24-11-12 Berryessa Union School District - Board Study Session

001e e e good evening good evening if uh everybody could take a seat we'll call a meeting to order I call a meeting of the special special meeting of the board of trust es to order at 6:01 p.m. uh we have four or five trustees um in attendance today um first item is the adoption of agenda any questions on the agenda if not I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda I move to approve the agenda I move to approve the agenda second moved and seconded all those in favor say I I I I agenda is adopted thank you so much um first I on the agenda today is reports and presentations Dr FES good evening Board of Trustees today uh we will have the presentation of our school consolidation advisory committee report as well

002as uh explanation of our historical timeline having arrived here and uh the process of facilitation for the consolidation recommendations we have several individuals that will be presenting information to the board this evening and we will begin with our assistant superintendent of Business Services Kevin Franklin all right good evening everyone so as Dr fenta said I'm here to kind of give a brief uh overview of um the process and how we got here and um before we end up getting to um the committee's actual recommendations and the process that the committee went through so that so how did we get here so um basically over the last 20 years or so actually the district has been declining in enrollment and specifically over the past 10 years we've had a significant decline um over and above what

003uh had been projected and so as District enrollment decreases the revenue associated with those students decreases as well so as we can see on this slide we Peak um during the pandemic at about $103.7 million in Revenue in 2223 a lot of that being a lot of one-time funds um from covid and the pandemic relief um and we are now down to 88.7 million for 2425 and then over the past um 10 to 12 year time frame we've also decreased by approximately 2,000 students so that's a significant number of students um over the past 10- year period especially when you take into consideration that our our elementary schools are about 4 to 500 students at most um per elementary school and the middle schools are about 650 students or so so that's a significant decline

004over that time frame so what does that mean that means that in some of our smaller elementary schools just due to Staffing and enrollment there's an increase in combination classes so if you're at some of our smaller elementary schools you might have noticed that we have uh multiple um combination classes because of how many students there are per grade level a lot of them have you know 30 to 35 students per grade level so not quite enough students to have two teachers for for a grade level which leads to a lot of combination classes and then with middle schools that translates into just having less staff which means that we don't have a lot of elective offerings that we're able to offer to our students so we pretty much have our core class offerings and

005then have art and music and we don't we aren't able to offer much beyond that so our enrollment Trends so Statewide enrollment in K12 has been decreasing over the past 10 12 years specifically in the past four to five years um enrollment has decreased significantly across California so you can see California uh enrollment has dropped by about 6% and you can really see that decline uh due to the co pandemic uh between 201920 and then 20221 what does that look like within our County so Santa Clara county is the third fastest declining County in enrollment so a 10% drop in enrollment over that same time frame and so while Statewide rate of decline over the past uh four years was 5% the rate of decline for Santa Clara County was 10% with bera's decline of

006over 133% over that same time frame so that's you know countywide uh districts are experiencing these issues with declining enrollment and families moving outside of the Bay Area uh for a number of reasons a lot of it due to the cost of living uh here in the Bay Area and then just with the tech industry and the fluidness of um that industry and remote work we did see a lot of families move out of this area which contributed to that to that steep decline uh in enrollment specifically in this County Mr Franklin may I interrupt you for a second I forgot to ask um would you um have us hold the hold any of our questions till the end would or would you like to interrupt would you like us to interrupt you no you

007can ask right okay feel free to interrupt Mr Franklin okay yeah thank you so so again I mentioned that uh bias's decline since 201920 was over 133% this is how uh that decline has trended over the past number of years and what we can see is that specifically uh the impact of covid while this looks similar to the same trend line of about 300 students per year that we had experienced in years past what we had projected at at least at that time of 2019 20 2021 somewhere around there was that we were going to be leveling off some um for the next few years but instead we saw a steeper decrease and while a lot of school districts experienced that decrease at the onset of covid we experienced that large decrease one year after

008um and so that was we were kind of the anomaly um in the area but we did experience that significant decrease a year later from most of the other districts uh that that are around us here um in Silicon Valley quick question yeah I think it it's uh worth repeating that because uh so from what I understood is uh we had a projection of you know deine anyway um so uh what I'm hearing is what ended up happening is we the decline was much more significant than what was projected at that time correct so yeah we at a steer rate that we have projected hey do you have any percentages or numbers or anything like that um comparative to what we estimated um yeah I could go back and and look at that what I

009what we had been projecting was we had been projecting um almost a leveling out at the elementary school level with the future uh still decrease but there was a projected um it wasn't 300 students decrease we were projecting about 50 or so um if my memory certainly right and then uh it decreased by a significant amount more than that and so even in that particular year I think we had de we had projected about 100 student Decline and we experienced about 300 student decline thank you for the so this is the same enrollment figures but broken down by School site so you can see how the enrollment trend has impacted each of our school sites so those bars are for three different years so yellow is 20123 blue is 201718 and then green is 2223

010so you can see all of our schools for the most part are experiencing a decline uh in enrollment over that time frame and you can kind of see how that's been kind of expedited over the past um few years in particular um and so while we're experiencing that that loss in enrollment and Ada it makes it hard to sustain the same level of resources at each of those School sites um due to the still having to pay the same facilities cost having to still pay um to keep each School site operational and so when you're talking about operating school sites at a significantly lower amount and not being able to rightsize Staffing in accordance with that leads to us being um overstaffed and and and paying more for our smaller School sites per student than

011we would be um if the schools were larger I mean this is the same Trend at our middle schools so you can see the middle schools um you know have kind of varied depending on which Middle School you're looking at pedmont stayed relatively flat over that first fiveyear period and then experienced that decline over the next 5year period after that um sierant it has experienced more of a steady decline and then maril has experienced a decline over the first five years and then leveled off and then you can actually take a look um within the report that shows and we'll have a demography Presentation tomorrow that goes over kind of the new uh figures and new projections for the middle schools but the middle schools tend to level off a little bit M grows slightly

012but overall the Middle School numbers are remaining the same and where we see the decreases across the elementary schools moving forward so what are the budget stressors that we're experiencing currently and so a lot of this is partly um due the expiration and ending of the one-time covid relief funds um we had a significant amount of one-time dollars that um we're receiving through the state and federal government over the past few years those all have inates that are coming up uh either this year or next year and we've utilized a lot of those funds um in full already there are one-time dollars that were then stressed that we use on sustaining Staffing levels at the same level we were prior to the pandemic so typically the guidance would not be to pay for ongoing Staffing

013cost with one time dollars but that was the emphasis at the time due to the pandemic so on top of that yeah add interrup yeah I think that's worth repeating to um just just to understand specifically during uh the pandemic time the uh the additional relief funds that were provided was um one of the targets was to uh sustain the Staffing basically not not uh you know do any layoffs or anything like that correct so at the onset of the pandemic the first rounds of covid relief funds were specific and it was specific to stating that we were not able to lay off any staff or to reduce staff um at all okay thank you so on top of that you know I've already kind of Des the declining enrollment um we're actually funded off

014of our Ada and not actual enrollment so the percentage or the number of students that show up every day is how we receive our funding so that's referred to as average daily attendance or Ada and so prior to the pandemic our 88 percentage as a district was extremely high it was over 97% however coming out of the pandemic we were struggling to get even 94% of our students to come to school every day so you can see that um over the over that four-year period we're now at 94.4% Ada and that's actually up from the previous year so um in 2022 I think we were at 94 or even slightly under 94% so what does that mean that translates into almost a $2 million loss in Revenue so if we had sustained that 97% ada8

015percentage um over the same time frame and if we currently have that 88 percentage be about a $2 million um impact to our budget in a positive way okay so on top of that um Cola for 2425 back in January was projected at being just under 4% for 2425 however by the time the governor passed his budget the cola calculation was down to 1.07% so the impact on our multi-year projection for 2425 over that time frame of six months was an impact of almost $2 million that we had to remove from the projection so although that's not money that was realized that was money that was in the governor's budget as a projection for the cost of living increase that then had to be adjusted due to a number of factors including um the reduction

016in inflation over that time frame um and so that was an impact of almost $2 million so you can see both of those um bullets right there are almost $4 million in Impact to our budget and then to top that off then there's Rising operational costs um some of the examples that I listed there are Healthcare liability insurance utilities and retirement so over the past seven or eight years our um employer contribution our required employer contribution for both calsters and calp which is the Retirement systems for uh the majority of our employees has doubled over that time frame so our contrib that we're required to pay on behalf of our employees doubled um our liability insurance has gone up by over a million dollars over the last four years so um partly due to the

017pandemic and partly due to some other factors with variety of lawsuits that have gone on Statewide um Health Care we've seen almost 20% or more increase in health care across the board over the past couple of years as well um and so just really kind of see the impact of covid and how that's impacted things beyond our control you know we can't negotiate our liability insurance costs we you know there's things that we've done to try to mitigate the health care cost which I'll um talk about on our multi-year uh projection but we have tried to mitigate those costs by going to a different uh healthare provider and so that's been a long process but but we've been doing and trying to implement some of those um ideas to help with some of these budget

018stressers that we have so the additional Financial impact of operating small schools we only have a finite amount of resources and so as I mentioned before when you have a small school and you're having to still fund it at the same level some of the other schools it really stretches those resources um and so we have high cost to operate our under enrolled campuses and then as I mentioned because of the smaller elementary schools we're not able to offer as much um electives and have as robust of a elective program um and then we're also not able to have you know um the right amount of teachers per grade level we're having to create combination classes um that I mentioned before so um you know to be able to offer a more well-rounded learning experience

019for our students that needs more resources more teachers and the way we get that is by having larger schools so we still have budget challenges so even though we had our budget stabilization committee come up with recommendations on how to um try to um you know mitigate these issues um with our budget and um reduce the deficit spending that we are experiencing um we've implemented a lot of those and this process that we're currently going through with school consolidation is one of those the district is legally required to show a balanced budget over the three-year period That's the multi-year projection I was talking about earlier so we not only have to be able to meet our financial obligations in the current year but we have to also show that we can meet them over the

020next two years so our budget are reviewed annually and then um two other times throughout the year at the first inter and second interum by the Santa Clara County Office of Education and they do all of our budget reviews and then certify whether or not we're able to meet those obligations so we're beholding to them um with our budgets and so the County Office of Education is the one that a few years ago at our budget approval required us to commit to making $6 million in budget reductions to have a balanced budget no longer have a structural deficit which the board then committed to through a board resolution in 2021 and then we went through a process of having a lot of covid relief that helped kind of push the um the process out a

021couple of years and helped us sustain a lot of those programs that I mentioned before but now we are required to start to implement a lot of those um stabilization committee recommendations so um what we've currently implemented at this time is we've implemented Staffing reductions in the current year we have currently had a hiring freeze in place so while you may see that we do have some jobs posted that we're currently hiring for those are all positions that have been vacated in the current year that we're needing to replace those staff members so whether that's for par Educators in special education instructional assistance um things like that those are the positions that you see being posted they're not additional positions they're all positions that are required that we have to have that we're trying to

022to fill those spots so we have implemented hiring frees we did go through the process of looking at every single contracted service that we utilize as a school district made reductions uh where we could and made a lot of reductions there and then we've also explored I believe it was two years ago we explored at the onset of the budget stabilization committee we explored uh an additional parcel tax and the committee or the community did not show uh support for that which is why the district went out for just a renewal of the partial tax which is measure a and so um we were fortunate enough to have that passed two years ago but I do want to point out that we did try to increase revenues by seeing if the community was receptive to

023an increase in the parcel tax and the and the survey results showed that the community was not at that time so our multi-year projection assumptions so these are the assumptions that we're using in our current multi-year projection this multi-year projection will be updated uh next month and we presented at the December board meeting uh that's the first interim so we will update all of these figures and so that's one thing that I will point out that especially on the second and third lines for the enrollment and funded Ada as well as the unduplicated uh pupil percentage those are all fluid numbers we look at those figures at every budget period what's our enrollment are we still projecting the same amount of enrollment what's our Ada we're really stressing Ada to our principles and our school

024sites right now and and stressing attendance trying to get that percentage up but continuously evaluating that because changes in our attendance impact our budget both current year and future so we're always taking a look at that and revising our figures um accordingly so I did want to point that out multi-year projection assumptions on the expenditure side so what you see here are um expenditure reductions not only for school consolidation process but also because of declining enrollment um so because of declining enrollment and projections based on that we've estimated a certain number of FTE reductions both for certificated staff and classified staff as well as certificated management and classified management we've those figures into the budget currently for uh 2526 and you can see those um accordingly on the [Music] chart so this is what the

025multi-year projection looks like in total in total um what you'll see at the um first interim is that First Column of estimated actuals will be updated with our un audited actuals we ended the year uh slightly better than we had estimated at that time so so that column will be updated and then we will be updating the the budget year accordingly based on how we're trending um at this time one thing that I did want to point out that um in our current year budget you can see that we have 88.7 million in revenue and then we have um 99.5 million in expenditures some of that is deficit spending that's deficit is spending down some of the restricted dollars that we have to spend um but one thing that I wanted to point out is

026that our salaries and benefits for our staff are 90 over 90% of our budget so over 90% of our expenditures is for salaries and benefits however when you take a look at the actual Revenue that we're receiving for the year our salaries and benefits are over 98% of the current revenues that we're receiving so when you take a look at that in totality there's not a way to be able to cut you know not not make reductions in Staffing to come up with a balance budget there has to be an impact to staff based on the amount of Revenue that we're receiving and the amount of salaries and benefits that we're we're spending on a yearly basis so addressing these challenges has been an ongoing priority so as I said back in June of 2021

027when we had our um budget approved Ral the Santa Clara County Office of Education uh required us at that time to adopt a resolution committing to $6 million in budget reductions um we then formed our budget stabilization Committee in the following year and um that committee worked for about a year and a half on coming up with their proposed uh solutions to help uh address the deficit spending in the structural deficit within the budget and they presented those recommendations back uh last December and then that's when um the board then committed to forming a school consolidation advisory committee we formed that Committee in April of 2024 and then since then through uh just this past month uh the school consolidation committee has been meeting um about every four to six weeks and had a total

028of nine meetings to come up with these recommendations that you'll see later on this evening so what were the budget stabilization committee recommendations the first recommendation was to rent or lease empty sites or classrooms that was something that was actually already ongoing back then and it is still ongoing now and so we are currently in the process of doing that um one thing I will mention is that one of our current sites that's being leased at the moment um is uh the Birchwood property and the Birchwood property has Milpas Christian School on there they have not formally told us yet but they according to their website are no longer going to be in operation and they're going to be merging with another school and they have not been paying their current lease so that's an

029additional loss of over a half a million dollars in revenue and their lease um was still valid for another year and a half and so that's a year and a half worth of Revenue that we are not going to be potentially not receiving and they are currently not paying at the moment so I did want to point that out so we are in the ongoing process of trying lease out our vacant properties um and then we also have another um program that recently uh closed at one of the sites as well and stop leasing two classrooms so um you know everybody is feeling some of the pressures coming out of the pandemic and um and a lot are not able to uh to continue so um but we are still in that process of trying

030to rent and lease property the second item was to sell District property um so that one is not something that we implemented if we do sell District property um the selling of District property can those proceeds can then only be used for future Capital facilities projects so it's not something that would help our general fund but something that would help um for our facilities and bond program moving forward the third recommendation that the committee had was to consolidate or merge schools which is in progress and is what we're doing now and the process that we're that we're explaining this evening the fourth is Staffing reductions so we did start to implement Staffing reductions we made a number of um reductions to our certificated um teaching staff this current year along with both classified and management

031each I think took a reduction of about 5% um out of each um category and then the last item that they recommended was a supplemental early retirement incentive and so that is something that we offered at the onset of the pandemic in 2020 um we're still paying for that incentive program um we're paying that off I believe um at the end of this year but it's not something that um is currently um would be something that would be a savings for the district but we'll continue to monitor um that particular item as well moving forward to see if that can help us out in the future quick question Mr fr here um on item number two selling of District property if you can clarify a little bit more uh about so I understand that the

032funds generated from the sale cannot directly go into general fund correct which funds most of our um salaries and programs and so on yes um but can we is that are we able to uh invest that money somewhere and draw interest from that is that is the interest separate or is it part of that same uh monies yeah so all of our all of our um funds are are invested with the County Treasury they do earn interest however if for instance if we did sell property yeah and we received however many million dollars it is and we did earn interest on that it can only still be used for the same purposes of that fund and of the those funds that are sitting in that in that account so if we sold property it would

033still be only able to be used for Capital facilities we can not transfer to the general fund for general purpose use okay okay so um so selling distri property any monies uh that we receive from the sale as well as any interest on those monies cannot be used and the general fund has to be corre only for facilities and maintenance too or just facilities just Capital facilities yeah routine maintenance is not allowed um the the only revenues that you can generate from a site that could be used for general fund purposes are for the leasing of property leasing of property correct all right thank you okay so the budget reductions and I mentioned this a little bit earlier when I talked about the multi-year projection but the budget reductions that are currently in our multi-year

