so

046let me take you through this first um and just actually some of you are new faces to me you know between coveted masks you know who is this guy again so uh for the last 23 years i've worked with school districts in the state of california we're based out of walnut creek uh we work with a lot of your neighbors vacaville fairfield sassoon martinez a lot of districts in contra costa county in fact about 200 and some districts throughout the state of california so we travel up and down the state and again for the last 23 years our role has been to say hey this is what you need for facilities let us show you how to get that money and then help you get that money and do so at the lowest cost of

047borrowing so that's our role as a fiduciary and as a financial advisor so by way of background so historically here i want to to bring your attention to some information here one is that table on the left which is known as your assessed value that represents all taxable value located within the boundaries of the district so the refinery homes gas station restaurants pieces of dirt anything that is considered taxable within those boundaries makes up your assessed value and what you can see is that right now in 2122 the very last line item this has a little pointer oh there you go uh we're at 6.6 billion dollars so when you add up all the value not market value not what you could sell your house for a property but what the county assessor has assigned

048as a value which usually was what you paid for your property and then a one or two percent increase you know per year it all adds up to 6.6 billion so what that means is that when you apply a bond program to your tax base you're applying a tax rate so whatever that tax rate might be that tax rate when applied to 6.6 billion dollars every year provides revenues the basis of which are used to repay a debt so think of a bond just like a home mortgage you borrow the money up front the bank gives you the money you buy your house and for the next 30 years you make your mortgage payments that's what a bond is like historically this community is no stranger to that and i'm going to draw your attention

049to oh it looks like it disappears once i get to the screen see how it's there but the first bullet point so the district voters back here 1991 they passed a bond all those dollars have been spent and you can see a 22 million dollar bond was passed in 1997. all of those dollars were spent but there's about four or five years left on the 1997 program and then most recently in 19 or excuse me 2014 about 50 million dollars was authorized and of course those were the dollars that tim was alluding to that you're in the process of spending down and completing those projects so there's no money left the tax rate combined for for those different tax rates for those different bonds rather is about 133 dollars and 26 cents per 100 000

050so that's the tax that voters have been paying and continue to pay for all of those different bond programs while it's a technical thing i do want to draw your attention just to this last bullet point which is your what's known as a gross bonding capacity every school district every municipality actually in the state of california has what's called a debt limit or a bonding capacity and it's simply a formula in this case it's two and a half percent of your total assessed value for the year which in this case is 6.6 billion from that you subtract out what you already have borrowed and that gives you your net debt limit and what that simply means in this case your net debt limit is 114 million dollars 114.5 million and what that simply means is

051if your voters gave you a blank check and said we don't care what the tax rate is you can do another 100 tax rate that's fine you would be limited to that 114.5 million dollars because that is what is known as your debt limit now every year your tax base grows so that number grows and every year we also pay down debt so that number also grows so there's two things that will continue to increase your debt limit uh and interestingly enough even those districts that are up against their debt limit you can go get a waiver from the state there's been about 60 requests and all 60 of them have been granted so the two and a half percent really is kind of an arbitrary figure and again that's probably more than you wanted

052to know i'll go through these other slides much faster okay next slide so new geo bond program what would a new general obligation bond program possibly generate and we're going to talk about you know what that possibly means so on the left hand side of this table you see different tax rates 45 50 60 doesn't mean that's what you get that just means that's probably about the most you would get if you did a new tax rate why if you did a new election with a new tax rate under prop 39 law you are capped at sixty dollars sixty dollars per one hundred thousand dollars of assessed value what does that mean that means if you own that piece of dirt and you've owned it forever ten thousand dollars worth of dirt and the tax

053rate is sixty dollars per one hundred thousand how much would you pay six dollars a year if your home is assessed at a hundred thousand and and the for those that have a home that's assessed at a hundred thousand you've probably lived in it for about 40 years um my mom lives in danville since 1974 and her home's worth a lot more but it's assessed at about 211 000. so she pays nothing in taxes compared to what the value is and there are people that have lived in their homes for a long time and thus would have that similar so if you have a hundred thousand dollar piece of property you're paying about five dollars a month if you have a million dollar piece of property now you're paying about fifty dollars a month it's

054the same tax collection methodology that the county uses right the county we all pay one percent if you're a property owner you pay one percent to the county based on your assessed value this would be you know zero six percent if in fact you use the sixty dollars so big picture 115 million which is now on the far right hand side so pretty much at or below or just it would be below by the time you sold all the bonds your bonding capacity so when i talk to the district and i say tim charles understand you may have 300 million dollars worth of value but that's not even in the realm of possibility so just like anyone who wants to do a home renovation you look at your budget and you say this is kind

