001Good afternoon. Special meeting of the board of trustees of the Berisa Union School District is now called to order. All five board members are present. Adoption of the agenda is the next item. Could I have a motion, please, to adopt the agenda? Move to approve. Second. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda. All in favor say I. I. oppose. The adoption of the agenda is approved. Three, public comments on agenda items. There's no one. We shall continue to four, which is review and discussion. A, local control accountability plan study session. Superintendent, please. Thank you, President BAC. Uh this evening we will have our annual presentation of the local control accountability plan, our LCAP. Uh just a few months ago we had our annual update. So now we'll be bringing that to a close
002and talking about our data points and goals um for this next iteration. So I introduce to you Dr. McCreary, our assistant superintendent of educational services. Good afternoon. Happy to be back. Just want to review here our agenda. So part of the LCAP is the local indicators that we have to also um review. So I'll do a little information on that. And then the main part of the presentation tonight will be reviewing the 2526 plan and looking at the metrics and all the different components of that which is also includes the educational partners um survey information results reviewing the goals metrics etc and also talking a little bit about differentiated assistance for the district. So just a little FYI, this is the local indicator piece. Um LCFF priorities where the data is not collected at the
003state level but at the uh level at the district. And so some of the local indicators reflect the emphasis of local control enables the LEA to measure its progress using local data. Also provides a holistic view of the progress, challenges and successes and also informs the LCAP planning process. And so for the local indicators, you'll see here um the priorities that are covered. So we have priorities one, two, and three. Priorities six and seven. And basically what we do is we do a little self-reflection and it's either met or not met um specifically with these priorities. So for priority one, our basic services, um just pulling data specifically on um teachers and if we had any misassignments for teachers that are teaching our English learners and that's zero teachers. Um number of students without access
004to their own copies of standards aligned instructional materials is also zero students. and the number of identified instances where facilities do not meet the good repair standard which is no incidents. So priority two is the implementation of state academic standards. This is a rating scale of one um be it exploration and research phase to five which is full implementation and sustainability and we use the self reflection tool feedback from ed partners and our focus areas specifically about professional learning aligning instructional materials implementing policies and procedures and implementing the standards and related support. So as a group of our ed services team, we scored ourselves within the range of three to five on those focus areas. In addition, we also have to pull in lots of family engagement. So some of our family engagement opportunities were
005with the LCAP advisory committee which met three times in the spring, the Berasa district advisory committee, our DAC which is a district English language advisory committee, our schoolside councils PTA, our panorama surveys for students and we also sent out the LCAP um survey via parents square to parents and staff. For goal or priority six, which is school climate, we look at our metrics based on um attendance rates 95.3%. Our chronic absenteeism rates are at 13%. Suspension rates at 1.5 and we had two expulsions this school year which were both suspended. Uh we also did student input and once again those are through our panorama survey, student focus groups. the superintendent and I go out to each of the 13 schools and interview and check in with a handful of students from each grade level. We
006also have our social emotional learning curriculum, um, mental health supports at all of our schools and web at the middle school. And last but not least, priority seven is access to a broad course of study. For elementary, we have specialist teachers this year in arts, in K1, music 2 through five, physical education four and five. Uh middle school, access to electives, music, choir, art, and Abbott. So, we've met all of our um local priorities. The next phase is looking at our LCAP goals. Just to review, goal number one, ensuring a safe and productive learning environment, promoting wellness and a positive school culture for all students. Goal two, improving student achievement for all students by providing common core state standard instruction with the strategic use of technology and providing PD for all staff. Goal number three,
007increasing parent community involvement and education. And so in this iteration of the LCAP, we also have to reflect back to um year one, which are our baseline um data, and specifically have to call out which of our student groups are identified with the red indicator by the California data dashboard. So this is just a listing that we have to bring back um this year and next year to reflect on if we're making progress within these student groups. Throughout the spring, we did a lot of um education and engaging with educational partners. Some of the specific things that we did were meeting with community partners basically through February and February, March and April. We had many meetings with our principles, leadership teams. I mentioned the berries district advisory committee that we met with two times. Our
008DAC also met with them two times to review this information and we had um three meetings of our LCAP committee as well. We also provided online service surveys through Panorama through Parent Square. I mentioned uh Dr. Fuentes and I going out to check in with students at all 13 schools. We all also had to check in with um Shelley Oda who's our SULPA director and have a consultation with her as well. So one of the other pieces that we have to um dig into a little bit here is our district is identified with differentiated assistance. So we have to also write into our LCAP how are we going to support the students that are identified um in this category and these are long-term English learners. So if you see here in the charts, we've got
009students who did not perform well and that's in the area of math and you can see they scored 125 points below standard. And then also um 6.6% of these students were at least or suspended for at least one day. And so because we were identified um in both of those categories, the district has to provide um opportunities to help support our English learners who are also considered long-term English learners, which are our students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And of course, we also know that just because um they're identified in sixth, seventh, and eth doesn't mean that we have to continue to support them in the primary grades and upper primary or upper grades as well. And uh the elementary level and so we had to identify what we were going to do to
010help support them as well. We also had um a lot of results, survey results. So you can see here we were able to survey 1,645 elementary students and 1,783 middle school students. And those questions specifically are around school culture and how they feel about um things at their school site within their classroom. Then we also reached out um to identify parent square survey parents and staff. This piece we had 379 responses. The majority of them were parents and caregivers, some classified folks, um certificated teachers, um administrator and managers as well. And then these are some of the results from the Panorama survey. You'll see specifically this one's on the elementary level. And for the most part, our students are doing pretty well. um compared this to the fall data, we did h see a decrease