034projection to uh balance the budget over the next two years are listed here um in these four items and actually item number four the changing medical benefit provider we kind of just lumped it all into 25 26 we're going to start to realize some of those savings Post January 1 we are making a switch in our medical benefit provider and so we will start to realize some of those savings but for Simplicity sake we just put it into the 2526 column um but um those those figures are are a combination of um the savings that we would get of about $2 and5 million from school consolidation plus additional Staffing reductions due to declining enrollment so then in total over the next two years you have over $6 million in um in savings and those are

035ongoing savings so even though they're reflected in the 25 26 year those are ongoing savings um that that will continue to realize because those are in salaries and benefits so one last question I think I've interpreted you a lot today I do apologize but thank you for your patience no problem last question about um the the Staffing reductions that I mentioned um so so the this the staff that are separated from our district do we continue paying into STS and Pur for them or how does that part work so staff that retired or staff that have resigned or um so I'm going I'm going to say the stuff that the uh oh as part of as part of these reductions so yeah once they've moved on and then we no longer have um Financial Obligations

036through through stirs or anything like that so but for a staff that has retired or and retired I think we still retired staff there's things in their cont there's potentially things in their contract postretirement benefits that we are obligated to pay there are some um minimal cost for that um but that's but that's it okay and those that have resigned uh voluntarily final obligations thank you for the clarification appreciate it okay okay we'll be transitioning a little bit here just to talk a little more about our process and planning as we've been navigating um the work with our budget stabilization committee and then entering into the process of review for the recommendations that came forth from that committee and so just to share as was mentioned uh we partner closely with the Santa Clara County

037Office of Education their oversight in terms of reviewing both our budget as well as our instructional programming and so through uh their guidance um they provided us the direction for the uh requirement of the funds that we needed to capture right for reduction which prompted the board's resolution and also the advisement of having a budget stabilization committee to be able to uh collaboratively come through together with various solutions that could help mitigate that $6 million um in addition to that uh We've also engaged with um outside districts who've faced similar issues as ours to see what best practices are out there um declining enrollment and fiscal challenges with the reduction of one-time funds from covid is not unique to beresa but is an experience of most districts across the state of California so unfortunately there

038are others out there that have already um addressed these issues through budget reductions in school con consolidation or going through those processes now just like we are and so being able to get their insight has been very beneficial um and engaging with the different resources that they've had to see what would be a good fit for us here in beresa I also want to um include the board in that research effort it's was over a year ago when we attended the California school boards Association and together as a governance team we went to every single Workshop that was offered during that conference that was focused on budget reductions and school um consolidation processes and and during that learning we also engaged with various experts from across the state of California to get advice on how

039to navigate this significant Challenge and also uh of course working very closely with our advisory committees that have been representative of our sites our community members and District staff to help inform us of next steps and provide the board with their proposed recom recommendations as challenging as we know facing um fiscal um reductions can be we also have always reminded our committee that we want to keep our students at the Forefront of these difficult decisions and in these challenges we challenged our committee to think of ways um that we might be able to uh expand learning opportunities for our children um through you know this difficult time knowing that uh the the uh impact of having reduced Revenue at our sites is already impacting our students with uh combination classrooms and with uh reduced uh

040elective offerings is there a way through this CH uh through this challenge to make that situation better for our students um and again you know reaching out and working with the input from the committee to be able to provide them with the information they needed we're not done with that work this process still continues post the board's decision uh you know there's lots to do uh in terms of uh preparation and creating transition steps based on the board's um the board's uh decision that'll happen at later on in the next few months after you do your deliberation and review oops let's go the other way so one thing that the board also made clear as we've talked about these issues at various board meetings over the past two years was the importance of making sure

041our community was aware of the challenges that we were facing and uh the different um budget decisions that the board was making so when we go back to the budget um stabilization period we uh did a lot of information then to our community providing Outreach on the challenge that we were facing um a lot of Education around how we are funded that is often times uh a confusing Point here in Santa Clara County because we have districts that are state funded versus districts that are Community funded and it's a very different set of resources that we receive to be able to support the learning programs for our students and so that has been something that we've worked hard to um explain what those differences are and why as well as then engaging of course with

042uh the next step of the school consolidation process when the board um made that decision of accepting all of the recommendations from the the committee with this being one of them uh we then move forward with making sure we can communicate that opportunity out to our community to be a part of that process and so we did that back in um March February March and the board took action on the committee many of those members are here this evening and we thank them for the challenging task that they had ahead of them to be able to work through all the data and to provide the board with their best recommendations based on what they learned as they've gone through that process we've shared with our community who those volunteers were and uh announce when those

043meetings occurred because the other thing that was important for the board in terms of public transparency was making those committee meetings open and making sure that there was opportunity for folks to observe that process and and see the information uh as well as the committee who was delving deeper into that to provide recommendation and so that that occurred um we had different ways of being able to share that information on our website through our newsletter through separate eblast reminders we want to thank Our Community Partners um like our District 4 newsletter who was able to share information there as well as our barasa citizens advisory committee meetings who received monthly updates as well for community at large who are members in that neighborhood association that uh committee also includes the penitencia neighborhood association so we're

044able to address community members that are involved at that level and again our communication isn't at a close it continues and uh wanting to be able to continue to address you know questions from our community and concerns uh I know our board has also been very receptive to hearing that feedback as well and tonight will be another opportunity for that um and then in addition uh you have our study session which provides you the opportunity to be able to engage in the learning and to ask your own questions as you begin to formulate uh your own decisions regarding this issue that we're facing um and of course public notice is required of every meeting when the board is convening so that's just a very general um review of the various types of communication that we've

045been able to provide and at this time I do want us to transition to tonight's um important uh report from our committee so that we can talk about that process and the board can get a better understanding of the different data and conversations that the committee engaged in during these last um several months and so with that I will uh invite our facilitators here Brianna Garcia and Lynette Hodson from school Services of California and so for this one it's down good evening I'm Lynette Hodson and my colleague Brian Garcia is here with me we're from school services and we were contracted with by the board to facilitate the school consolidation committee um so you see actually a list of the consultants and staff members that provided support to that committee these people were not active

046members of the committee but yet provided data and information um along the process so you see uh Briana and I from school Services you see representatives from Lano Smith to help make sure that everything was following the brown act Mr Williams uh provided the demography information and many of the staff members from barasa Union School District were available from all departments including operations to answer questions and provide data the committee me elette before you go on I do want to be sure that the board is aware that many of these individuals are here and so I just like to reintroduce over here we have our demographer Tom Williams who you're very familiar with and of course our our legal councel who supported us through this process Harold Freeman who's right here up front thank you

047and we also these are the committee members that were approved you con see there were representatives from each of the schools there are staff Representatives um from the district as from coordinators you have the business community members that were there uh the Teachers Association had Representatives as did the California Schools employee Association there was a a representative from the citizens uh Bond oversight committee and so you actually can see there was extensive representation and again many of these people are in the audience um today so so the committee went through a very detailed process um the first five meetings or six meetings that the committee held uh the first one was organizational we go into more detail and then with the rest of them it really was a lot of data that was provided to

048the committee for their review with regards to the districts its operations its enrollment Etc moving forward the committee's recommendation as we were providing all of that information there was a scoring Matrix that was proposed and that the committee um reached agreement and consensus on utilizing it was we were made clear to the committee from the beginning that while that scoring was there to provide them some um a way of organizing the data that the idea wasn't that uh you were they were going to go based on the scores and their scores alone it really was a way of looking at the data organizing the data um so that they would have that uh all in one place in order to have those conversations and make a decision as to their recommendations moving forward and the

049committee chair and vice chair will'll talk a little bit more about that when we're done um in an effort to provide the board an opportunity to review the data that was shared by the committee and to provide a little bit of leeway while the board was is only considering the closure of a small number of schools the committee was asked if they would rank at least four elementary schools and all three of the middle schools because while you will be looking at all the data that the committee was is looking at you're also going to be considering a lot of other information that the that they potentially uh weren't aware of you're going to be asking your staff for additional information you're going to be talking to the demographer looking at boundaries and different things

050and so the committee uh wanted to ensure that the board had um an appropriate or and a list of what they thought were their uh priorities and rankings for the board to consider and choose from when it's making its determination and again the Committees what they provided really was just a recommendation ultimately it's the board's decision as to which schools how many um the timing and all of those things with regards to any closure or consolidations of schools the school rankings um were discussed in a two level process first the committee was broken up into small groups in order to deliberate and have conversations with regards to these schools and how they would rank them um and then at the end we actually had a uh individual ranking by each Committee Member in order to

051arrive at those top schools and the ranking level of the schools for the board's consideration in addition to recommendations with regards to potential closures the committee also considered whether alternative grade configurations is something that the board uh should potentially consider and so they looked at two different options one was the potential of converting your uh Elementary schools from TK through 5 to TK through 6 which would then result in Middle Schools being 7 through 8 and um the committee did not determine that that was a recommendation that they were making to the board but they did uh make a recommendation um which will be discussed with regards to considering switching the reconfiguration of your middle schools from just s eight Middle School to potentially uh switching one to a TK through 8 configuration um and

052so this would impact one of the middle schools uh but would still require closure of those elementary schools and so the committee did in its report um include a recommendation for the board to consider that possible reconfiguration of the middle school and so I just wanted to walk you quickly through those meetings that were held by the committee um and the criteria that was considered for those the first meeting that was held on April 25th was really just an organizational meeting in order to provide the committee with an understanding of their roles the roles of the facilitators and staff that were going to be providing support um to look at the criteria that was being proposed and that was based on guidance provided by the California Department of Education with regards to uh the types

053of considerations that committees and districts should make when they were considering closing or consolidating schools and an explanation of the scoring criteria and how that might work the second meeting was focused on providing demographic information the district's demographer provided information with regards to the trends longterm as well as the staff providing information regarding the current and projected enrollment and capacity at all of the school sites there were four criteria that were developed and uh reach consensus by the committee to consider with regards to demographics and enrollments criteria one was looking at enrollment at the school district at the various district schools and looking at ones that were the enrollment was and projected to remain low over the period of time that we were looking at those that consideration included uh special education and special dat

054classes because they're loaded at different ratios and we wanted to make sure that that was part of that conversation criteria two looked at demographic diversity um I'm sure if we asked everyone in this room everyone would have a different definition for what diversity is and also what what level means diverse and so what we utilized was um the unduplicated pupil percentage which is a metric that was developed by the um State as part of the local control funding formula that Kevin talked about before that looks at the population of students that are English Learners Foster youth or eligible for free or reduced price meals Criterion three was looking at what schools had excess classroom capacity and how much excess capacity the schools had and then lastly criteria for looked at the proximity to school schools

055with capacity to accommodate incoming students so if a given school was closed would the three nearest schools have capacity to absorb those students to try to limit how far students might have to go um if their school were to be closed meeting number three was focused on facilities we looked at the size condition cost for uh repairs maintenance um construction projects that might be forthcoming looking at the support spaces if there were environmental factors that were impacting those School sites so the committee considered three criteria for facilities criteria number five was looking at the condition of the facilities this was partly based on uh facilities inspection tool that's developed by the office of public school construction which is a state organization and looking at the costs that have been um estimated for upgrades at the

056various School sites moving into the future uh utilizing um for the majority of your bond funds Criterion six looked at modernization modernization construction and other projects that were recently completed with the thought that if you just spent x amount of dollars on a School site then you wanted to take those costs into consideration if it was a school that was actually going to possibly be closed and then criteria said when was looking at historical investments in facilities the first two criteria are really looking prospectively and you're saying it's going to cost this much money to upgrade the School site you don't want to have that consideration without also knowing how much money was spent at a school site because it's possible that a school needs $50 million in upgrades but if the district has never

057put any money into that school that's a very different situation than one that needs $50 million in upgrades but 40 million was spent on it in the last year so we wanted to look at the Historical costs as well criteria number eight can I um so can you maybe clarify a little bit more the difference between Criterion five and six uh this there's there seem to be some sort of overlap between the two is there is there any overlap or or the separate uh considerations can you just elaborate a little bit more no problem uh yes they are separate criteria five is really be looking at mostly at your facility's master plan and what will those propos expenses into the future so if your facilities master plan said that X campus needed $20 million in

058improvements over the next 5 to 10 years that was where it was looking at in criteria five versus six was looking at ones that were just recently completed so in the last several years your last several bonds how much money was recently spent or was underway was being spent right now on those school facilities and so there three criteria we looking at how much was spent uh historically how much you spent in the last couple years and then how much is proposed to be spent in the future you're welcome Criterion 8 looked at whether there were unique facilities at any of the school sites that if that facility or that School site were to close that was something that wasn't available at any other School site um an example that you don't have here you

059have high schools um that have stadiums um and not all high schools do so if you closed one high school at the stadium that would be something that would then not be available to the district so we wanted to look at those types of facilities Criterion nine was looking at support spaces and wanting to ensure that they had sufficient capacity to meet not only the current enrollment but any projected enrollment especially if you were bringing more students onto that campus Because you were closed in another school so is the cafeteria large enough for the number of students that would be enrolled at that school site is the multi-purpose room the playgrounds Etc are they sufficient to meet um that projected enrollment at a school site criteria 10 was looking at our environmental factors was there

060anything that would impact the use of that School site um earthquake faults is one that everybody's aware of you do have schools in California that have earthquake faults running right through them and you can't make improvements on those campuses in the future and so we wanted to note any of those that would potentially impact the use of that campus and then Lastly lastly Criterion 11 if there were any leases or other outside uses that were on any of your campuses that were generating income and if the closure of the school would impact the ability of the district to continue to generate that income meeting number four focused on educational and student support services so really looking at the programs that are being offered to your students looking at the uh California school dashboard which has

061performance levels based on metrics that were developed by the state looking at the test scores um through the California syst of students performance and progress those smarter balanced assessments looking at the academic support services that are being provided on our bel's campuses um just so that the committee could see what the district was currently offering to all of its students or to particular subsets if they were specific to a given School site so there were three criteria that the committee considered in this um meeting Criterion 12 was looking at whether or not schools met the performance in two or more the State criteria so the state on the school dashboard has five performance levels uh from Green is the highest down to Red at the lowest and so if there were any criter if there

062were any performance or state indicators where they scored either orange or red which are the bottom two that's what Criterion 12 was looking at Criterion 13 was looking at um if there are districtwide programs at a given School site that would need to be relocated so if you closed a school and that was the only school that had um AVID for example for its students then if you close that School site would that need to that program need to be relocated and then on the flip side of that for Criterion 14 if it had to be relocated could it be relocated or was it a program that was specific to that school site because you had an astronomy lab and that was the only school on the campus or within the district that had one

063and and so we wanted to make sure that if there was a program could that program relocated meeting number five was looking at the fiscal and other impacts um the presentation included much much of what um Kevin provided to you um this evening with regards to the fiscal status as well as the implications of school closures and if there were other community impacts and so the Criterion for this meeting that the committee looked at were existing safety concerns regarding traffic or safe rout school is there anything right now at the campuses um that rise or that have safety concerns and then on the other side of that criteria in 16 would the consolidation of students at any given School sites then raise any um concerns with regards to traffic or safe boxs to school so

064that's the differentiation between 15 and 16 17 uh would the transportation be required for the relocated students The District offers Transportation only for special education students and that would continue um after any type of consolidation so that was looked at Criterion 19 looked at any alternative uses that have already been identified for the school sites if they were to be closed and then Criterion 19 and 20 looked at the really the fiscal aspects of that Criterion 19 looked at what the benefit and net savings would be from a specific School site being closed while criterian uh 20 looked at the operating cost of a given School site excluding staff staff is a programmatic uh determination that the district office makes and where programs are how many staff are located there are really dependent on that

065so we wanted to take that off the table and really look at what do it cost to operate that facility um and have that for the uh committee's consideration meeting number six um so we transitioned from providing And discussing data with the committee to the committee then really starting to have conversations about their possible recommendations to the school board uh staff did add the presentation to the committee with regards to the two possible reconfiguration of grades that I talked about before going to TK through eight for potentially middle schools and uh moving grade six to the elementary schools and so there was a presentation regarding that the committee was provided with information with regards to free and reduced price meal percentages at school sites as well as uh racial and ethnicity information just so that

066they would have a broader understanding of the students that were at the various School sites throughout the district um and then we talked about narrowing the criteria as you saw when I just walked through that there were 20 of them in total and it's a lot of information and some of those criteria when you looked at them there was no difference between schools sites so for example we talked about whether there were any unique facilities none of the campuses had unique facilities and so when you looked at the criteria the scoring was the same across all of the campuses so the idea with narrowing them was to focus on those criteria that showed a differentiation between schools just to better focus their conversation not that they didn't have that additional information or couldn't consider that