055of what i think we might be able to afford but let's see how the christmas bonus works out see if i get a raise et cetera that's where we're here is our max budget is about 115 million however and this is i think kind of one of the more exciting things there's a second approach that we looked at called a tax rate extension remember how i said the 1991 bonds are all gone and the 1997 bonds will soon be gone what happens is that means our tax rate is is going to go down however we could go to the voters and ask them hey voters what if we just keep paying the tax rate that we've been paying all these years we're not going to increase the taxes but instead of letting the tax rate

056go away maybe we could just keep paying it so in this scenario that what what ultimately calculates is a 59 and 40 cent tax rate could generate upwards of 122 million now you might say wait a minute the last slide you just showed me 115 million this one's supposedly a lower tax rate in this model we took out the the last series until 2030. doesn't mean we have to we we could we could chop off 22 million and get you 99 million dollars okay but the point is is that there's protect tremendous potential just by extending a program that clearly benicia voters have been okay financially paying over the last 20 years a little bit more detail on that i i hesitate to even i'm sorry to all those that are looking at the screen

057this is so tiny but i will make an effort so this column represents the 1997 election it goes away in 2025-26 okay and so that tax rate goes away with it this column represents the 2014 obligations which will go away in 2039 that's too far out to even to even worry about but what we could do is we could go to the voters and say hey voters instead of having you know that tax essentially go away let's keep paying on it with one caveat remember how the maximum tax rate can only be sixty dollars that's the most that we can ask even though the 1997 tax rate is much higher than sixty dollars and you can see that here so what would ultimately happen if you go to the far right here is that the

058tax rate on the new bond would be about fifty nine dollars and forty cents and our combined tax rate far right column everyone even in the audience should be able to see we go from three digits to two so even by extending the tax rate we can have ultimately a reduction in tax rate from 130 or so down to what appears to be in the 80 range so a lot of detail but hopefully i was able to kind of capture that for you but i think this is a really exciting option especially one that's mindful of you know where we are i don't know that a lot of people want to pay more in taxes but here's a situation where we actually get to say you know you'll be paying actually less than what you've

059been paying and we get to deliver all of these great school facilities that we need and that we're asking for so these bond programs do require going to the voters very quickly on your voters you have about 20 000 registered voters here uh majority of them are democrats here's kind of a breakdown of political party here's a breakdown of age what's what's really important here is just simply this you have more voters that don't have kids than do so we can't just say hey as long as the parents of the kids are happy we can pass no we've got to make our case to our senior citizens to our single you know audience that don't have kids yet to those that have just sent their kids off to college right so we have our work

060cut out for us from the simple point of view that we need to explain something that they would see a benefit for them because they're not going to see necessarily the direct my children benefits but they'll see it with property values they'll see it in community safety they'll see it in an overall better quality of life that good quality schools bring but you can't just rely on parents here turnout's important and i'll tell you why this is your district and this one's actually quite fascinating this is your district and you can see historical turnout going all the way back to november of 2008 and you can see of course everybody votes for president a lot of people vote for governor and the primary is not a lot of people turn out why is this relevant

061to you the next two chances for your district is june and november of 2022 gubernatorial primary where we're picking the two horses between the democrats and republicans and then the gubernatorial general which is who do we want as governor look at your 2018 your turnout for primary 40 percent your turnout for the gubernatorial general 64 the question simply is and our job is to help you figure this out can we win with a low turnout when only 39 percent of the voters show up do i need the extra 25 of lower propensity voters that kind of only show up for president or governor do i need them in order to be victorious or can i win either way right i think this district the last 2014 success was in a primary so we know we've

062got some track record and some history there but that was also seven years ago so there would be some extras some some efforts to determine what do we do from here and that brings me to this this is the timeline to say if you went in june what would we need to do and then also as i mentioned we can go in november so where does it start it starts with your master plan which the district has been ongoing you have a pretty good handle of how and what projects you need and how much it costs then you get to to this kind of right this is as a board do we want to explore the feasibility of a program and simply the question is do i have the needs and am i willing to

