CUSD Board aMeeting 4-15-26/2

001Carlsbad's ASB is planning to bring back therapy dogs at the end of this April to bring further support with the stress of AP tests approaching. They are also planning Lancer Market, a market where students with small businesses can sell their products at school for other students to buy. Lancers ASB is also finishing up planning prom including prom court, prom proposal contest, and its spirit week. At Carlsbad Village Academy and Carlsbad Seaside Academy, they're starting off their fourth quarter with a lot of positive momentum. At Carlsbad Village Academy, the school welcomed eight new students to begin the quarter. CVA also hosted its WASC midterm, which went smoothly and reflected the continued work happening on campus to support students. Looking ahead, CVA seniors visited Mira Costa College today, UC Santa Cruz, and SDSU. Seaside will also be

002hosting its WASC midterm visit on Wednesday, April 22nd as a part of its ongoing work to reflect on and strengthen the program. This Saturday, April 18th from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., both schools will come together for a community service event with the organization Sleep in Heavenly Peace. This group builds and delivers beds to foster youth and families in need, helping ensure that no child has to sleep on the floor. With materials donated by the Carlsbad Charitable Foundation, students, staff, and volunteers will work together to build 27 beds in just a few hours. That's all. Oh, awesome. Good job, Chloe. Thank you. We now move on to item 6.2 by CUC PTA president. Okay. Looks like she might not be here today. And thank you. We now move on to item 6.3. Report by the

003CEO of the Carlsbad Ed Foundation. Okay, not here. We now move on to item 6.4, report by La Union president. Please come to the podium. You'll have 5 minutes to speak. Good evening. It's great to see the sea of orange behind me. Uh this is not my agenda item, this a separate agenda item, but I like seeing all the La Union representatives here. Um just wanted to read an email from Megan Arias on April 3rd um regarding one of our classified employees. Uh we are proud to announce that Brianna Mallard at Excuse me. Athletic trainer at Carlsbad High School has been selected as one of our San Diego County classified school employees of the year for 2026-2027. Ms. Mallard, along with three other county honorees, has been nominated to represent San Diego County in the

004California Depar- Department of Education statewide Sorry. statewide competition. State winners will be announced later this April. We are honored to celebrate one of our outstanding classified employees with this well-deserved recognition. Thank you. Thank you. We now move on to item 6.5, report by CUTA president. Please come to the podium. You'll have 5 minutes to speak. Good evening. Good evening, Madam President and members of the board. I'm Rachel Marinucci. I'm the president of Carlsbad Unified Teachers Association, but tonight I'm here as the voice of an entire site full of teachers who today walked into their classrooms and were met with legal notification that feels less like a public record and more like a personal invasion. I want to speak plainly about the climate this creates. For a teacher, receiving a CPRA request is a terrifying experience.

005These are professionals who dedicate their lives to students and suddenly they are told that their private phones, personal emails, and their professional communications are being scrutinized. Even we've done nothing wrong, the psychological weight of being investigated is a burden no educator should have to carry while trying to teach our children. They are feeling a profound sense of gotcha politics that has nothing to do with student outcomes and everything to do with harassment. This brings me to a critical point regarding the handling of these results. Currently, there's compounded fear because the board has decided to post these the results of these searches, including names and potentially out of context communications publicly on the district website. I want to be very clear, the CPRA requires the district to produce records to a requester. It does not require

006the district to publish them to the world. By choosing to post these results online, the district is not just being transparent, it is providing a platform for the public harassment of its own employees. It invites keyboard warriors to take snippets of a teacher's life and weaponize them. This is not a hypothetical. For some of our teachers, it's a reality. The union is paying for one such teacher to use DeleteMe due to threats to her safety and that of her children who also attend school in the district. We're asking this board to reverse its policy, and we're asking them to cease hosting records on a public-facing website and protect the professional dignity and the safety of the staff that make this district run. Transparency should be a tool for good government, not a weapon used to

007intimidate teachers. We're asking you to show our members that you value their privacy as much as you value the law. Let's protect the people who protect our students. Thank you. Dr. Norman, will you follow up with our speaker? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. We now move on to item 6.6, Superintendent's Report, Dr. Andrea Norman. Thank you, President Ward. This is such an exciting time of the year with so many wonderful activities happening across our district. I've had the pleasure of visiting several sites along with our trustees and I do want to give a shout-out to our trustees. A lot of them take their vacation time snippets in between their work day and um they take a lot of time out of their schedule to go visit our sites and see the great work of our

008classified and certificated um employees. Um I'm looking forward to attending the CHS musical Something Rotten later this month. I recently visited AOMS with Trustee Verbeth and had the opportunity to walk through the newly opened administrative building. I'm not going to steal your thunder, Dr. Knight. I know you're talking about that later, but it includes several new classrooms. My sincere thanks to the staff for their flexibility and patience throughout the construction and the recent transition. There is still more work ahead at the site and we will continue to keep everyone updated on our progress there. I'd like to extend a special thank you to all the students who serve on the Superintendent's Student Advisory Committee. We have more than 42 students who join us five times a year and their insight into what's happening on our

009campuses is incredibly valuable. I'm especially grateful for their commitment to attending these meetings early in the morning even before school starts. As their paths differ, they all share a strong sense of readiness for whatever comes next. That speaks volumes about the support and opportunities provided by our classified and certificated staff as well as our leadership team. Thank you all for helping make these experiences possible for all of our students. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Narman. We now move on to part seven, public comment non-agenda items. Item 7.1, public comment regarding non-agendized topics that lie within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board. This is the time that the members of the public have the opportunity to address the board on any non-agendized item that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board. We have

010five blue cards that have been received. And in order to allow speakers to present their comments and ensure we are able to properly attend to the business of the board per bylaw 9323, public comments will be limited to 20 minutes. This means each speaker will have 3 minutes. When I call your name, please come to the podium, state your name, and indicate whether or not you live within the boundaries of the school district. The first speaker will be Crystal Thomas followed by Emma Herbert and followed by Carson Johnston. Crystal Thomas is first. Hi. I'm I do live within the um school district. And I'm here on behalf of Clean Earth for I am a volunteer. This is the letter describing why they would like you to reconsider using toxic pesticides. Um it's my understanding that

011the school >> discussed beforehand and so the organization said, "Well, they they said they agreed and then it seemed odd that that they still went about with these toxins. And you know, you're all educated. So, I don't need to tell you anything at all about the risks. I just wanted to make um two points really quickly. Um one of them is that even though pesticides affect all of us, the ones that are most vulnerable are our young children. And it can cause exposure can cause a slew of health problems um that affect them their whole lives, but also since uh since some of them are um neurotoxins, they actually affect the brain development and cause behavioral problems, and that is an issue that affects everyone. Um and then the other quick point I wanted to

012make is just that no creature exists in isolation. And we're all a part of complex ecosystems. And in our area specifically, it's very unique and remarkable our our ecosystems are. And so if we use the the toxic pesticides, we we can't really control what is poisoned and and who isn't. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. President Norman >> Emma May I make a May I make a May I make a over here? Oh, sorry. >> May I make a request that the superintendent follow up with the last speaker? Thank you. Emma Hello. I do live in the CUSD. Say your last name for me. Hebert Hebert. I'm sorry I said it wrong. >> good. Okay. Good evening, Dr. Norman and members of the board. My name is Emma Hebert. I'm an eighth grader at Calavera

013Hills Middle School. I am here tonight to propose a new elective course called One Size Fits All. This class would be open to all grade levels in middle school and would focus on self-worth, personal care, hygiene, and media literacy. While the class would be available to everyone, boys and girls would participate in separate sections so students could feel more comfortable and respected while talking when talking about personal topics. Middle and high school are very important years of a student's life. During this time, students go through big physical changes, feel more social pressure, and exposed to social media more than ever. A lot of students struggle quietly with body image and insecurity. These struggles can affect confidence, participation in class, attendance, and overall academic performance. Even though schools offer health classes, they usually focus mostly on

014biology and move quickly through sensitive topics. Students are given information, but they don't always have the space to really talk about it, ask questions, or build confidence around it. One-size-fits-all would go beyond just biology. It would combine structured lessons and guided discussions. The structured part of this course would include education on hygiene routine and understanding unrealistic beauty standards. This discussion part would allow students ask anonymous questions and participate in small group conversations. This balance would make sure that the class stays educational while also being supportive. The course would not replace academic learning, it would actually strengthen it. When students feel comfortable in their own bodies and confident in themselves, they are more likely to engage in class, participate in activities, and do well academically. Supporting students' well-being is not separate from academic success. To make

015this class possible, current health or counseling staff could help develop this curriculum. And the course could count as a general elective. A pilot version could even be tested with one grade level before expanding it school-wide. This proposal is not about creating a feelings class, it's about proactive education. It is about giving students the tools they need to understand identity, hygiene, and self-confidence. During some of the most important years of their lives. If we want students to succeed academically, socially, and emotionally, we have to give them more than textbooks. We have to give them confidence. Thank you. Thank you, Emma. And Dr. Norman, you want to follow up with that? All right, Carson is next. Good evening, Dr. Norman, trustees, and staff. My name is Carson Johnston. I'm an eighth grader at Calavera Hills Middle School.

016I am here tonight because I firmly believe our school restrooms need a simple but very important change, which is to install urinal dividers in the boys' restroom. This change would provide much-needed safety and privacy and lessen the embarrassment and discomfort for male students. I know this might seem like a small yet minor change, but privacy matters and it should be uh considered this change. This change would help boys using the urinals feel more private and less uncomfortable while using the restroom. This should not be costly that addition, but it would show that the school districts care about our privacy and well-being. Our school should be should always feel safe, respected, and not have to worry or feel stressed about using the restroom. You Adding urinal dividers would be a small yet impactful change to our

017schools, which would create a big difference for the students. Thank you for listening and talking and taking the time to this evening to consider this proposal. This matter is very important to fellow students and me as our privacy and safety matters. Thank you. Thank you, Carson. You want to follow up with him? Fantastic. Okay, Yusef Miller is next followed by Nakai Wilson. He's here. He's just probably in the back. Yusef. No, he's here. One of 15-second delay, so he just heard his name. Oh, okay. There's a delay in the hallway. There he is. Good evening. My name is Yousef Miller with the North County NAACP and the North County Equity and Justice Coalition. And I just want to say in terms of equity and justice, just yesterday the city council did a resolution on anti-bullying.

018And I think that should be wing beneath our wings in this situation here where we have kids that we have to take care of. Kids that are of all persuasions, all backgrounds, all differences need to be protected no matter who they are. And that is up to us to take care of the most precious treasure that parents can send to these schools, which are our children. When we look at what's going on, not only here in Carlsbad, but North County coastal, inland, South Bay, East County, things are are really they come to a head during certain months. For example, I'm dealing with about four or five instance that happened because of Black History Month. Then when Latino uh History Month comes up, it's going to be the same thing. Asian History Month, Asian Pacific, it's

019going to be the same thing. We need to get ahead of this and make our policy strong, make our policies effective, make the sure the policy the rubber meets the road so people know that there's consequences for being uh showing bigotry, attacking, being a violent to people because of their heritage and where they come from. We cannot accept this. We need to raise and develop our children so that they can fit into a diverse world. There's a diverse world out there. We're sending them to that world and here is where we can make a difference on how they see other people in their class, other adults, and other children. And hopefully to be a model, to be a model in in Carlsbad to all the other places that are having issues. These issues need to

020be resolved now because uh recently we had a fight we had a fight, but those fights in other cities and other states turn into something life-threatening. Luckily, we're not on the news for something like that. But we have an opportunity to mitigate that. We have an opportunity to educate. We have an opportunity to develop youth to understand and appreciate differences, to celebrate differences, and realize that someone's difference is not an attack on our self. It is actually celebration of the diversity in human beings, the way we eat, the way we talk, the way we pray, the way we look, our hair, our lips, our nose, our eyes. All of that stuff is the beauty of the human species. And we can come together and make sure that our children can replace us better suited to

021deal with that than we are. We have in in a lot of areas, in a lot of ways, we have failed our children. And I want to make sure that now that we're aware of this failure, this misstep, this gray area, we fill it in and make sure that these parents feel safe when their kids come under under your care and under our care, I would say in general, that their children will be will come back unharmed, unassaulted, and hopefully living and thriving. Lastly, I would say, um, on another topic, I am so happy and thrilled to see so much labor in the house. Nakaya Wilson Good evening, President, board members, and Superintendent. My name is Nakaya Wilson and I am a resident of Carlsbad and a parent of children currently attending school within the

022district. I want to begin by acknowledging the opportunities that exist here. Carlsbad is a beautiful community and families choose to live here with the expectation of a high standard of education and support for their children. However, over the past two school years, I have increasing I have become increasingly concerned about the level of professionalism not only at the school site level, but also at the district level. There have been multiple instances where I have had to make repeated requests for matters for um for There have been multiple instances where I've had to make where I've have had to make repeated requests for matters appropriately the first time. Instead, I have found myself spending significant time navigating the system, being redirected from one staff member to another in order to obtain clarity, answers, or resolution. That

023is not sustainable for families, and it is not reflective of the standard this district represents publicly. When families invest in this community financially, emotionally, and through their children, we expect a level of service that is organized, responsive, and accountable. At a minimum, concerns should be addressed clearly, consistently, and without requiring repeated follow-up or escalation. This is not simply about individual experiences, it's about systems. Systems that should be designed to support families efficiently and professionally. I ask I am asking the district to take a closer look at how communication, responsiveness, and follow-through are handled across all levels, and to raise the bar accordingly. Families should not have to work this hard to be heard or supported. I share this not to criticize, but to encourage growth. I believe this district has the capacity to meet a

024higher standard and our families deserve that. Thank you for your time. Thank you. We now move on to part eight, consent calendar. All matters listed in the consent calendar are considered by the board to be routine and will be enacted by the board in one motion. There will be no discussion on these items before the board votes on the motion unless there is a board request for one or more specific items to be removed from the consent item from the consent calendar for discussion. Have any blue cards been received? We do not have any blue cards. Trustees, are there any items to be pulled from the consent calendar for discussion? May I have a motion to approve the consent calendar? So moved. May I have a second? Rawlings. Okay. Trustee Emery made the motion. Trustee

025Rawlings seconded the motion. Ms. Garcia, please call for a vote. Trustee Rawlings? Yes. Trustee Verbet? Yes. Trustee Cece? Yes. Trustee Emery? Yes. Trustee Ward? Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We now move on to part eight, part nine, sorry. Part nine, presentations, agenda item 9.1, information, high school grade waiting practices. Trustees, this is an information discussion item. I will now hand it over to Dr. Brian Rocket. Uh thank you, President Ward. We're going to get situated with Dr. Ecker up here. Um district and site staff have been reviewing board policy and administrative regulation 5121 uh on grading or following concerns raised regarding inconsistencies in policy and practice for grade waiting uh for advanced high school courses. Uh Dr. Ecker has joined us this evening to present an overview of current practices and potential updates to

026ensure alignment, including considerations for advanced placement waiting at Sage Creek High School, uh, and impacts on college admissions. Uh, as President Ward mentioned, no action will be taken this evening. This is an informational item only. I'll now hand it over to Dr. Ecker. Thank you, Dr. Brackett. Uh, President Ward, trustees, Dr. Norman, uh, thank you for for providing the opportunity to speak about weighted grades at our two comprehensive high schools, Carlsbad High and Sage Creek High School. Uh, tonight I'll speak briefly about weighted grades and college admissions, uh, detail the differences between Sage Creek High School and Carlsbad High School, and discuss the steps that we have taken and will continue to take to provide increased clarity for students and their families. Uh, there one just to talk about, weighted grades and college admissions, which