067information but just trying to help um really um focus on what the differences were within the schools to help them Reach uh consensus on their recommendation once those things happen we did the committee did rank the middle schools at that school site I mean at that meeting and we ended there meeting number seven um there was a request by a Committee Member to get information on intradistrict transfers so the transfer of students within the district if a parent requested moving from school a to school B um and so we provided that information and then we looked at the elementary schools um and the narrowing down the schools that were going to be recommended uh for the school board and so that conversation was had at that meeting at still at that time there was no

068ranking yet on the elementary schools that really happened at the next meeting which was uh October 17th the committee actually then ranked the five schools that they were recommending to the board for possible closure we Revisited the ranking for the middle schools because there was an error in the total of the scoring when we first looked at it on September 5th and so we wanted to make sure that they had an opportunity um with the corrected numbers to see if they had any questions or any change in how they wanted to rank those schools and then there was consideration of those um that grade reconfigurations um at that time and so they had a ation and they made a decision to recommend the TK through eight and instead of just recommending one school they decided

069to rank two of the middle schools first and second for possible consideration but we came back to the last meeting on October 24th we just Revisited that TK 38 reconfiguration um the last meeting we ended kind of late and so we wanted to make sure um that everybody was still on the same page um and so we reaffirmed the recommendation that was made at the prior meeting um as well as confirmed the ranking for the elementary schools and the middle schools then we walked through the report that you have um same as we did this evening meeting by meeting and we're making sure that we captured all of the information or all of the notes or different things that the committee really felt that they wanted to make sure that the board knew that they

070had considered and talked about so all of those notes were made and corporated and then the committee voted on um the total recommendations the elementary schools the middle schools and the reconfiguration at that time and again and we have the chair and the vice chair here as well as some of the other committee members that'll talk a little bit more about um that process and their recommendations at the end and so with that if you have any questions for us we'll happy to answer them before we turn it over to thank you I did have questions but I want to give the opportunity uh the board opportunity to ask any questions if you have any questions for the facilitator trusting us um for clarification purposes um yeah SP unique unique uh what is it uni

071facilities uh on specific School sites um can you elaborate on what what would constitute an a unique facility uh from your experience um for the most part it's usually some type of use that's just not found anywhere what we see at other we didn't have any here um what we see at other um districts sometimes is a School site will have a blackbox theater and that's the only one that has it or you have one that has a swim stadium or a swimming pool at the school side and that's the only School within a district that has those facilities um sometimes you'll see um uh very extensive science labs or astronomy um facilities they're just certain things that sometimes a School site has that isn't available to other School site yeah I thought one of

072our school sites did have a have a facility like that which is why I wanted to um just wanted to get that clarified because U you know yeah I was a little confused when when you said the unique facilities and none of the school sites had but I think at least one of all School sites does have a unique facility um you know Dr F please correct me if I'm wrong there but um um but yeah I was surpris that that didn't that didn't come up uh in the in the conversation uh but we will we will take the report and then uh we will continue uh talking about it um and I thought I did had another I already asked that question about modernization um which is good um as far as um special

073programs districtwide special programs uh what what programs do any any programs come up any discussions and what what were they and what were how I might not remember all of them off the top of my head but we had Aid that were at different School sites we had the Mander Ming program at one of the school sites you have SRA so s program also parent participation program and we do still have our chairpersons who are going to speak that can also share with you what their conversations were I just wanted to point out so um speakers and our special education programs which which is what is a a key uh component of this uh whole equation and you know I would ow the next speakers to elaborate on some of those points and uh give

074us more clarity U but I do appreciate uh your time and all the help with putting this together and uh not not an easy task but uh we rely on your experience and expertise in this process we appreciate you being here no problem our pleasure thank you all right good evening trustees Dr Fontes and cabinet uh we are here representing the school consolidation advisory committee as the committee chair and vice chair over the last several months we've been dedicated with the challenging and important task of reviewing the data analyzing student opportunities and objectively considering which schools in our district to recommend for potential closure I would like to thank all the committee members for their dedication hard work and diligence throughout this process and if there are any committee members here this evening would you

075just please stand [Music] again thank you for your participation and courage throughout the last few months this has been a very challenging process and none of us truly want to close schools however we also understand that due to the current financial situation the closure of schools is necessary to stabilize the budget the stabilization is crucial for maintaining the student programs and staff that support our Student Success the committee was able to collaborate authentically and ultimately came to consensus over the recommendations that will be presented um this evening before presenting the recommendations I do just want to highlight some of the insights from the committee the committee did understand the impact of the decision being made and did not take the decision lightly we worked hard to consider the needs of every school community and every

076school was discussed in a positive way we listen to the parents and the community and every school was discussed in a positive way sorry we listen to parents and the committee members in addition to considering the data that was shared on the screen the committee asked lots of questions and gained a better understanding of the data and the members of the committee had many debates during this process the committee kept uh faculty cost front of Mind as we didn't want money spent on buildings that could be spent on programs for kids however we also consider criteria other than just numbers and dollars we considered the academic assessment results that are included in criteria 12 as well as considering the socioeconomic data and the communities and the impact that schools were closed the committee considerate the

077success of all students not the success of specific student groups we discussed what would be in the best interest of all students and also considered safety as a priority we considered the locations of the school sites and safe paths to school as well as the number of students who walk to school we considered the capacity of each School site we looked at all the criteria presented not just the narrowed criteria consideration was given to special programs that is important to consider the impact to all students involvement and parent choice and we determined that all the special programs can be moved to another school site the T8 tk8 option was also discussed including the concerns regarding safety and the committee discussed how the tk8 model would be something new for our community when discussing the tk8

078option there was emphasis on traffic and the safety of students getting to school the process described starting on page 43 is important to highlight as it describes the process we went through to uh to get to the decision that we made again I want to reiterate that this was a difficult process and the committee did its best to maintain objectivity objectivity throughout the process the final decision came after much debate but we ultimately came to consensus on the recommendations so at this time the committee is recommending to the board that you consider closing the following schools in the ranked order when is um when you're making your decision this evening and that is that for the elementary schools number one is uh Cherrywood number two is Toyon number three is l view number four is

079Summerdale and number five is Ruskin for our middle schools number one is sier mon pedmont is number two and Mill is number three in addition as an alternative to closing the the a middle school we do recommend that if you want that you could could go with a tk8 model and if you were to do that we recommend that Sierra be the first choice for a tk8 and then Pont be the second choice do you have any [Music] questions I have so if we do a t uh TK to8 Rec configuration one of the schools what does that mean for so that does that mean we preserve all our middle schools and then would to close an additional Elementary School yeah so what it would mean is that we basically maintain two middle schools as

080as is one of the middle schools um turns into a tk8 and we shut down three elementary schools okay is that a more expensive option that does require an investment because you have to do reconfiguration of the Middle School site and staff um did provide the committee and can share with the board schematic options that ALS show what that investment cost would be so we do have that available to share with the board if you'd like to um take a look at that now or we can share with you after additional questions so we were to go to um the tk8 option with uh students living with cron or Pont boundaries would they potentially be impacted so that would be to the discretion of the poor depending on the Middle School location that's selected you

081would be merging one Elementary School into that Middle School location and then closing two additional middle schools is what was recommended um but again it depends on the site and the size of that tk8 that you want to create uh it is depending on the location you could potentially even um merge two sites on that Middle School site but again it depends on the location of interest and the size of that campus so then if we are going to reconfigure a middle school that would mean that no middle schools would be closed no you would have that means your middle schools would all three be remain open but one Middle School would be converted into a TK so it would it would expand to include the elementary students and in addition I think in when

082you might have been asking a potential impact for entry of other middle school students correct that are and so so that would cause a some reconfiguration of boundaries depending on the School site location that's selected and the type of program that you may want to offer at that location my um I just want clarification if there is a reconfig duration of a middle school that would mean that we need to close three elementary schools correct correct because you would be merging one of those Elementary sites at minimum to that Middle School location understood so if we were to do that uh you know Rec configure a middle school to TK to 8 would then the entire populations of say one or two schools uh that you know if you decide to close them would they

083all go to the same middle school so the elementary site that you would be merging in would stay there it' be their K8 pathway right and then it would just again it would depend so and the reason I say it depends it depends on the type of school you want to create because you do still want that K8 to be a reasonable size to be able to offer elective course offerings for those Middle School grades so there is potential to still allow other element students to feed into that site if again depending on the site location that's selected uh you know we do have one Middle School site that's more conducive to growth than the other so then some of the students that go some of the classmates might still be separated so one of

084my main you know kind of goals is to make sure that students are disrupted as little as possible and to me that includes them having you know the same classmates they've been with they've been at a school site so they might still have to go to like say a different elementary school or to another school site and not necessarily all go to the same middle school if we were to potentially but again I think it'd be easier for the board to look at the schematics and then look at the boundaries that are correlated with that potential Middle School to be able to see how closely we can keep that Vision in alignment yeah I agree I think let's let's bring that out and then let's look at the yeah so another question I have is

085um and we haven't had you know uh I know we've got a lot of community input but we don't know whether the community would prefer or something like say closing three middle schools as oppos or three elementary schools as opposed to closing two elementary schools and and a middle school we've not asked that question we did do a survey early on based on committee requests the committee had requested uh data from our community to see if they would be interested in the K8 and if they were uh what kind of K8 uh program would they like to see so we do have that information okay what what will it take to get that it's actually it's in the packet it's in your binder it's in there yes me a possibility to present it we can

086share that as well so we can take a look at it and present the one excuse me the one question I have is 1 2 3 four five so on the list of recommendations uh it's a question for all of you is there are three Title One schools in elementary and two t one schools in in middle in the Middle School um any potential reconfiguration of um child one school be at um consolidation closure um or a k model how do how does it affect our uh title one1 does it fall does it do we reevaluate the student population percentages um or does it uh transfer uh transfer or you know evenly to the new site so Title One status is based on student eligibility right and so it depends on the cluster of students

087at that new week configuration to be able to determine whether or not they would still be able to capture that title one funding for support services so in effect if you were to consolidate um two sites that are already existing title one that funding would continue to move over with those students because you already have two populations that already capture that required threshold and you'd actually have additional Revenue putting them together you know to consolidate those resources now we have eligible students across our District but they may not meet that threshold that's required by the state um at their School site currently but if you brought over additional students we'd have to do the data estimation to see if we would have h a threshold met to retain that title one funding I don't know

088if there's any additional information Mr Franklin so is that information that we could uh get like a projection if we were to let's say close one particular Elementary School would it impact another Elementary School in regards to title $1 whether they they become they maintain a title one school or no longer become a title one school because of the students they're now absorbing yeah we'd have to do that analysis to find out you know which two schools that we'd be talking about and then we'd have to then look deep into the data to see where those students would go so I know we have another study session December that something that be provided just High L reje let's say if um Cherrywood were to be closed and then where would those students be going and

089would it impact those students in terms of tot one money yeah that if if we know what schools you're wanting us High projection where they live at geographically where they would go like their boundaries yeah and one thing one thing just to share with the board is as our demographics have changed over the years so has our Title One eligibility that has lessened uh we currently operate six sites that are title one but they're Title One on the waiver they no longer meet the threshold the threshold is 40% or higher of the students need to meet um you know the free and reduced uh meal requirement most of our sites that continue to be Title One hover in the 32% range so that has gone down over the years so I think that that makes

090it more significant if they're especially right at the the hovering border that they potentially lose we could potentially lose title $1 for certain you lose Title One funding when you go below 25% eligibility okay thank you so I had a different question that I uh asked over um uh facilitators about um uh you know those unique facilities uh did you uh you have inter knowledge about our uh our school facilities did you was that brought up uh about unique facilities and did you mention anything to the committee uh members so most of the most of the things that the people consider was the programs if they're reportable outside of facility now facility cost was also considered for modernization or for upkeep so those were also considered as well but you didn't specifically talk about a

091site having a unique facility that doesn't exist in any other any of our other sites uh correct I still don't understand just structure wise uh are there are there anything uh are there any any of our sites have any any any specific speci or building that's unique to that particular site um I don't think that was discussed because it wasn't part of the criteria yeah it was yeah it was okay what is the criter so it was discussed to be quite honest I do forget exactly how that conversation went we've had so many of these meetings um but I think when we looked at it you know we looked at the three middle schools and what kind of facilities they have they've all got facilities that are about the same our elementary schools same thing

092we looked at you know we didn't find any specific facilities um That Couldn't like for example I think it's rusin that has a science lab and that could very easily be packed up and moved to another school so that that's under Criterion eight you have unique facilities so um if the facility could could be replicated easily uh that means it doesn't make the unique facility criteria correct okay yeah and then similar to when you had asked about the programs um you know because we do have all these special special programs but we did discuss how any of those programs could be replicated at a different School site right thank you all right you're welcome so I'm glad that you had mentioned uh programs and Services I think one of the most important thing about us

093the school cons consolidation process is not about just cost savings it's about giving uh more programs and services to our existing students and one of the ways to do that is through consolidation I think one of the drawbacks with um uh the TK 38 model is that um um it doesn't really give more programs and service to services to our our our middle schools unless there's a scenario that that out there that I can't think of um because we're still spreading services and programs across three middle schools whereas we consolidate to two schools we often more programs and services so I'm not sure if we were to go to to TK through eight model um is there a potential for us to continue to offer more programs or services or is there is that not

094accomplished so there's an opportunity for the board to um again it goes back to the programming piece and what would you want to have offered at that tk8 would it be a traditional tk8 would we want it to be a specialized school um in which case you would have very specialized um program offerings that would be created there like a a stem or steam school for example so I have kind of it's kind of a related question so is there any data or any research done on um you know the quality of Education uh students receive in a say a TK TK to8 environment kindergarten 8 environment Elementary combined Middle School versus you know traditional elementary and middle school is there you know are there any additional benefits to say having school sites that that

095are specifically elementary schools versus combination it really depends I think Services did you touch on this a little bit in your report with the committee it's in conclusive actually I mean there's studies that are out there um but there's nothing significantly different between a traditional TK five School compared to a tk8 school you also have public input and then still further discussion pieces mhm um one one more question about the T tk8 model is um lost my the uh it's fine the um the impact on um the traffic impact and you know uh you know number of students having at the same side um uh I know some of our elementary schools already do staggered uh start times and and uh release um how does that um affect our traffic because I'm trying to visualize

096the three middle schools um the this Cent Middle School is is on a major thare here um C is inside the neighborhood and so moral is also in a in a major thare so we don't win in any of the scenarios with the with the tk8 um what are some of the considerations I mean uh if we do TKA uh what are some of the environmental considerations number one and uh the second one specifically but you alluded to having a TKA with a specialized program uh like a team School uh what is the investment on there how does it look um operation wise you know what are the advantages uh of having one and would be would that a school like that with a with a stem steam uh program uh P students from other

097school other Middle School other two remaining middle schools uh would they want to get transferred to something like a a school a middle school with specialized program like Ste 10 how how does that configuration work I'm just curious to understand so I'm going to have Mr Franklin first um share the your answer your first question about traffic okay so and and maybe Harold you can maybe come up and help with some of the the answers to the specific um traffic studies that we would do once the board has made the decision about um the TKA option um but as you mentioned the staggered start times is a is something that could help alleviate traffic the other thing that we have to remember too is if the school is larger there's more staff so there's staff

098to help with the drop off and pickup um you know procedures at each School site I'm familiar with a number of TKA that have about 800 to 900 students which would be more than what we would have at a tk8 that are both located off of a major road and located within a neighborhood that um you know as long as the flow of traffic is is understood and you have staff out there supporting the drop offs that there's not um you wouldn't really notice much of a difference than the current drop off and pickup currently um it's just a little bit different because the age group of students varies a little bit more so you know for instance just within the past um four or five years um Sierra Martin Middle had about 900 students

099um being dropped off and picked up every day and if we're looking at a tk8 of 650 to 700 that's still uh significantly less than was there just a few years ago so the traffic wouldn't um be very much different but you would have a lot of Staff out there to be helping you know with the drop off and getting cars through the the circle and we'd have to really look at those drop off procedures and and and make sure that that's understood by our families um to make that happen but there's a number of options and then there's also traffic studies that we would be required to do prior to uh implementing the the tk8 model and then just again to go back to the tk8 programming a lot of that is really driven

100by parent preference you know and parent interest in having their children attend a tk8 school um and looking at the survey data that was provided to um the committee uh our families that responded to that survey um overwhelmingly the program area of interest for a ka8 was in stem or or computer science uh that was definitely of Interest so that would be programming um planning that we could bring back of course we have a lot of existing Partners in Silicon Valley area to be able to lean on uh to be able to provide you know some Innovative classes uh throughout the day and and after school uh in terms of looking at you mentioned potential poaching within the district uh or outside the district right um so we would be looking at uh designing a