063ask the community not do a bond election or anything but am i willing to ask the community do some surveying and some talking to the community members to see if they're willing to support us and and maybe it's yeah i'm willing to support it with a brand new tax or maybe it's no i don't want to do a brand new tax but i like the tax rate extension idea maybe it's i'll support you for all the projects except i really don't want to spend any money on swimming pools performing art centers et cetera et cetera so the question is is do we want to explore that and that ultimately is for you is the board to decide so what does explore even mean a couple of things one a survey of registered voters telephone survey

064random sample this is where you get data statistics numbers and we can come back to you and say hey good news 70 of the voters like the idea of a tax rate extension bad news they don't want to pay for the swimming pool again i don't even know if that's on the list you know or good news they want to pay for all of the projects but bad news there's some major tax sensitivities and they're only willing to do it at thirty dollars so cut your project list from 115 million to 60. right that's the data that you get back from the survey so think of that as quantitative assessment and then this public information program qualitative assessment can't put a number on it but yeah did i talk to the chamber of commerce ask

065him hey what do you guys think of this yeah businesses are supportive of it okay good do we talk to the refinery like last time we went in sat down in front of him roll put out our cards on the table what do you guys think hey mayor city council member these are the kinds of conversations that we need to have to find out if we've got you know support among some of the key stakeholders because they'll sway you know opinion one way or another so we want to make sure that we've got their support as well when you do both of those quantitative qualitative and they both look good ultimately what that helps us do is create a program that your voters are willing to support so this isn't john isom's idea this isn't

066charles's idea this isn't the board's idea this is really the community's idea it's your schools it's your taxes you should have a major say in it and that's what we want to do is take all that information and create a program that we can give back to the community and then the campaign committee's job just got a lot easier because they don't have to convince people of it they don't have to say hey listen to this great idea i have really it is let me tell you what you already told me that you want this is what measure b is all about and those are the programs that have been very successful in our experience so all of this stuff you know fast timeline all this stuff would be a january february you'd have to

067make a decision by march so if you're sitting in there and you're saying all right when do we really need to decide first week in march the resolution calling the election would need to be submitted what happens if the survey doesn't come back well i will be here and i will be telling you i don't recommend we go in june we should reset for november and here's why not my opinion but here's the data and this is why we're suggesting november or i don't think we can pass in june or november i suggest we reset to 2024. that's that's what no one wants to hear but you should be prepared to hear it so ultimately again we only go if our voters want us to go and if they're willing to support us but kind

068of in the orange there that's the deadline right march of 2022 first week for a june 7th election if it's november that that deadline becomes august the first week in august what it is is it's 88 days before election day basically three months back from from that day so all this stuff up here is you know can we get this stuff done between now and and march and if it all looks good then june could make a lot of sense there are other factors that i may not be aware of so that's why we have these dialogues and these discussions uh that might say you know what june forget it you know but let's let's open our our you know minds to a potential november so a lot of information that concludes the presentation um

069i'm happy to take you know any questions that you guys may have so thank you mr eisen for um sharing this this very elaborate information with all these numbers um i do feel that we have some questions um from our uh my some from our board that they would like to ask um i i'm wavering on this whole thing because i you know extra taxes on people especially when our community is so much more mature than having young folks and and really we want to start getting young families in here and doing that but at this time there's not that big of a percentage of the younger parents that would be taxed um but i'm going to stop here and just let my colleagues talk um or can i add a few things as thank

070you so much for this great information i thought of a couple other things that might be helpful as you know we're digesting all of this um important information and so again here we are in november and this is the first time we're really kind of bringing this back to the school board so it's a lot of information there's a lot of numbers on the page but it's our first step to start that conversation and we're just reminded that um last time we did this did this back before 2014 you know we we had our first district facility committee which is uh made up of staff from all the different sites and departments and uh we put together um our uh school district facility master plan and so again i i referred to the 136 million

071dollars in school projects that was identified you know seven years ago or so and so it's our intent that you know while if if this proceeds um that you know we would get the facility committee back we take a look at where we're at what we've done what's left to be done and make any modifications it's it's very safe to say um there is a um there is probably i'll just really roughly based on on this old older plan at least 70 or 80 million dollars left in projects that have been identified here now that'll change a little bit after we um go back through the committee um and we're just kind of reminded some in this first local bond that we passed and the projects we've been working on it's kind of a lot

072of it's been behind the scene there's definitely been stuff that the community has seen especially at the middle school and what you will see next is at mary farmer elementary probably some stuff at the high school too with painting um but we did um early on we did playgrounds at all the elementary schools we did some roofing at farmer and the middle school tech rooms uh we did um fire alarms which are extremely expensive and you know they they are operable and modern and current um but nobody really sees that they just expect that and they should but they're they were very dated on the verge of being non-workable and non-fixable so we really caught that in the nick of time at the high school we did the all-weather track and field and stadium we've