027is kind of hovers around a lot of the conversation in the community about weighted grades, is just a reminder that there's thousands of high schools in America that all make their own choices regarding waiting prac- weighted practices. There are high schools that do not offer any waiting. There's There's high schools that do not offer AP courses. Um, and our universities still must work to understand each student as related to the opportunities provided at their school. Uh, and then their success with these with the opportunities presented. Um, on this slide as an example, I provide, uh, the, uh, calculation formula that the University of California schools use. Um, and, uh, um, as you'll note, they they make a series of decisions here about how they come up with a GPA. Consider one thing um from an

028admission standpoint that that typically an admissions officer at a university will have about 3 minutes uh to review an application. So, they have to have uh a formula for how they're going to review each application from a variety of schools all across the country and sometimes internationally. So, our UC schools publish this so that everybody can see how they're going to do that calculation so that they can consistently track uh how well a student did as comparison to their peers at their school. Another example that I that I don't have listed here are a couple to consider. Pepperdine University, which we uh heard we have uh some of our uh Carlsbad Unified students attending next year. Super exciting. They do not provide any weighting. They completely You can provide them the weighted grade from your

029from your high school. They strip that out. Um Stanford, similar. University of Michigan, very similar. Their perspective would be, "Hey, we expect you to do very well in your classes and we expect you to take rigorous coursework and we expect you to do well." Uh you know, that that perspective does not require a need to look at a weighted grade. They want to see you do well. At Stanford University, they're looking at 3.9s through 4.0s and rigorous coursework. So, they decisions about weighted grades to them are less important and they say that they're looking for a holistic approach. Bottom line on all of these is that there needs to be a consistent formula for a university to use so that they can consistently make decisions about admissions from an array of students from a variety

030of high schools. So, uh at the at Sage Creek High School's founding, several decisions were made that have that created two really amazing, but two very different high schools here in Carlsbad Unified. And it's a wonderful opportunity for all of our Carlsbad Unified students to have a choice of two distinct options. But as such, there are there are some differences between the two schools that impact what courses are offered. And how the schools have decided to handle specific courses. So, for example, I one thing to consider is that the pathway for languages at our two schools, by the decisions of the departments of the two schools, are different. Typically, at at Sage Creek High School, you'd want to try to complete a year and a half of a language, for example, in a single year

031because of the recommendation of language teachers that you don't skip a trimester of learning a language and you continue on. So, that creates a track that leads to sometimes higher or more total courses that you would take at Sage Creek. And so, their placement of where their AP class sits for Spanish, where their honors class sits for ASL, for example, are not consistent across those two schools based off of the planning of those departments at those two different schools. The other one is is we offer some courses that are embedded. Like like math analysis is a great example, where it's embedded within a math class at Carlsbad High School, it's a standalone course at Sage Creek High School. And the big one that has come up as part of this conversation is that AP courses

032are year-long courses. That means that at Carlsbad High School, you finish that course in you start that course in September, you finish that course in June. At a year-long course at Sage Creek High School would mean you'd start that course in August or September. You'd finish that course, you know, well before June and it's critical since an AP class is meant to match the rigor of a college course that students are passing the proof that you've met the rigor of the college course, which is taking the standardized AP test. And so, by design, Sage Creek has prioritized uh or there's the students at Sage Creek High School doing well on that test, which means they've added a third trimester non-UC approved like third trimester course that they call seminar to support students in being successful,

033which has has been a pretty effective strategy in in performing well on the AP test at the at year's end. I sort of covered this slide already. Yeah. So, uh what I want to share today, this is a slide that Dr. Way presented to parents at one of his Java's with Josh and I just kind of wanted note it because it relates to the to the AP decision that Sage Creek High School has made. Um So, every year the the AP gives out their AP honor roll where Sage Creek in this past year in the 2020 24-25 school year earned a gold. You receive a platinum medal by getting 80% of students participating in AP in AP classes with a pass rate of above 90%. So, at Sage Creek they missed platinum by only 3%

034participation rate and exceeded the 90% threshold on the AP test. I don't think this should be I mean I this is a pretty amazing you see the the limited number of schools that we have in San Diego County that meet it. I will note that there's one other school in San Diego County that comes to mind that is a trimester system with the same exact considerations as Sage Creek High School and that is Del Norte in Poway who is a platinum medal winner on the on the AP Honor Roll. So you can see that this is not just a Sage Creek decision. This is a decision by the other trimester school and also as you can see a successful model. The other thing to to consider is that um Like first of all when we

035consider all of these conversations in the end we remember that we're that GPA is one measure of who a student is. There's a whole lot that universities are attempting to do to determine who's the right student to have on their campus and a lot of universities talk about this holistic approach to it. They really want a human being and they really want to see this human being on in their in their application. Um I just I would also point out one of the things we did is we we tried to pull two different students with almost identical records to see what those GPAs would look like on two different school sites and so and these are two different students so there's obviously there's slight variations here. But we have two students that took 13 AP

036and honors classes in 10th through 12th grade at Carlsbad High School and Sage Creek that took two college courses that had A's in every class. These are some amazing kiddos here and you can see the GPA differential is almost non-existent there between those two schools. So some of the fears about these differences between our schools. It's just noteworthy that every consistent course that we offer at Carlsbad High School that we also offer at Sage Creek High School is weighted in the exact same way. Uh and in the end what you find is that student performance, if they if with similar performance you get similar outcomes on GPA. Um okay, so for our next steps, I just want to note that we appreciate the feedback from the community. It has this whole process has brought us

037together and um and had taken the opportunity to like to really look at our course selection offerings, the decisions that we're making, the the like the mechanisms of which we communicate these with families. And there's a lot of things that came from this conversation that I think are in the end a win for everybody in Carlsbad Unified. What we're attempted to do with our with our all of our schools and our high schools is to make sure that we are doing our very best to offer our students ways to be competitive in a very competitive environment, you know, with peers in Carlsbad but beyond in the in the region. We know that it's high stakes and we want to give our students everything that they that we can give them to be competitive in this

038in the environment of applying for jobs or applying to colleges. Uh so what we recommend and doing moving forward is that we weight our honors classes in in grades 10 through 12, which we are currently doing mostly. I think we noticed one math analysis I named earlier was one that noted wasn't weighted at Sage Creek High School that I that we believe should be weighted based off UC recommendation. Um that we weight UC approved AP classes. Note that the seminar class is not in a in a in a UC approved course. You would have to think about that differently to or or design it differently if you wanted to add waiting to it. Um but remember that it also doesn't appear on a transcript when you apply to a college since it's not a approved

039course. So, it doesn't help your grade, but it also doesn't hurt it. Um that we recently the um the chancellor UC chancellor had made a um in in the vision 2023-30 document had uh has really pushed for high school students to be taking more college classes. Uh it is with the recommendation about about 12 units by the time you are graduating a graduating senior. Um I and we we have seen uh some of our neighborhood districts neighboring districts uh start to weight college courses, which we currently do not. AP classes are designed to be of college rigor, but we have students that are taking college courses that are not receiving waiting for those courses. And I think a strong argument could be made that if you're going to provide waiting to AP classes, you should

040consider waiting college classes that students are taking and doing really well in right now also. Uh so uh we're going to pull together a committee uh uh a an ad ha- ad hoc ad ad hoc committee. Thank you. Uh to look at some of the courses that we're offering. We also continue to offer more and more college courses. This has been a commitment we've been making. It's first really started popping up with CTE classes, but we're looking for other opportunities as well. Um to determine which of these college classes would be appropriate for us to also wait. And it kind of speaks to to like what we prioritize and what we value here in Carlsbad. And I do think we value and acknowledge students that are taking on the rigor of college level courses. Um

041and then once we have some clarity there, uh we do believe we already have started this process. Each Creek High School, for example, has already started working on redoing their course selection catalog to provide some greater clarity in there just from like the start about this is our weighted courses, these are our non-weighted courses, and then easier to like navigate this long document to be able to look at the courses by different departments. We've added a layer of communication or visibility in Aries for parents and parent portal to be able to easily see their what classes are being are weighted, what classes are not, and we've given the ability for our administrators and registrars and counselors to be able to pull a transcript showing unweighted, pull in a transcript showing weighted, to be able to

042to allow parents to be able to see those two things. Those are actually some of those are brand-new availabilities within Aries that we've taken advantage of. And the other one is is once we've, you know, finalized some of these changes that we're looking at making, then sending a message out to families and making sure that everybody's aware of of our waiting practices and why those are our waiting practices. With that, we'll hand it back to you, President Ward. Thank you. Great. Thank you. This is the time for public comment. We have one blue card that's been received. When I call your name, please come to the podium, state your name, and indicate whether or not you live within the boundaries of the school district. You'll have 3 minutes. We'll have the timer on the screen,

043and your mic will be muted when the time has expired. The first speaker is Julie Krem Kremery. Could I give Hello, good evening. My name is Julie Crumly. I am here actually I live in Carlsbad and I have students who go to Sage Creek High School. I am here representing a large group of concerned Sage Creek parents. And our main concern that I am here is to request the district to comply with its own policy specifically AR 5121 requiring weighted credit for rigorous courses and board policy 5121 requiring uniform GPA calculation. The current practices at Sage Creek have not been fully aligned with district policy. I appreciate the updates from Dr. Ecker. However, I would like to have some um information. I'd like to give some information on that. First of all, for AP courses

044um based on the the two transcripts that you have, it it appears to me that it does not include the third trimester for Sage Creek students. A key thing is if the third trimester when students at Sage Creek sign up for an AP course, they understand it's going to be year-long. College Board designs AP courses to be two college semesters. That means the whole school year. At Sage Creek, if they sign up the third trimester. I'm I'm sorry for the AP course. They sign up for the third trimester as attached. So, if the attached course cannot be independent, then the grade is also attached to the GPA. So, when you only give weighted point to the first trimester, the second trimester, and the zero point to the third trimester, the GPA becomes 0.666 not one

045weighted point as required by AR 5121. And um I have sent the information to you all. At AP as an example, AP US History, there are seven chapters be new materials being studied on uh in trimester three. So, new information is not a support course because College Board requires that you that schools have to complete the entire course within the two college semesters as Sage Creek has signed up for. So, it is not Thank you. Trustees, do you have any questions for staff? Trustee Rawlings. Thank you. On um slide 11, Oh. Where did it go? There it is. Um I had two questions, but I'll stick with one. When we're talking about waiting select college courses, um I don't the students get kind of don't they get double credit because they're actually that college course

046is being used as a college course in um when they move to college therefore they have to take one less class in in college. So, if that's the case, what would be the what would be the advantage or um or or why would we want to provide that waiting if they're already getting credit for an entire course and have to take less classes in college? I I think that's fair. I mean, I think in some regards that could also be true for an AP class. You have some if depending on how well you do on that AP test, you you could have some colleges, not all colleges, but some colleges provide credit for taking that you could earn credits in college for taking an AP class and passing that AP test. Um and I I

047think it speaks to generally I that the waiting practices that we have on a on a high school campus speak to the values we have locally. Just because as I stated earlier, the colleges are going to apply weight or not apply weight based off their policies regardless of what Carlsbad High School or Sage Creek High School does. And but I think it's also clear that our families here in Carlsbad value the waiting that we provide to our classes. And if we value our students challenging themselves and taking college classes, then I think it's reasonable just like an AP class to to consider providing weight to those courses. Follow. Thank you. Um So, if the course transfers, um how do call how do colleges see that as if they're accepting it as a transfer course, and

048then how does the waiting play into that then? If they've already accepted it, the course as a you know, as a three a three unit course. So how does the waiting play into the I guess the acceptance? From from the university perspective? >> So already you have depending on on how you view this. So if a school like Pepperdine for example that doesn't that does completely unweighted considerations of applications. They then what what they say is it doesn't the waiting is is irrelevant to us. We like the unweighted because it's clearer to us. We don't have to worry about points here and points there. It's just 4.0 scale. Did you get an A, B, C, D, whatever. They then want to look at you the rigor of the courses that you've taken and and they

049would apply higher levels of rigor for a student who took a college level course. So from an acceptance standpoint a school like Pepperdine would would be interested in to see wow, this is a student that took three, four, five college courses. The UC actually puts it into writing where they provide extra points for college courses or AP courses in their whole like system that they put together for determining like as they review applications. Their admissions department. Am I answering your question? But my question is that if if a college says, okay, I'm going to accept your the English course that you took at MiraCosta College as a one less class that you have to take as for your degree. What does waiting help with that situation? They've already said, hey, you're taking a college class,

050we're accepting it as a transfer class. >> Okay. I guess I'd separate the two things. For like number one that it lives in the admissions department where they're they're determining is this the right student to have at our university. I I do want to clarify I don't work for any admissions and I can't speak for anybody there. Uh but I would say that rigor it's pretty clear to me they're very public about that. They rigor is something they consider as far as admissions goes. If they've determined that this is a student they'd want to admit and the student accepts that invitation, then it would that college course would appear on that transcript. I would add to that just real quickly that one one other benefit of that um is that is that the waiting encourages

051students to take advantage of those opportunities. So to degree that we have uh opportunities for our current uh for our students to take dual enrollment classes through our high schools and uh and concurrent enrollment because of our proximity to uh MiraCosta and they can do those classes often at at little cost at no cost if they're dual enrollment or little cost if they're uh if they're taking concurrent classes as a high school student, we can uh you know, in terms of providing equitable opportunities and greater opportunities perhaps to underrepresented populations of students, um there's some encouragement there to have that access and that that little extra bit of motivation sometimes can make a difference. I would agree that not always does it make is is that the factor, but it it certainly can and that's

052something that I think that we look at as well in terms of getting a wider swath. It's one of the goals that this board has set to uh to increase uh our underrepresented students taking honors AP community college courses and I think that's one way that we can certainly encourage getting after that. Uh Trustee Verbeth. If the Sage Creek students don't wish to receive the support of that third trimester, are they able to opt out? Mhm. No. I think at this time the best that I could say about the decisions at Sage Creek is that if there were an extenuating circumstance, something significant that Sage Creek would realize this is this is in the best interest of the student. I think generally speaking they they find that the system that they have works well, especially

053in meeting meeting the goals that we've set in Carlsbad Unified what we want for students, that generally speaking the answer to that is no. Trustee Rawlings. Thank you. Would there be any consequences if a student and parent decided that they didn't want to take that third trimester such as not graduating, not having enough units, any other consequences besides maybe not doing well on the on the AP test? Not necessarily. I think we've talked to Dr. Way about that circumstance coming up from time to time. And as Dr. Dr. Ecker referenced, you know, extenuating circumstances have come up, but we're not there wouldn't necessarily be a consequence. The student would have for all practical purposes completed the AP course during the the two trimesters and then what they are are setting themselves up for in that

054instance would be a gap of time from the course to the exam and potentially the the missed instruction that goes along with that. Trustee Verbick. Okay, I didn't know she had a follow up. So the presentation only covers UC schools. Is there an effect on non-UC schools? You've talked a little bit about Pepperdine, but other non-UC Is there a reason we didn't mention other schools, types of schools? Yes, I tried to mention a couple. I I I'd say first and foremost, every admissions department needs to have a plan for how they're going to review uh, with hundreds of people or I don't know, maybe dozens or a few, depending on how big your school is, uh, people in your admissions department working on reviewing these applications. Uh, and it has to be consistent. So, it

055the the way that it would refer to any school, and I mentioned Pepperdine as an example, at University of Michigan is another one that's just like Pepperdine, they do not do weighted grades. Uh, uh, Stanford says that they only look at grades 10 and 11 and and use a holistic model, which is another way to say that they generally don't consider weighted grades. Uh, Yale, very similar, says non it doesn't is is a holistic model. They do look at ninth grade, 10th grade, 11th and 12th grade. So, they all have like a different like manner of which they're going to plan to typically spend about 3 minutes on a on a application, and in that 3 minutes, like understand the best they can this particular student. So, that's why they can't worry about somebody else's

056grading practices. They have to have their own plan and follow that is and I think the UC because it's very it's more it's actually most universities aren't like that, where they you can just go on their website and they're like, this is exactly what how we do it. You can actually use this our website to put in your own grades and see what their our UC our UC GPA would be. Uh, I it's a good example. It's also a good example cuz more students in Carlsbad apply to UCs than any other system in America. Did you have a follow-up, Trustee Rollins? Okay. I have a question. Can you explain um the board policy and AR 5121 and what the discrepancy is that the parent is speaking to? I can. I think that the specific discrepancy

057are um is that in AR in it's it's really the AR that is the is the piece that I think needs to be cleaned up for clarity is it's it's it has a line where it says because of the rigorous nature of and it says uh AP classes uh honors classes that they're provided weighted grades. We've never in Carlsbad Unified uh provided weighted grades to like ninth grade honors courses. Uh and so we continue not to provide honor honors weighted grade to a ninth grade for a ninth grade student to take. Um and so we would need to clean that up. That's that's one lack of clarity. One other just point of it is it's is that the trimester system has a has a lot of benefits. One of the the side effects is it

058can be a little confusing on how this uh on what it actually means to take a year year-long class and I think it is confusing when you have two trimesters and you're done with months to go in the year and to be done with that year-long course. Uh and so that AP that AP class piece creates this interesting choice that early on not early on at the founding they um made the determination that they were going to uh see that disadvantage of an AP class having their test in the spring and uh the um and the course ending uh months months earlier to try to take it as an advantage and use that extra time to really hit it out of the ballpark for their for their students in performing well on the AP. So,

059I have a follow-up to that. Please. >> Um was the AR created before Sage was created? Uh the It's been Yeah, it's been It was updated in '21. I That's what I said, '24. Just kidding. Yeah. So, it was updated It was It was It was updated in 2024. What the the change that was updated was actually it said college courses would be weighted in that and it was removed. So, it which was not accurate at that time, either. So, that it was it was I think removed to be more accurate in 2024. Uh and I think it deserves another update to be more accurate now. >> Okay. So, when it was updated, it was updated with the consideration of the trimester system, then, since it was 2024. Is that accurate? Yeah, that's that's accurate.