101neighborhood tk8 so it would have neighborhood um requirements first unless the board wanted to look at uh a a lottery system or an open enrollment for that site that's another option but given our our boundary line reconfigurations um we would probably recommend to do a neighborhood school first and then uh do a layered approach to admission to the site but there's different ways that you can go with that thank you for that um any other questions from the bo Miss BL what is the meaning of a neighborhood school please neighborhood school is students who live within that boundary have first rights of attendance what schools were the two middle schools were the ones ranked first and second for tk8 uh was SI and Pont uh the reason for Mel being removed from the list was

102because it was uh way out of the um Financial realm right okay any other sorry any other questions from the 30 seconds to gather your thoughts any other questions um can we also get an up front cost I know we were to go towards the TK model there would be some cost to um uh make the schools um especially middle schools capable of handling elementary schools for example playgrounds uh you know bathrooms and and such uh how much would that cost that cost and um would it fit the timeline because um of the consolidation process okay and I I believe that those numbers are in the report um I believe to convert C 2.4 was 2.4 million approximately and was 2.6 yeah Pont make it uh fit for elementary school students yeah because you'd have

103to reconfigure classrooms and like for example here this Cas would be changed up at a playground okay um I believe from was around 8 million okay thank you and we do have uh schematic designs again so um Tony kisto our bond director worked on that and can get more in detail of showing you the type of work that would need to be done to make those changes is so say we you know uh go with a TK to8 model and select either seront or Pont would the schools forclosure since it's going to be you know a neighborhood school would the schools targeted forclosure that be the ones kind of feeding into that currently feeding into that middle school right now that would be the natural course you know you would look at the Middle School

104site that you've selected and then you would go and look at your neighboring feeder Elementary sites and and go through that process of deliberation and so right now we have three three schools right feeding into into each uh element or middle school at least we do have some Elementary sites that split across two Middle School locations so then it would change the elementary school rankings that were currently recommended by the committee well that yeah that's why we listed five of them is so that based on the conversations that you have um you'd be able to you know again it's just a recommendation and depending on what you decide to do you'd be you'd have the flexibility to do whatever you think is in the best interest of the community so let's say we do go

105towards the the TK the option um can we kind of just also get a high low projection on what the neighborhood schools would be I'm assuming see will probably be rusing or or a wood element neighborhood schools and Pon would be what a Toyon Noble Summerdale yeah Toyon Summerdale that are on the list from the committee okay that's neighborhood schools right and then everyone else would be I guess be opened up to whatever a lottery or whoever well and again that's depending on how you want to do admittance but when we show you the schematics we also took detail on how what the capacity of each school could be so you look at existing enrollment to see how many students could fit in that new configuration okay thank you okay so it's kind of similar

106to the question earlier so say you know we were at Pont as a k tk8 there's no guarantee that all the students that currently feed into pedmont would then end up at pedmont if it was a k to8 school so they could potentially go to another Middle School potentially I'm sorry another elementary school as opposed to the combination school so potentially again it just depends on which site you want to include uh and depends on the current capacity of those Elementary sites uh we do have some sites that are really low in number where you may be able to um capture quite a few within that same existing boundary and how about the staffs with then would they then be uh be split among you know other schools or would they all go kind of

107to the same to the same school so we have a transfer process and I'll let Mr Cabrera answer that question yeah the criteria for transfering teachers for school closers includes several criteria and one of them is giving them the first opportunity to transfer to any open position also given them priority to move to where their students are moving into and I believe that answers your question question about some the criteria items uh I'm talking about programming um there we have uh some unique programming uh at uh one of our schools sh would have a Mand immersion um how much of a um was there any discussion um surrounding that that program and you know the impact of um you know basically approving the program then uh and moving it to a different School were there

108any concerns from our committee members and uh how they addressed and uh you know based on uh experiences from other school districts how how they uh how they handled that uh that move how was a discussion uh sing that so yes we did discuss uh specifically The Manor and immersion program uh we ultimately came to the decision that we would be able to move it to another school but some of the concerns and debate that uh came of that conversation was uh the way that the program's currently structured where I don't know exactly how it works but where they're um mixed between the Mandarin class and the English class and then they switch teachers that you know there was concern about how that would look at another school but and we did have um one

109of the members of the committee is a teacher in that program um and so ultimately we did come to the decision that we could move it to another school yes so as a board we were provided with kind of I guess a scatter gram of where the students kind of live is there a way where we could get work for the VOR and emerging program students to see where they live to see how do mostly live the chairwood area or or are they outside of area or sit we we do have that information because that was also asked by the committee to know how many students were cherry residents uh versus barasa residents versus outside the district so we we do have that data um don't know they have that readily available but we can

110bring that back yeah I'm also interested in that so we'll give you some time to gather that data by we few more questions black yeah um so we have that data right now so I can share that so currently um there's 277 students in the maner and immersion program 44 of those students are current Cherrywood resident students um there's only 38 students that come from outside of the district the rest all come from other attendance areas within the district so the most being actually from the Vincy Park um area of 54 students so we do have that breakdown B School site but the majority of them come from Vincy Park attendance area um and then next is from the Cherrywood attendance area and so on but they they're mostly from outside of the Cherrywood area

111so these students that you're speaking of are students um that are going to Cherrywood right now correct they're current Cherrywood students okay now if we were to close certain schools three of them we just say Elementary three elementary schools then these students will be accommodated by other schools nearby um and they can be accommodated because they are seat capacity am I correct yeah so the goal would be to move the man immersion students the man the whole Manor immersion program to another school site and then the students who are not in the manering immersion program but then be relocated based on you know how we redraw the boundary lines for the Cherrywood area right thank you could you could you repeat the number of students that are going to Cherrywood and at the same time

112they are the residents within that school neighborhood so the amount of Resident maner and emersion Cherrywood students is 44 and then so the Mandarin program has 277 um the entire school is about 525 or so so it's it's roughly you know it's it's a little more than half of the school is man Orion students and 44 of them live in the Cherrywood ATT within the within the Cherrywood neighborhood correct only 44 correct so without the M emion program um would it be true that the Cherry Weare uh enrollment would probably be lower than 21 not it currently it would be roughly the size of Toyon with it projected to go down I believe in a couple of years to 230 to 220 to 230 resident students or so so would toy be projected to be

113going lower which would be projected to be our lowest to projected to go down to about 190 190 every Cherrywood without the M students as resident students won't be projected to go I know probably get it later by Mr W yeah you'll see that tomorrow during uh Mr William's presentation but it's approximately 230 students or so projected at Cherrywood in a couple of years okay thank you um let's see the Mandarin program at Cherrywood we know that there is a program at carmont am I correct correct we have sixth and seventh grade there yes I just wanted to make sure that it's still going on wonderfully thank you that's a good point uh so if um since s is is um up there for a potential tk8 model um how would the manin program be

114impacted um if we were to merge a mean yeah if you were to merge a different Elementary School into seron um would that have any impact on The Mod emersion program specific so again that depends so at siert you have multiple sites to choose to merge so it would depend on whether you know which elementary site you wanted to merge into siert middle school and then so for example if you were to say Cherrywood which is why I think you're you're asking that question because it's number one so that's an option um if you did that then you would be merge consolidating your dual immersion program there now the Mandarin dual emerin Elementary program currently operates 10 classrooms it's a large program and it would occupy quite a bit of space over at sierant Middle

115School uh not lending itself to much extra space for English only classrooms I have a question um and again we have the schematics for that that can get into that detail to show you the number of classroom spaces that would be available what yes does rusin elementary school have the capacity to accommodate more students within the Mandarin program rusin does they're one of our larger campuses and so they they would have room to accommodate the 10 Mandarin classrooms but not necessarily entire School of Cherrywood that would mean that the Cherrywood students will have to go somewhere El hopefully nearby correct yeah I got I am a little concerned about the Manning program and that's the reason I I C it up because I mean we know we know challenges uh we faced in U putting

116such a program together it's uh to our district it's very new uh and you know the uh School side as a whole uh the school Community as a whole uh has worked really really hard um a lot of Blood Sweat and Tears I know um I think more te than anything else but uh we are at a point where they have established the very established um there and they I know they received uh numerous commendations um the the reason I I brought it up is because uh some of our other programs uh comparatively in in in the district has been running for for quite a while um you know maybe 10 15 years uh or more uh and they know what to what to expect with a potential uh move to a different side but

117from my perspective and the reason I I I brought that up is uh from my perspective n program is still still in in regardless that it's been ongoing for six or seven years six years and it's still in its infancy according to me it's still a little raw um and my All My worry is um we're approving a uh potentially approving a a award winning program that is starting to settle down starting to um you know uh gather some steam gather some recognition uh I know that we have we had National recognitions we had uh you know people from uh all over the world come and uh review our uh our program My worry is you know you don't want to disturb that thing and and I I it's not to say that I don't

118trust um our staff or or for or our um or our school community that would receive that program uh but My worry is we will lose that momentum uh and had this been running for maybe 10 12 15 years or something like that um situation would have been different you know I I don't AR we need to think twice some of our successful programs are running for a while and we know uh you know none the movements will not um matter because uh we have uh the same level of uh expectation and uh and education across all School sites and all these staff members know what to expect this this seems to be a little bit it seems to be a little unique um uh experiment if you go uh in our school uh district

119and it has been a very very successful experiment so I'm uh kind of surprised first of all that uh you know there not more emphasis more discussion or more um uh feedback or whatever you want to call it on that specific program on this in this particular School site um and my All My worry is uh you know if if we at this point in time specifically I will attribute that a lot attributions is at this particular point in time uh if we uh uh you know do anything with a program like moving it elsewhere I am worried uh you know about how well it will continue to do and you know how how well uh it will do that that's all my wor which is why I wanted to find out uh what was

120the conversation surrounding that um that specific uh program programming and U and it looks like we we t upon it but did not Del deeper into um into that you know what what the programming how the programming came to be and what the structur and and so on like I said it's very unique to our district uh which is one of my concerns about moving it elsewhere losing the moment uh again I will once again uh I had their attribution uh 10 15 years uh you know if you had this program we might be we might be say we might be able to say yes we know what to do uh and also I think Cherrywood is a sealed certified all all staff members are sealed certified is that correct sealed trained not every some

121are in the process of getting train but they're going K5 TK K5 right SE so we have um so our you know if we decide to consolidate that school to a different site uh for the sake of argument only um because they are in the same family we have ch R and there a question asked about capacity at Raskin if we decide to cons to consolidate with Raskin or close and move to Raskin are all staff members of Rasin also SE certified point so we lose that value of uh uh value proposition there don't we but we can expand train sorry no uh r is not a seal location we have other sites that are seal sites um but we've been expanding SEAL training so if that was the direction of the board to do

122we could do that all right so um so I correct me if I'm wrong again Dr so man imersion program is included in that in that seal certification so it's part of that so so if we do decide to move it elsewhere um okay so let me ask you this in a different way so if we do decide to relocate that whole program so will we will all the all the seal certified teachers um move along with it so no as do Mr Cabrera shared already he shared the transfer provisions and we can share that with you again um and I think you know as we think more deeply about this you know there's time to prepare for depending on where the board all decides to land in consensus on you know what are those

123program supports that you'd want to have at every School site that is the board's prerogative to identify what those um areas of focus can be at each school um the reason what I asked about the accommodation the capacity seating at resting to the possibility of moving the mandering program there here is because it's close to sierant and sierant already has a mandering program that they can just fit into it as they grow older that's that's just my um that was my main thinking right I appreciate that my All My worry is about um you know right now moving that program anywhere because to me uh from my perspective from whatever I've learned about the program um based on uh uh the um presentations that they provided during the uh during the uh visit what was

124the ncls can you help me with the abbrevation there was it ncls that was the the national Chinese uh Institute that came out to visit yes so I I was there uh when they presented to them to the group and I understood a little bit more about uh what all went uh into putting this program the way it is structured right now so my All My worry is at this point it's My worry is it still feels a little raw um still feels that it's it's in its infancy uh for us to um potentially relocate and which is why I was surprised to see Cherrywood land at the top over there um so that those are those are my concerns on that capacity wise I don't understand uh you know I don't see any problem

125with that um but uh yeah that's where I I'm coming from and again uh your discussion doesn't end here there's still time for more discussion on today's agenda we do have it structured for Q&A for the committee just based on our basic report that was initially provided but also you still have time for public comment and then come back for any additional um discussion or additional information that the board would like to receive in an upcoming meeting thank [Music] you thank you for that presentation appreciate it um before the next agenda item we'll take a 5 minute recess e e e all right let's uh go ahead and find our seats we will be reconvening uh shortly that's only when I Rec please go ahead and find your seats at this moment so we can

126reconvene the meeting that's the hard part with having races all right let's settle down we will now reconvene the special meeting of the Board of Trustees thank you for your patience um as a as a kind request um I understand that uh our voices are not projecting well in the back so if you can um keep the conversations to the uh to a minimum if you do need need to speak please uh step out and have a conversation and please come back in uh so people in the back can hear what we're saying uh so the next agenda item uh is public comment um on on our agenda items um do you have anything to say Dr or just item right okay all right so um prior to uh you know uh calling for public

127comment I want to begin by acknowledging the uh challenges involved in um in this process uh consolidating schools is U among the worst things uh a board can undertake uh it's a very uh it can be an emotional Journey it can be uh difficult to fully grasp the scale of it um I want to keep you I want you to keep in mind this the this effort uh began in 2022 as we saw in the presentations um with the establishment of our budget stabilization committee and this is a continuing work of that um but it reflects our commitment to addressing the district's uh Financial realities um it's unfortunate that we are in the situation that we are in the situation right now uh we need to preserve services to support our students uh give them

128more opportunities um as we review the committee process um and the Creed of information um I ask everyone to remember our shared purpose uh to to ensure that all current and future students of basa Community receive a quality education uh let's keep this meeting respectful constructive and focused on the facts basa has always had a strong reputation of meeting de for being thoughtful and respectful and for for setting a positive example for our children many of them are in the audience today and um I'm sure many of them are watching uh online too uh with that I'll open up uh for public comments on our agenda items all right so um I go and read the speaker contact at this time okay um speakers are requested to State a name and affiliation for the record

129speaker uh will be usually given 3 minutes to address the board um and I'll take a pause here we have about 32 33 cards um 3 minutes each would be about hour and a half what does the board feel about that may of everybody's time as well as the parents in the audience um so usually we uh you know during our regular board meetings we limit total comment on one topic to 20 minutes is that the case this time or that is in your policy but it's your discretion as a board to extend that time well I would propose extending the time uh you know to allow everybody to speak but maybe reducing the time because obviously you know that would be at least an hour and a half of of just public comments uh

130so I propose letting everybody speak however long it takes but just reducing maybe the 3 minutes to something a little bit less well the it's okay um that will be about just about an hour how many speakers do you have again 30 33 cards just okay so that will be about an hour just about a little bit more also I think that there might be someone who might yield their time to the person ahead of them so all those consideration so what um just said is um uh if any would like to yield their time to someone else because they uh what they wanted to speak about uh was already covered by someone else you may also want to do that but we want to be uh mindful of everybody's time including uh our little

131ones that are here it is a school night uh so with that we'll uh we'll relas it to to I just say the speaker yes you have two minutes but if you can make your comments briefly I think everybody would appreciate it so all right so for for today's meeting each speaker will be given 2 minutes to address the board 5 minutes per organization and a maximum today um we we will strike that out we generally have a 20 minute timeline but we we will keep that flexible [Music] um so um uh you the amount of time a lot of me speak T today uh so we uh we we do that so we are um accredible we all diversity of viewpoints um let's see speaker are reminded to communicate with respect fairness and courteousness

132to each other and to all present we ask that you not use the name of any District employee in your comments the board welcomes allly communication from the public especially with our children watching let's be mindful of our Decor thank you appreciate that thank you for your patience with that I'll call up uh Eli and Ariana as our first speakers hello my name is Arana and I'm in third grade and I was just elected to be student council president at suit out Elementary my friend and classmate Eli would also like to introduce himself and say a few things hello my name is Eli I'm the student at sumerville and over there the principle is great and and we learn new stuff every day I would not be as smart as I am without Miss TR

133M King and Mr G and all the staff at some of them thank you beautiful good job thank you for those comments thank you next is uh Valencia [Music] all right uh my name is G Valencia I am representing today I stand before you to advocate for the importance of keeping to on Elementary School um and also to argue against the notion of any school closures I'm a parent at toon Elementary is not just a building where our children come together to learn it's a community Hub a place of growth and development and a safe home away away from home for many students who may not have that support I'm sure most of you are aware but not only is Toyon Elementary a title one school but at least over 42% of our students who

134attend are from low-income families being of Latino descent I have done the research in our district toan has the highest population of latinos with about 50% about 50% of students in our campus being of Hispanic GR your descent my daughter being part of that 50% my daughter has high anxiety and since she has started at tum the staff has helped her in many ways alleviate any Stress and Anxiety that she may have she has built trust like many other of our students we are lucky that these children are receiving the help and support that they need in order to succeed not only in their education but also with their well-being our school is important and it is also a school Pro um part of the SE program I could have chose any school in the