073also done some painting there uh seismic work uh earthquake proofing at venusia middle school has started which we have to bring that up to code whenever you touch buildings they make you upgrade to the seismic work so that's in that project right now we did district-wide new clocks and bells new phones new surveillance so that again it's a lot of back backbone stuff so really quickly and very um summarize what's left to be done in the master plan is pretty much the classroom modernization at all of the school sites there's some older wings there's portable wings that need to be replaced the master plan talked about library and library enhancements at the schools including at some of the schools creating some specialty classrooms like music room art room our schools do have those now but

074they're basically just in many cases a regular classroom that's been slightly modified to accommodate that some are better than others parking asphalt additional playgrounds possibly science classrooms um something like at the high school with the uh the performing arts building and the the band program the dance um hall i'm just and then classroom modernization in general and so i just want to share that just to kind of bring a little bit of the you know what does it mean what would we be doing just kind of reminding us what we've done and what's left to be done and i think uh knowing that we've that the local community has stepped up with the measure s fund and the district's done um its job at going after other funds at the state um with our bond

075director miss uh egan and at this point uh at least 15 million dollars coming in from the state of california is is uh pretty amazing to be able to contribute that to our um facility project needs um and and what caught my uh attention earlier with mr isem's presentation is he mentioned june 2022 or june or november 2022 so we're just kind of reminded uh a school district in california can only ask and only put something out to vote on an even number year is is that correct correct even numbered so if you don't if we don't do it in 2022 we'd have to wait till 2024. so i think with that i'll pause and then let you guys ask your questions thank you so much okay go for it go for it well thanks

076tim for that club for the clarification i we have done amazing things with the bond money i think that we've had we have been um very prudent in our expenditures and i think the improvements have been um you know absolutely amazing for our kids they have absolutely been a good thing i agree with sherry though that has one of the things when i was reading this board item last night my concern is for the makeup of the community we have a lot of retirees in our community that function on a fixed income and that is a concern and i think we need to put it out there and be at least it's a big concern for mine so i and i think it's a it's a part of our reality and i need to think

077we need to think about it i'm also concerned about timing we are coming out of covid and there's been a large impact on our citizens as well as a lot of our businesses in town so um the idea of dancing with another tax to me i'm not feeling really solid and with that said i think some of the things and um i don't know if it's you john or tim who's going to need to give us some more information but i think as as this starts to hit the community we need to have a real understanding and i i need to feel really solid regarding the dollars what's left on any of the existing bonds what is securing this bond money and john you mentioned one of my questions already because i'm like why i'm

078looking at the tax impacts and it's like why is 97 so expensive and you were showing that it's going to be less if we extend it so whatever that rate happens to be that's causing such a huge hit on people's taxes so i mean part of those questions i think you're gonna need to help us john tim so that we're really comfortable so as we talk about this to people when people question us i i don't think the in response of i'm not really sure is going to fly really well and i don't want to be in that position either so those are my questions and i know my colleagues have questions as well because we all talked about not feeling really solid yeah so and i'm glad you raised that and and i think

079that's why the the exploration is is so relevant and so important you you didn't hear me say let's put something on the ballot right because first and foremost you you may or may not know this about us and how we're compensated and how we get paid we're on a contingent basis no win no pay so i will be the first person to say your community will not pass the measure but that's why you do things like the survey to get a real good sense are people worried about copenhagen i'm worried about coven you know march of 2020 was a bad day for school bonds november of 2020 kind of went back a little bit to the mean we had 80 success in november of 2020. so i think for me it was like oh for

080some districts the water's fine for some okay but that's why we go through this process so we've already begun doing surveys we've done surveys in del norte county san bruno currently doing one for fairfield sassoon vacaville is also going to be quickly following and doing a survey of their own they are in that exploration process i may have to say at each of these board meetings you can't pass and maybe we can blame not blame but but maybe you can't pass because the senior citizens are concerned maybe the senior citizens are our biggest fan right i mean we just assume oh a parent's going to vote for it and grandparents shouldn't but grandparents do my mom votes for every single bond and believe me all of our kids are gone so that's what the survey