011in social awareness and self-efficacy, but like I mentioned, this is comparing it to the fall where the students might have scored themselves a little higher in those categories. And these um surveys were sent out in like March and April. Um, for sixth through 8th grade, similar scores, pretty much in good shape, a little bit down from the fall. And then just looking to see a little bit more about the survey information that was sent out through um, Parent Square and some of the results here. Basically asking um, folks if they disagree or agree with the focus areas. And one of the focus areas here for goal number one is that we continue to offer academic and social emotional support using MTSS. So the majority of our folks who answer this are in favor of continuing
012this um area of focus. This is another goal. This is talking specifically about English language arts instruction. Making sure that's a focus and math instruction as well. For goal number three, maintaining and fostering strengthening our community partnerships through multiple parent meetings and committees. And then we look at each goal specifically. And so for our annual update, goal number one, you'll see um the baseline is where we were at last year and what we accomplished this school year and if we had any difference. So you'll see in the middle that our attendance rates did increase by uh 27%. Our chronic absenteeism rates decreased, which is great, from 16.2 2 overall to 13.2. You'll also see our Hispanic students decreased, our students with disabilities increased a little bit, and the students that are um economically disadvantaged also
013increased. And I still didn't I see a difference that's not correct in the right hand column. So, I need to fix that. suspension rates are pretty much the same, a little bit of a decrease. So, our focus area for this past school year was make um continuing our work with MTSS, working with collective impact solutions um to help surprise help to provide support for our adult meetings and site leadership teams. our positive behavior intervention support programs at 10 schools went through the level two training, three schools went through PBS level one training. They'll be kicking off that work in the fall. And then um other means to help support our students, Carousales, Project Eden, Sweet 360, and Mr. Tom Carroll's position as the coordinator of student services. continuing to engage with our students and their
014social emotional learning, providing several workshops throughout the year, and also um getting support from our school link services coordinator who's housed at Pedmont Middle School. So, for next year, we're going to continue working through our MTSS process and we're going to be revamping what was our student success team. going to be called the student support process. Now, we're going to continue to work on alternatives to suspensions. Our PBIS um year two and year three training will continue. We will be adding a an additional BCBA to our district. So, instead of contracting a second um f person, that person will be our employee. Happy to say that we've landed that position already. and we'll be exploring new updated curriculum for both elementary and middle school. LCAP goal number two is here and then overall as a
015district we are in good shape in the green category and we are 29 points above standard even though we did decline by 3.3 points. And then here's the specific data around the e around ELA. And once again in the middle is the data that we reflect on. It's not this spring, but it's last spring's data. We're just now getting in spring data or data from the 2025 school year for ESPback. And here's our math scores. And you'll see here where one of those indicators is in red, that's the long-term English learners. The other one, I think, is our students who are Pacific Islanders. And once again, the data supporting the need for some growth and some support in math. You'll see our um data for math is not as robust as our data for ELA.
016And then the support that we provided this school year, we added um a couple of additional TK classes with materials to provide support for them. We also had multiple new assessments for all of our grades. Um this was fastbridge. Our intervention training had happened. We continue to offer support for our reading tutors at the elementary level. Um, for EL, we continue to provide professional development for our SEAL teachers and we have a handful of our middle school teachers offering up support for zero periods for our English learners so that our students may have an elective. We added an additional music teacher and art at the elementary level and art teachers at the both the elementary and middle school. We just wrapped up seventh grade. Mandarin immersion. We'll be adding eighth grade next year and we're
017continuing to provide training on the illuminate platform and education star. So we'll focus on the upcoming school year, continue to train our teachers and site administrators on the fast bridge and star assessments for English language arts. continue to look at the um intervention piece and also provide more training for our supplemental programs which are FCO during or for English language development. We'll continue to provide unit development days for SEAL and expand SEAL to other schools specifically Ruskin and Noble Math. We're going to continue to contract with Silic Silicon Valley um math initiative SVMI to support more um professional development on the math framework roll out. This will also help support us in adopting a new math curriculum in the next uh year. And we're going to be identifying tasks within SVMI which are MARS tasks
018to support deeper thinking within math and some more training around the supple program for freckle. um our eighth grade our current seventh graders who are being promoted will get to eighth grade had a good meeting with those um middle school mander immersion teachers um right at the end of school so they're going to be providing the eighth grade curriculum our two current sixth and seventh grade um teachers will be doing that and then supporting the mandarin emerging mandarin immersion program as it integrates into Ruskin um for visual and performance performing arts. We're going to continue to refine our new art program at the elementary levels and our music programs for elementary grades as well. And we'll continue to explore inclusion opportunities for special ed students. And then last but not least, goal three. Here are
019actions and services that we highlighted this school year. Parent Square supporting more effective communication from sites and districts. continue to offer more parent workshops and follow-up support, continue to strengthen our family liaison position to help support our parent outreach. And as feedback we received um to provide more training for folks at the school sites, office staff, principles, and teachers on parent square and then continue to offer more parent workshops focusing on students who are affected by the school's consolidation program and continue to strengthen our family liaison program or position to help support parent outreach. And that's our focus for the LCAP in the upcoming school year and some of our data points for this school year. Just made it. Okay. Any comments from the board? Um just a couple of quick questions on the first
020is probably the easier one is the survey data is always challenging to get. Yeah. So I mean I I'm assuming that SER survey is also pretty important to our dashboard and information. What else can we do? What other ideas are there to improve uh participation in the survey? What what can I just want to add? Yeah, definitely the return rate was very disappointing. This is the lowest that we've had. We've had much higher numbers in the past. This has also been a very challenging year and it's certainly impacted other um activities that we were trying to implement. Um folks were just focused on other things I I think is a lot of the reason for the turnout that we experienced this year. And I also want to say timing as well. I think we sent