135district for her to attend to but I chose Toyon toon has so much to offer for their students in the regard of education and support and I'm going to always choose Toyon the idea of school consolidation may seem like a practical solution to budget constraints or declining enrollment but we must consider the broader impact that it could have on all of our students our families and communi but mostly our students St closing toy on Elementary would mean disrupting the lives of these children who have worked so hard to gain the trust and strong bonds with their teachers their friends and importantly the help that they need thank you thank you for those comments our next speaker is Amy G Amy G okay you back up okay starts okay okay um my name is Amy G

136I have been a kindergarten teacher at Summerdale elementary school for the last 20 years I'm here to represent Summerdale um I've also grown up in this community I went to school in this District um and I've attended all the consolidation advisory meetings except for one and then all this so i' I'm familiar with the process um all the schools in our district are special and valuable to what they community so me this to say this uh closure is not easy but um so whatever the board decides to do I will respect that because the process I I know it's not easy but here I am I want to speak up about the positive aspects of Summerdale that Mak spe that make Summerdale unique and special so some of the positive things are one of the

137district's goals is to reduce the achievement Gap summer there are showing progress toward that goal this year summer do was recognized as an educational results partnership Erp onor L school for high academic achievement and Student Success and this is a direct quote from the B USD Community connections newsletter the Erp honor utilizes public school student achievement data from 2023 to identify successful schools and districts some El stands above others in the state because of his demonstrated ability to get students to Greater level success and Beyond and a reduction in the achievement gaps among student populations how do you get this honor one of the contributing factors is that suale success is our PBIS program and that's the positive behavior interventions and supports um that's a system established uh uh with a structure which provides positive

138and supportive environment for all students sumerell has a strong PBS program on can I speak for my school enough longer or no second finish up okay so in okay so well suale scored a high score of 97% of the tier Fidelity inventory walkthrough as a remote sual earned a grant to deepen our PBS implementation receiving this grant shows Su El's commitment to the PBIS process and suel continues to show their commitment to improve their PBS program through a range of supports currently okay and I'm just going to end it off s u m m e r t a l e superar with my brain and my heart I will go very I'm aale Superstar good job our our next speaker is kly Caitlyn La Caitlyn La is it l u or l u [Applause] [Music]

139she might fall oh I can hold her I just need to hold the card yeah thank you okay okay you can do this my name is Kaitlyn my home school is book tree I go to the chairwood I am learning I love Miss Joe and Miss Joy I have friends I have fun at school events learning at TR with evolvers teachers my mommy and me please don't close my school thank you for your comment appreciate thank you so much for being here next next uh next speaker is uh ktie Tran oh sorry did you still have a did you want to use rest of your time to make well I had it for my daughter and I just want to make sure she had enough time that was Caitlyn got but this one is for

140me I understand okay perfect thank you uh can you reset the counter to one one and a half minutes thanks gotcha we keep track thank you so much sorry about that oh it's okay my name is Katie my children's home school is book tree and I am here to encourage not selecting Chariot for closure I have attended three different Elementary School Cherrywood Toyon and Majestic what makes Cherrywood different besides the 84 844 th000 savings cherwood Community it's a team of Staff parents and students Cher will promote students to learn about different cultures every month there will be an event where generally led by parent volunteers Charwood involves and encourag students to be responsible safety patrol comprised of students and adults they show up the school early to encourage safety of their peers their teachers and

141their neighborhood the chood community takes years in commitment of supportive passionate parents Educators and students built and nourished to where it is today the community is not replaceable and cannot be created once broken up I understand we have a $3 million deficit to resolve but can we do it in a way that will minimally impact our student Co has taken and affected everyone now we we considering relocating 500 plus students which is 133% of our elementary elementary students in the school district so please do not consider Cherrywood forclosure but instead consider integrating other schools into Cherrywood and further grow the strong thank you for listening and your patience and your time thank you so much next speaker is Katie TR Katie Tran okay I see okay it say one plus one sorry that's her child

142my mistake I know you sorry about that so next speaker we have an organization um my Pac representing is uh link Kao your discre can I get one extra minute because I'm organization let me uh let me get that clarified so generally we reserve that for Association but again you're you did a reduction to minut so do you want to reduce from to we'll go with yeah we'll go with three minutes uh because you're you're part of my pack you're representing a group of parents yes sorry three minutes sorry for the confusion go ahead please good evening board members my name is linkai and I'm the chair of the myac Mander emerging parent advisory Council here in ch elementary school tonight I'm here to ask you do not close Chu elementary school as some uh

143like Community member don't know the M my program in uh this uh School District starts with a grassroot effort a group of passionate parents including myself brought attention to this board members about Community need of this Mi program seven years ago so we go through we went through a lot of like uh commun Outreach and public debate and seven years ago this B member B members made the right choice right decision to start this Mi program here in Chu because the potential success of the school site so I would like to thank you thank you so much for stud this initiative and right now you are going to make a decision again and the uniqueness and also a successful factor of this Mi program is a seal strategy which some like uh gentlemen don't understand

144previously the reason like uh this strategy works it's because it requirs one to one pairing between like a Chinese teacher and English teacher so student have the chance to switch between two language uh uh scenario so we call it do emersion and this model works very well and our student achieve excellent result both academically and ex character and last year we had this like a nationwide du uh du emerging conference they see how success this system being set up in TR they are pretty impressed so without consider this sale learning strategy you make decision to close TR is 4y because they think moving Mi out of TR just move the Mi teachers no that's not right you need to move the whole school is a whole ecosystem you need to move those English student along

145with this uh uh Chinese students so uh the goal of this school board is make sure the long-term success of this like uh within this district and closing chairwood you have the risk to basically destroy all those committed effort we have been made in the last seven years is a big risk and also you are going to convey a very negative like message both within district and outside District so I'm here to urge all those po members use your critical thinking make the right decision like you made 7 years ago do not cose Trav I and also invite all the board members to join our monthly myad meeting to hear the voice from this community like teachers students and parents thank you so much thank you for the comment the next speaker is um is

146it Reverend Linds wordss one good evening board members I come tonight as a parent of a student at Toyon and a student at pedmont middle I've served on School site councils for both schools and on the district deac committee and I've had kids go through the special ed programs of our district and I get it our church had to recently close its preschool I understand the gring decisions that are before you my concern tonight is especially about Equity my faith demands that we can we are most concerned for those that are least advantaged in our society the title one schools receive special funding for those disadvantaged students Toyon is one of those title one schools as is pedmont and serving on School site Council I've helped oversee those funds at Toyon it's helped fund a

147reading intervention teacher and if you look at the progress not just the current espc results but the progress of cohorts at Toyon the investment that we have made especially over the last 5 years for those students that are most disadvantaged has been really impressive likewise over $100,000 in Title One funds go to pedmont Middle Toyon if consolid would probably go to Noble those funds may be lost based on how those students and the populations intermingle tyan and pedmont are also the most highly High populations of our Hispanic and Latino uh students in our district in California those students have only an 80% graduation rate and I think we need to be concerned about how this consolidation creates trauma and impacts those who are least advantaged in our society you have the tough decision before you

148and I pray that you really consider those students that especially at Toyon that are often overlooked and we have worked really hard to invest in them and how this consolidation can affect their mental health and their long-term success thank you for those comment next up is Amanda Amanda she's not here all right we will put that apart um next speaker we have is Bobby Evans I just saw [Music] hi U my name is Bobby Evans thank you for the opportunity to speak here my children are no longer in baresa school district or any school other than college at this time the consulting firm keeps telling you that there are no uniqueness about any school they are wrong Ruskin has its own science lab in a brick building that is funded by parents and Community donations

149and fundraising the entire School benefits from the science lab this brick building cannot be moved to another location it is not a program do you know as a homeowner of 34 years in the rusin community that I have yet to receive any type of communication or flyer informing me that there will be a school closure no surveys no communication ever that this school district has had low enrollment for years wouldn't as a homeowner that pays property taxes that provides some funding for these schools be notified you would think so but you are sure to send out flyers asking us for our votes and for our money specifically for measure K which I was a part of the measure K committee and worked with one of the current board members on that committee measure K got

150turned into prop two so we are still paying some funding for you you send without Flyers asking for our votes to be on the board but no communication no surveys no Flyers as you actually what's going on financially it's very interesting most of the community was not even aware of this until meeting number six finding out on next door you owe the homeowners in this community an apology for your lack of transparency and handling of funds please consider these closings and find another solution because clearly after hearing your discussions tonight you do not have all the information to make an educated decision thank you thank you for next up is Christian Mar Christian naare Christian naare back hello my name is Christian naris I am a student and the ASV president at p m i

151here today because I believe closing our schools would have a serious negative impact on our students and their families pedmont is more than just a building it is a community where we learn grow and support each other if this closure goes through it would disrupt not only our education but also our lives and careers of the families who rely on this school we risk losing a strong sense of belonging and the close relationships we have built here over the years I urge you to consider the long-term impacts that this will have on our community and our school thank you thank you for those comments next up is R Bon my name is re bansel I'm a Cherrywood parent my son is in kindergarten in the Mandarin emersion program both my sisters went to Cherrywood and

152my parents live a mile away unfortunately I need to speak in favor of school consolidation in closing cherwood I looked through the data from the school consolation committee and I can't say I disagree with anything you know the the choice of made will reduce the impact on parents and will save the district the most money as possible closing schools is an opportunity to have more money for music teachers more money for school Labs more more money for Science and more money for interventionists and that can help our students more underutilized schools means poor education not better education perhaps we can spread more resources and more time in thinking about the Mandarin immersion program so that the the quality of dedication stays true it's a tough topic and we are going to lose our community if

153you close Cherrywood but wherever we go we'll make a bigger and stronger one at whatever school we end up at thank you thank you for those comments next up is Jin d first name is x i n got [Applause] you hello my name is Sindu I'm a homeowner in the rasing and seront area I have three kids that are attending these two schools so during the during the pandemic when everyone had to stay home we found our how was too small so we started look looking for bigger houses but unlike many of my friends who took the chance to move to catino or cille we choose to stay here by another house because houses here are quite affordable and parents here take education seriously but are not pushing their kids too much I really enjoyed

154a well balanced life here and I'm sure many of rasan cant families would share the same feeling that's why Raskin and camont houses are favored by a group of home buyers I have several friends who are real estate agents they told me that a certain group of their customers are particularly interested in rusing and camon area and call it a hidden gam so if rusing or camon is closed this group of home buyers who value education with turn to other areas like meas so the housing prices in muus would get a boost and our rking and their own Families Our prices would drop signific significantly but this is not yet the worst when there's no demand we need to compet with surrounding houses who don't have a very famous School nearby So eventually when demand

155Remains the Same and increase in Supply would cause everyone's house to decrease in value have you considered that I believe that the consulting firm you hired they they should know this because they are dealing with school related issues and they should know top schools are closely related to housing prices but they chose not to reveal the information thank you for those comments we appreciate it I I want to add one one more second it is not right to let the whole Community to lose billions of do dollars just to save a few Millions for the school district it's it's not right and I have filed a complaint against them I suggest you do that too thank you government thank you for those comments appreciate it thank thank you for being here next speaker next speaker

156is Karen kinska I hope it's said that [Applause] way good evening um my name is Karen hska I'm a parent of a Cherrywood student and hopefully a future Cherrywood student um like everyone here I know that this has been a very difficult conversation to have I know that many of my community members have put in a lot of work and effort and I know the board has a very serious decision in front of them um what I want to emphasize today or what I think is most important to take away from the data um with respect to what was considered um is that the data itself needs to be considered um in an appropriate way and it needs to be fully understood so for the case of Cherrywood where the data was kind of missing

157is um an understanding of the Mandarin immersion program um now I know all of you received this electronically and and hopefully in hard copy as well um we understand that there have been some confusion points about the Mandarin immersion program we put together a guide to help you understand how the Mandarin program works what has made it successful and some of those points of success are that it follows this very distinct Seal program that pairs up the classes so that there are a onetoone coordination that means that the teachers and the children in these classes have been working together to build the success of the program so you can't just take part of the teachers in the classes and move them without disrupting that um relationship that is working and that the model was designed

158for you're you're effectively breaking the model if you're trying to move it without moving the whole of Cherrywood school um and then the other point that I'd like to remind the um the board that again is captured in detail um the reason that Cherrywood is considered and was determined in the first place is because it has the capacity and really the success of the Mandarin program has shown that we are drawing people from all across um the district and that has led to our positive enrollment trait because we have um so much demand for our program so again I'd really encourage you please understand this program before you make a decision about the Mandarin program uh so that you can make an informed decision based on the data thank you thank you for your comments

159thank you so much for being here next speaker is Kimberly bloomquest Kimberly [Applause] Bloomquist what it means good evening my name is Kimberly bombest I a sixth grader in the Mandarin ersion program at sier middle school and in the Lum of Cherrywood Elementary School one reason I cannot bear to see either of these schools go is they are both well-oiled machines inspired by our teams of the people in these schools theander and ersion or these schools are special to me because we are one big family if we were to relocate this program we would have to start this family from scratch last year the fifth grade Mi had the majority of the fifth grade Mi received the biliteracy award our teachers have all been amazing in teaching us our language skills and life skills we

160need to preserve this established community of sier and cherwood thank you for listening thank you for those comments appreciate it being here next speaker is om and SW good evening board members my name is and I'm a fifth grader at cherrywoods mod and emotion program ever since we heard that Cherrywood and other schools are going to be closed my classmates friends parents and I have been very sad and unhappy despite being a non-native student my teacher and some of my close friends parents have helped me succeed very well in the Mander emotion program I've not only learned Chinese songs poems culture but also competing in Regional and National level competitions considering cherrywoods cherrywoods Mi program has consistently received awards every year by by considering to close the school all efforts my teachers principal and all

161the parents put into making our school so well known will all be for nothing most importantly my friends and I have been together since kindergarten and I've been looking forward to continue being together and learning Mandarin in SAR and by considering to close CA as well all of us are deeply heartbroken and shaken some of my classmates are considering to go to private school and also considering to move away I request you from the bottom of my heart to not separate us from each other and our teachers I speak on behalf of my little sister who is in second grade and can not think of going to any other school other than Cherrywood please do not separate us from people we love and care deeply for thank you have a nice evening well done thank

162you for this comment next speaker Steven Chang Steven Chang good evening board um thank you so much for your time I'm actually truly inspired my name is Stephen Chang I'm the proud parent of two young children at Cherrywood but behind before me actually stand a whole committee and a whole community of Cherrywood um I think um just to correction right there are actually 12 classes today um at the Mi program but there's actually something about Cherrywood that makes it unique it's not the Mi it's everyone in Cherrywood right you can't really separate MI from cherwood and the other way around right it's taken seven years as I already call seven years ago right when we started this a lot of people got together I'm looking at a few right now on the panel right we

163all worked very very hard to build this and the results speak for themselves look at the enrollment rates look at the community look at all the stuff that are not just my pack HSC all of us work together to build right you know we don't we understand that it's a tough situation schools have to be Consolidated I get it I feel the pain of every parent here but you also have to look at the data the right way the way that chity has been represented is actually incorrect right from a cost perspective right if you look at it this is the one that's actually growing enrollment it's attracting it's a magnet it's attracting folks into our community and it's making it better right so we need to understand that if we stop it now the

164legacy is going to be the lost decade right there's a lost decade of Economics the Lost decade of stock market we don't want to have a lost decade of Education especially for an award winning program like chairwood again I'm truly inspired by all of us who are doing it and I implore the board please let's look at all the other options right let's look at all the other places that we can save on cost but I think to close this is actually the wrong decision thank you very much thank you for those comments next speaker is pong pong nen my name is Fong man and I'm a mom of two kids at Cherrywood I and along with many many parents have questions why has consolidation been the first Resort instead of the last where is

165the evidence that budget cuts other measures for budget cuts have been tried why haven't we looked into requesting State authorization to transfer District property proceeds into the general fund account where is the evidence that the district has attempted to increase enrollment and improved our attendance rates at each and every school did we track Why students left our district to figure out ways to retain them and do we look at proposing an increase in partial tax to raise money for our district just like mil petas did they just raised their partial tax to uh get $2 million for their school district why haven't we looked into that moving over a thousand students and staff cost money the real pain will be felt when the students that we ask to move leave our district our savings that

166are projected will be drastically slashed and our deficit grows even larger where is the financial details laying out the cost of closing schools and where is the analysis on how sending students to schools with larger enrollment and would impact their learning or their well-being the district simply assumes enrollment will continue to Trend downward despite a significant number of housing being added in North San Jose if projections change will we then have to reopen the schools and then cost our budget to be even great um our budget deficit to be even greater not once will we ask if schools should be closed or if we ask how can we work together to solve the budget deficit without closing schools we only asked to select schools to close and so I ask the board to reconsider that