081gets us the survey tells us demographically ethnically political party propensity to vote remember the 39 versus 67 it tells us all of that stuff and it gives us valuable data and in addition charles tim you guys may be having conversations with those movers and shakers because i could bring you a survey and say hey good news 60 of the voters say they would support it let's go but if you came back and said yeah but the chamber's against it city council's against it teachers unions against it then i would say okay we don't go okay but we should consider exploring because the benefit to not and and i and i and i gave you all the information just to give you all the information but in my experience the tax rate extension the no tax

082rate increase is really what we should just be talking to your community about are you interested in a no tax rate increase when the 1997 goes away instead of it going to zero let's just bring it from 100 to 59 dollars so you're going to be paying less okay but we're also going to get all these great facilities and improved classrooms and upgraded infrastructure but we have to do that exploration in order to come back with a recommendation one way or the other but yeah i i should have said that at the beginning my financial loyalties if you will are aligned with yours which is none of us want to go unless we know for certain that our community really wants this and if the community doesn't want it then we don't go and we

083reset to 2022 november or no or 2024 or never i mean you know there are certain communities but most communities that have done a good job on their bonds those voters tend to reward them and say hey yeah i love the new stadium i love the roofing i love the new alarms that no one sees and you're telling me this isn't going to increase my taxes yeah i'm not gonna oh okay and we're gonna get all these new projects yeah those are a program that i think has potential here no promises but i think and is worth at least exploring so great questions thank you thank you mr isom i i i just wanted to ask a clarifying question and that is um you said that uh the cost the cause it's a contingency situation

084correct so if you're doing all this exploring and surveying that will cost the district nothing correct so it's a it's a terrible business model if you're not good at winning these programs and providing the right advice but when we're successful 90 of the time or more then it it works for us and so we're like yeah i know a lot of districts don't want to spend a bunch of money if they don't think it's going to happen so we say don't worry about it we know tax rate extensions are very popular we know with the benicia community i've walked your streets i know the voters i know how supportive they are of education i also know they're senior citizens on fixed incomes but there's ways that we can talk to those people as well so

085we're confident enough that our approach and your community that's been responsive and supportive in the past may be supportive again but again i'm not saying let's do a resolution next week i'm saying let's spend the next couple of months few months six months figuring out if now is a good time for benicia and it may be right and it may not i mean that's the beauty of the survey is i i can put my personal biases aside and say let's trust the numbers you can put your personal biases aside and say let's trust the numbers it's a tried and true process that we stake our business on so thank you i i have to say that i am an agreement with mrs ferrucci and president seda um i think we need a lot more information

086to go forward so that i thank you for that clarification yeah thank thank you anybody else anything yeah i think we do need some more information like where that money is specifically going to be spent and if it's wise i mean i i worry about our district because our district now the population of students that we have is going down we're having less people in our district and yet we want to put in all these beautiful things which are wonderful don't get me wrong but also is that the right time to be doing that and that money has to be spent on facility correct it has to be spent on rooms and and that kind of thing it can't be teachers in their classrooms and all that so it just seems like a lot of

087money but again i'm open-minded and at this point we were not voting on anything it's just an informational thing and i i really appreciate your hard work putting this together for us and and we'll have to give it some thought and um and have you back so i i really do thank you so much oh you're very welcome yeah i just have you here i'm sorry looks like we have another question oh yes i i um this probably needs to go to mr ray hill i i would like to know um within the bond structure within the the general obligation bond that we're considering what would the priorities be i'd really like to see that specifically um with an estimate thank you everybody real quick just uh just asking for board um board direction uh

088what you know going forward just um how would you direct us do you want so we have a couple of board meetings in december um you know i could get together and plan the agenda but would you like to is your direction for us to come back in december with you know more more details about items and expanded you know their costs etc just in-house like in-house not so much on getting hopefully the bond but on what it will be used for i think that's what we're all kind of wanting to know right so so maybe is board direction your superintendent uh bring back more the information along these question lines at the december meeting so we can continue to inform ourselves to see if we want to go forward and explore it as mr

089eisenmann's talked about i think right good yeah actually one of the the things i was going to request as well dr young is i'm sure everybody has gotten gotten the email from the city of benicia this week they are on their last leg of approval for i forget the whole name of it gateway something gateway yes which is which is their additional development in the city of venetia i am going to assume and i know it's not good to assume that it means it would be a change of population for us it would also mean additional children which things which i also believe will impact our facilities i don't know if we've had any conversations with the city yet to inform us of any of the impact of that project development but it seems like