060I think the one of the discrepancies that's been raised is is uh a just a a difference in understanding of what that third trimester means in the AP course. Um that that they There has been an argument made that that is a part of the AP course and therefore it should be weighted according to what it says here about weighting. The the the alternate argument is that the the AP course is completed within those two trimesters, which is the equivalent of of a year-long course. That's the trimester equivalent of a year-long course. And that the seminar course, the third trimester uh seminar with whatever AP course is, is not It's not a A-G approved class. It's not a weighted class as such um because most of the uh alignment that we that our high schools

061have done with uh with uh weighting has is an alignment with the UC weighting when the courses are submitted for A-G approval. Uh if they're weighted within the UC doorways portals as referred to, then it has been weighted on campus. And that actually speaks to the issue that Dr. Rocker raises well about grades 10 through 12. UC's only weight grades 10 through 12 courses. That has been our practice as well and there was an error made when this AR was updated last that it says it it reads as all honors and AP courses. That's never been the practice. Uh, our high schools have always weighted grades 10 through 12 and that aligns with the UC waiting system as well. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Um, so just to clarify, if a two trimesters equal one

062year, then the waiting of those two trimesters, are they equal to two semesters at Carlsbad High School? Yes. It Yes. And And I'll just I'll just add to that that I think the question comes in why why looking at UCs is why looking at UC waiting is is useful is that uh, the point being that yes, that same the student that takes AP US History at at Carlsbad High School and Sage Creek High School, they're both earning two terms of weighted credit. The difference being that the that the Sage Creek student is taking a third term of AP Seminar that is not weighted and it's also not included it's not counted in the UC grade point average calculation because it's not a UC approved course. Um, it's a local answer to uh, a a scheduling,

063you know, uh, situation that helps >> opportunity >> that helps opportunity. Thank you. Uh, a scheduling opportunity that allows them some additional time to prepare. So just to clarify that that Sage Creek has a bit of an advantage even though they have to go kind of faster with the two trimesters, the advantage is they have more time to um, to study and get ready for the AP test. Is that accurate? In the I'd have to do the calculations the the I I will admit have I've been doing this for a long time and the calculation of minutes between Carlsbad High School and Sage Creek still throws me off. But I I believe that yes, that by the time the student has in at Sage Creek has reached the AP exam, I believe that they would

064have had more instructional minutes in the course up to that point in the year than than the Carlsbad High School students would have. But I don't quote me on that cuz I'd have to calculate it out. Trustee Furseth. So Dr. Director, you're I believe you're stating that we need to clean up the language a little bit. Is that correct? I think from >> AR? I yes, I'd say from from the role the AR plays for communication to our community, there's there's room to clean that up. And there's especially in conversations about college courses and and that that will once that's determined there'll be some need for some real clear communication about what that exactly means, how to gain access to those college courses. So are we non-compliant right now to our AR? Yeah, I I'd

065say that um we are like at the at best it's un- it's not providing the clarity that it should provide on that AR and and we should fix that up. I think it's best to work through this with our committees and figure out exactly what it should say instead of update it three or four times before the end of the year. But yeah, I'd say it in the end, yes, it needs to be updated and to provide the clarity that I think our families and our community deserve. So will we be doing that? The committees are meeting like immediately and we're going to begin working on that or what's our plan? Yeah, I think as Dr. Ecker referenced we we didn't want to piecemeal. There there were a number of questions as trustees are aware,

066a number of questions have been raised about this. Um and we had some immediate recognition that there were some things that we wanted to provide greater clarity on but we didn't want to jump in either without having a full understanding of what the issues were. Um I think the the main lingering thing at this point is the conversation around community college classes. The the uh the board policy already allows the board policy designates the superintendent or designee to establish a you know waiting policy and it allows for in the in the board policy uh concurrent uh college courses to be weighted. It's just something that that traditionally has not been done in Carlsbad. We we'd like to clarify some of that. I think as I shared in conversation with some of the trustees, you know,

067we we looked started to look at that. We I think we feel that that's there's value there but there's also a difference between taking a uh calculus course at MiraCosta and taking a a basketball course at MiraCosta and we want to make sure that we're clear around the parameters about what what's weighted and what's not. So, is it It's a follow-up. Okay, go ahead. Um so just to clarify, the only changes you're looking at is in the AR and we there will not be a policy change coming before the board. It'll just be an AR that we would be informed of that changes have been made, correct? >> That's correct. >> Thank you. I had a question. Um can you explain to me if the college board says the weighted course is two semesters, is

068that so a semester is not equivalent to is equivalent to what in trimesters? Is it So, I think the >> semesters is three trimesters. A a full equivalent a full year course is a two trimester course at Sage Creek High School and a two semester course at Carlsbad High School. Okay. Any questions? Any other questions? All right. Is there discussion? Yep. I'm just about to say it. Thank you. Give me a moment. Trustees, now is the time for discussion. Go ahead. Sorry about that. I thought you were moving on to the next agenda item. Um uh No, I read through um a lot of the information and um I can understand the confusion, but I do think that Sage Creek is um actually um taking advantage of their trimester system and providing additional opportunities to

069students that otherwise I don't think exist as much in the semester system. So, I'm I'm very much um in favor of how they're approaching their um their waiting piece and as we discussed um when we were in kind of a subcommittee meeting, this is that you know, if um if a student and a parent didn't want to do it, I mean, it's not going to be encouraged by any means, but um they certainly there there would not be consequences. So, I felt that that was um that that would at least provide some choice to parents and students if they really didn't want to do it. So, I'm very much in favor of some of these changes and the um and where we're going with Sage Creek. And I just like to say that I'm grateful

070that we're coming to the table with our community and our parents and recognizing the discrepancies and the the need to clean up the language so that it's very clear for everybody. Thank you. Yes, um thank you for the presentation. I appreciate it. I I could see why there is confusion and I think it's important that that we're cleaning that up and that we're going to be updating our AR and our student handbook. So, I think I think that clarification for families is important. Any other discussion? All right. Okay, thank you. We now move on to agenda item 9.2 special education preschool pilot. Trustees, this is an information discussion item. I will now hand it over to Dr. Brian Broquet. Uh thank you, President Ward. Uh tonight we are presenting an overview of the special education

071preschool instructional materials pilot. Uh this initiative is driven by our vision to empower every child through early intervention and inclusive play-based learning. Uh to remain current with California's 2024 preschool transitional kindergarten learning foundations and updated assessment standards, our curriculum committee has spent the last year evaluating comprehensive research-based programs for preschool. Uh after an in-depth review of five options, the committee selected two high-quality curricula for classroom piloting. Uh the first is Tools of the Mind, which was piloted in late 2025. This program focuses heavily on student self-regulation and intentional dramatic play using teacher coaching and scaffolding to build student confidence. And the second uh program is Learning Genie, which is currently being piloted in our preschool classes through May of 2026. This curriculum is noted for its strong universal design for learning adaptations, integrated assessment reporting,

072and robust family engagement tools that provide resources in over 100 languages. Our goal is to ensure that our youngest learners have a curriculum that nurtures their unique potential while fostering independence and and for learning. And as for next steps, the pilot uh period for that second option, Learning Genie, concludes next month. All sample materials, you may have noticed, are available for viewing right now in the district office here through May 18th, and then we'll look forward to returning to the board on May 27th with a final recommendation for adoption. Um, thank you, and I'm available for any questions you might have about the preschool pilot. Okay, this is a time for public comment. Have any blue cards been received? We have not received any blue cards. Okay. Christie's, do you have any questions for staff?

073Christie Rollins? Thank you. I had asked Dr. Norman, but I was still confused on um because this is entitled pilot, I thought we were we were starting the pilot, not ending the pilot. So, could you kind of tell me and I've never seen that the way it's done before, where we're we're entitling an agenda item as a pilot when we're basically saying we're putting things on public view. So, I just wanted to kind of clarify how the how the process is changing. Yeah, no, I appreciate the question. So, the the three items, actually, this one and the the subsequent two items that we'll we'll talk about a moment. The reason that we did them this way, we we are in the middle of finishing up pilots for all three of these materials. Um, what we

074would normally do is finish our pilot. We would bring to the board a recommendation on the selection that has been made, and then have public viewing. Um, and what we've traditionally tried to do is maintain like a 30-day window for public viewing, public comment, if anybody has comments, that's part of the required process is to engage with the community, and then we would bring back any comments and our recommendation. Because of the timing of the board meetings at the end of the year here this year, we wanted to just make sure that we allowed for adequate time for viewing. So, what we did different this year is that we've got all the materials that are being piloted out there. So, folks can take a look at all of those. We'll collect any feedback on any

075of them and then, similar to what we would do in pre in you know, previous years, we'll take in that consideration along with our committee's recommendation and bring back a recommendation. So, just because the way there's a there's kind of a gap right now between now and the May meeting and then we've got some compressed meetings in June. We wanted to just make sure we had an adequate time frame uh to provide uh the public an opportunity to view the materials if they'd like to do so. Any other questions? Okay. Trustees, this is time for discussion. Any discussion? All right. No discussion. Thank you Thank you. We now move on to agenda item 9.3 middle school math math materials pilot. Trustees, this is an information discussion item. I will now I will now hand it

076over to Dr. Brian Brocken. Thank you again, President Ward. Uh tonight we're providing an update on the middle school math instructional materials pilot. Uh our goal is to ensure uh that all students become mathematical critical thinkers and confident problem solvers through an engaging and equitable learning environment. Following the uh 2023 uh California Department of Education math frameworks adoption, our secondary adoption committee convened in October 2025 to begin an intensive review of materials. In December uh the committee recommended uh two publishers for classroom piloting, Eureka Math Squared and Amplify Math. Those uh pilots have been going on this year. The Eureka Math uh Squared pilot, which launched in January, has shown strengths in its well-organized digital and print formats, its strong UDL uh supports for multilingual learners, and it's use of math talk routines to connect

077concepts to real-life situations. The Amplify math program began in March and is ongoing. Key highlights of the Amplify math program include robust opportunities for differentiated learning through its support, strengthen, and stretch model, as well as interactive problem-based learning tools via Desmos, which is a an online tool which is also utilized on the SBAC testing. This program also provides teachers with standards-aligned reporting and student reflect self-reflection tools. Looking ahead, the pilot committee will finalize its recommendation in late April. Again, as you saw, there are these materials are available for public viewing out in the lobby here at the district office and will be available for viewing through May 18th. We plan to return to the board in May for final action or recommendation for final action on the middle school materials recommendation to have those in

078place for next year. And I'll hand it back to you again, President Ward. Great. Trustees, do you have any questions? Okay. Trustees, this is now time for discussion. Oh, I didn't. Thank you. Do we have any blue cards? We do not. Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't see any blue cards, so I skipped that. No questions? Discussion? I just want to say I'm I'm really glad that they're taking a look at these programs. Go Math um doesn't really seem to align with the new frameworks and the new frameworks are extremely robust, so um as this is kind of my my heart center with our math curriculum, I think that they will make a great choice and I'm excited to see the changes that brings to our middle school math programs. Awesome. I heard some great things

079when I was at Calavera Hills Middle. All of the pilots, so that's good news. They're excited about it. Um one in particular, but I won't say which one it is. Okay, any other discussion? Okay. All right, thank you. We now move on to agenda item 9.4, the Spanish materials pilot. Trustees, this is an This is an information discussion item. I'll now hand it over back to Dr. Brian Brocket. All right, thank you again. Uh near and dear to my heart as a former Spanish teacher, uh is the uh update on the middle and high school Spanish instructional materials pilot. Um our mission in our world languages department is to provide every student with meaningful opportunities to develop as global thinkers who can effectively use world languages beyond the school setting. Uh following updated state standards

080uh and frameworks, our committee began a review of new Spanish materials. After evaluating eight programs, the committee unanimously selected Reporteros by Cengage World Languages for a year-long pilot that's been going on all year uh in Spanish levels 1, 2, and 3. Uh the strengths of the Reporteros program include um design a design uh for a communication first environment, and authentic resources for cultural engagement, as well as interactive engagement through a wide variety of cooperative activities to promote interpersonal communication, as well as support for diverse learners. The pilot period, like I said, has been going on all year uh and it was the only program that the teachers uh elected to pilot. They we've had some very positive feedback on it, um but they want to wrap up uh you know, kind of using all the

081components before they make a final recommendation. That pilot period will include uh will conclude at the end of April. Um again, as you noted, uh sample materials are available for viewing uh at the district office uh now through May 18th, uh and we plan to bring a recommendation back for Spanish materials as well at the May 27th meeting. And I'll hand it again back to you, President Ward. Okay. I don't see any blue cards. Are there any? We do not have any. Okay, trustees, do you have any questions? Okay. Any discussion? All right. Okay, thank you. We now move on to agenda item 9.5, presentation of construction monthly update. Trustees, this is an information discussion item. I will now hand it over to Dr. Rob Nai. Thank you, President Ward, trustees, and Dr. Norman. Tonight

082we're pleased to present a brief update on construction projects that are going on throughout the district. Um as a high level, we'll provide an update on phase two and phase three projects related to measure HH. We'll also provide you an update on the Sage Creek soil mitigation. And I just want to preface this. The report that we got was rather dense and rather technical. And so I would envision at some point in time, either May or early June, working with Mr. Adelman to bring back our architects as well as our geotechnical engineers to give you more information about that. But I'm happy to give you a high-level view of some of those findings and then um we can kind of go from there. And then we'll share some timing as it relates to our new

083facility master plan that we've been developing with Lionakis and working with the site. So as we wrap up HH, um we also want to have a facility master plan in place um that looks at all of our campuses again and gives us another comprehensive view on the projects that we need to still consider moving forward. So in regards to phase two projects, we continue to progress on the schedule with key milestones being met across multiple sites. Uh these are some pictures of the brand new administrative building along with six new classrooms and the counseling office that was completed and turned over this week as a matter of fact. So, I was able to tour that today. We as Dr. Norman had mentioned, we're still working through some uh early or um some issues with locks