167especially when you're considering a top performing school like Cherrywood thank you thank you for those comments next up is K Yan [Applause] yeah I'm a proud asking and Mom uh I'm here to uh say we need three middle schools uh because if you look at the permanent classroom capacities S mountain pit mountain is about 800 so the current students the current enrollment is very healthy if we close one we will push more students to use the pple classroom right and I think the condition of those portable classroom is not as good at as the old district office if the older district office is not going good enough for our adults uh how come those portable classroom will be a option for the [Music] students okay so that's for uh Middle School uh if we have

168to um close some schools and I I support the uh Pont Middle School K option the newly added options uh because this location and uh has the capacity to grow and the uh this dream and this newly builded gy uh should make it available to more students because the KA campus will be the largest campus among this District there's no way to pick a smaller middle school and converted to a K8 impact all the students there so that's the reason but again I think we need to keep the three middle schools I shouldn't speak on behalf of cherry but I have a friend from chood and uh he wants me to say something um about his opinion so you guys already heard all the wonderful things about the chood I just want to mention the

169challenge chood is facing they don't have enough English students so some students jobed from the school because they have ch teacher teach them English they're not happy about it thank you thank you for those comments our next speaker is Jennifer Stevenson Jennifer Stevenson hi there jennif Sten I have two kids at Cherrywood I'm one of those incoming transfer parent families I came from Stratford private school this year and one of the reasons I joined was because I can walk to school it's right nearby and the community feeling and relationships that my kids would build if we move to a local public school so the idea of moving again is really upsetting I also want to note that I recognize the demographics as a challenge everywhere but statford schools are growing they actually open a couple

170Junior schools in mil pedus they're opening a high school that tells me that parents are interested in academic performance when they choose a school which is one of the factors I considered as well and so I would think that academic performance of the schools as one of the top things that you'd be looking at and Cherrywood is one of the top three in terms of the rankings your own scoring of greens and so on that have the best scores in suspension rate English learner progress Ela and math also of course as a few people have mentioned that Cherrywood is attracting students from outside the district for the Mandarin program the report today mentioned you consider closing smaller and underutilized schools chairwood is not smaller or underutilized it's again in the top three in terms of

171utilization the only three that made over 70% and 500 kids so that means that you'd be moving 500 kids and yes some of them are in a mandering program but it's still 500 kids that are being disrupted from that local school so I would have weighed that higher myself so one of the reasons I wanted to talk is that the waiting that the the committee used called something called a weighted score where it wasn't really weighted normally weight means you put more weight to more emphasis on that criteria the weighted score in that report means that criteria happened to have a ranking from 1 to 10 and so the wor school got 10 bad points instead of having two bad points like they did for something like academic performance so when you add it up

172and you have a weighted score at the top it's really misleading and our volunteers did a great job they're not data scientists so by giving them data in this way I think it is misleading I think it overweighted the three cost questions giving a score of Maximum score of 10 in the total and I urge you to reconsider that when you look at the rankings of the the school thank you thank you for those comments next speaker is AD This is highly intimidating good evening and thank you so much here your time this evening my name is Anin and I'm a parent of a first grader at Cherrywood school I myself went to Lan View and then I went to mural middle school and then I went to High School in San Jose State so

173San Jose San Jose all the way um but the reason why I'm here is to ask you to take Cherrywood off that list when I looked at the information the metrics I was very confused as Jennifer mentioned how is it that a school that's performing so well that has growing enrollment and is one of the best performing schools on this list at all I understand that cost is one of your greatest um priorities right now but to close a school that is performing so well and then also decoupling the CH the Mandarin emersion program from the school itself that makes absolutely no sense you've heard from numerous speakers now the quality of the program is based on the structure of it which is very hard to move to another campus and we also have to

174think about what makes a program successful it's the administration it's a faculty to have worked together for years to create what it is today and it's a community and to say that we're going to extract just the Mandarin students manderin merging students and place it into another school and act as if there's not going to be any disruption I feel is quite naive that disruption who knows what that's going to cause will there be dissatisfied parents who decide I'm going to pluck my student out take him to another school Mr funin just talked about the importance of enrollment if we lose enrollment because we decided the manard IM motion program can move arbitrarily I think that's going to hurt our district it's going to hurt our budget even further and so I'm here to really

175emphasize that please don't penalize a school that's performing well and penalize a program that it's excelling in its current state thank you thank you thank you for those follow the next speaker is Karen Luke Karen Luke what's name yep it's [Applause] you good evening my name is Karen Luke um I have two children currently in Bessa my daughter Rachel in the M person and saramont seventh grade and Rebecca in the maning program in seven um in fifth grade at Charwood um we're a non-heritage family that joined this program um my husb my son um was a 10th grader and he actually came to Pont Middle School too um when looking at all the reports and hearing all the data for my middle school child I heard a lot of things about you guys looked at

176presented data about where kids are coming from to go to school but nothing was mentioned about the after school programs what these schools in the area have that are unique um like Rachel's part of the wrestling team at camont and the fact that you know you have the camont wrestlers High School people coming over and working with the kids and interacting with them I've heard about them like math students coming over to the high schools my son comes over here to p m middle to help with the chief leader Academy we also got to look at what the after school programs are where these kids are going these are part of all their social networks like kids here go over to hang out the library you know real kids go over to Target those are

177all part of growing up these are why all the middle schools are very important for my younger daughter I just like to say when you're looking at the Mandarin program please don't think it's just Mandarin teachers and English only teachers these teachers all work together and through Co and virtual learning they helped you know discover that my daughter needed more assistance for her specific learning disability and these are all things that they've worked through and established in the program and they have a system that they're working together so when you're considering these um closing schools please look at everything just not like only the data that's presented from you from the consolidation committee thank you thank you for your call next speaker is Emily Emily hope Emily hope I don't have time for self inroduction

178but I just want to re the importance that um you read the 14 page white paper that Karen painstakingly prepared on how moving and dismantling Cherrywood would have a profoundly devastating impact on our Mi program and I would also reiterate link Kai's appeal for each of you to join our upcoming myc meeting on Thursday to discuss how it's impracticable to move the Mii program the fact that Cherrywood has an increasing enrollment despite the low number of Resident student is custom to the success of the program that it can attract people from other uh home schools and outside the district and like one of the board members pointed out the program is still in an infancy stage do you really want to disrupt the momentum that we have after we've only had our first cohort of

179sixth and seventh graders graduate from the program they started in 2018 and they just graduated um it will be a huge setback to the program and then suen gear um I am actually quite encouraged by the questions that the board is asking today one of the board members talked about how titlean funding um is impacted with the consolidations as a finance professional I'm deeply concerned about the financial analysis that has been done for the estimated savings it is very one-sided it talks about how much cost you can save but it doesn't consider the potential Revenue you will lose when students move to private schools if you were to close High performing schools are you sure that closing High performing schools like camon Raskin or Cherrywood will not impact our enrollment numbers like I really urge

180the board to get the Consultants to model out the potential Revenue loss to better gauge the estimated savings from each consolidation scenario that's what you've paid them to do and you need the right data to make the decision if not we'll be back here again very soon to discuss a persistent budget deficit situation thank you very much thank you for those comments next speaker is Priyanka Priyanka Priyanka hi uh good evening this is my first time uh at one of these meetings uh I have spoken at Sunnyville school district meetings before during covid I am uh today uh Sierra Middle School mom uh my son has just started sixth grade I'm also a transfer parent meaning my son has spent five years at the wonderful Cherry Chase Elementary School in Sunnyville um and at age

18140 after being divorced a few years ago I still wanted to buy my first home and the only place I could afford a home is right here in basa San Jose and I put 20 years of my life savings into buying a home here with the hope of my son having to being able to go to school here in agreement with my uh co-parent my ex-husband that we would support him going to school to sieron so now it is both heartbreaking for us as parents and for my son and many other kids like him who have transferred to these schools because copertina homes and Sun homes are simply not affordable to many many of us and so I think this is very important uh I have three main questions from what other parents brought up

182the Consulting firm's data I feel is not holistic they have only considered past data and not future Trends they have made assumptions that are not valid and not logical I have worked for a Cap Gemini a global consulting firm working with clients with big Brands and I know the transparency and hardw workk it takes to be a good consultant I do not see these Consultants as good Consultants from everything the other parents have shared with me from the way that the data was shared represented gathered collected and analyzed so I request all of you to take this with a grain of salt and I beg for more time for this work to deserve the time and attention that it gets uh I think I have only 20 seconds left so the other thing I'll say

183is enrollment data I know this is a problem however inter and intradistrict transfers have been consistantly denied and discouraged since the past four or five years and I demand why this is the case if there is low enrollment and I was part of the school uh committee or member of anything of the kind I would have done everything in my power to increase enrollment and not denied enrollment so this is my personal experience and the experience with many parents that these denied inter and intradistrict transfers and I more answers here thank you thank you thank you for those comments I I understand the emotions are all i' I remind everyone to be respectful in your commentary uh we want to have a productive conversation tonight um we're looking forward for your inputs with that we'll

184go with the next the next speaker uh called Scarlet Scarlet Rose [Applause] good evening board member teachers students and parents I'm a parent of someone that grad of three children that graduated from Noble from peont middle and peont high school I currently am a co- den leader for Scouts and I see a lot of student EVS flourish from a lot of the Bay Area Schools I have a couple questions the B School District would not renew M's CHR 's lease that was leasing the burias of Birchwood property they were paying 65,000 a month that's $780,000 a year why did the district choose to stop that Revenue where was the Birchwood yearly property Revenue allocated to will or can they sell the lands can they use the profits toward keeping the schools open what will happen

185to the Birchwood campus and other school properties that are considered to be closed in the future also the district wants the schools to consolidate without raising the teachers or the staff salary why not consolidate some of the superintendents that make 300 to 200,000 plus a year where is the transparency of where the district money is going why aren't the voices of a parent worth an hour and a half of your time aren't the future of the children worth an infinite amount of time also the advisory committee is looking for a school that has unique qualities when the fact is crystal clear that each child that goes to every school is unique look for alternative Solutions such as parcel tax and other options don't close any of our schools thank you thank you for this comment

186next speaker is Nina Nina set Nina set please good evening board members I'm a Community member I have spoken previously at the board meeting I am an alumni of both Ruskin and sieron and my parents still own a home in the area it is absolutely devastating to hear that Ruskin and sierant are on this list I can tell you right now three things I want to bring up you talk about a survey I surveyed my neighbors I got signatures from my neighbors none of my neighbors knew about this they're mostly Mo I'd say 75% of my neighbors are seniors they're homeowners people that been that have been here 30 40 and 50 years so when we talk about surveying the community I want to know who was surveyed how they were surveyed in what languages

187they were surveyed in none of my neighbors knew I only found out Labor Day weekend on next door that is appalling that is absolutely appalling that people that have lived in this community for decades had no idea and this is going to have a devastating impact what are we going to do the question I also have is why aren't we looking at Alternatives why are we not looking at Alternatives thirdly we talk about and I'm going to Echo what Bobby said and other people are saying if we close top ranking schools mark my word people will choose private I have neighbors one of my neighbors is sending their younger child to Ruskin his older sister goes to private school I can guarantee you if you close Ruskin both those kids are going to be in

188private and that is probably the case for a lot of young couples who have moved to go to top ranking schools in this District they're not going to wait around I've did I have also read research that says that the year the school closure takes place as well as the next year academic performance goes down those children need their Community they need their teachers they need everything that they have in their current schools there's absolutely no reason to close any of these schools thank you thank you for those comments um next speaker is Mrs W hello uh I grew up in the varasa school district I went to Toyon peont middle and peont hills and as a mother of the Majestic Way and the Sam saramont student I'm also a mother of an i of

189a student with the IEP and 504 plan someone on the committee mentioned earlier if anybody reached out to the community about possibly keeping all three middle schools open and the answer to that was no there was one survey and there was no communication from the district for who live in this area about the school closures for the families that live in the pedmont Middle School area we did receive a letter about the 10 million grant that was approved for the gym that we are in right now so I'm asking for you to please review the the idea of the T TK througha option versus closing a middle school siat middle school is the largest school in the district with 677 children the enrollment numbers would be higher if the district allowed for the inter District

190transfers which they stopped two years ago we you are asking for 677 kids to move which are these are the children that went through covid the third and fourth graders who had their Elementary years disrupted now you're asking to move these same kids the year of their eighth grade year which they are all looking forward to my recommendation if it means anything would to do the tk3 TK through a option with middle school pedmont and Toyon and sumerell being the options since the communities are right next door to each other and there wouldn't be much disr disruption to the neighborhood thank you thank you for those comments the next speaker Amit SE Amit oh there you go to the school district and the board thank you I appreciate this minute in this time uh thank

191you everybody and the parents for being here uh I'm a proud parent of two children at lanv elementary let me tell you something about being a parent in any Community it's not the immersion programs it's not the programs that just are there my kids are in the Indian immersion program they're in the Vietnamese camb Cambodian immersion program and the Latino immersion program and that all comes from the cohesiveness of the education system and that's provided by the Educators in those schools nothing is solely singled out as being more successful than the other the second aspect to that is when we look at the meritocracy of what we are using to make our assessments folks we're using a decision process for Consulting organization that hasn't done a good job of what we are really evaluating ourselves

192against it's very clear based just on one community in one school giving their outbursts and their comments and you know there there their feels for it that's very fair I think the second thing about this process that we need to understand is that at the end of the day we have to have awareness within our community to be participative in this process a lot of us feel left out out of this we are disjointed we are looking to you to make decisions but we're not part of that process anymore how does that make anybody feel if you go to your physician and are not part of that process this is cultivating future Benjamin Franklin said the best investment you can ever make is education it pays the highest interest look at our school districts that's

193what we want from you so consider the totality of your actions and it's repercussions in the long term that's all I ask thank you thank you for the and once again before I call our next speaker I do understand your emotions but please be respectful uh in your commentary uh we want to get positive feedback and critical input uh from the public today which is the purpose of this uh special board meeting uh with that we will um I'll call upon Susan um Wong is it the writing is not very clear it's w yeah [Applause] you hello yes uh good evening board members and um and all the neighbors my name is Susan and I'm uh living in the neighborhood of rcing sier mon and also my kids are attending TR and my program so

194today here I'm have just G out two comments about the school uh crocher here so first is about the the foundation there why we're closing because we project that the enrollment will keep going down but actually this this assumption is not solid so including today's presentation I noticed that all the data stop at 2022 because that is the lowest point of the enrollment but this number the enrollment number actually increasing for the continue two years later which means 2023 and 2024 so for this two years the L coming back and keep stable so the assumption that the L will drop further is not solid this is the first point the second point is about the Middle School So currently uh based on the data provided by the um consulting firm there are 3,000 capacity for

195the students uh we are think on but for the current uh middle school students they over 2,000 around 250 so imagine if we out one of the school which means that this 2, and uh there will be 50 students have to overow to I don't know nowhere so it's not fair for our students they have to fully pack in two schools that's not fair so uh I think that's it so that's is my point Thank you thank you thank you for those comments uh next speaker is uh J J j i e I always mess up your name not here okay all right we will move forward to our next speaker is Luna Le good evening for members my name is Luna I'm a ruscin mom in during last board meeting comments I talk about

196uh my questions with the consulting firms I'm going to not I'm not going to repeat it today tonight I want to urge you to reconsider the decision of closing one of our middle schools we only have three schools here if any one of them is closed we can't have it open back and I proposed at least to post Pond the closure and instead of contact a thoral survey of all current F fifth grade parents the survey helps up helps us understand the refence and a potential impact of closing a particular school because I heard many um Middle School parents telling us that they couldn't enroll in ceron that they send their kids to private schools and by opening that survey and see if they wanted see if we could maintain those parents in the middle

197school and enrolling the um and increasing the enrollment of the Middle School um by doing that and then also I understand that school closure may be inevitable but as many other parents already mentioned closing those top schools here made causing a decrease of the enrollment further than others um probably we will have to face this crisis or the deficit again in a few years if we made that decision so please do make a decision that PR preserves our education excellence and also keep this families and invest in our public systems thank you thank you for those comments next next speaker is Jessica buos uh my name is Jessica buos I'm a parent of a third grader at Ruskin and a seventh grader at sierant uh thank you board president Jay for raising the question concerning

198what justifies a special program I want to share again a testimonial from Jeanie aant she was the educator who led the fight for Ruskin science lab in 1995 it serves countless students for as many as sorry it has served countless students for many years since 1997 when it opened its stores this is 27 years of dedication to our children so the comment of it easily being able to relocate is offensive to me I believe this special program is a foundation of their love for stem the parent survey showed that stem was on the top choice for their preferred special programs I Believe by inspiring the love for stem and even steam very early on in their education carries into middle school and Beyond Ruskin and Sion also have multiple students who are successfully complete competing