090that would also be a piece of information as we move forward in this discussion that we would need to also have as well so that we're really having an informed discussion and not turning around in november and i'm like we didn't know about this i i don't think that would be wise on our car on our part at all so so will the city be um also requesting uh a bond or uh raising taxes in our property taxes you know i i mean because there's this do do you do you know i mean yeah i don't know that i can ask okay because that would be another consideration correct those are great points great minds are working together that's awesome thank you and thank you and thanks mr rahil thank you anything else again all

091right um we're going to be moving on to our next item which is also a discussion item but before i start this it's actually it states on the agenda busd district paid benefits and increased to school board stipend for school board members and i'm the one that brought this up because i had heard other districts do this and i didn't think um until i heard from several several people they kind of jogged my mind a little bit to rethink this um this ask of the board um so the what i'd like to do for it when it comes back in in uh december or december across um that we just talk about the stipend and that five percent that it can be increased um and have that be an annual thing for the this board

092going forward um that it should be increased by the maximum which is a very little percentage of five percent um which brings us to like from 240 to 250 or something is it's not not very 252. yeah it's not very much so um i know sue wing that you were going to talk on this topic but i hope that helps you um you're welcome to talk but i really am going to pull that part all together and we don't need to i'd rather see that when i looked at the numbers that this district would have to spend on five people if we all chose to do it the numbers were astronomical i still can't understand completely how it's that much money but personally and i think my colleagues would agree that i i'd like to

093see money go back into the classroom and spend in the classroom for the students and for the you know with the teachers in mind and that's where i'd rather see you know thinking about it now it's like that's that's our purpose that we want to make sure that that everything is done correctly and that um i i will remove that part so sue did you want to say anything no i'm sorry you sat through the whole meeting okay please sue wing thank you so much of course i really appreciate it what i do want to say is something that i said in my email and i'd like to speak it so you can actually hear i believe that you all know how much i support our school board this was something that resonated with me

094of course when you send an email and you hit send you think oh i should have said this right so i do appreciate this but you all know how much i support our school board and all of you and i also know the time it takes to be an effective school board member and i've seen some of you on your own time coming to bms um i also know that you're going to school events and seminars etc and every year has challenges like layoffs or covid but it's part of your school board package unfortunately that you have to deal with um i am very grateful that you've pulled this because um you know if after talking even our less than 35 hour a week employees are paying about 250 a month for 11 months for

095benefits right now so i do thank you very much um i also want to say that i do fully support the increase in stipend i know that it's a very long time in coming so thank you so much thank you miss wayne all right so um so i guess we just talked about the stipend to the school board does anybody have any comments uh or anything really related to the increase of five percent per year we're not voting on it today we are going to be voting on it next uh in two meetings so i just if anybody has anything to say please share your thoughts i just want to say thank you for pulling it i was very uncomfortable when i saw the actual dollar amount and so um it was something that was

096making me very uncomfortable so i appreciate mrs zeta that you did that so thank you you know i was just trying to make that make it a better system system-wide so that it was for equality but it doesn't mean it has to happen and when i saw those dollar amounts it just like snapped i that was not a good thing so i i mean i'm the one that put it on there so i take the blame but i'm also the one taking it off so in a place gay but so i just think it was i i think it's just i think the the end action of dropping it i think is the thing that's important and i just wanted to say thank you for that you're welcome it's my pleasure um did anybody have

097anything to say regarding the five percent okay we're good we're going to close out that section and move on to the next one then thank you the next item um that we're talking about are not sorry non-consent action items in the 13.1 consideration and approval of resolution um authorizing the issuance and sale of the 2021 general obligation refunding bonds in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed 9 million to refinance outstanding bonds of the district and approving related documents and actions um i think mr rahil you're going to speak on this for us thank you good evening yes we have this item tonight for your consideration and uh your action i will also uh ask mr isom to share a few thoughts as well and so what this is what this one does this resolution

098is from time to time a school district can consider refunding or refinancing its bonds if it can get a better interest rate very similar like folks do with a home mortgage uh when you can refinance and get a lower interest rate um it it would make financial sense to do so and so here we are um and there are some current um conditions in the school bond market which might make us pause right now uh what this resolution does tonight is it um it authorizes the district to proceed if there are interest savings on the refunding and um with that um mr isam if you'd like to just share a few comments um because just like a a home refinance takes time and paperwork uh there is more involved with the school bond refunding and