021the uh the survey out like right before spring break and some folks have potentially, you know, moved on, aren't checking their emails very carefully at that time. So that's something for our team to to remember so that next year we send it out maybe a little earlier, maybe at the beginning of March instead of it being in April. Yeah, makes sense. I mean, realistically speaking, we have if we have 6,000 students, I'm assuming we have about conservatively about uh 9,000 parents, right? Including single parents and so on. So, at least a 50%, right? Yeah. And and I don't think it's like I said, I I don't think there's a sense of survey fatigue as much as there were just other areas of focus that people had. And um because even in terms of our staff
022numbers too, we've had larger participation, you know, with our staff in the past as well. But I I just think it's just the context of all these things, right? And the other thing is with the uh with the attendance, I still see some pressure in the attendance and although we had a marginal improvement it looks like um with the attendance uh is there more focus continued focus going to be there for obvious reasons. One main thing is learning loss for sure for the for our students and uh as we as we know it also puts pressure on our uh ADA and the budget bottom line. So yeah and I think you know uh going through this past year uh there was a lot of education with our parents and our community understanding the impact of
023daily attendance and and what that does for our district budget. So, um, I do think we need to capitalize on that new knowledge as we go into next year. I know Mr. Carol's, you know, working with our social workers, with, you know, our our health clerks, our office staff, having those communications with the parents, uh, letting them know what those options are to ensure that they capture attendance based on, you know, whatever the situation might be, even an emergency that may come up. But I do think um we need to continue to push forward with attendance um awareness campaigns and all of those things for as we kick off a new school year and also keeping in mind that next year we're going to have new school configurations as well. So that's going to reflect
024on all these data points for next year. So, it's going to even though next year's LC LCAP is going to be midcycle, it's going to be somewhat of a baseline of new data based on all the movement that's going to be happening. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I'm just curious about the chronic absences rates, right, for uh 2425. I know that the overall is 13.2%. Excuse me. But the Hispanic is 28.9. What can we do to um to improve to improve the attendance? Similar, you know, uh for 180 school days, that's 18 um absences. So that's how we identify students who are chronic absent. So if you think about that and you go back from the beginning of the school year, it's 10% of the school days. So even at the beginning of the first two
025months of school, 60 days, that's six days. And so a lot of parents keep their kids home an extra day here and there and that really adds up. So, we just have to continue to outreach. I think specifically, you know, that's one of the goals for our um parent leaison is to check in specifically with our students who are Hispanic because that's our how we're identified for our cease and sigis disproportionality. And so, we're definitely going to make sure that we continue to focus on that. and even our students with disabilities. You'll see, you know, not only our Hispanic students, but you know, some of those students overlap within the students with disabilities and then the students who qualify for um socioeconomically disadvantaged. So, some of those students cross over three different times. So, if
026we can find a way to really connect with some of those families and that would significantly help um not only the Hispanic but also those other student groups as well. Do do you think then that um the chronic absence for the Hispanic students would have any effect on what's happening with the political scene at at the present time? I don't think we see that as a lot of pressure at our um schools this year. I think it has more to do with just educating our parents like uh Dr. Dr. Fuentes had mentioned and making sure that they understand what that rate is and understanding the difference between excused and unexcused. It doesn't matter for our um chronic absenteeism rates. If the students absent student this is a hit against us even though they could be
027excused. So, um, we're just trying to really encourage our families to, you know, come drop your kid off, go to your appointments later in the day. So, some of those strategies, I think something that we really focus on at the beginning of the school year. It wouldn't hurt if we did another little campaign around January, February. That's when I feel kids and families kind of start trickling off a little bit more. not necessarily at the beginning of the school year, but more towards the middle of the school year. Oh, I just want to say thank you so much for this presentation. I always look forward to seeing what's going on with our LCAP. I only have um one question for you. I'm just curious um for um the implementation for 2026. You mentioned um we
028want to have more inclusion opportunities with our special education students. I was just curious, excuse me, curious what those opportunities look like. Um, how the engagement will be, you know, just like an idea of what will happen in the next school year. Our biggest challenge is just identifying our students who qualify for special ed and making sure that they're included. The more they're included within the regular classroom, the more opportunities they have to potentially get um exited from special ed. And so I know that there's a lot of collaboration happening at certain sites. And once again, now that we're moving some of our programs to different sites, we want to make sure that still continues. And even if it's only for a short amount of time per day, I think that opportunity there really helps
029support our students with disabilities. So, it's not any big push. It's just those little opportunities, be it at um recess, even during PE and music. I think those are some of the easier opportunities to get our students included within the general ed population. Thank you. Any more comments from the board? None. Thank you, Dr. McCer. Mercy. Mercy Vu. We shall continue then. Um B under review and discussion, the budget study session. Dr. Fuentes, please. Yes. Um at this time, we will have our assistant superintendent of business, Mr. Kevin Franklin. He'll do the review for our um recommended June budget adoption. Right. So, good afternoon. um here to present our budget for 2526 that'll be adopted um next week. So that's where we're at right here on this chart. So we're at the LCAP and budget
030hearing and adoption. We'll have the hearing um at the regular board meeting um in a couple of hours. Um, but I'm going to kind of go over um what came in the state May Revise and the governor the governor's May revise announcement and then what those budget impacts are from the May revise to our district. Now, I will say that since the governor released his May Revise, the state legislature has also adopted their budget and they're currently in negotiation with the governor. So, um where there's some differences, I'll kind of point that out and how that might impact us as we go along. So the current budget problem that um is uh impacting the state is that while revenues are coming in higher than anticipated, the revenues are lower than what was anticipated in January.