084that we're getting squared away, but the facilities are beautiful and um teachers and counselors are in there and um it's a nice nice nice greeting, nice site um as we move forward with that. Um in regards to some other work that's being done at AOMS we're transitioning into the next phase which includes uh the staff lounge conversion and other campus upgrades. It also includes uh refresh of our sensory room and key infrastructure improvements like our HVAC, roofing, and safety and security systems. So, work's still to be done at AOMS. Um and we're continuing that work with the hope that that will be signed off maybe at the middle of next year with AOMS. All right. Um in regards to Buena Vista Elementary School, the classroom building that was being worked on and the infrastructure there

085has been turned back over to those classrooms. Um they saw significant refresh. Uh new drop-down ceilings and new casing and infrastructure. Um the admin building is now under construction. So, if you've been able to visit there, that is completely torn out. Um and they're working on framing uh the new admin building and the project remains on schedule and um a lot of good good work's been been done over there. In regards to Carlsbad Village and Carlsbad Seaside Academy, um construction will begin in June of 2026 and we have uh um the construction set up literally hopefully the day after NCA's last day of school and so they're going to try to get in there. That's going to be a summer sprint for them to finish those classrooms, get those ready for our CBA CSA students

086at the beginning of school in August um for the 26-27 school year and then they're going to uh begin some work on the administration building at CBA CSA with the hope is that that completion date will be in um December of 2026. So, we'll use the temporary housing that was put on that campus that double-wide portable that's there as the admin building. Uh that's the plan and then um the administration will move over once that uh is once that phase is complete. All right. In regards to phase three, we're transitioning into some of those phase three programs. Um at Carlsbad High School, the track and field replacement is on track for this summer of 2026. The scoreboard, the fire alarm, and the chiller progra- uh chiller projects are progressing through design and procurement. Um you

087know, we are looking at the scoreboard itself and whether or not those as-builts can um the the structures themselves can support just the re- lift and replace of the scoreboard system there or do we need to actually um build in new pylons and and new structure to support a scoreboard that will go in there. And the thought will be the the one piece that will take a little bit longer is those fire alarm systems. Um, we're anticipating completing those by uh the school year, the beginning of the school year, August 2027. Um, and that has largely to do with the fact that we can't really be working on the fire alarm systems uh during the school time, so they're working on those after school and on the weekends primarily. Uh, we also are um working

088our on our secure entries both at Sage Creek and Carlsbad High School. That'll be just the buzzer system itself that buzzes uh uh visitors in and out. Um, and that's scheduled to be completed at the end of the summer. And then Poinsettia and Calavera Hills, um, that's going to involve some uh redesigning of those spaces. So, that will have to go through DSA submission um, for the completion uh schedule that the end of summer of 2027. All right, in regards to the soil uh investigation at Sage Creek, um, the additional soil exc- excavation and test pit at the 4000 building has been completed. Samples were taken and all test pits backfilled. The walkway around the 4000 building had been reopened. And preliminary findings are currently underway with our staff pending um, a more finalized report.

089Um, but based on we have two architects that are working out there right now. It's Studio WC, the architect, the review and the overall March uh site status report by Universal Engineering Sciences, which is our other architect, uh the current testing lab, the water content in the soil is stable in some of the test pit holes that they looked at and is low in others, indicating room for additional settlement. So, what they said is in some of the wells that they dug, um that soil is compacted and compressed, and they don't see any additional settling happening in those wells. However, in a couple of the other wells, they do see um that there is the potential for additional compaction, if you will, and so they're going to be investigating those other test holes um for

090further review. At the gym, you'll recall that they did what's called that slot cut, where they cut out a specific piece of that concrete, um and we're pleased to report that the walkway movement in that particular area is due to water intrusion, um which is good news. That means it's not um erosion itself under the ground, so it's water that's seeping in on top, um and so there's further investigation that needs to be considered there, but that is potentially a much um cheaper fix than if it were below ground. The architect has requested, and I love this, GPR, or ground penetrating radar, uh from the walkway of the front entry gate to around the gym to determine if the settlement found is isolated at the gym or prevalent throughout the main thoroughfare and quad, and

091to what degree. These results will then determine the next level and scope of the repair. And I asked specifically, how much is this going to cost? And they said that they could get this uh embedded in already the cost that we have um out for bid or out already for that contract. So, they're going to um roll that into the cost that the we already have to do that. Um in regards to the review itself, so the review of the overall site findings by Studio WC and Nino and Moore conclude um as well as the GPR results that are going to be made available to inform a repair plan. We'll look and have them present their findings as I as I mentioned before in either May or June along with any mitigation and repair plans

092moving forward. In speaking again with Mr. Adelman today, he recommended that once the repair plan repair plan is presented the approved uh and approved, we can begin the process of the facility hardship application by the state. So, again, I think the next steps would be to have the architect as well as the soil engineers come back in either May or June. Um talk through the rather technical um parts of the report. Um there was some good news in this report as well as I think some areas that we need to further explore. And have them come back with not just uh that technical side of things, but some recommendations on the fix itself, which they did not provide at this this particular time. So, uh that'll give them some time to put that together and

093bring that back for either May or June. Um in regards to the facility master plan, I did mention before we've been working with Lionakis this entire year and and part of last year um to work through and develop the plan. We think that we'll be ready to develop that either in late spring most likely it's going to be early fall of next year and it will probably be a separate study session that we'll need to have um just to talk about that facility master plan and go through each school site and what they're recommending. Um it will include improvements at all of our school sites and the board will have the opportunity to re- review and provide input before broader engagements entailed. They've been meeting at the sites and going over um the site request.

094We'll bring that back, but once we get board approved you know, board direction, um then we'll bring that back to the larger communities at each of the sites to get further input um on the plan itself. So, in closing, I'll turn it back over to President Ward and I'm happy to answer any questions after public comment. Great. Do we have any blue cards? There are no blue cards. Trustees, do you have any questions? Trustee Emery. Yes, thank you so much and you knew we were going to ask about Sage. So, um on slide 11 when it um refers to the ground penetrating radar over spring break, has that already happened or is that yet to occur since we just finished up spring break? Yeah, it has not happened yet. Um they did that on the

095one area around the gym, but uh they'd like to do that um throughout the main walkway of the campus. Um so, that will still need to happen uh over the next couple weeks. Go ahead. I'm assuming that will need to be a time when students are not there, so Yeah, and I I haven't gotten with them specifically on when they're going to do that, whether that's going to be after school, what's entailed with that ground penetrating radar, um but it may be something that they could do while students are on campus. I just don't I don't know what it entails. Trustee Rollins. Thank you. Um remind me what the cost is uh for this? Yeah, I think that contract we approved a contract of about $275,000 for that and that was um being taken out

096of developer fees. Okay. Trustee COC. Um on slide nine when we're referencing uh the updates at Carlsbad High School, I understand the delay with the scoreboard. Do we have a timeline one way or the other uh if it's determined that they can use the existing foundational structure versus if we need to replace that? Yeah, I don't at this point in time. They were looking for the as-builts the last time I had talked to the construction group. Um and I I I believe that they were I I believe they found those and they were just analyzing whether or not the weight of the new scoreboards could be supported or not. So, they were working with the architects on that, but I don't have a specific timeline. Go ahead. Um and is the sound system being considered

097integrated with that cuz it's not mentioned? Yeah, this the sound will um go out for a separate bid, but I think they wanted to determine which scoreboard we're going to be using first because some of the newer scoreboards include some sound um in them and through them. So, they wanted to determine that and then um take out the bid their remaining sound upgrades that they'll need to do. Trustee Rollins. Thank you. Um prior to um prior to laying the concrete for at Sage Creek, could this have been discovered um the problem with the soil? Back when the school was built? I mean could Is that what you're asking? >> Right. I mean you know, as the I mean obviously the architect is you know, um you know, they said, "Yeah, go ahead." But then, as

098they're getting ready to lay the concrete, could that have been discovered that there might be a problem with the soil? Yeah, I don't I don't think so. I think what's happened over time is that the soil's continuing to compact, and I don't I don't know if they've identified um all of the mitigating factors on why that's occurring. So, I don't know if it could have been prevented or not. Um I was just saying, could it have could it have been as they're looking at it, I you know, an experienced concrete layer, could they have seen this and gone, "Wait a minute, this this may not be right." >> I I don't know the answer to that question. I you know, they I do know that they got the go-ahead. The soil reached a certain point

099where the geotechnical engineer was saying, "It's compacted to the level that you could then put concrete on top." So, um that was a determination that was made at time the school was built. Any other questions? Okay. Trustees, this is time for discussion. Any discussion? Okay. All right. We are now at part 10, business services, agenda item 10.1, project labor agreement. Trustees, this is a discussion action item. I will now hand it over to Dr. Robnett. Uh thank you again, President Ward. I'm going to ask uh Ms. Polito to come up from F3. You can actually sit up here, Sarah, if you want. We're going to put you right at the dais. We call that the hot seat. No, no, no, no. With us. Give me a second. So, tonight's item under business services is a

100discussion and potential action item on project labor agreements. Staff has invited district legal counsel, Sara Polito, who will be presenting information and will also be available to answer questions following the presentation. By way of background, project labor agreements or PLAs are pre-hire collective bargaining agreements that establish the terms and conditions of employment for specific construction projects, including wages, benefits, and provisions intended to prevent labor disruptions. This item is being brought forward following direction from the board at the March 12th, 2025 meeting to return with additional information on PLAs. In accordance with the resolution that went with the passage of Measure HH, the district issued a public notice of intent on November 6th, 2025, satisfying the requirements of a 90-day notification period and allowing for both discussion and potential action this evening. The purpose of tonight's

101presentation is to provide an overview of PLAs, including legal requirements and key considerations, and to outline options available to the board. As part of that, several potential next steps are identified, which Ms. Polito will walk you through, including those outlined on slide nine in the presentation. At this time, I'm going to turn it over to you, Ms. Polito, who's going to walk you through the presentation itself. Thank you very much. Um and good evening to the board, uh to Dr. Norman, and to the cabinet. Thank you for having me. Um again, my name is Sara Polito, um and I am a partner with Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost. Um we're a firm that generally uh actually almost exclusively represents um school districts. So, I'm here tonight in the capacity as um as counsel for the district

102with the goal of giving you kind of a widespread view of both um negative and positive impacts of a project labor agreement based on my experience helping other districts um with these negotiations and having um seen a number of districts consider and uh um evaluate whether these types of agreements make sense for their community. Um and really my goal is just to help the board effectuate its goal. So, my goal is to be as um impartial as I can be when I provide you with the pros and cons that uh we've seen as district council in other circumstances. So, moving forward, usually when we have this conversation with the Board of Education, we start by identifying what are the board's goals. And for most boards, um their goals can be summarized kind of these four

103points that you see here um on the slide. And that is when they are looking at construction projects, they want to obtain a facility that fills the operational and design needs. Um they they they need the building to to do what it was built to do. Um they they want the delivery of the facility for um a total price that is fair and within budget and and uh usually this conversation surrounds um the understanding of the fiduciary duty to uh spend funds, um you know, provided by the by the public, right? So, taxpayer money's in a way that is um that is responsible. Um and then the third is ensuring that the facility is constructed uh with high quality, right? So, that it meets the operational needs and provides a safe learning space for students.

104And then finally that the facility is completed in a timely um manner. So, you know, we want projects to be completed on time and within budget. Um as you've heard already, uh I just want to provide kind of a basic explanation of of what is a project labor agreement. Um something that may be helpful is you may also hear them referred to as a project stabilization agreement or a community workforce agreement. Those terms generally all point to the same type of agreement. They're just called different things in different communities and contexts. Um so they are pre-hire collective like bargaining agreements that establish the terms and conditions of employment on a particular construction project. And I'll note that generally these pre-hire agreements are not permitted by the National Labor Relations Act, but there is a carve

105out for the construction industry. So um you'll you'll hear in a few slides about how particularly in California there is a code section that allows these agreements under the condition that certain factors be included. And it's stated in that in the code that these are factors that are required for the protection of the taxpayer. Um so again, what are some of the of the provisions that we normally see in these agreements? They usually set wages and benefits in exchange for no labor strikes or lockouts. They apply to all contractors and subcontractors of any tier on the designated project or or or projects that they apply to. Um and they generally create additional requirements for payment of wages and benefits over and above the payment of a prevailing wage. Which as you know, payment of the

106prevailing wage is required on any public school district project over a thousand dollars. So that's a baseline already required for construction within the district. The the wages and and benefits paid under a PLA go above and beyond the prevailing wage. Um okay. So All right, the screen. Let's go on to the next. Um So I had mentioned before Um, public contract code section 2500 is the kind of the exclusive section of the law that speaks to us about what a PLA can and can't have. And really the way that it's phrased is that there are five items that a PLA must include to be allowable. There needs to be a non-discrimination clause that prevents discrimination based on race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and other factors that you'll see listed there. Um, the agreement

107has to provide for a particular like resolution method for disputes that arise from the agreement. Usually this is through uh um, an accelerated arbitration uh uh clause that you know details how that process will work relatively quickly. Um, it has a no striking provision that both prevents a lockout on one side, but then work stoppage and strikes on the other side. Um, drug testing is required and a protocol is agreed upon within the agreement for all all workers that are employed on the project. And then finally um the uh the those projects that are subject to a PLA must still be open to any licensed and qualified contractor or subcontractor that bids on the project whether or not they are affiliated with a union. So, contractors that are awarded the work under the PLA agree

108to comply with labor safety and other wage provisions in the in the PLA, but they don't necessarily need to be a part of a union. Um, one thing that I want to note is that while these are mandated provisions of a PLA to the extent that these are seen as a benefit for the district, many of these can be accomplished outside of a PLA. And they're provisions that can be included in a um construction agreement without uh well, you know, one or or many of them without it having to happen in the context of a PLA. Um one of those exceptions is the uh the no strikes um and no lockout uh provision, which is is is is is generally not included outside the PLA context. Okay, so typical additional terms that you'll see in

109a PLA outside of the five provisions that we know um are are mandated by law. Um normally the um unions with which the PLA is executed will be the exclusive um uh they they have exclusive like uh like representation over all workers on the um on the on the project um and uh for all of the contractors' employees whether or not those employees are a member of a union. Um there are requirements generally that the contractor selected hire through the uh the union referral systems or through a a centralized union job referral system. Um it the PLA will normally require that um employers make fringe benefit uh uh contributions um and um additional uh payment above the prevailing wage um to uh well, so they make the payments to the employees, they make the contributions

110to uh particular um union-held uh like plans. Um and then finally, they have a um local hire provision in many cases in which there's a requirement that a certain percentage of the workers on the job be hired within a certain uh like geographic area, whether that's, you know, within the city, within the county, or other uh like designated area um surrounding the district. Okay. Um so, common reasons cited in support for a PLA, and I will say before I start here that this can be a really, um, highly, you know, controversial and emotional issue for many districts and and, um, advocates on both sides of this issue and, um, you will see uh, both sides cite to particular studies, um, and reviews that have been completed, um, but there is no kind of overwhelming agreement

111about the the impact on, um, things like, you know, the cost of a project or the timeline. Um, you'll hear, again, advocates on both sides cite to certain studies, but there's no, um, in our estimation, there's no, uh, you know, hard and fast rule about what the impact of PLAs are on on any particular project. Um, and a lot of the evidence provided on on both sides is, um, you know, based on, uh, past experience and other other projects that have happened. Um, so common reasons cited in support of a PLA, um, are the worker benefits, right? So I mentioned that, um, a PLA establishes, um, supportive practices like, um, additional pay above the prevailing wage, additional benefits, um, that are, you know, paid to workers on, uh, on the project. Um, the no strikes