099so if you don't have everything set up in advance uh you don't have the time to take advantage of uh the lower interest rates and i'll turn it over to mr isom now yeah thank you tim very briefly uh and tim you pretty much explained everything so so really what this is this is a preemptive action by the district to take advantages should we find ourselves in a more favorable interest rate than today so today's interest rate environment would not make sense for you to refund the bonds however a month ago two months ago maybe even three months ago interest rates were low enough that we were making significant savings to your taxpayers specifically this this is that series a bonds from the 2014 election so we're looking at those interest rates and we're saying

100interest rates on those are kind of high i can go find a whole new group of investors who are willing to buy interest rates at a lower rate and then that difference between the high interest rates and the lower interest rates is what creates the savings these savings would go directly to taxpayers they would not be for the district doesn't go to your general fund so this is a being a good steward of taxpayer dollars the district has done a number of these over the years uh so this is a prudent move uh for the district to position itself to take advantage if again interest rates were to go back down uh there's like a yo-yo interest rates go up they go down this week they've gone up because the feds had their meeting and

101they said oh we're gonna you know ease he's on our monetary policy we're not gonna buy as many bonds that we do instead of 160 billion a month we're going to just buy you know 142 billion a month so still a lot but again this is a preemptive move all costs of issuance associated with it or only if the financing goes through so again back to that kind of contingent way that we work um this is something that folks bond counsel ourselves the underwriter are all kind of in a all right we're willing to proceed and do some work on your behalf but none of us are going to pull the trigger so to speak unless we know that it's going to be meaningful savings so candidly we're in a little bit of a pause

102tomorrow we we had a scheduled meeting with the rating agencies to get a credit score for the district because every district wants a credit score it allows you to borrow money very cheaply if you have a good credit rating just like individuals do but because of where interest rates are we said you know what let's not spend the time or the money at this point but what this would allow us to do is to jump into the market and get the ratings and possibly get the bond sold between this board meeting and the next board meeting or the next board meeting after that so it's certainly our recommendation uh that the district would would approve this for that prudent manner uh one other thing to point out is unlike a home mortgage refi where you

103reset the clock this you cannot by law we cannot has to be the exact same terms it has to be a true financially efficient money saver for the district not just a cash flow play like a home mortgage refi is for a lot of people you genuinely need to save money every year you don't get to add years to the program so it's an apples to apples comparison and the only thing you know from our perspective is that we want this to be more financially efficient like right now we could save you 250 000 you think that's pretty good it's not very good in this situation we want to save more we want 350 or 450 or 500 000 uh but this would at least give us the green light to keep an eye on

104things and jump in the market if it did turn in our favor in the coming weeks so and and those savings are for the taxpayers not for the district it was it's the interest rates that uh that would save money for the tax payers okay two questions and i john again i think you you're like in my head so knock it off um but one of the questions i think was um would it would it extend the length of time of the bond so i'm hearing you say no correct so if this is a 30-year bond and it'll be done in 30 years whether we refinance or not correct in fact i think we're i'll tell you exactly how many years are left but it would be a lot would not extend uh it would

105not extend that those those years as as you've pointed out so currently this terminates or would be over in 2039 okay so we have another 17 uh years or 18 years on it and and it would also be 2039 but just lower taxes lower payments so and what's the cost to the district if we do this well uh all the costs of issuance are paid out of the bond proceeds so the cost of the district would be zero okay that's the question i was going to ask is what the cost was and what the difference would be to see the value in it but um any other questions no okay then um and i guess at this point we yeah can i get a motion to um accept 13.1 as discussed um by john islam

106and tim ray hill with all the information they've gathered um can i get a first motion how about if i make the motion yes i was the one making the best questions yes yes thank you general sure so i want i want to move to approve oh wait wait one second i have somebody out here yes all right i have this ticket um lisa delafort delorphis could you please join us okay the reason i want to speak at the other time was because i also had another thing i wanted to talk about so my only topic the only thing i really wanted to talk about with the bond was that i was really concerned with all the blank appendixes all the blank exhibits i'm like how are we going to do this without knowing what

107interest rate we're paying um and so i actually did some research my son actually sells bonds for a living so i i talked to him about this and he said this is totally normal but usually you have numbers and so i said what do we do so now that i know that you will get the numbers when you get the numbers i'm sure you will be alerting the board to the numbers so that all those exhibits and appendixes are there the other item i want to talk about is it related to this it is not but you didn't let me talk before so can i say it it did i only had one ticket for you oh i didn't know i needed to do separate ones um sure go ahead okay i'm just wanting to