031So there's reductions um not only at the state level, but then there's also some uncertainty at the federal level, and I'll point that out kind of later on as we go on. But there's higher costs and ongoing structural deficit within the state budget that the governor is having to try to patch and fill holes um while also not cutting education. But I'd say the biggest issue um is that the governor is looking at um not funding Prop 98 at what the calculated guarantee would be in the event that those revenues don't materialize. So even though Prop 98 is a minimum guarantee, he's proposing to withhold some of those dollars just in case um the revenues don't show up. And where that revenue uncertainty comes from is mostly from the LA fires and the delay in
032tax filings for LA County and those impacted areas. Um there's a lot of uncertainty like we had with COVID as far as what those revenues are going to look like um when they're finally collected and and um and tabulated in October. So with that uncertainty is withholding some dollars that should be coming to education. And so that's just creating a lot of uncertainty within the state budget. So the guarantee is calculated right now at 114.6 billion which is a decrease of 4.3 billion from January and then 1.1 billion less than what was in uh the current year budget act. So that's some of those decreases that I was mentioning. Um, and then the other thing is that fourth bullet down, that 1.3 billion um, in um, I guess the shorting of Prop 98 that the
033governor is kind of holding off to the side. It's not deemed to be constitutional, so there will be lawsuits most likely from CSBA and some of the other advocates if that does go through, but the state legislature has also put that similar funding mechanism into their proposal as well. So it looks like something similar to what's been proposed is going to move forward and materialize in the actual budget for 2526 and then have to be played out in the courts. So this is what um the base grant per ADA entitlements look like and within those parentheses are the change from what the governor proposed in January. So you can see for TK through three it's about $13 less per ADA within that gradespan. And then you can see um what that change though is up
034from the actual 2425 budget act that was proposed or that was implemented. So uh $13 less per ADA from January, but still an increase of $231 because of the COLA um from what last uh from what the current year budget is. So hopefully that makes sense. just trying to point out that it's less money from what he was projecting in January and from what we, you know, projected in in our second interim for the future, but um but still a positive increase because of the funding of the COLA. And then the other couple of items to point out are just um really that um the home to school transportation add-on gets the cola and then the big one is going to be that TK add-on for staffing of 5,545 per TKDA that is um actually
035in line with what the legislature is also proposing and that's up by I want to say close to $2,500 per ADA and that is the one area that's different from how our funding works. That TK add-on is based off of the current year ADA for TK. So, if our TK program grows in 2526 above what we projected, we will get this TK add-on based off of that dollar amount or and that ADA. So this is the financial dart board that we use from school services of California for our my projections. So you can see the cola for the outy years there at 3.02% for 2627 and 3.42% for 2728. Um however those are both down from what was in um the January dart board. So those are going down slightly. um Kalpers's employer rate is
036staying the same um throughout all of the years on the dart board and while we did get a little bit of uh relief from Kalpers and that rate reduction by about 04% I think you can still see that it then continues to grow though in the outy years so that's some relief for this year this upcoming year but it still um continues to grow slightly in the next few years. Uh these are the statewide average reserve levels um from 23 24 data. This is just to have a comparison um to show what the statewide average reserves are throughout California compared to what we currently have. So we're currently sitting at about a 3% reserve which is the required minimum. But you can see elementary districts in 2324 at about 25 and a half percent and
037then other districts um of our size are about 22.14% uh back in 2324. But I will say back in 2324 I think our reserve was somewhere around 7 or 8%. So we weren't right at the 3% um comparing apples to apples in in that chart but um still below that average. But again, that's California, not necessarily um regionalized. Proposed in the governor's budget is a discretionary block grant of 1.7 billion. So, the governor had proposed this same block grant back in January, but it was at 1.8 billion. So, um he's slightly reducing that figure. Um, and so if it's distributed equally based off of ADA, which is how we think he's proposing to distribute those dollars, it would be about $35 per ADA, which would equate to about $1.7 million for the district. However, the
038legislaturator's adopted budget reduces that 1.7 billion down to 500 million. So that would be about 500,000 for us versus 1.7 million. So, you know, there's there's some um negotiations that are going to happen around this topic. The LAO actually, as you can see on the third bullet, the LAO, who's um um just a advisory in in nature, though they proposed increasing that by $400 million um as part of their their recommendation to the governor based off of his May revise. But looks like neither group is going with the LEO's figure and they're both looking at um a reduction. So I think the governor's final budget will end up somewhere in between. But um but that still remains to be seen. So if we have some more information um by the next board meeting, we can
039share that. But otherwise, I haven't heard anything about this topic at all. So um one thing to point out is that it is fully discretionary. the governor did have some proposed uses, but um essentially we can use those dollars for whatever we choose. I would just add because I think this is an important time that we do outreach to our elected officials um you know to really um emphasize the importance of that one-time discretionary grant because we had all uh based on the governor's proposal had made plans and put it into our budget development process. Cutting it by 2/3 is significant. And so, um, really important to just reach out and let our legislature know, uh, not just that we need that money, but how that money would be utilized if maintained, right? that it