112and no no like lockout provisions, um, are said to reduce or eliminate the possibility of a strike or work stoppage that can, in turn, lead to a to a project that is completed on time and on budget. Um, the training requirements, so, um, a PLA will generally impose a standard for for workers to help ensure the use of a competent, um, workforce. It's normally that, uh, workers have to have gone through an apprenticeship, uh, program, right? Where they've been trained to do the skill that they, um, that they are completing. Um, and, uh, Uh, the well there are two other factors, one being diversity. Um, so some PLAs, in addition to creating a goal for the local workforce for having sourced workers from a local geographic area, they also create goals for, um, you know,

113certain types of of other factors. So, so veterans or, um, folks that are in between, um, employment that are learning a skill, right? They seek to, uh, foster other, you know, forms of diversity through having a goal for employment of those types of folks on that on the project. Um, and then we talked about the, uh, the local hire, um, preferences that can also be, um, included in those agreements. Um, I have also heard the benefit that, um, it it's said that, you know, um, agreeing to support unions and apprentices through, um, implementation of a PLA in in turn supports students that join those those programs, right? So, the uh, the idea here is that by requiring a certain number of the workers on a project to have gone through an apprenticeship program, you are,

114um, kind of indirectly, um, you know, creating a benefit for those in the community or those that were prior students that choose to join those types of programs. Um, for example, instead of going to a four-year college, they will go, um, and, you know, complete all of their training within a four-year period and then, you know, they can find employment back in the district based on that, uh, uh, uh, like preference, right? That was provided. Um, on the on the other side of that, there are, um, you know, other ways in which districts, you know, provide support to students that choose that route. So, there, um, there is a curriculum that has been, uh, you know, created and adopted, um, by a number of unions that can be implemented within the district and it helps

115prepare students for the apprenticeship programs that they may choose to uh join after they after they graduate from school. Um so those again I I always think it's important to explain both how there are benefits within a structure but then that's only helpful to the extent that you know where they may be available outside of that structure as well. Um okay so on the opposite side um uh common reason cited in opposition to a PLA um some studies that are cited here have shown that uh they can potentially increase costs. Um and that's because um there's some indication that certain types of um contractors that would have bid on uh a non-PLA projects choose not to bid on PLA projects. Um and some of the numbers are between 13 and 25% um but again I

116I don't put too much uh it's it's it's really hard to say. Those studies are are very very specific to a certain context and time. Um a reduction in competition I mentioned before um because there's a requirement in a PLA to use a uh folks that have gone through a registered apprenticeship um program and specified like hiring practices um some contractors that don't normally work with that form of a of a labor force will just will choose to be a part of the competitive process and so it in that way um you know you uh you lose competition that may lead to less um less competition in price right? So it doesn't push price down as um much as it could have in other other contexts. Um and then diverting resources. So some people see

117this as uh the the like local higher provisions um serve to benefit the the like local economy and workforce, but they, um, it may be kind of a kind of a misalignment of goals, right? And it could potentially take funds that were, um, intended for educational purposes and kind of move them towards this alternative goal of supporting the community more broadly. Um, two other things that I have heard, um, um, from, uh, workers on projects that aren't necessarily a part of a union, um, is that, um, some of these agreements require that the, uh, contractor, the employer, put, uh, or pay some of, um, some of these like fringe benefits to the union, um, and, uh, often those types of benefits will not vest in a worker for for 5 years, and because these projects

118don't normally last 5 years, those workers that are not a part of the union otherwise won't benefit from those fringe payments that are being paid. Um, that's just kind of a, uh, you know, kind of a a like like a side effect, I guess, of of what this looks like. The other thing, from a political perspective, we have seen, uh, um, groups like taxpayer advocates and others, um, that, uh, have been very vocal about not wanting to, uh, pass a a bond in districts where a project labor agreement has been put in place. Um, and I I you know, they they have concerns about the structure, and so there is, you know, um, sometimes, uh, some pushback when it when it comes to the the district approving a bond in a future year. So, um,

119other other factors, I think for, uh, for you to consider when when you as the board are are are thinking about whether this type of structure makes sense in this community is um does the district have issues with project delays, excessive costs, or change orders, um or cost overruns where using a PLA could potentially help address those those issues. Um what is the makeup of the district's current construction um workforce and would those contractors be qualified for future district projects if a PLA is adopted? Um and I think this is really important because a community like Carlsbad looks really different than a community further inland or or a community um you know in really any other part of the state. And so looking at whether these types of um local hire uh provisions make sense

120or maybe how those borders are are are drawn is is really important in this particular context. Um I I kind of already hit on the the the third one about the local hire preference and how it's really important to um define really clearly what that like geographic area is so that you don't um box yourself out of a sufficient number of of workers available to actually do the work that is that is needed by the districts. Um and then if the district does anticipate future uh future bond measures um just being aware of some of the potential political implications for some um for some for some taxpayers who feel very strongly um uh opposed to a PLA. Um there were a few other questions I'd received um in my experience working with boards that I

121just wanted to address. They were kind of the most common things that um that I hear. Um a question about how long this process takes. So usually once we start negotiating it's between a two and six-month period to kind of agree on terms. And it really depends on the unions that we're negotiating with, um the number of involved parties, excuse me, and uh kind of what what terms are placed on the table for negotiation. Um I often get the question and I kind of addressed it before, but just to be clear, whether a local hiring preference can be done without a PLA, it can be. We have to be careful from a from a from a legal perspective to make the local hiring preference a goal and not not like mandatory cuz there could be

122equal protection issues with the way that we structure those. So, it's really and you'll see that in the context of the PLA as well. It's really just it's a goal as opposed to it being like a like a mandated um um like a mandated percent or a number. Um One of the other factors is how we apply a PLA. So, you know, you may adopt it on a project-by-project basis or you may adopt it for application to a to a whole kind of class or category of projects. And that is also a really important consideration because if it's applied too broadly, you again kind of restrict the options of of who can bid on the project and and the you know, sufficiency of the workforce to kind of meet the the project needs that you

123have. So, um I would say kind of two factors to to really think about is how broadly you draw the geographic area that you're giving a preference to and then how broadly are you applying that the application of the PLA so that you're not uh creating a disadvantage in trying to find um contractors of a certain experience that can complete the project. So, now from kind of what are the potential next steps? So, there a resolution that's in front of you tonight um for action. And so, you can vote on the resolution that that is that has been presented for your consideration this evening. You can postpone the resolution indefinitely um or kind of a third option is you can request that staff um facilitate an additional presentation and additional information from specific trades, contractors,

124and taxpayer groups. So, this something that I have seen happen very often. Um it there's usually the board kind of wants an initial set of like pros and cons from from council. Um and then they'll say if there's, you know, continued interest in the idea of a PLA, in addition to the public comment that that you'll receive tonight, you you have the option to bring um other parties that are interested in this in this transaction forward to kind of give you both sides. So, usually I'll see um you know, certainly folks that are in the trades, right, can can speak to their experience with a PLA and advocate for it. But then on the on the other side, you're going to see the the big contractors that are, you know, that are doing the hiring

125on these projects um once they get the contracts. And then the taxpayer groups also have um thoughts on the on the other side. So, um certainly not uncommon. And I would say it's most common from my experience to have that kind of like a secondary presentation of of both pieces of information. Um just to make sure that you have all of your questions answered before you proceed with negotiating an agreement. Um so, if if you chose to to do that tonight and you wanted some additional information from both sides of the um of the matter, from a procedural standpoint, you could um postpone review of the resolution indefinitely until you gather more information or postpone review of the resolution until some like particularly um how like designated future meeting, right, if it's if it's important

126to keep it on the calendar. Um so, those are those are the kind of the three options for next steps and I'm happy to answer any questions. And we'll turn it back to you President Ward at this time for public comment. Great, thank you. This is a time for public comment. How many blue cards have been received? I believe we have 25 blue cards. Okay. Point of personal or point of order, can we take a break prior to hearing? Sure, quick break. Okay, 5 minutes. We'll be back at 8:10. >> Mhm. >> Okay, so we have 25 speakers. So, can I get a motion to extend the minutes from 20 to 25? So moved. Second. Okay, we have Trustee Emery who made the motion, Trustee COC who second. Um Ms. Garcia, please call for a

127vote. Uh Trustee Rawlings? Yes. Trustee Berbec? Yes. Trustee COC? Yes. Trustee Emery? >> Yes. Trustee Ward? Yes. Motion passes 5 to 0. Okay. When I call your name, please come to the podium, state your name, and indicate whether you live within the boundaries of the school district. You will have 1 minute to speak. We will have the timer on the screen and your mic will be muted when your time has expired. The first speaker will be Kelvin Barrion, after that will be L. Sanchez, and after that will be Ray Pearson. Kelvin. Good. Good evening. Uh my name is Kelvin Barrios. I'm uh representative with the Laborers Union Local 89 here in San Diego County. Here in of this item. Um I'm here speaking on behalf of my business manager, Valentin Macedo, and our about 5,000

128members. And of those 5,000 members, we actually have several hundred that live here in Carlsbad. My boss actually wanted to be here, but he's a football coach in the Carlsbad area. Our union has a lot of ties to North County. Again, several hundred members in Carlsbad, about like a thousand in the North County area. And I did one point that since it's uh limited in time, I wanted to focus on is that without a PLA, contrary to I think what the presentation was, like you can't have local hire. I think the attorney said is like you could make it advisory. You can, you know, ask, but you can't actually require it. It's through a PLA that we can require local hire to ensure that we're hiring locally and hiring Thank you. L Sanchez and Ray

129Pearson's after that. Okay. Ray Pearson, you want to go ahead and we'll circle back to L. Boy, this is odd. I'm Ray Pearson, resident of Carlsbad, parent of a student graduated from Carlsbad High School, and a former member of the Proposition P Oversight Committee, and some of you colleagues with you as well, too. I want to focus on one central question. How do we make the most of every taxpayer dollar to benefit our students? And last thing I'll say is even small increases in construction costs can have real consequences. Fewer phase four and phase five projects, fewer improvements completed, or delays in needed projects. With limited bond funding prioritize maximizing what we can deliver for students. Thank you. Did Al Sanchez return? Okay. Um Shawn Keone Ellis. And then Carol Kim. Hello. Good evening everybody.

130How you doing? My name is uh Shawn Ellis. I am an organizer with the United Association Local Union 230 and a community member of Carlsbad. I actually uh just coached my two FNL teams up in Alga Norte and we got a game Friday and Saturday in Poinsettia. But why do I say that? I've had a lot of great privilege, right? When I got out of the Marine Corps, I got on a PLA job. It was a federal job. I instantly started making a living wage not knowing any skills, got into go to a California registered apprenticeship program. That was a long time ago. Today I'm an organizer. I grow the movement. I do politics. I do a little bit of everything for for the members. That is the future that you could provide people from

131multiple communities and including your community yourself, okay? What What are PLAs in Vista, in San Diego and across this county? It has helped non-union contractors get the work and become union contractors. It's one of the biggest tools to provide that opportunity for business partners to see the quality in our labor and the skills that we provide. So I 100% urge you to support Al Sanchez, did you return? Okay. Carol Kim? Good evening trustees. My name is Carol Kim and I'm the business manager of the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council. I have the great honor to serve and represent over 35,000 union construction workers in the county of San Diego. I rise to speak in support of the project labor agreement that you are taking up for consideration because they're a policy tool

132that allow public agencies to enable local hire and help manage complex construction projects efficiently. There's you you they ensure that workers are trained, skilled, and qualified. They set goals for hiring local workers. They can set targets for securing local business participation and create career opportunities for entry-level workers. Um they provide transparency that ensure that projects are meeting goals and are managed effectively and they provide accountability by holding parties accountable. They require fair and open competition per public California public contract code 2500. I'll note that because of the patchwork quilt of PLAs across the country, we now have hundreds of non-union construction workers who are fully vested in union pensions and also that San Diego Unified, which has had a PLA for about 15 years, actually has had Thank you. Al. All right. The line's long

133at the restaurant. Hello council members. My name's Al Sanchez and I'm a Carlsbad alumni. I lettered in football and wrestling and I also met my wife there on the campus of Carlsbad High School. I love Carlsbad. Local 189 and I'm also a Local 189 union member. I've been a member for 38 years and it's changed my life. I was able to to have a career the whole time getting paid a fair wage and it made it possible for me to purchase two homes throughout the years. I also had had top quality medical coverage throughout the whole career as a labor. At the time, put in monies towards my pension that's second to none. I know this PLA will bring a lot of money to Carlsbad. I urge you to please pass this PLA. Thank you

134for your time. Okay, we have Ann Ann Cermeno, Jake Estrada, and then Francisco Pena, and then Aaron Borgardt after that. Hi, good evening. Uh my name is Inocencio Jake Estrada. I am the political director for the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council, representing 36 35,000 over 35,000 workers across this county. Um I'm here to speak in support of the project labor agreement. These agreements serve as a powerful public policy tool that protects taxpayers' hard-earned dollars, deliver high-quality construction job uh high-quality infrastructure projects, and create good-paying jobs that benefit all construction workers, union and non-union alike. And when we're talking about school districts, I cannot think of a better use of public policy. Our kids, our educators, and our communities deserve school facilities built to the highest of standards. We all deserve to have

135our public dollars maximized for for the highest impact, which means they go to a skilled and trained workforce that live, work, and play in the region. We urge you all to move this process forward, to vote I, to vote yes tonight, and support our communities. Thank you. Aaron Borgardt. What? And that's the same person. Ann Cermeno is the same person, right? >> same person. Aaron Borgardt. >> That's me. Hello. My name is Aaron Borgardt, and I am a union member and a mother. While I do not personally reside in Carlsbad, I have many union brothers and sisters that live and work in Carlsbad. I urge this board to vote to enter into negotiations with the San Diego Building and Construction Trades Council to develop a PLA agreement. Excuse me, a PLA. These agreements include local

136hire provisions that will put San Diegans across the region, those that live, work, and pay taxes in the county of San Diego to work on Carlsbad Unified School District projects. They ensure construction projects are built on time, on budget, and to the highest standards. A PLA keeps those valuable dollars in our region and allows these dollars to change hands up to six times in our local economy. These building trades agreements, excuse me, include provisions that provide top-tier family health, dental, and retirement benefits for all construction workers on covered projects. For many, these agree Thank you. Shauna Hurst, after Shauna will be Eric Kristen. Shauna Hurst reside in the district. My question is, what part of the bond is not working? Why are we having this discussion? We have been performing. The biggest factor we've had

137is cost escalations and we're putting forth something that will continue to do that. The people who have spoken to me, what are they talking about? They're talking about unions and political part like um a special interest groups and I'm here representing students. That's why we're here. That's why we passed the bond. That's what was on every door hanger that I put on on all the doors. I was the one here that passed help pass this bond, not these unions. And I'm the one that is here for our students. We need those monies to go to our classrooms and deliver on what we said we would. We're not even going to get to most of the projects in four and five, and now we're discussing how to increase our costs more. I can't It's just almost

138disgusts me that we're even having this discussion. And where were all these people back when we were trying to pass the bond? They weren't here because Eric Kristen After that Amy Reichert Good evening. Eric Kristen executive director of the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction formed 28 years ago by union and non-union construction firms solely opposed to solely opposed discriminatory and wasteful project labor agreements. You had a Prop HH update. Going well, no problems. This is a solution in search of a problem. Why is it that only four of the 42 school districts in this county have ever used a project labor agreement? If you wish to emulate dysfunctional corrupt school districts like San Diego Unified, knock yourselves out. That is exactly the type of school district you don't want to have anything to do

139with. We have We have sent you over the past year example after example of how PLAs have utterly failed on local hire when 90% of your local construction workforce according to the Department of Labor is non-union. Nine out of 10 workers wake up on a daily basis in this county, in this state, and in this country and choose to work in a union-free environment. A PLA explicitly and implicitly discriminates against them by stealing money out of their paycheck and sending it into a union trust fund they'll never vest in. That's what a PLA does. If you pass a bond and put it up for a vote, Thank you. Amy Reichert David Zepeda will be after that. Good evening. My name is Amy Reichert. I'm a mom, a taxpayer, and someone who has spent years fighting