199in math competitions their competitors include private schools like Harker bases and Challenger last year the ruscin team won at state level and went to Nationals in Math League ceron students won third and eighth place overall this is just one example of the success that have come from our established stem and science lab our science lab was and continues to be funded by our parents the community donations and fundraising and is supported by our school it has two dedicated teachers and it's a real physical building thank you thank you for those comments our next speaker is Eileen um not able to see the last name clearly L is it oh okay I [Applause] know my name is Eileen I don't have all my children are grow up so I don't have any kids go to any

200of the school here but I I'm the property taxpayer nobody get notify me of this school closure nobody did any survey you know with me and my next neighbors put out the sign say don't close San Pon they say oh what they're going to close s Pon so I that's the time I started you know getting very upset okay I am I know you you know there's a budget crisis but I'm against close any of the Middle School because we only have three middle school if we close one of the middle school that 300 the other two Middle School each school is going to absorb 300 kids do you know the traffic Pon Copley moral it's going to be very bad in the morning and when and also kids cannot walk to school those 600

201kids they cannot walk to school anymore right so the traffic is going to very bad and then when the parents are driving the kids to school parents are very stressful so the kids will not have good experience of going to school they are not going to have good spirit going to school so you and also kids are going to be late to school so you will have tness that's very bad and also I I'm for that merge school to the middle school because the parents are going to take the kids to the school they don't have to go two different places one go to one go to uh Elementary School the other one go to the other way they cannot handle it a parent cannot handle it so I hope you guys consider this okay

202thank you thank you for your comments um next speaker it says share with teachers um on this so [Music] [Applause] we can do three I good evening reset the cont 3 minutes please thank you you get three minutes to speak thank you so much good evening everyone uh we are Cherrywood teachers I'm Trisha Fam I'm Cindy Joe I'm Leu and Betty Chen we feel that we feel compelled to speak in clarify the deal immersion manding in English program Cherrywood is not comprised of two programs our students are integrated as one school we are not two separate programs yes I think cheru teachers work as a team we're not a Chinese school but a due immersion program teachers spent seven years to integrate the program to trust each other other as a real Partners trust me

203the integration was not always Joyful We had hard discussions tears and sweets and the English only teachers also benefited from this program we have lots of stories to share and you're welcome to come to us if you would like to hear any of that and if Charwood were to be closed we will have we would have start over again to build up the truck and integrated Dynamic which took years to build thank you I want to bring to your attention one of the Criterion from the advisory committee was if programs could be readily or easily replicated and um The Mandarin emerging program is not something that was built in one year two years three years it took us a full seven years for teachers to work together endlessly English teacher Mandarin teachers we switch we

204share our students our students share the teachers the this is an this is an integrated program that cannot be separated and um to hear the board to discuss questions about oh the Mi program is how many kids and the other group is how many kids is really heartbreaking for our community so please consider thinking about us as one whole school because we are a community and we welcome and invite you to come and see that we are one community and one school the lastly I'd like to bring to your attention is um two other considerations and that is what about families who have a student or a child in the Mandarin verion and another in the English program are they going to have to choose or be split up and lastly um another parent had

205spoken about Co having an impact where their seventh grader may not graduate with their eighth grade Friends next year um same situation our fourth graders this year they started kindergarten during covid it took them years to build that community of relationships with their friends and now they're going to potentially graduate in fifth grade without their friends please think about their mental health and well-being thank you thank you for thank you for those comments next speaker is uh Jin Wong Jin Shin [Music] exam hi uh good evening everyone and p m um so I'm a father of a CH student my is H to uh currently in second grade um so um my my job basically is dealing with the data every day um I heard we have a me criteria to consider how to dealing

206with this uh cost uh problem like uh we want to close the school but I don't um see anyone uh really uh talk about the cost of each individual Solutions and uh for me I see High en rment rate at the childwood I see um successful in the program at the chood um in my opinion I think we should find out a long-term solution instead of just a short-term solution like oh we just choose a a school to close uh and moreover I think emotionally every parent of a student they don't want to close their own school they like their school they love their school that's a a community and uh myself I also volunteer at the school so I have a strong emotion to the childwood um so emotionally I don't think anyone want

207to close their own school but uh we also need to talk about the data right we want we want to have a best solution to basically solve this current scenario uh short of uh funding um so we should have a more uh successful uh program in our whole district and so that we will uh attract more student let say when we talk to our neighbors we will recommend the emersion program and they will consider um enrollment to a public school instead of going to a private school or going to a Christian School um that's my point Thank you thank you for those comments our last speaker today is Vivian Vivian Zang [Applause] [Music] um today I want to speak up for Charwood so um my son has attended childhood for three years and uh he

208loves his his school and he love his friends he love his teachers you cannot imagine how happy he is every day he goes to school and even um on the holidays he tells me he wants to go to school and and um I don't think it is a good idea to create a k28 school you know for the middle schoolers they are almost as big as adults and the younger kids in um in the lower grades of elementary school they are maybe like half as big as the adults right can you imagine if you go to work every day your co-workers are twice as big as you are or if you drive on the highway the other cars are all two uh twice as big as your car it's very it's not safe right and

209and it's scary and uh the younger kids they are not only physically um less mature than the older kids and also they are mentally much less immature right so I think you do not you do not keept the uh one year old in the same school with a 10 year old right it's it is the same logic um and third I think uh you need to When You Close Cherrywood you need to uh you cannot evenly distribute all the kids to nearby schools right because you need to keep all the Mand immersion kids uh together right so it's it's going to be a lot of work so this is really very very important to consider okay thank you thank you comments thanks to everybody that spoke today thank you for being here V thank you

210for your patience I know I'm a little liberal with my timee keeping here uh I just wanted to uh hear everybody's opinion and I appreciate it thank you all for your patience also all right uh we will move on to the next item in the agenda uh review and discussion Dr Fontes this is my item if we can go to the last slide Kim oh that one right there thank you so again uh this does not conclude the board's opportunity to continue to deliberate regarding the best options for the district what we have here again is various options um that can be brought forward to the board in terms of thinking through various scenarios that may be best ins serving our students you see there you have option A which was the initial uh proposal

211that was brought forward to the committee which was consideration of closing two elementary schools and one middle school with the amount of savings that that would bring forward to the district uh again during convers ation with the committee there was the thought of a creation of a tk8 which was option b closing two elementary schools and merging an elementary school with a middle school there's a savings attached to that and as was discussed earlier this evening um there's additional investment that goes into that option to reconfigure the Middle School site and then of course uh another option here is uh to not consider any of the middle schools and to just stay focused on Elementary School sit selection and there's uh the um to meet that Savings of the 2 and a half million that

212we're trying to capture the closure of the three Elementary sites so similar to option b without reconfiguring a a middle school so we know that uh the night has gone long you've heard a lot of information um and we again though also want to hear from the board any additional information you may need that staff and I can bring to you in an upcoming meeting to help your uh continued thinking about what might be the best solution questions comments on the board um how do you feel about the time uh you still okay with the time I'm okay with I can also review information from the prior discussion that I've already captured here that the board has requested for additional information if there's anything else you want to add to that you know we can

213also bring that back to to you um what I have here is there was a question uh early on regarding Title One analysis of funding and what that impact would be and what that would look like based on different schools that might be considered I also have here um question regarding uh the cost for reconfiguration and exactly what would that look like I have here the configuration uh schematics wanting to be reviewed so you could actually see well at pedmont for example how would that physically look on site same with Sierra um I also have uh that there were questions regarding the Mandarin program and the instruction model to bring back more information on that issue are there any other uh questions yeah so um I have a couple so uh for the you know

214merging one Elementary with the Middle School U so you have you know some information you going to gather regarding what that's going to look like will that include will that just be about you know what the site itself is going to look like or what other schools would be affected uh if we were to select you know one the other so the School site selected is to the discretion of the board so what we have those we do have schematics for each Middle School we can share with you the uh amount of students it has capacity to grow to extend to the tk8 and then uh depending on the elementary sites that we want to look at we can let you know whether or not they can merge and fit appropriately or not okay also

215so we have you know three options there do we want to as a board eliminate any of those options uh and you know narrow down to two or even [Music] one or do we want to keep all three open as of right now I think U they're all on the table according to me um um very interesting point about the K8 do we we of course we have K8 or I don't know there tk8 K8 in the area that are successful I think Orchard School is one of our uh they're not our school but one of the schools in the area M that is a successful K8 program um and you know it'll be interesting to see how how that structure works out and I think that feeds into your uh uh point about presenting

216the schematics of how the campus might look visually uh in one of the two uh campuses that are shortlisted here um but definitely there's there are more more questions more um ponderings if you will more uh things maybe we didn't think about um so far I think we have got some amount of feedback from the community today um maybe we want to take some more time uh to think about those options and uh and meet again uh at a future meeting uh and come up with more questions if there are any other questions yeah go for it um yeah I had some you know just some uh maybe some responses some of the questions posed during the community or during the comment section one was about the Birchwood campus and you know kind of what

217happened there I know you went over it staff went over it briefly can you kind of explain kind of what the situation is sure yes uh birwood campus which is where the milus Christian School is currently operating from uh to be clear to our community we did not stop their lease their lease actually is still active they have another year and a half on their lease um we are still pending communication from them uh to let us know formally what their plans are ahead uh but of course it's come to our attention through our neighborhood community that they have decided to stop their school and and merge with another private school in another area and they do uh provide uh their their rent for their lease on a monthly basis and uh these last two

218um two months where rent was due they did not pay their full rent and let us know that they don't have the ability to pay uh their full rent at this time and so we are uh working to engage with them further to understand more what what their plans are in terms of um staying committed to their lease with us which was active but they are now um in breach of that contract okay thank you and then the other question you know that that I heard U our folks here ask is um just Outreach efforts you know to community at large regarding our you know process uh for consolidation so as we shared earlier um in terms of our communication Outreach uh We've we've done that through our own list serve but of course that's

219typically through our parent community and anyone else who has joined our list serve you know from CommunityWide that would receive that direct information when we looked at um opening up the committee uh knowing that we wanted to try to get as many folks involved in this uh School consolidation process uh we did reach out to council member Cohen to see if we could advertise that opportunity in his newsletter knowing his newsletter also did Outreach reach um across our community and so he uh graciously agreed and provided us space uh through that realm uh in addition to that uh we also have uh monthly District updates that we provide at the barasa citizens advisory Council which is the connection of the barasa neighborhood association and the penitencia uh Creek Association and we've been sharing updates there

220regarding our budget and School consolidation process so um sorry um so one question uh that came to mind is uh do we need to do we need to have this kind of a big bang approach of uh either closing three Elementary or uh you know two plus you know doing all those things can we model it in such a way that you know we we uh start with something you know whatever the option is maybe uh create a TK tk8 model or something like that and see how how it proceeds and then bring the next option in um is that I I know that we have a we have a timeline on it we have um the county breathing down our nexts uh as far as the budget is concerned uh but you know to

221somewhat soften the blow so to speak um is there any kind of option any kind of movement uh within that um within what we decided uh as as a as a board to uh to to do this um uh you know two Elementary and one middle um at the time uh can we can is there any movement any flexibility in the way we can structure that so you're asking like a phased approach yes okay so again our remember that our current budget has already accounted for 2 A5 million in savings that goes into our multi-year projection this year and the county um you know they've uh are monitoring our decision- making around the cost savings that we need to do for the $6 million um they're monitoring this process they have requested that the once

222the board received the report from the committee that they receive a copy of that committee report um just to know that we're moving along um based on the recommendations that our budget stabilization committee has made and we're working through all of those recommendations as we've said in the past um because I believe this question was asked um a few board meetings ago in terms of the timeline we have 2 and a half million that we need to account for and we would need to find it in other avenues um so in terms of a phased approach I would have to ask Mr Franklin to uh calculate what that would look like because there will be a remaining balance that we will need to find reductions for that balance in other areas and then just keeping

223in mind that 90% of our our budget is in um Staffing cost which is also services to students too so we we want to be mindful of that um the reason I asked that question is there multiple school districts um in our County facing similar challenges we Alam rock that went through that process Franklin McKinley uh is one more um and I I don't know what's going to come off uh East Side there also in the in a you know budget ho from from what I understand um the high school district uh I'm sure that the count is looking at all those things looking at all these school districts uh facing these challenges uh um and from their perspective you know it's um we need to have a balanced budget we need to have these

224uh cost savings and ensure our reserves are healthy and so on uh but if we have so many so many school districts MH uh doing the same thing um we have so much of you know open property uh out there we have um there's there's so many things um to consider just check just um just not from from um from a financial perspective we need to look at the community uh as well because it's affecting uh our parents and our students and and so on so uh you know is there any any kind of a leway the community the the um County can give us um and they work with us and they work with multiple school districts and and U you know help us you know like I said soften the blow a little

225bit see if approach can work is there something um that we can do all I'm just trying to trying to see if and I'll transition to Mr Franklin so you can share with you the County's review process uh because I know in terms of our um submission of our budget you have three qualification levels a positive certification a qualified certification and a negative certification each level of certification comes with uh different um expectations uh from the state the county is the overseer of the state so these are state regulations that they are implementing as they review every school district's budget right I think I I saw that in one of the slides that that we um without this um savings we run the risk of a state takeover is that is that uh something and

226Mr Frank can explain that process more yeah so it's a good question so if we don't realize that $25 million in savings plus the additional savings from declining enrollment we would have to realize those Savings in some other way so if we decided to go with the phase in approach and we only generate a million dollars in savings from school consolidation we would have to find that million and a half elsewhere in the budget um that would be outside of our teaching staff so um we went through this process currently and if we do not with the two with all of the savings that I showed in the multi-year projection that maintains a positive budget certification barely at the 3% so if we do not have the full amount of savings as shown in the

227multi-year we would most likely skip qualified certification and be directly a negative certification not able to meet our obligations for next year um that just varies depending on how much savings we would find but um and then it would be risk of fiscal solvency issues as soon as our cash is depleted okay thank you so I think multi-year projection is is a key uh factor is what what they're looking at right and definitely when you're not able to meet that minimum 3% Reserve uh you know the level that certification status adjust whether that's in your immediate year year two or year three so so could you explain further um Mr Franklin if that amount um is not feasible in year three what would our potential status be so if we were not meeting Financial Obligations

228in year three would would be in qualified status so if we were able to meet the 3% in year two we would still theoretically have some time however um you know the the county would put a lot of restrictions on us they would give us um you know certain parameters that we would be required to meet within the the certification process and um and a lot of these things are projected savings and so they could potentially say that they don't believe those that those savings will uh materialize and could change our certification anyhow to negative certification um so that that's definitely a possibility and the other piece too is when we've seen uh school districts find themselves in that negative certification status which comes after the June adopted budget oftentimes um what we've seen is

229the county comes back and lets you know now you need to make that difference of reductions by October they don't give you a longer length of time um that's typically how those reductions uh when they see that those reductions weren't previously made that they have a greater sense of urgency that they need to be made before you move further in to your next fiscal year yeah so a reminder back a year ago we had a conditionally approved budget or two years ago we had conditionally approved budget the county required us to come up with a budget stabilization plan it had to be submitted to them by October 8th for them to approve our budget um as is with those projected um reductions in the budget and committing to then detailing what those reductions would be

230and when they would be implemented and then they're ensuring that we're staying on that timeline so that's the monitoring that they've been doing um throughout this time um get a we did get a conditional um that was the reason the board took that uh resolution for the $6 million reduction thank you for reminding me that I do recall uh discussing uh as there was some some talk about um parcel tax um potentially adding up uh paral tax measure you know if if we do you know look into that what what amount of partial tax would satisfy our um our budget hold you would need a a pretty high figure and I'll let Kevin talk about that um he did briefly mention during his presentation that we did attempt to raise a current parcel tax um

231that was uh two years ago when we when it was up for renewal at that time we did Community polling um we had a service provider come and do the polling for us to see uh at that time we were even just looking for an additional $20 we thought we could raise the parcel tax from current $79 to $99 which would have been incredibly helpful for our district um unfortunately to pass a parcel tax you need 2/3 vote in favor for that unlike a bond right so there's a higher threshold of positive votes that you need to gain that revenue and the polling came well under what would be required to pass and that data was presented to the board and was shared with you because you needed to take action on the amount that

232you were willing to go out for for that parcel tax so um since that didn't PLL favorably but the renewal did people felt comfortable with continuing with the the $79 allotment we moved forward with with that amount versus risking the total amount and it not passing in light of uh where we are right now in light of all this uh all the talk about closure and consolidation um do you envision um support from the community um there would have to be polling done again that isn't anything that we could uh really um take a guess on we would have to PLL the community to see what that level of Interest was and now we're off an election cycle corre so remember that um to do a special election we would occur that entire cost for