040helps to support student services, that it helps to maintain social worker support, that it helps to continue addressing, you know, learning needs that the students have so that they understand um the value and the impact that those dollars have and and what would go away if that money doesn't stay in place. Um the other thing is uh both the legislature as well as um the governor are proposing that shift with Prop 98 if they both continue moving in that direction. That's expected to be litigated by all of our educator associations. Um so there's there's a lot of still mobility in this. So really important to get your voice out there and to um let our folks know, you know, what our opinions are about these things. Okay, moving on to expanded learning. So again, this
041is another area where there's been a lot of fluctuation in revenues for us to be able to provide our our expanded learning program. I think I mentioned at a previous board meeting that we've um had a reduction of about a million dollars in the program over the past two years. And so what the governor is proposing in his budget is to expand the funding for um ELOP by about $525 million. But what he's also doing is he's expanding the the number of um school districts that qualify as a tier one agency. So, a tier one agency um would now be um those school districts that have uh that receive concentration dollars, so that are above 55% unduplicated count. And so, that would expand those folks getting that full $2,500 per ADA rate. And um the
042governor did not propose setting a tier 2 rate that's at a stable rate. Right now, our rate as a tier 2 district of under 55% in duplicated count um has a rate that fluctuates. It started out at being set at $2,000. It was funded at about $1,500 this past year. They recouped unspent dollars to bring us up to $2,000 um just now at the end of this fiscal year, but there's that rate instability. And so we're just some, you know, making an educated guess on how much that rate is going to be. The one thing that I'll mention that's changed from the governor's propo or governor's may revise is that the legislature proposed stabilizing the tier 2 rate, but they didn't say what that would be. So that doesn't help us out as far as
043planning, but that at least lets us know that our voices have been heard about stabilizing that rate, and we just need to see what that stabilization is so that we can plan. So, whatever that is, if it's $1,500, $1,800, or 2,000, at least that'll give us uh a number to work with that we know that we'll receive no matter what per ADA and can plan based off of that instead of having to make these educated guesses. Yeah, it's also problematic in terms of us providing any kind of assurance to our families in terms of scholarship eligibility to be part of these programs. um you know when the ELOP uh allocations were first distributed we all had uh an equal rate then it got shifted to the tier 1 tier 2 model and that was a
044significant reduction of funds for us given that our district falls into tier 2 and we're nowhere close to being eligible for tier one. So um so so long as we stay in that tier 2 realm um you know it's unfortunate because this past year our families did feel that difference because we weren't able to accommodate as many children as we had been able to do prior once this shift changed by the state distribution and not knowing what not knowing that tier 2 is going to have a certain rate also doesn't allow us to plan and work with our providers to ensure that they have sufficient staffing for the students that we want to provide space for after school. So, um it really has a significant impact on a service that our parents rely on and
045so we hope that that's something that can be worked out. As Kevin mentioned, um the legislature did propose a stable rate. So they, as he said, they've heard our concerns about not knowing how much money our allocation's going to be if you're a tier 2 district. Uh, but we don't know how much that's going to be. And the increases that have been given are going towards tier one. They're not being distributed across everyone. So that's another thing to note. Okay. So, moving on to universal um transitional kindergarten. So, I mentioned that rate, the $5,500 for the TK add-on. That's to address um the staffing ratio, which is going to go down from a 12:1 to stu or a student to adult ratio and be reduced to uh 10:1. So, um that's going to be a
046hard cap at 10:1. So, um, we're pretty much capped at 20 students, um, with our current ratios, unless, um, we add another body into the TK classroom if we want to go over, uh, 20 students in that classroom. Another adult. Yes. So, it doesn't have to be a teacher. It could be another. I will say we'll say though that, you know, um, we all know the value of early learning and having our students start with us sooner rather than later. And I think um you know the expansion of TK and the the um expansion of that birth date eligibility has been good to our district in terms of bringing in more students. Um we've got lots of TKers already registered for the fall and still coming. So uh that's a it's a positive, you know,
047sign. So moving on to the federal level. So the at the federal level, there's been no proposed cuts to title one or IDA, which uh funds special education programs. Um however, there is talk about what those programs look like and how that funding is distributed. Um they're also looking at consolidating a lot of the other grant programs into bigger block grants and they're proposing to actually do that um with title two and title three. Um and so that remains to be seen whether or not that's actually still funded. Is it part of a block grant that they've then shoved these um grants together and then proposed a reduction overall to those? Um, for us, you know, any reduction on the federal side, even though it's not a huge amount of money, is still a significant
048amount for for our students. And so, I think with the the English language acquisition and uh title three um dollars, I think we're looking at around $300,000 if that does not get funded moving forward. I just want to add to these items here because um even though as was mentioned title one and idea funding remains in the federal budget, it's the ideological ideological shifts that are occurring that could still impact how those dollars are used and and how they're prioritized. you know, um, as superintendent, we've been receiving lots offormational memos from the US Department of Education about all of the different um ways that Title One money can be utilized, for example. And so, just uh going in different direction on how some of those dollars might be utilized in the future. So we just