140for transparency and accountability in our local government and against fraud, waste, and abuse. With all due respect, when the attorney said PLAs don't increase costs, the overflow room literally erupted in laughter. I'm here tonight to ask a simple question. Why is something so controversial, so divisive, and so discriminatory even being considered by this board? A project labor agreement is not neutral. It picks winners and losers. It tells local contractors, small businesses, and independent workers they're not welcome unless they have the right political friends and follow rules that favor special interests. And why consider a policy that could reduce the value of every bond dollar by up to 40%? Money that could be spent fixing Sage Creek High School. That's taxpayer money meant for classrooms, facilities, and students. Thank you, Amy. David Zepeda And then after

141that will be Tony Sanchez. Good evening, board members. Uh my name is David Zepeda and I'm a painter by trade and a proud member of Local 1399. Uh I don't live in this district, but I'm not here for me tonight. I'm here for the members of my local and the members of all the other locals. Uh PLAs bring local hire requirement will uh give them the opportunity to earn money in their community and put it back into the community. I'm living proof that a PLA works. My first experience with the union was on a PLA and for the first time in my career as a painter, I was able to have a uh livable wage, benefits where I had top-notch health insurance and a pension to look forward to. Counting down, 16 years left. So,

142I urge you guys to to put the PLA. Thank you. Tony Sanchez, and then Marcelo Gomez. Tony? Yeah. Good evening. I'm a Tony Sanchez. I'm a proud member of Local 1399. Painters and Allied Trade, and I'm a representative representative of of lot of members, thousands of members. Um so, I do I am not from Carlsbad, but I'm here to support all my brothers and sisters that are from the area. And um going union, having all these union projects has helped me get my first house, um raise my kids, I'll be waiting for a pension, um and I I would like for that to um to see others that are wanting to have a future in a career. Um so, I strongly encourage you guys to uh support this. Thank you. Marcelo Gomez, and after that

143will be Jacob Gandy. Sorry about that. Marcelo Gomez? Okay, I'll take Jacob if he's ready. Good evening, everyone. My name is Jacob Gandy. I'm a third-generation glazier. I represent Local 1399. Um for those of you that don't know, a glazier is somebody who puts in windows and architectural aluminum. So, you know, things like this, um in any scale of buildings, from large scale to, you know, lower scale. Um I'm also here to represent um my students. Uh I'm also an apprenticeship instructor. The only difference is that we don't call them students, we call them apprentices. And yeah, there are certain stipulations that you know, certain jobs require but like it's been mentioned several times um the union members are getting paid great wages, you get benefits, you know, retirement um your health insurance and then

144also these students, my apprentices go through a four four to four and a half year program to learn the skills that they need to do the best kind of work possible. So, moving this thing forward, doing the PLA ensures you quality work, union work and the best you can get. Thank you. Okay, trying for Marcelo Gomez again. Okay. Um I'll circle back. Jacob Minafo. How's it going? My name is Jacob Minafo. I do not live in Carlsbad, I live in Vista area. Um I recently moved to San Diego 5 years ago. Um native to northern California. I've been a union glazer for over 10 years. Um third generation as well and I just wanted to say that you guys should support this PLA. I've worked under countless PLAs all over California and they have a

145sense of professionalism on the job site that I would like to continue for Carlsbad School District as well. Thank you. Okay, Doug Bowman. Doug Bowman. Marcelo Gomez. Bo Coleman. Beau Coleman Marcelo Gomez, Doug Bowman, Beau Coleman Eric Christian I'm good. You're good. Scott Davison, I know he's here. He's right over there. Since the pandemic, we haven't had too many issues where you could draw a clear black and white line and say that a policy would either benefit students or benefit adults. So, this project labor agreement is a great reminder of why so many of us are here, sitting on the board, sitting in the audience, and what watching at home. We're here because there are simply too many people running our public schools for the benefit of adults instead of kids. The PLA is the

146quintessential embodiment of this dichotomy. It is an anti-competitive, anti-free market special interest favor to labor unions, which like the teachers union, exist only for the benefit of their members, adults, and not for the benefit of students. The best analogy I heard boils down to a a recent trip I took to the grocery store. Before Easter, I grabbed a few handfuls of Cadbury eggs because they were on sale, buy five for the price of four. But, imagine if the store had a PLA agreement in place and forced me to buy four for the price of five. Who in their right mind would do that? I hope it's not this board. Gerardo Gomez Good evening. I'm My name is Gerardo Gomez. I am a proud member of Local 1399. I am not a resident of Carlsbad. Um

147I think it got to the point where it's not affordable anymore. And Um I did graduate from Carlsbad High School. I'm in support of the PLA because it brings more work to North County residents instead of driving all the way down to San Diego, creating more traffic, spending money in other places that's not in the uh North County district. So, please be in favor. Thank you. Diego Espinosa. Hello, my name is Diego Espinosa. I'm a proud member of Local 1399. Uh I represent 1,000 members. I'm a floor layer by trade. So, I worked in non-union companies where most of their hiring was coming from out of town. And so, I was on that side of of of of the of the of the coin. And ever since I got a I was started working on

148PLAs, it kept me working on my area. So, I used to work a year in in Carlsbad, but since I started working in on PLAs, uh I stayed in my hometown. So, I feel that that's going to happen to Carlsbad when this applies to all the the workers that work for this uh uh for this uh project. Thank you. Thank you. Luis Miguel. Luis? I got to translate. So, He said that he's favorite PLA because he he lives here and he travels all the way to San Diego where they have a where he's a apprentice but he would like to for that bill to pass or sorry to pass the PLA where he can stay locally for a local hire. Thank you. Okay, let's see that one. Okay. Jose Miguel. Okay. Hola, mi nombre es

149Carlos. Formo parte de la unión y es un poco tedioso ir bajarte los días hasta San Diego. Uno nunca sabe con lo que se puede encontrar en el camino como tráfico, algunos problemas al llegar en el aspecto. Desearía tener una oportunidad de poder trabajar cerca de mi residencia ya que yo soy de Oceanside por lo cual estoy a favor del PLA y me gustaría tener tener un poco más de accesibilidad al trabajo en el aspecto de no tener que ir hasta San Diego por lo cual me gustaría que el PLA y por supuesto formar parte de esto. Gracias por su tiempo. So he lives here and he would like to for the PLA to pass that way he doesn't have to travel all the way to San Diego what he does. So he's a painter

150He's a painter and and he would like to for that to pass to stay to work here. Thank you. Okay, I'm just going to circle back to Bo Coleman, Doug Bowman, or Marcelo Gomez. Okay. Oh. You had called my name but you didn't call me up. It was Jose Copenha. Oh. Okay. Um Oh, he's here. Okay, I'm going to call one more person up and then why don't you come up after that? Okay, thank you. Alyssa Williamson. Uh my name is Alyssa Williamson and I do live within the district. In 1997, President Superintendent uh Cheryl Ernst asked me to serve as co-chair of the committee tasked with running the Prop B ballot measure. When we met with a campaign consultant for their first meeting, he said that one of the mission-critical tasks of the committee

151was to obtain an endorsement from the San Diego County Taxpayers Association. In the subsequent bond elections which we've had, we've received similar direction from other consultants as well. They've all said that endorsement from this association can be highly influential in passing local school bonds. I've also learned that the association typically opposes school bonds that include P- with for districts that include P- um PLAs. Um there most likely will come a time when either this board or a future board will be faced with um initiating a bond measure. Uh tonight, if you choose to pass this resolution, the chances of receiving an endorsement from the Taxpayers Association Okay, Francisco, come on up. Sorry about that. No worries. Good evening. Uh Francisco Peña representing the uh Western States Regional Council of Carpenters Local 619 here in the

152county of San Diego representing over 7,000 union carpenters, which about 2,000 of them reside here in the North County. I myself reside in our neighboring city of Vista. Also have my son with me who's not only a Marine veteran, but he's also one of our apprentices, which we do who an apprenticeship program uh specifically for for veterans. So, you could just look at our neighboring city of Vista. They passed the PLA. And talking to the uh contractor out there to superintendent, the project was built was built in time and under budget. Right now, my son is driving all the way to San Diego or Chula Vista as a lower period apprentice. With the gas prices right now, it'd be great to work in our backyard. We live in this community. We want to We want

153to work in our backyard in this community. I myself worked also a non-union, and I can tell you that working on public works, we always get Thank you. Okay, last call for Bo Coleman, Doug Bowman, and Marcelo Gomez. I think Bo had to leave and Doug Oh, okay. Bo had to leave. Hello. Uh my name's Marcelo Gomez. Um I'm a local member for local 619 carpenters. And I would actually like the PLA to pass by right now. I'm traveling all the way to Riverside for work. Um and it'd be cool cuz I live reside right here in Carlsbad. I pretty much grew up in Carlsbad and Oceanside, so I would like to work closer to home. Thank you. Okay, Doug Bowman, last call. Doug? Okay. May I have a motion for the board to consider

154adoption of >> Point of order. Oh, yeah, question. Sorry. Got distracted. Uh trustees, do you have questions for staff? Thank you. Trustee Rollins. Thank you. Um on slide three of the presentation, I'm sorry. Um it's four. On slide four. Um out of these required um pieces for a PLA, what um what do our contract our current contracts include? Do our do they include non-discrimination, dispute resolution, drug testing, and open dog contractors? Yeah, I would need to check specifically each contract is different and how it goes out to bid, but I believe it includes non-discrimination. Um I I don't know about the others. Follow up. Um on slide five, I think um Ms. Palito was going to chime in. I I I was just going to add some initial information. So, I I don't have specific

155information about the district's particular contracts, but just in in general um for for a public agreement, right? For for public works, there's um almost always an attachment and exhibit that requires the that uh the contractors comply with a drug-free uh workplace requirement while on district property. Every district has a board policy that uh that is going to require that. Um so, I I would be relatively certain that that's in all of the agreements or at least most of them. Um there's always a dispute resolution uh process of of some nature within those agreements. It just kind of depends on the the scale and the scope of the agreement, but they're all going to contain some form of a of a dispute resolution um uh like section or provision. Uh And then as far as open

156to all contractors, so state law requires that we promote you know the ability for for the most competition. So there are rules against having particularized um restrictions about what types of contractors can can bid on projects. So if that helps. Go ahead. Um so just to be clear, all of our contracts include these basics already, right? So this would not be a change in practice, correct? So they don't contain the no strikes provision. That's something that that would not be included. Like no strikes and no lockouts provision is not something that's normally included within public contracts. But a number of these other items, there are there are laws for public agreements that would have some form of these provisions. They may not look exactly like you would see them in a PLA, but they will

157be addressed in some some form. But go ahead. Um Follow up on slide six where it talks about training requirements, that that would be an extra. Um do any of our contracts include training requirements for contractors we hire? Um so I I can speak to the fact that there are certain types of requirements and certain types of contracts in the state of California. So there are certain types of construction delivery methods, like a lease-leaseback contract or a design-bid-build contract over a million dollars that have the skilled and trained workforce requirement, um which so those would have that that particular standard that a certain percent of the workers on those projects have uh uh gone through you know like specialized kind of training, but those those provisions aren't necessarily in the other types of general like

158everyday construction contracts that go through the design bid bid build construction delivery method. Go ahead. Um okay, so um if it's there, what is the actual requirement then? That the current requirement by law that with all the contracts they have to be what is skilled mean what's the definition of those things? Yeah, so there's only two types of agreements, two types of construction delivery methods that we can use as a school district that have um well, there's two that that the skilled and so that the the design build project over a million dollars and the lease leaseback agreement, those are those are types of construction delivery methods, right? Ways that we can structure a contract with a contractor to do work. Those types of contracts are are required by law to have a skilled and

159trained workforce. A skilled and trained workforce are workers that have gone through an apprenticeship program of some type on this necessarily a union sponsored or approved program, but they've gone through the apprenticeship process. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you and um so the is there like years of of um within the apprenticeship is there years of experience and you said that there's only partial you know, partial workforce. So how is it 50%? Is it 80%? How what's the percentage that's required under those contracts? I believe we're at 60%. There was kind of a scaling up within the law that those like a ever-increasing percent had to be a skilled and trained workforce for those two types of projects. How many years is required for it to be considered a trained and skilled workforce? Um I believe

160most apprenticeship programs are are are four years, but I I I can't speak speak to the specifics of all of them. Okay, uh Trustee Emery, sorry. I sorry for Dr. Norman or or Dr. Nye, um what projects or upcoming construction do we currently foresee that would elicit um would be of use with not of use, but that that we see coming up that either this would be used for or not depending on how we vote. Yeah, from a construction standpoint, we're working through all those phase three projects as well as anything left in measure HH that will have dollars for. Um so, um it would be anything that we've identified moving forward with the remaining dollars that we have it. I think we had uh identified about $19 million of the bond um on phase

161three, four, and five projects that were still uh out there and available to be identified and part of that was HH dollars and another part of that was developer fees. Follow up to that. >> Um and that would not include the ones currently in the works or ones that we had discussed possibly moving to the maintenance department instead of um bringing in outside construction sources. Yeah, it it uh includes the work done at Carlsbad High School as an example. The work that we have scheduled to do at CVAE CSA. So, any of the projects that I identified uh in this evening's presentation with construction excluding Sage Creek Sage Sage Creek wasn't part of uh measure HH um the soil mitigation at least. So, we're using developer fees for that. Um Trustee Verbeck. Um I'd like

162to refer to slide eight. Uh there's four questions, factors to consider. And the first one, uh does the district have issues with project delays? And what are those due to? Is that permitting? Um I'm not aware of um any huge delays that we have issues with. Just Pack Room with the Pack Room with that. >> that was a permit issue. >> Permit. And so the PLA wouldn't necessarily be intended to help with that, correct? Yeah, I have a new question. Do you have a follow-up? No, I just have a new question. >> Okay, go ahead. Trustee Verbout, go ahead. Okay. So then moving down, what is the makeup of our district's current construction workforce? And of that workforce, if we had a PLA, would they lose their jobs because they wouldn't qualify? Yeah, I I

163I don't know the answer to the second question. In regards to the first, I do know that Director uh Kim Brough before she left real broad brush strokes is about 80/20 for um non-union to union workforce that we currently use. Um 80% non-union, 20% union. But that's again, that's a real generalization um based on the numbers that she had provided. As a follow-up to that, so has it always been our intention as a district to look for the most qualified and the best price contractors? Yes. And how how would that change if we were to have a PLA? So so I will say right, the um the way that you go about the process of selecting a contractor is going to depend on your construction delivery method, right? So, as I was mentioning before, right,

164there's design build, there's lease lease back, and there's um the kind of more traditional design bid build option. And those those are pretty much exclusively the the three methods or some variation of those that are used. Um the design bid build option the the law requires that you pick the low bidder, right? So, you create certain um requirements in that bid so that you ensure that the contractor has to be licensed, right? They have to meet certain qualifications, but other than that, you essentially have to select the lowest responsible responsive bidder. For the other two construction delivery methods that I mentioned, um there are there are other options, right? So, lease lease lease back gives you the ability to um consider and select a contractor based uh on on a series of of criteria that

165are um that are provided within the bid document. Um so, uh the reason I say that is there are different, right? Sometimes it's really just, you know, just the low bid with the like standard standard like classifications that they're that they're licensed, right? That they kind of meet the basics, and then you have to select the low bidder. With with other types of procedures, you have the ability to consider criteria, and it gives the district more flexibility. If you were to adopt a PLA, you would just essentially have an additional set of requirements that would go on to that to that bid document or the RFP depending on the construction delivery method that you choose, right? So, you you would be saying to a contractor, "Not only do you need to meet all of these

166underlying requirements that we would, you know, have as a standard, but you have to be willing to comply with the terms of the project labor agreement." Um and so, it's it's going to depend what things are negotiated into the project labor agreement, but we talked about some of the standard features, right? Um Um something like a like a local hire provision. Um and so you would you would just be requiring the contractors that respond to your procurement document to agree to comply with those provisions when they when they are selecting their workers that are going to staff the job. So do you typically see with a PLA the construction costs increasing as many have reported? That's a that's a hard question to answer. You There are studies on both sides, right? So there there are