233that um um I think did didn't East Side I have a have a me ballot measure for their H Tax I I didn't track it I don't know whether it passed or no they had a $49 parcel tax in this election cycle I'm not sure how how it it faed I need to check the um check how it supported but um that would have been somewhat helpful and you did have a question um which I didn't answer about uh what would that dollar value be for a parcel tax to um cover yeah so currently the the current parcel tax is $79 per parcel and it brings in approximately $1.7 million so it would need to be somewhere similar to that to raise um$ two and half to $3 million so it' have to be somewhere

234around you know $60 at least per parcel potentially higher um and then what we've been seeing too is that the number of uh opt out because um seniors um have the ability to opt out of the parcel tax as the community ages we see a lot more uh opt outs and waivers um and then just a reminder that the last um time we put the parcel tax on the ballot which was special election cost over a million dollars it was about $1.2 million so essentially that utilized almost the whole first year um renewal um amount just to be able to put that on the ballot for Renewal Tris oh no I was just going to say that yeah that's uh even just to put on the ballot it's several right like I was going to

235say several million so that's and that's potential that you we might not get that back so if if we you know roll the dice uh and you know it doesn't pass then we're out that money so now we're in in a deeper deficit all right so um what's the consensus if you uh do miss Bo sorry I interupting go ahead um I think you to share my mic your mic is not working is it on yeah it's on it's on no yeah anyway regarding the board considerations there are three options there shall we as a board look at it as three options or shall we look at it as two options yes so that was that was uh you know what I wanted to kind of uh discuss I think that you know we from

236our discussions we're looking at more like option A and B and C we haven't really discussed unless um there's a you know there are board members who are in favor of keeping option C on board but I think at least we could narrow it down right I mean it's a difficult decision regardless but I think narrowing down from three to two would be a kind of a step you know in the right direction I agree with that that option A is um that's my opinion is should if we want to consider all three but for me personally um option A is out let see minut so I was actually thinking A and B and then C is out I'm still open to hearing all of them but I think going back well first of all

237I want to acknowledge U there's a few speakers here I think that spoke I want to acknowledge the uh that the passion that that they gave uh there's a lot of advocacy for for one school I know no one wants to close their own neighborhood schools or the schools where the kids attend to um so we all of us up here we recognize that uh but on that same note I also want to acknowledge the hard work and all the time that was spent and given towards uh the recommendations for uh the schools that will be considered for potential closure closure or consolidation by the the committee uh out of all the 10 elementary schools um I think the the committee got it right with the five schools for discussion um I think the the

238ranking um is still up for discussion and um but when it comes to that I I think I'm not sure where the board stands with it but I think those should be the five schools that we should focus on uh for discussion um the ranking I know is still up in the air but at a minimum I think that's what we should focus on going forward unless uh there's other schools that the board wants to consider or schools on the list that the board is really admit against at a minimum I think those are the five schools out of the 10 elementary schools that we should consider right so um thank you thank you for your just have yeah so U I agree except you know so I I don't think though you know I

239asked this question previously that that really considers option b so if we do like a combined middle school with an uh you know basically TK to8 school that would affect possibly schools that are not on the list is that what I heard correctly from earlier not necessarily no so we could we could still keep that option and then keep the schools on the list yes MH those would be the schools you would consider for merger so while I thinking about that from my my perspective um uh I'm not inclined to close any of our middle schools um at this time uh you know primarily due to the the size of the campus so for for me closing a middle school um would not be uh I would not not be in favor for that favor

240of doing that that's my uh perspective I do like the um and definitely I want to get more data on uh how the tk8 model will work uh specifically uh talking about stem or um any any any um uh what is it called targeted uh program in in that particular TKA School um so option b looks to me looks okay I mean there's not nothing is okay don't don't don't get me wrong um there's nothing nothing okay with uh this whole process but um if we had to um capitalize on some of the uh you know uh money that um additional funding and things like that um maybe combining to uh elementary schools and then creating a tk8 model might be a good way to go uh that's that's my um opinion my opinion is

241um to keep option b as something that we can really think about I'm not in favor of closing three elementary schools certainly not even one middle school so it seems seems to me that the only one that would be even though it's hard I'm a former educator myself so I know this is difficult very difficult all of us in here will experience this as a very difficult decision action B seems to be for me personally seems to be something that I can really think about I don't like it either way but we are facing a situation that's a a very difficult situation for all of us so with option b it says close two Elementary and merge one Elementary with a mill that would mean three Elementary we impacting three Elementary correct um is that

242your understanding too so we we will end up impacting three Elementary anyway I will end up backing up sorry what so with option b um the uh it's a is to close two Elementary and merging one Elementary with the middle yes in back three three elementary schools yes so you uh Miss boak if I heard you right so you do not want to close three elementary schools but you're okay to merge close okay I'm okay with the merging of the TK to a middle school so um with the TKA um is there is there a scope oh gosh where is my where's the list is there a scope of bringing in two elementary schools into TK is is a space um today and for future growth that could be an option depending on the Middle

243School site so that's information we can bring back to you so since the board all seems to have an interest in learning more about tk8 we can bring all of that data and answer those questions back and definitely in that you know we need to see the traffic impact study e and all that whatever that goes along with it uh traffic is definitely a big concern I I agree with the uh uh uh with the community as communities concern surrounding that and and there's no winning with with that model anyway in any of us any of our middle schools because um two of them are in thare one is in the middle of the uh middle of the community uh with multiple you know single family homes in the area trust me oh yeah no

244so yeah I got confused so I was thinking option b was merging basically three elementes with the middle school that wouldn't have to be the case right so no we we definitely don't have space to do that okay yeah no no so I was confused yeah I think yeah that's and I I I don't know if U the rest of the board agrees maybe that's the option we should focus so that's the one we kind of do seem to agree on that that that's the one option but do we want to keep another option open is basically I guess my my question but we don't agree on which which of the other two we should keep open uh if we do that from my perspective and this is my this is uh just from me

245is uh I I'm not inclined to to touch any of the three middle schools we only have three middle schools here um and it'll be a good idea for future growth to keep them open active um and you know definitely actively look at improving enrollment um whatever we need to do that so so my question is so so you know if we don't touch we don't have a huge you know Middle School enrollment now so in the future is that going to you know if we don't have kind of students feeding into is is is the middle school that's combined in TK to 8 is that just going to become an elementary school uh because you know we don't have enough students kind of feeding into it or is the you know TK to five

246you know going to then dominate more than you know as the because right they're all middle school at the middle school level we don't have a whole lot of students same at the elementary level right so to me it feels like we should make some kind of reduction at at the middle school level as well and tomorrow evening we'll have our enrollment projections that'll go through the next few years it'll let you see what those numbers start to look like for our three middle schools so whatever we besides so you know another one of my priorities besides uh you know impacting students uh you know obviously having schools closed having students separate from uh not only from the campus but from you know potentially from their classmates that they've been with you know for maybe

247several years that's disruptive to the students um but also I I another priority I have is to not have to go through this anytime in the near future um so and you know people have asked the question about you know the facilities and we'll get to that those discussions later once we figure out you know what sites are going to be Consolidated and what facilities will be vacant um but um so one part of the facility to is you know we don't know the future first of all we can't use so say we were to sell you know a site a School site that closes we can't use that funding for uh general fund so we can't use it for uh keeping our programs paying our staff that kind of thing but also we don't

248know in 20 years what the needs of the district are going to be that's why uh we're not as a board I know we're not in favor of selling facilities because we don't know right and you know in 20 years say we have growth something happens in this area that you know there's a student population boom and can you can you imagine right real estate how it's gone you know during the last 20 years what it's going to go like uh in another 20 years so we want to preserve those sites keep them uh as part of the school district's inventory so just to kind of answer that kind of question that's one of my priorities is to uh what I forgot what I was saying but anyway causes a little disruption and make sure

249we don't have this happen anytime in the future thank you so it looks like we we probably need to get get to see some more data from your side so definitely and I have that here and I do just want to share with the board that in the meantime in your folders uh under appendix a yes uh if you go to the October 17th meeting that the committee had you will find there uh the schematics that were shared with them for K K8 configuration so that'll give you an opportunity to start taking a look at what the committee saw and then uh our team will also bring back additional information based on your questions this evening page number it's the ooco it's up at the top corner you see the dates at the top so

250you look for the October 17th meeting yes it's towards the the end yeah it's towards the end uh page 2117 so as far as options B is it possible for us to get scenarios of what could potentially happen for example if uh let's say seront were to merge with an elementary school logistically it would probably make more sense for it to merge with Ruskin since it's right there so Ruskin would be the school set for closure correct potentially it's to the board's discretion uh you've got uh the sites that feed into um sierant that are on the list include Ruskin and Cherrywood okay so it'll probably be one of those two schools if it was submerged to a TK througha and same with um probably two Elementary sites are Toyon and Summerdale correct okay so

251then if we're to go with option b I just want to be clear potentially those will be the schools that will be slated for closure then option b also sorry trusting so we if we uh do um we choose for example pedmont like you said in the example uh we have the two schools that feed into pedmont um two Elementary School that feed into p and then we need to identify a third school too correct so not necessarily they don't have to be in that same area they can not the same area I'm saying so we actually so for pedmont Middle School we have Toyon and Summerdale that feed completely in but we also have students from Vincy Park and Noble that also come to pedmont oh interesting right yeah those are two locations where

252students split between two different middle schools where they attend so it would be one School uh combining with with pedmont so the whole school would then move like say if it was like say Toyon they would all the students would come so that's where we'll bring back capacity number numbers to you to let you know how many students we would be able to um hold within that facility space and then with the um the boundary discussions that's why we have here Tom Williams to he knows all of our boundaries that's why we can show you where um you know our Vincy Park students attend and the area that the noble students attend as well because that'll come into play uh once we determine uh if we are going to do a K8 what's that maximum

253capacity that we want to hold in that school which may require shifting students to their next middle school so Vincy Park splits between pedmont middle school and murill and then um uh Noble splits between pedmont and sier uh I have a question is Summerdale a tan school it is okay of the schools on your the list of the five Toyon Summerdale and Lan view are title one and then with the middle schools pedmont middle school and Marill are Title One middle schools so one one piece of information I wanted to say and I don't know if I missed it you know among the materials is you have data showing kind of where students live what neighborhoods what streets they live in so we we have it by a a scattergram and so that's at the

254front of your binder you know it's kind of hard to see but we can spend some time going over this the next time so that kind of lets you know where the students are clustered is it possible to put it up there yeah we I so we can she doesn't have that on her slide so these are all your resources but we can review that more closely um Tom Williams put these together for you there's one more thing so sorry trust I I just want to hang on this option de point a little bit I I want to I think a l of thread on that somewhere because uh you're talking about merging one Elementary School with a middle school so let's let's take the um what is it called the data that we have

255right so we have um so since we pedon let's talk about pedon we have uh toon and suale that Fe fedmont um so if if you're saying merging one Elementary with a middle school at least one at least one MH so let's say if we take two elementary schools to merge with a middle school to form a tk8 right we will worry about the capacity later M then we have we are now Consolidated or closed two middle schools Two element you're consolidating two elementaries into the middle okay and you would still have one more Elementary that you would uh outline for closure okay so so it will be a total of three schools correct uh regardless right correct I I also have another question regarding title um Title One students what is the percentage of

256Northwood and Majestic Way so they are not designated Title One no they're not but do they they do have our for our unduplicated count of students and you do have that in your um resources here I'll have to look it up but we do have it for every school so we have a list here for you on how many students for each site are on free and reduced lunch capacity because that was something that the committee looked at they also looked at how many Foster youth each site has Etc the reason I'm asking is because um I really do not want to lose the title one students who are at present receiving these funds if if um at any event that those school one of those SCH should be closed yeah that's a good point

257Point yeah and I have that as an item of requests from the board to bring back MH thank you thank you so still trusty new please go ahead I just had a question about option one more question does that potentially will cause a boundary change or can we do it without a boundary change because we've experienced this in the past and this this is not an issue that we've addressed with the the community if we were to go with option b we may have to do a boundary change right uh you may um again it depends on the middle school that's selected um you know and what that what that overall capacity will be so it depends because we have some sites that are are small in terms of student enrollment where that whole school

258could merge in without a boundary boundary change they're just changing from their current site location to another um it's it's looking at what that that middle school capacity is going to be that might adjust those boundary changes well I'll just give an example if we were to go with sierant with option b sier Mon's boundaries will shrink correct and that will cause a whole different kind of worms for parents correct I just want to put that up there yeah and the reason for that is because you're merging larger School sites okay so that that's the reason for for that adjustment and that's where I go back to saying it depends on the Middle School location that's selected and the amount of capacity that you have for students that would then trigger the boundary changes that

259are needed okay thank you I would like to point out also that this evening someone had mentioned who spoke earlier regarding the title One funds at toon and um if these students should be dispersed that they will lose those funds but if these students are um reconfigured into a school that's also receiving these funds then that should not be a problem correct and potentially they will probably have more pattle One funds um coming to them depending on the situation potentially right and then yeah it it depends on the configuration of the schools but yeah if two Title One elementaries merge with the title one middle then yeah theoretically the the percentage would be higher and there'd be more resources the reason I ask is that there are some uh uh programs in uh Toyon reading

260Intervention Program that is funded using title one uh and you know my hope is with with two tile one schools merging that program gets enhanced you know we can get more more resour sources focused on that uh so that that's that's a good option to have um the one thing I wanted to mention I looking at the schematics I don't know whether it's possible to put it up there but um looking at the layout of the campuses between pount and um and sount for a tk8 kind of a model the layout of um pon pon seems to be a little bit more conducive because they're um they from what I can see there school what is the classrooms are the perimeter uh most of the classrooms are in the perimeter which means uh you could

261potentially DeMark um Elementary and midle can we can keep them separated um from each other not having to cross paths uh during the school day uh compared to S on it's one one building um with with uh different classrooms on the sides so I I like the if we decide to go with the TKA configuration um from my perspective pmon looks more attractive pmon or pmon looks more attractive because the classrooms are on the perimeter so if we I apologize sorry if we we can we can have Elementary on one side and middle on the other that's what I'm looking at I have a another concern if we are this is just a scenario if L land view is to be closed um those students are those students can transfer into other Majestic Way or

262Northwood am I correct so we have yes those are the two would be the two near nearest schools would that be enough for those students who are receiving Title One funds to receive it while they're over there so that's analysis we have to bring back to you I'm worried about that because I care about these students that are receiving these funds they need the help so one of my concerns is you know in discussing this school I know that of all the middle schools this is the one that kind of Performing uh not as high as the other ones uh and same with kind of the elementary schools that we're looking at this so we're going to create one huge underperforming school that's kind of my concern right so we don't want to I don't

263know if we want to find ourselves in that situation where we sent all the you know underperforming students to one school well I think what needs to be thought about there is maximizing the resources that they'll gain in that consolidation process as you talked about intervention support and other programming that they need okay and then um so besides that I think you know there should be something extra right so if it's this school so siron has uh you know they have the Mandarin immersion program uh kind of going there uh perhaps something else some other incentive for parents to want to send their their kids here uh and not just you know because we get extra resources because the students are you know underperforming so stem was one of the options like stem Academy type

264of a thing was one the options I I would be interested in looking at how how that could work and what would be the cost associated with it and you know practically speaking it may not be the easiest thing to do to bring up a k school at a in a such a short time [Music] um and also make it a STEM Academy type of uh scope so I'd be really interested in seeing how uh that can we plan how how how you envision that um happening all right so we seem to be all focusing on the tk8 um option option b is that is that um safe to say that or I like the whole idea actually of the reconfiguring a middle school um so that would mean that would mean um an elementary

265school going into that particular School and you had mentioned um trusty shasan about your preference and that preference is the pedmont Middle School to reconfigure I'd like to still uh keep seron as an option so both schools obviously I think you know the more options we have the better to reconfigure right yes yeah okay to both those two schools then oh just to just to uh qualify my comments I was looking at the schematics specifically and my comments were based on um you know visualization of how we can separate out K5 and uh 68 uh that is one only thing and I'm not suggesting that we should do that but um I just I just like the layout of of pedmont as a possible tk8 canas yeah there are multiple um model options that were

266put together so we can walk through each one so you can see them all and get a better understanding of what that breakdown is all right so where we go from here I think we have uh spoken in length about at length about a lot of the options do we U take this back sleep on it and meet again um there a future meeting a future special meeting M to discuss some of the uh questions that you post and then if you give us a chance to reflect upon what we have learned today does it sound yes I have all the information we need yes okay any other questions Miss um I see you thinking about something I am always thinking I don't have any more questions I'll think some more for sure yes me

267too good all right trone do you have anything Perfect all righty so my agenda is buried here somewhere there you go I got you oh all right so all right now we move to adjournment so does this mean does this mean we have we might come up with a potential date for another special meeting to discuss another study session discuss the options and also get some of these questions answered yes uh so for tonight's meeting this is it entertain a motion for adjournment if there are no other questions I move that we adjourn second we moved in second all those in favor say I I I I meeting adjourned at 10:23 p.m. thank you so much for your attendance thank you for your patience today really appreciate it a