049kind of need to monitor that um because those are restricted funds and if those uh if that guidance gets adjusted in any way we'll have to shift accordingly and um and then of course seeing the absence of these other critical um funding resources you know one thing I think it's important to to remember is that uh federal funds that we receive are very um specific for certain groups of students. to meet very specific needs. And so not having those dollars, it doesn't mean those needs go away. You know, those children still need those supports. And so we'll have to figure out a way on how we're going to provide that and again lean into the California Department of Ed and our state legislature um seeing you know where support can come locally if we're not
050going to get it at a national level. Um but again all of this is very fluid right now. So we'll see. But those are things to keep in mind. All right. So, moving on to how all of that impacts the budget here at BUSD. Um, we'll go over the revenue assumptions, expend expenditure assumptions, the enrollment in ADA, and then the MYP. So, our local revenue assumptions are for next year. We're still projecting a decline in enrollment. So although we have had an increase at the TK level with the expansion of age eligibility, we're still projecting a decrease uh in enrollment overall down to 5,783. Again, our TK and K enrollment numbers look pretty strong at the moment. So um that number may change as we move through the summer. Um but that's an approximate 140
051um student decrease or so from uh the current year to next year. Um the funded ADA, keep in mind that's a three-year rolling average of our funded ADA. So that's why you see it being fairly close to that um enrollment projection. And then you'll see it actually um being closer higher in the two out years just because of how that um average works out. But um it's a three-year average of of our ADA that we're funded at. And then the colas are listed there. Our unduplicated pupil count is or percentage is at 42.24% and pretty much holds steady throughout the my at 42%. So this is how the calculation works out with the COLA across the grade spans for a total LCFF funding of um $69.5 million in LCFF funds. So, what that looks like
052in a chart form, our LCFF funds compared to our federal, our other state um uh dollars and then our other local dollars that we get through grants and donations and um our leases and other things of that nature are shown there. So, you can see the bulk of the dollars come from our LCF funds. You can see two and a half million federal dollars. That's going to be for special education, our title one programs. Um and then a lot of our other state funding is from um significant portions from ELOP um and programs like that. So that's how our revenues shake out. And then this is on the expenditure side. So you can see um uh employee salaries and benefits for certificated and classified staff, what that breaks down to. And then you can see
053then how much the associated benefits uh statutory benefits and health and welfare. So it's about 88% of our current um expenditures are for salaries and benefits and then the rest being for our books and supplies and then other contracted services. And so within those other contracted services are our utilities, our liability insurance and things of that nature. So all of that makes up about 10%. So, um, really where we'd want to be to be able to start building a comfortable reserve would be about 85% or less on the salary and benefits as far as, um, percentage of expenditures. Um, so you can just kind of see we're getting close to that with some of the reductions that we've been making, but um, that's where you see some of those districts at that have those um,
05422% reserves on average. So this is how the proposed budget um is delineated between unrestricted and restricted dollars. Um so you can see um what our ending fund balances are um in uh in each of those funds. So remember the restricted dollars are our federal title one dollars, title two, title three and then our supplemental dollars are also tracked um now and have to be set aside to to um provide for those specific students that generate those and you can see the combined um revenues $91 million and then our combined expenditures of 95. So, still deficit spending, but again, deficit spend mostly on the restricted side to spend down some of those um remaining dollars that we have from one-time sources and things of that nature. Contributions to restricted programs, um contribution of 12.7 million
055to special education and then 1.8 8 million is the required contribution to our routine restricted maintenance program for a total of $14.5 million in restricted um contributions from the general fund. And then this is the general fund contribution for special education in particular. You can see how that's grown over the past 10 plus years or so. Um, one thing to point out, um, in, you know, taking a look at our projected $13.7 million in contribution for the current year, that's in our estimated actuals versus next year. A lot of that reduction is just due to um reduction in contracted services that we've been providing for this year. Um, where, you know, we're contracting some services out. Next year, we're going to have actual um staff hired through the district. And then we've also had a
056decrease in transportation cost through our JPA for students that we are providing that are getting services outside of the district. That cost has come down quite a bit. And so that's why you see the projection uh for the contribution going down by about a million dollars for next year. This is a snapshot of our enrollment over the past two or three years and then what the enrollment looks like in the multi-year projection. Um you can also see what that unduplicated pupil count is and how that translates into that 42% that I was mentioning earlier that kind of carries forward. So we've gone down from 45% a couple of years ago down about 3% to 42 and it's maintaining at around 42%. So for 2627 in the multi-year projection, we're projecting an ending fund balance of