167studies that I have seen that say that it does increase construction costs. And then you'll look at particular districts or particular circumstances that say that it actually helps them save um on the project. So that's why when I said earlier, you're going to hear advocates on both sides are going to cite cite to particular studies or circumstances. Um but I in my estimation, there's no clear-cut rule there. It's just it's it's it's really really going to depend. There There are studies that that have been published that that point in both directions. So it's it's it's hard to say with certainty. Trustee Rawlings. Thank you. So what you're saying is that that's not it's not conclusive whether the cost would go up. Correct. Thank you. Um I do have a question and I'm thinking Dr. Nye

168might be able to answer. Um was the plumber that um that hooked up our water system to um to uh recycled water at Hope Elementary? Was that a union uh plumber? Um my understanding was that was not a union plumber. Do you know how much experience that plumber had or if that plumber went through an a uh an apprenticeship program or um did we have any requirements on how um on how much experience or training that that plumber had received? No, I do not. Okay. And were there any consequences to that actions that the district is currently involved in or had was involved in that has cost any money or has caused problems for families? Uh at this point in time we're there is litigation that's out against the district and we're working through that

169as a district. Is there any current costs associated with that at this time? Not to my knowledge, no. Other than legal fees, correct. Um I do I have a follow-up but it's a different uh school site so I don't know if if I can continue on that path or not. >> Sure, go ahead. Okay, thank you. I'll go after you. >> thank you. Um uh the uh the folks that laid the concrete at Sage Creek, um were they union contractors? I do not know that. You do not know that. No. Um and um at at Sage Creek did we have any requirements for training and or experience for concrete like for laying of concrete and or anything dealing with soil? Yeah, I I do not know the answer to that. Sage Creek was built over

17014 years ago. I I was not um even in the district when it was built. So I don't have any background or experiences to the the background of those uh construction. I know Balfour Beatty was um the general construction on that but they had hundreds, probably hundreds of subcontractors and I don't know the experience of each one of those. Um one more follow-up. Um I was made aware that um there were three union contractors that were at Sage Creek. Do you know what their um what their uh careers were in? Yeah, what um before Ms. Kimbrell had left, she reached out to Balfour Beatty and they were uh able to provide uh her with the knowledge of three contractors that were union that worked under there um that worked under them at that point in

171time, but I don't know uh what trades they were. Okay, I have a question for Sarah. And then I'll come back to you. Um on slide number seven where it says um you kind of spoke to this where it says opponent site studies state from 13 to 25% cost increase in bid pricing. So um is there a particular study that you're talking about there or and was that fact-checked and Um yes, there is a there is a particular study that that I was referring to. Um whether or not it was it was fact-checked is I So I can't take a legal position on this, right? My my role is as as the attorney for the district. And so I have seen studies cited on both sides of this equation that say both that project labor

172agreements can increase costs and then on the opposite side where they say it's actually helped school districts save cost. From a from from a legal perspective um there's there I can't say with certainty that it does either. Okay. Um and so I so I I bring that particular study forward um because it's one that is often talked about in this in this in this context, right? Boards will sometimes um ask about it or or um people that are um against a PLA will discuss it, but I um it's not necessarily my role to to to advocate for one or the other, just to just to you know, present the information that it's there's uh there there is evidence on both sides that from my from my view is is inconclusive from from a legal perspective.

173Okay. So, just the statement that noted here then what I'm hearing you say is it could go either way for either side. It depends on the project. It depends on the project. >> to project it could it could vary. >> Mhm. And certainly there have been projects where the cost had probably increased because there was a PLA as opposed to there not being a PLA, but then you'll hear of um anecdotes, right, of uh you know, projects or districts where the facts went the other direction. Mhm. Like we heard from that gentleman. Mhm. In Vista. Mhm. Okay. Uh Trustee Varba. Okay, back to slide eight. Um the third question, does a local hire preference benefit the Carlsbad community? In other words, are there many district contractors that reside or have their place of business in

174Carlsbad? Yeah, I do I don't know the number of that. We'd have to do a deeper study. Certainly had a few here that spoke tonight, but I don't know the true number of um union versus non-union members that reside within Carlsbad, the city of Carlsbad, or even North County for that matter. We don't know what the percentage is. So, I have a Do you have a follow-up to that? I have a follow-up too. Do you have a follow-up? Go ahead. It's fine. Trustee Varba. Okay. Um so, follow-up to that. So, you know, one of the things that I've learned about PLAs is that you know, they it's they hire locally. They also um work with local businesses, too. Do you know if the contractors that we've used in the past have utilized the businesses here

175locally? Uh yeah, I do I know that they do utilize the businesses here locally. To what extent I I wouldn't be able to tell you, but I know that um that is the preference of many that they're working with local businesses as well. >> a priority or is it a preference? I I would I would I would not want to even venture a guess as to each individual contractor and whether or not they're doing that as a local preference or priority. I don't know. >> that's not something that would be like in a contract that the district would have when you were Yeah, I would have to review your contracts to see if that's stipulated anywhere in there. I don't I don't believe it currently is. Uh trustee Rawlings, you had a follow-up. Thank you.

176Just super quick. When you talk about the city of Carlsbad, um we would be looking at Carlsbad Unified which also includes portions of Oceanside, correct? Well, so you the the two parties that that are negotiating the PLA decide on the on the geographic boundary of of a preference. So it it could be the district, it could be the city, it could be the county, you know, those parties decide on the boundary of the preference. Go ahead. So just as a follow-up, so all of this would be up to negotiations, which means each party would probably bring information that would show the demographics of a particular area to support their cause within negotiations, correct? All of the items are up for negotiation except for those five points that have to be included because they're in the

177statute. Thank you. I have a follow-up to that. So also what would be under negotiation is the size of the projects, right? And the cost of the project. So the district and labor could decide together about you know, it wouldn't be like you know, small jobs that we would do do here locally, but they can kind of set what that cost would be. Yeah, so some some negotiations of a PLA apply only to one, usually very big project, and some will apply to an an entire kind of uh a like category of project. That can be based on uh price or some other factor. Um but I I have seen it um very commonly where it's based on on a dollar spend amount, and it's it's over a certain limit because under a certain limit,

178you know, can be restrictive. >> And what is, just to follow up on that, so what's kind of the average about? That's really hard to say. I can't say that I know an an average. I would say >> What's the low end? >> Um I I I would say I've pretty commonly heard projects over a million dollars. That's I I know at least two others. >> a PLA? Mhm. Um Did anybody have a follow-up here? Okay. Uh Trustee Emery. Do we know um in our San Diego San Diego County and local, you know, other local comparable districts, which ones are currently um utilizing PLAs? I don't I don't have an extensive list, like a top-to-bottom list. There's there's a few districts that I've that I have worked with, but I wouldn't be able to give

179a a comprehensive answer. Okay. Uh Trustee Verbout and then Trustee Emery. So, I'm going to move on to the number the fourth question on slide eight. Does the district anticipate a future bond measure where support may be needed from taxpayer groups who may oppose a PLA? Uh I would say that uh we're certainly working through our new facility master plan, but that would be at the direction of the board should we want to go out for our future bond. It would be our recommendation that we do go out for our future bond considering the limited number of dollars we have left in our current bond. So, um we had a previous board member speak to this as well as IOC members and we received emails just reminding us that measure HH earned its endorsement from

180the San Diego County Taxpayers Association in part because it precluded the use of a PLA. And so, I just want to remind everyone that >> Point of order. We're in Okay, I'll ask questions. >> Yeah, so Thank you Cathy Trustee Rawlings, appreciate that. So, with limited measure HH dollars left um you know, will we be adopting potentially adopting a bond in the near future when this is in the memory of our taxpayers should we add a PLA to this bond? It would be up to you know, it would be up to the board whether we adopted the the PLA and then also if we decided to go out for a bond, but I do see it being prohibited if it were adopted. Thank you. Trustee Rawlings. Thank you. On slide seven, you discussed reduction in

181competition. Is that competition in dollars or are we also talking about competition in the highly skilled competing for uh you know, local you know, local workers and based on whatever we agree to isn't that aren't we raising the bar and then that's where the competition is rather than the competition being on cost? It could be. I mean, so so this point that I've made here is that some folks that are in opposition to a PLA will say that contractors that would have otherwise bid on a district project without a PLA will choose not to be a part of the project because of the additional requirements. Now, that could have that could have an impact on price, right? The whole idea in the public contract code is that most district most district purchases over the particular

182threshold have to be competitively bid and have to be selected on the low price because the idea is that the more competition, the lower prices are are driven down. But certainly there's there's various components of competition that come into play there. The follow up. Um So, my question is is that when you talk about reduction in competition, it's those folks that can't meet the high bar of a PLA that bow out. So, we would be looking at competition of at the highest caliber, not the the lowest caliber would not be able to compete in that within a PLA, correct? Um I would say not necessarily can't meet the obligations, but choose and choose not to, right? So, some some could be that they you know, don't foresee being able to hire the workforce that has

183that those all all those qualifications. Some would just say, we're we're not a contractor that chooses to engage with with projects that are subject to a PLA. And so, they they may just choose not to because of the additional obligations. Any other questions? Go ahead. Um and when you talked about the benefits as far as pensions and health benefits, doesn't that also create a stable workforce that will be available for long-term projects as instead of kind of um potential contractors that may come and go? Um I don't really know that I would be the qualified person to answer that question from a from a from a legal perspective. Certainly, I I think you would hear um advocates of a PLA that that would make that make that argument. So, I have a follow-up to that.

184So, um if they're non-union or if they're not part of the PLA um contractors, do their workers not have benefits? I mean, could that be a possibility? Um yes, it is a possibility. It it just kind of depends on the contractor and the way that they structure their agreements. Um but I think the factor that is that is unique to a PLA is that um it is required. Well Well, there Yeah, there I mean, it's not necessarily required, right? The only things that are required are those five things that are in the statute. But as a part of the negotiation, generally what gets agreed upon is that uh contractors hire certain types of skilled workers and then have to pay into the fringe benefit and pension programs that are associated with the union that is

185the exclusive representative of those workers on that project. Okay, I understand. Um I have a follow-up on that. So, could that potentially increase costs because um the union is paying into those benefits and that's my first question and I have a second follow-up. Um I think it I think it could theoretically. I can't I can't speak to whether it generally does or does not, but I I have certainly heard those that are against a PLA um site that as as a potential issue of cost. And then my follow-up is when we hire skilled workers, um is it our responsibility to know what their benefit packages are? Um from my perspective, generally no. There So, there are certain, uh, like legal requirements, right? Like, uh, every public project over a thousand dollars, the workers have to

186be have to have to be paid a prevailing wage. There are certainly, um, uh, oversight, uh, like mechanisms and laws in in place that where, um, that gets checked and ensured over the over the course of a project, but other types of fringe benefits is not normally something that the district is responsible for overseeing. So, we've never had a problem with labor strikes with our projects where people have walked off cuz they're unhappy with who they work for. No. Go ahead, Trustee Rawlings. I have a follow-up and then a new one. So, the follow-up is, um, the Carlsbad Unified School District doesn't hire these employees, correct? Aren't they hired by, uh, contractors and/or, um, union halls? Yes. And then, can I ask my new one or do we have Go ahead. >> Okay, thank you.

187Um, um, we talked earlier about, um, really looking at, um, high rigor in our academics for our students. Would doesn't it seem reasonable that we would also want that same rigor within our, um, contractors that work for us? Uh, we certainly want, uh, one of the requirements that we would want is, um, a skilled workforce. And so, um, regardless, we want, uh, people on our jobs that are skilled and can do the job. And that would mean high rigor for their profession, correct? Yes. Thank you. >> But, I think we're also seeing that displayed through the projects that have been completed without the PLA. We do have high quality projects. We just had saw that displayed in our presentation as well. Go ahead. Does that include the plumber that, um, hooked up to reclaimed water

188and they the cement worker that doesn't have you know that couldn't look at soil that would cause problems with concrete? No, I do understand that there have been issues in the past. I was referring to the projects that we recently highlighted with AOMS. I know that there have been other projects in the past that have been of concern. Any other questions? So may I have a motion for the board to consider adoption of resolution 20 20-2526 exhibit B author is authorizing negotiation of a project labor agreement. I'd actually like to make the motion to authorize the district and adopt a resolution exhibit B. What did I say? Did I not say that? You just said consider and I'm saying that we want to I'd like to make a motion to authorize it. Okay, can I

189have a second? I'll second. Okay. Trustee Rawlings made the motion Trustee Ceoci seconded the motion discussion? Go ahead. Um as many of you know, I am also a union member. Um and I've struggled back and forth with this because I'm very aware that we are you know, wanting the best for our buildings, our facilities, our students, but as we're going into negotiations currently with our CUTA and with our LAUNA I feel personally like we need to put our priorities with our unions who are currently employed with us before we put future projects that are maybe not even on the books yet. Um, I really want to make sure that, you know, as we head in to those negotiations, we're looking towards our current staff and filling with the highest qualified people we have, you know,

190talking about filling with non-agency and bringing more people into there. And I really struggle with, you know, although philosophically I fully agree with union work and and the quality of work that they bring, but I really struggle with feeling like we neglect our current employees um, for projects, like I said, and people that aren't currently within our district. So, I uh Um, thanks for sharing that. I I personally feel like, you know, with teachers, for example, we wouldn't want to hire teachers that aren't qualified or barely qualified. Right? We want highly qualified teachers, just like the people that are building our facilities and building our schools and our sites, um, should be highly qualified as well. And that's one thing that the PLA ensures. Um, also, our, you know, we have a pathway for this.

191And if we want to ensure that we have students that have a career in this pathway, um, a secure career where they have a pension and benefits, um, you know, this is something that we need to support. And also, I want to say that if we have people that we are hiring locally, our tax dollars stay here locally as well. So, that's something to really really remember because we do want to keep the money here. Um, go ahead, Christy Rawlings. Thank you. Um, I will be supporting the motion that I made. And um, but um, Christy Emery, I did want to kind of make the distinction that um, that uh, bond dollars can't be used for salaries and or other aspects. So, the So, when we talk about bond dollars, those are one-time dollars in

192order to pay for high quality work. One of the reasons why I'm so supportive is and one of the things that we'll be looking to install is fire alarms. If fire alarm doesn't work right or, you know, it gets hooked up wrong like the water happened at Hope, that can be disaster and that's going to cost us a lot more money than what we're talking about. And when we talk about negotiations, we're not saying this is a done deal. We're just saying, "Hey district, go negotiate the best deal you can in order to meet some of these criterias. And I'd like to see contractors that have, you know, not just journey level but, you know, years of experience, you know, before they can even come on our campus because we in my view, when I

193look for a contractor that's, you know, going to even, you know, do work for me personally, I'm going to or I go to a doctor or I go to a or mechanic, I'm going to What kind of experience do they have? What kind of certificates do they have? You know, are they, you know, have they been in the community? Are they part of the community? And are they are they going to be stable? Are they going to be around? Or is that contractor going to go bankrupt because they're a sub or whatever? So, from my perspective, I'm very concerned that with these two instances that we've had and I've mentioned them a few times with Sage and Hope, I really have concerns that we need to up our game in our contracts from my perspective.