108tell you about the classroom environment i might get emotional here it's okay every classroom teacher is struggling to meet the needs of the students and we aren't feeling supported we have more people working at the district office than ever but less support at the schools i know my principal is working very hard to advocate for my students but she can't do it alone i have several students are so high risk they don't qualify for a better way which is our district contracted mental health service i have other students who do qualify but are on the waiting list i have so many students struggling yet i have not met any of the district office employees who are hired to help why are they not meeting with teachers and or students why are they not regularly on

109campuses i'm spending so much time working on supporting my students emotionally academically and teaching lost social skills that is simply overwhelming your teachers are going to burn out if help is not given i also want to know why the schools were not given more money for supplies this year i have spoken to teachers at several sites and there is less money available to teachers across the district you were given more money by the state to spend on the students we need to be able to buy more books tech support art supplies and materials to bring a sense of joy to the students thank you for listening thank you lisa all right um you're on with the we're gonna go back to the um 12 or 13.1 and you're gonna lead us right okay you wanna

110may i make one clarification please and i and i and i'm glad that she raised the that point and i want to explain it just for the record and for those at home i felt like i've been up here for so long i'm like all right just be brief so what you have in front of you is a resolution that's in its final form and that means it's perfect it's exactly what we need to meet the legal requirements it deputizes your district administrators your finance advisor your team to go ahead and get this done on your behalf that's a singular document that is being approved in combination and part of that resolution or a number of other legal documents that have a lot of blanks and that was what that was what was raised hey

111there's a bunch of blanks why the reason that there are blanks is that these figures or these blanks will not be completed until the final pricing is done and think in your minds if there's 17 years of maturities we need to know the dollar amount the coupon the interest rate to the penny what's called a q sip number the total cost of issuance to the penny all of those figures don't get finalized until the pricing and so what this resolution says in addition to deputizing folks it also says the other documents they're 95 complete so we agree with the framework we agree with the structure we agree with the parameters and we understand that those blanks will not be complete until the time of the pricing so that's why you're only adopting the resolution and

112and in essence the 95 complete form documents that do have all those blanks but there is a reason for for the blanks and that is why thanks for the clarification all right diane okay so um i like to make a motion that we move and approve the resolution 21.2022.13 authorizing the issuance and sale of the 2021 general obligation refunding bonds in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed nine million dollars to refinance outstanding bonds of the district and approving related documents and actions as presented do we have a second i'll second that thank you mark um roll call please yes president seda yes dusty moss yes trustee farrucci yes justin yes and trustee krebs yes thank you okay our last item can i just make a comment before we move on i just i just

113need to say thanks to tim and thank you john when i was going through these documents i don't know about the rest of you but i was kind of feeling like oh my god um i have to tell you you did an amazing job explaining this because it was making so much sense that i was feeling my anxiety was actually dropping i was i was feeling much calmer the enter the explanation was amazing so i just need to comment con commend you for that and i need to say thank you thanks tim thank you okay we're moving on to item 13.2 consideration and approval of the declaration of need for fully qualified educators that was previously on the may 6 2021 agenda under the consent calendar um and i believe that thank you thank you

114thank you for saying that yeah yeah so as as you said this is really a routine item that we bring forward to you every year and i think that's why we put it on consent uh and so but it was told to us that it needs to be approved separately so each year prior to june 30th public school districts must file with the california commission and teacher credentialing a declaration of need for fully qualified educators the declaration provides the district's best best current estimate of the number of emergency teaching permits and limited assignment permits it may need to appropriately staff at schools as well as local efforts it will undertake to certify assign and develop fully qualified certificated personnel for the pending school year and then the rest of the resolution talks about the fact

115that we thought it was okay to do consent you approved it then but technically technically we have to prove it separately so okay then do i have a motion hello is there a motion on 13.2 okay i'd like to make the emotion that we approve item 13.2 thank you dude i have it i'll second it thank you thank you thank you everybody's waiting cece everybody is getting tired um i want to thank you for being here and for showing up online okay our next roll call oh roll crawl vote oh my goodness i'm so sorry almost there it's okay yeah yes trusty moss trusty for richie yes justin macelli yes and trustee groves yes thank you okay good good job everybody um we are done with our meeting i want to thank you for being

116here and for sharing information with us um our next regular governing board meeting is november 18th 2021 mark your calendars it could be fun so thanks everybody appreciate it good night you