057$3.4 million, which includes fund 17 um reserve dollars to meet our required 3%. And we are also meeting that required 3% in 2728 and we'll have a fund balance of about $4 million. So that ending fund balance is starting to grow based off of the decisions that were made uh for school consolidation and to generate those savings. Um and so then you're starting to see the fund balance start to grow as a result of that over the next two years. These are the projected enrollment numbers that I mentioned before. projected to to keep um declining in enrollment to 5581 and 2627 and then and 2728. And then you can see the three-year averages because the ADA is higher in those previous years. You're seeing some of those three-year average ADAs be higher than what our
058uh enrollment is for those years. And then we have the colas set at um what was in the school services start board of a little over 3%. And those will continuously change as um we go through the year and update um first interim second interim etc. Expenditure assumptions for 2627 and 2728 because we're still um projected to decline in enrollment. We are still projecting um reductions in our FTEES and making those efforts to continuously um keep in line with our enrollment decline so that we're right sizing our staffing as we go along. And so we have um those dollars there in that FTE reduction estimate. And then the pay increases for stepping and column. We typically estimate about a one and a half% increase in our salaries because of stepping column. um for our bargain
059units. Um that's just about the average increase that uh we naturally see year-to-year. And then lastly, this is what the multi-year projection looks like. So it's kind of all of those um slide, previous slides summed up together. We're meeting our 3%. And one thing I do want to point out um in the revenue portion is we have included in the revenue section the proposed or the the leases that we are entering into with some of our uh community partners at Toyon and Lane View. So, Toyon's uh lease agreement is on the board agenda this evening for approval. And so, we have included lease revenues for um for that site and then Lane Views is going to be on the agenda for approval next week. And we've also included those revenues for that site as well.
060And then, of course, we've included in the third year out the lease revenues for the Pedmont Road uh property with uh Aspenville Company. um that we approved that lease um I think two board meetings ago. So those revenues will start kicking in um on the third year of the multi-year. Those have all been included within um the multi-year projection in the outy years. So any questions about the budget? Comments from the board. So bottom line question is did the consolidation help with uh with achieving whatever we we were hoping to achieve. We were hoping to achieve near two and a half million. Oh absolutely because we would not be meeting our 3% reserve especially when you as Kevin just noted uh we're just meeting our 3% reserve even in the third year out even though
061there's a little bit of growth. So it's higher than a flat 3% but that's including not only the savings anticipated from consolidation but also new revenue that we also didn't have. Right? So if you removed that new revenue opportunity and had left things the same, we would not be meeting our 3% reserve in none of the years. Yeah. And so one thing that we did talk about um bringing forward at a future board meeting once you know we've kind of have all of our students and staff settled is is you know how those savings um actually materialized um and what that looks like uh for each of the school sites because you know that's something that's really hard to project. I mean there's certain things that we know that we won't have to continue to
062pay. We know that, you know, the utilities would stop for the most part um you know, at those three sites, but then, you know, it really comes down to then what the staffing reductions look like, who ended up retiring, how did we backfill some of those, you know, how did all of that end up um you know, playing out over the the last few months? And so, we'll have some of those figures that can be shared um sometime in the future either at first interum or second interum moving forward. It's important. It'll be great and it is important for the for the benefit of the community to to affirm that you know whatever actions we took. Yes. Did make sense and was you know necessary and and relevant. Um the uh I think is temporary
063moving to Cherrywood. So there will be some utility costs still at um for or so we will see because there's still a lot of movement because we also have other tenants and so we will have some flexibility on where we move district staff. I understand but I just want I just thought about that. So there is tenant interest in Cherrywood. Yes. the the one thing uh I just wanted to to maybe talk about a little bit more is the reserves average reserves. I'm trying to pull up the slide there. The average reserves that you spoke about uh statewide there are sort of districts which have which have that have 25% in reserve compared to what we have in 3% uh reserves. So I mean that that kind of highlights how uh you know the cola
064funding is really really uh not effective. You know, we we really need to look at the legislature really really needs to look at regional colas in order to look at the um the um you know numbers in San Francisco Bay area might be different than you know Yuba City or Reading or LA is even more than us. Uh some of the interior areas slightly less than us. So applying one blanket cola to to all the entire state doesn't help. So I think they they continue they need to continue looking at those regional cola numbers to try to spread out some of the some of the revenue uh because it's it's seems really um I mean unfair I don't know whether whether I won't say unfair I mean I don't want I don't wish anything bad
065for uh the other districts that have a healthy reserve but you know we shouldn't be fighting for every dollar you know I I want to be able to pay our teachers uh bring some of some new programming to the district and if you're always fighting against those deficit spending in the reserves, they're never going to be able to get do that. Yeah. Because the other thing that they don't have in any of those numbers are by by district type either, right? So by, you know, whether or not they're community funded, LCFF, you know, high unduplicated count, right? All of that makes a a significant difference in um ability for um you know, districts to grow their reserve. So even if you had it by region, right, you'd even look within our county, you have such
066a wide range of um types of district from from um high need districts to um you know, community funded districts and then a district like ours that's, you know, not um a high up or community funded, but we have to compete with those districts, right, for staffing and and maintaining th those staffing and programs to be able to attract students. So, so they're, you know, uh, ending balances that are much higher than ours. Is that due because, is that because their staff salaries are lower than ours? Is that one of the reasons? You know, it could be a variety of reasons. I will say that, you know, a lot of um if you looked at a lot of other districts um you know, health and welfare contributions vary widely um not only within the county
067but within the state and even in our surrounding counties. You have you have some districts that don't provide any employer contribution towards health and welfare. Um and so they have slightly higher salaries. I wouldn't say significantly higher, but slightly higher. Then you have some I would say on average that I see that are providing around 16 or 17,000 per employee um on an annual basis where ours is closer to 30,000. And a lot of that is to try to attract and retain staff. But when you're looking at that wide of a of a gap, um while pay may look the same, that difference in contribution for employees, um could be in the millions for um a district our size with a staff of let's say about 450 to 500 benefit eligible employees. So, um that's
068just one component of it though. Um there's a lot of other things that play into um how those districts have built some of those reserves. Some of them built it during COVID where they got significant significant amount more of onetime dollars than what we received. And um I think a long time back during CO I kind of pointed out some of those inequities even amongst our neighbors and what they received in some of those COVID relief funds versus what we received. So a lot of them were able to to bank those dollars and grow their reserves and slowly spend those down where we had to just kind of use the dollars as they came in. Yeah. And of course, you know, we don't want to hoard money either. I mean, it's kind got to be
069this balance, right, of where we have to have a good reserve, but then also if we have money, you know, we can spend on supporting our staff, our students, we want to do that. Um, are we getting uh parcel tax money from the last parcel tax still? We are. So, it's still set at $79 per parcel, which is what it originated at back in 2007 or eight when it first started. So, that has not increased. So, we actually just had our partial tax meeting um on Monday. Um and then there will be a report to the board um at the next board meeting. Um a representative from the oversight committee will be presenting to the board. Um but uh that's another area where those dollars have remained stagnant or decreasing because you have um folks
070that are opting out because they meet the age eligibility. And so those revenues have been declining as well. And so, um, our costs for our staff have gone up. So, we've been able to fund less and less staff out of that parcel tax. Yeah. And the $79, I mean, it's worth less now than, you know, right, 10 years ago. Okay. So, there's maybe a possibility that, you know, we'll revisit that. All right. Thank you. Uh, thank you so much for the presentation. I just have a couple questions on um enrollment. I was just curious um how many classrooms of TK are we expecting um for the school year and um is there a wait list? So there's two um TK classes per site except Vincy Park. We just added a third. So um all seven
071um elementaryaries have at least two and Vincy has three. Um there's no weight list because um we are required to serve all of the eligible students. So we can't have a wait list. We have to just expand our program as it grows. Got it. And is there any sort of advertising for our TK program or are um when parents have an eligible child, are they just immediately notified? only if they're within our existing system. But I will say um uh knowledge Yeah, I was going to say knowledge that of TK eligibility has definitely gotten out into the neighborhoods since last year. So, it's definitely there's a lot more awareness about it. um a lot of families transitioning and uh you know a lot of the preschool providers have now changed their programming focusing more on
072infant toddler because they're seeing a loss of uh student enrollment in the age four category. Yeah, thank you. And I was also curious about I know that we had talked um a couple board meetings ago about how we have shared revenues with Eastside Union. I don't remember. I don't think that was brought up like we get a percentage of how much they are generating. We do that. We have that with the developer fees. Oh, developer fees. Yeah, there it's a shared um split. But has there been any conversation to update the split about with the fees? You know, we had looked into that and that was a split that was um set years ago and that's something that we'd have to work with them on on negotiating something different. Now, I will say though that
073we have had um there's a few developments going on within the district that we've recently received developer fees for. I can't remember. Do you remember how much Josh that we just Yeah. So, um and I think that's the development that's next to um that's not the one that's at the Egg Ranch. I think it's the one going in next to Villa Sport. So, and that's just kind of one of the first payments. There's more that are going to be coming in, but um and then um Eric Shenower is doing another um development that brought in about a million dollars about a month or two ago. Thank you. Any more comments? If none, thank you, Mr. Franklin. Thank you very much. Let's continue on. Items to be discussed in close session. A, conference with legal counsel,
074anticipated litigation, initiation of litigation, pursuant to paragraph 4 of subdivision D of section 54956.9 of the government code deciding whether to initiate litigation. one potential case. Item number six. Are there any comment public comments on close session items? None. If not, we will now adjourn to close session at 5:08 p.m. Thank you. of the board of trustees of Beressa Union School District will now reconvene to open session. Item nine is disclosure of action taken. Superintendent, please. Thank you. In closed session, the board authorized legal counsel to initiate litigation with a motion by trustee Newin and a second by trustee Surini Vasan and a vote of 50. More particulars will be available after the legal action is filed. Thank you for that. Um item number 10 is for adjournment. Do we have any motion please to
075adjurnn? No second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Oppose. Okay. A German is now at 555. Do we go back there now? Not yet. Oh, no. We have another one.