194And so, to me this is a good way and again, we're not saying it's a done deal. We're just saying, "Hey district, you know, staff, go go negotiate the best deal possible." So, that's that's why I'm supporting it and I believe that that we should be, you know, expecting the same rigor from our that we do from our students that we do in our contractors that that are working on the facilities that where our students are. Yeah, Trustee Rollins, I agree with you and I think these two incidents that happened as well is costing us more money. Right? And I think if we were able to hire qualified people that could really do the job and do it well that you know we might not be in the place that we are now. Um trustee

195COC. I also very much agree with you trustee Rawlings and I wanted to point out that this resolution explicitly says that we're authorizing what we're what we're voting on tonight is authorizing the superintendent to negotiate a PLA agreement to bring back to the board for consideration. Um and that draft is for the board to then approve, further negotiate, or reject. So we are not voting on any specific parameters tonight. We're authorizing our superintendent to proceed with negotiations and bringing something to us to then vote on. Trustee Emery. With that and I I hear everything you're saying but should a cost end up with the fire alarms and other examples, if we go to the PLA and it ends up not being a million dollar threshold or whatever that meets that, then we're still you know

196using those HH funds, not using the PLA, possibly still having over costs and not putting those into our union members that we currently have on staff. So there's just too many things for me in flux at the moment since we don't have huge projects right in front of us and we are just opening some of our negotiations that I worry that we're putting kind of the cart before the horse in some cases and I want to make sure that we're taking care of our staff and fully funding and presenting those with you know all the money that we have and I fully understand that the HH projects I I do fully understand that the HH projects is different but we also have said multiple times that the amount of things we want to do are

197not going to be able to be fully covered by the HH. So it's going to come out of other places at other times. Um and so that that's what I'm looking for, not just for the next step, but for multiple steps ahead. And And I hear everything you're saying. I grew up in a construction house. I fully know. I know how to do a lot of things, but I I want to make sure that, you know, our first priority here is it is to our community, but it's also to our staff and our students. And I want to make sure that we are having the optics of putting them first when there isn't a huge project currently coming down the pipeline. So, just to follow up on that, just something to consider to Trustee Emery

198is um you know, the issues with with Sage Creek created an unsafe situation for a lot of our staff and our students. So, that's something to consider. That may be a, you know, My understanding with that was the soil, and that wouldn't have necessarily been because of the lay of the founda- because any of the foundation work that was presented was on top of the soil, and that would not have been something that would have been PLA contracted. >> Well, I think there are two different situations. There was the water that was coming up from the top, and then how it was compacted before. So, possibly if there was contractors that were able to identify that better because they're better trained, then that might that situation might not have been >> Oh, I'm sorry. I

199Yeah. I thought that was the geological survey, so that would have been a different But that was my understanding. Go ahead, Trustee Weaver. Thank you. So, I think our district has done a really good job at going out and looking for qualified contractors to do our work. Um I think from this conversation it sounds like um based on a couple of incidents is where maybe there's there's been faulty work, it has costed us more money, but that's life. That happens. Uh it could happen in a union as well. Um I think the thing that we're overlooking here is that this bond measure was passed without a PLA and it would not have passed with a PLA. And we have a responsibility to use the remaining dollars based on how it was voted in by the

200public, our community, and with the backing of the Taxpayers Association. I think we're putting ourselves at risk for future bond measures if we pass this with a PLA. So, I will not be voting for a PLA. I do want to second that we have many many high-quality projects that have happened for years and years and years in the district, and it doesn't take a PLA. That's not the only way you get a high-quality project because that's to say all the wonderful people who have worked for us, and they are our community members also. We don't want to disparage their work. Right, and I I hear what you're saying, but I think that there's other things that the PLA brings. It provides um workers a better wage, it benefits, and it Excuse me. So, it provides

201a lot of security and a pension, and a lot of that money if they if they are here cuz we heard a lot of people talk today about if they were able to stay here and work here, that money would remain here. Right? So, and I appreciate hearing that people are able to buy their first home. I mean, that's huge, especially here in Southern California. So, you know, I I I I think that's important, and I think that also brings back money to the community as well. Can I ask Sarah a follow-up question about You had mentioned paying into pensions, but employees don't always realize it because it's been that >> that earlier. And so, what happens to that money then? Sorry. So, um when those payments are are paid into, um, you know, like

202the pension plans or the fringe benefits, I should I should call them, they, um, they generally stay there and, right, they just kind of like benefit the, um, the the members of the union that that are a part of the union. But not necessarily the employee that it was originally paid to benefit. Right. Right, because they're, um, because they are not a part of the union. Those Those workers that are not a part of the union won't necessarily benefit from those those payments. Right. So, it's like teachers. Right? You guys we you're part of the union, so you pay into the pension. Right, but you have What I'm What I'm saying is that some people will never realize the benefits even though they paid in cuz they didn't stay long enough with the the company.

203Mhm. >> Correct. Yeah. Trustee Rawlings. I'm I I I did want to, um, address Dr. Norman what you'd said that, um, there would be nothing prohibiting if those high-quality contractors under PLA, they would they would qualify and they would be part of that, correct? I mean, it wouldn't it wouldn't prohibit anyone that we've had that's been great, um, contractors from from being under the PLA, correct? Correct. Yeah, they may choose not to bid it. Uh, but no, I mean, the contractor might, but those workers, you know, could be part of it, correct? If they're high-quality and they meet the criteria that has been negotiated, wouldn't they still be able to work for our district? Or work for >> to address Sarah on that in terms of who they if they're working for a construction company

204that isn't part of a PLA, I don't think that Yeah, so >> they wouldn't So, it's going to depend on the the the workforce sourced by the contractor that gets the project. But assuming that there are individual workers that meet the qualifications under the PLA that are um available to be hired on that particular job, they they Yeah, I mean they would be available if they are available to be hired and the contractor goes there for for workers, then And they meet the criteria that's the bar that's set by the negotiations, correct? If they meet that criteria, wouldn't they be a desired employee from that contractor? So they could get So they could get the job? Um I guess I can't really speak to what a desired employee of the contractor would be, but um

205Based on the negotiated agreement >> So if we say let's say the negotiated agreement says we want you know, uh an apprenticeship and 5 years experience to be part of this project. The contractor would be looking for folks that have an apprenticeship and 5 years of experience, right? Yeah, that's not normally how those requirements are are provided in a PLA. >> I'm just using that as an example. Um but if if a worker um has worked on a district project before, they wouldn't necessarily be excluded from working on on a project under a PLA, but they would need to meet the qualifications agreed to in that agreement. That's what I'm talking about. Um and then Trustee Emery, I just wanted to address um cuz you you've gone back to cost several times, and one of

206the things that um we've been told multiple times is that the the cost factor is not conclusive. That that um that many projects have come under budget and you know, sooner than they were expecting. So there's not There's not a that I just don't want you to to to >> No, it was the perception of Okay, so okay. >> before we negotiate with our current labor unions. But if the if the dollars aren't connected, um I'm not I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from. That you know, if the dollars aren't connected, if you have a bond and you have salaries, how are those connected? I did That's not quite what I said, but I'll stick with it. It's okay. Okay, thank you. Trustee COC. Um I'm looking at our district performance overview and

207it's kind of striking to see that it states that 30.6% of our students come from socio uh economically disadvantaged homes. And we've heard from several people that have talked about um PLAs providing uh one speaker uh commented generational stability that the benefits provided and that's powerful and thinking about our pathway program that you mentioned and the apprenticeship program um not just for young adults, but for veterans as well. I think that's really meaningful. So, um I just wanted to add that. Yeah, I appreciate that a lot. Um I think that's a great point, especially as we're going to be looking at our forward together plan. I think if you know, not only do we want that for our students, but we also want that for our community. And I think that's that's so important and

208you know, one of the things that PLAs do do is hire diverse workers. And um that's something that's really valuable and important. I'm thinking that the full circle of that is it's the parents of those students who may be benefiting from those PLA jobs that are going to have benefits for our students that they wouldn't otherwise have and that provides stability. Right. In in very meaningful ways. So, it's the whole child that we're addressing. >> Absolutely and as they become more have strong careers like their parents, then they will pay into our community. And you know, right? I mean, it's We want people to have successful careers and jobs because if they do, then we all benefit from that. Right? So, um yes, go ahead. Oh, I thought Any other discussion? Okay. All right. So,

209Ms. Garcia, please call for a vote. Um the motion is I'll just restate it. May have um it was a motion for the board to authorize adoption of resolution 20-2526 exhibit B authorizing negotiation of a project labor agreement. Trustee Rawlings made the motion. Trustee um COC seconded the motion. We had discussion and please call for a vote. Trustee Rawlings? Yes. Trustee Berbick? No. Trustee COC? Yes. Trustee Emery? No. Trustee Ward? Yes. Motion passes 3 to 2. Thank you. We now move on to agenda item 10.2 approval of resolution number 25-2526 statute statute Excuse me, statutory school fee increases >> order. Can we ask the audience to please refrain so we can continue conducting business? Thank you. We now move on to agenda item 10.2 approval of resolution number 25-2526 statutory school fee increase for new

210residential and commercial / industrial construction. Trustees, this is a discussion action item. I will now hand it over to Dr. Rodnai. Uh thank you again, President Ward, trustees, and Dr. Norman. This item before you tonight recommends approval of resolution 25-2526, which would increase the district's statutory school facility fees on new residential and community and commercial industrial development in accordance with the recent adjustment adjustments approved by the state allocation board. As background, California law allows school districts to collect developer fees uh to help offset the cost of school facilities needed to serve students generated by new development. In order to do so, the district must complete a formal justification study demonstrating a reasonable relationship or nexus between our new development, the students it generates, and the need for school facilities. To meet the requirement, the district

211engaged in a third-party consultant, Key Analytics, to prepare the comprehensive school facilities fee justification study. The study evaluated planned residential and commercial development within our boundaries, analyzed student generation rates, reviewed our current facility capacity, and calculated the cost of providing school facilities to serve those students. The study also confirms that the cost of accommodating this impact exceeds the fees that the district is allowed to charge under state law. Uh this impact exceeds the fees uh the district is allowed to charge under state law. As a result, we're recommending a modest increase to align with the new state max maximums. Specifically, residential fees would increase from $5.17 per square foot to $5.38 per square foot, and commercial industrial fees would increase from $0.84 to 87 cents per square foot. The resolution before you this evening formally

212adopts the findings of the study and authorizes the district to implement these new updated fee levels. As outlined in the resolution, these funds will be used specifically for school facility purposes including constructing, modernizing, and equipping school sites to serve students generated by the new development. While these fees do not fully cover the cost of growth, they are an important funding source that helps offset facility needs and reliance on local school funds or local bond funds and other district resources. With that, it's respectfully recommended that the Board of Trustees approve resolution number 25-26 to increase statutory school fees as presented. Okay, this is a time for public comment. Have any blue cards been received? There are no blue cards. Okay. Okay, Trustees, do you have any questions? Okay. Okay, may I have a motion for the

213board to adopt resolution number 25-25-26 statutory school fee increase in accordance with the allowable statutory school fees for new residential and commercial industrial construction exhibit A. So moved. Can I have a second? >> Second, Rollings. Okay, Trustee Emery made the motion, Trustee Rollings seconded the motion. Discussion? Okay, no discussion. Miss Garcia, please call for a vote. Trustee Rollings? Yes. Trustee Verbet? >> Yes. Trustee Ceoce? Yes. Trustee Emery? Yes. Trustee Ward? Yes. Motion passes 5 to 0. All right, we are now at part 11, personal services agenda item 11.1, approval declaration of need for fully qualified educators. Trustees, this is a discussion action item. I will now hand it over to Mrs. Megan Arias. Thank you. The declaration of need is an annual form submitted to the California Commission on teacher credentialing containing the employee agency's

214estimated number of emergency permits that might be requested during the year. Prior to processing applications for an emergency permit, this declaration of need must be on file with the commission. The permit must be approved and submitted on an annual basis. Based on the 2026-27 needs and projected enrollment, it is anticipated that approximately 10 certificated certificated employees will be issued emergency permits for clad certification, two for TK, two for multiple subject, and 10 for single subject, and 10 for special ed teachers uh who may need limited assignment permits. It's respectfully requested that the Board of Trustees approve the declaration of need for fully qualified educators exhibit A. Thank you. Okay. Trustees, do you have any questions? Okay, no questions. May I have a motion for the board to approve the deck Cool. Oh, I'm sorry. Do

215we have any pub any speakers? We do not. Okay. No speakers. Uh Trustees, do you have any questions? No questions? Fantastic. May I have a motion for the board to approve the declaration of need for the fully qualified educators exhibit A. So moved. Second, Rawlings. Okay. Was that VerBeth? Okay. Trustee VerBeth made the motion, Trustee Rawlings seconded the motion. Discussion? All right, no discussion. Ms. Garcia, please call for a vote. Trustee Rawlings? Yes. Trustee VerBeth? Yes. Trustee CeoC? Yes. Trustee Emery? Yes. Trustee Ward? Yes. Motion passes 5-0. Okay, thank you. We now move on to agenda item 11.2, approval of the employee appreciation resolution number 22-2526, Day of the Teacher, and resolution 23-2526, Classified School employee week. Trustees, this is this is a discussion action item. I will now hand it over to Ms. Megan

216Arias. Thank you. It's the district's tradition to honor certificated and classified employees during the month of May for their outstanding service to the district. Through the work of CUSD's dedicated workforce, we are able to provide high-quality learning environment for all students. Consistent with the California Ed Code, the district's employee recognition corresponds with the dates established by the state legislator. Resolution number 22-2526 designates May 13th, 2026 as Day of the Teacher, exhibit A, and resolution number 23-2526 designates May 17th through to 23rd, 2026 as classified school employee week, exhibit B. It is respectfully recommended that the Board of Trustees adopt resolution number 22-2526 exhibit A and exhibit B designating May as employee appreciation month. Thank you. Do we have any blue cards? There are no blue cards. Trustees, do you have any questions? May I have

217a motion for the board to adopt resolution number 242-2526 exhibit A and resolution number 23-2526 exhibit B designating May as employee appreciation month. So moved, VerBeth. Second, Rawlings. Trustee VerBeth made the motion, Trustee Rawlings seconded the motion. Discussion? Ms. Garcia, please call for a vote. Trustee Rawlings? Yes. Trustee VerBeth? Yes. Trustee COC? Yes. Trustee Emery? Yes. Trustee Ward? Yes. Motion passes 5 to 0. Okay. All right. So, we are going to go ahead and read the resolutions. We'll start with the day of the teacher and um Dr. Norman, would you like to kick us off? Thank you, President Ward. Whereas education is the most vital activity that we as a society undertake to ensure the well-being of the nation and I don't think I have the teacher of the day of the teacher. Oh, oh,

218oh. Oh, you didn't read this part? Uh I did not. >> Oh, okay. It started whereas >> I see. Okay. Whereas education is in large large measure the result of the talent and commitment of teachers and whereas teaching is a profession characterized by skill, knowledge, discipline, tenacity, and creativity in the delivery of instruction and whereas teachers are a source of caring, concern, counseling, empathy, warmth, and love and whereas teachers deserve widespread recognition and gratitude for their performance and whereas Carlsbad teacher teachers at the Carlsbad Unified School District exemplify all of these qualities and whereas teachers at the Carlsbad Unified School District educate and motivate students who have not succeeded in other educational settings or have special needs that require unique skills and compassion. Therefore, be it resolved that the Carlsbad Unified School District Board of

219Trustees and the Carlsbad Unified School District Superintendent join with the governor and the state legislature in declaring May 3rd 10th, 2026 Day of the Teacher. Okay. Day of the Teacher and You're up. Yeah. And be it further resolved that the Carlsbad Unified School District on this 15th day of April 2026 hereby passed and adopted resolution number 22-2526 by the following vote. All right, we're reading the next one. Go ahead, Dr. Norman. Whereas classified employees serve the people of the city of Carlsbad through their work at the Carlsbad Unified School District and Whereas classified employees continually assist the Carlsbad Unified School District in its commitment to provide quality educational programs and services to the children of Carlsbad and Whereas classified employees individually and collectively set an exemplary standard of performance and commitment and Whereas classified employees

220provide knowledge, skills, and expertise that are relied upon by staff throughout the organization and Whereas classified employees serve a vital role in providing for the welfare and safety of Carlsbad Unified School District students. Therefore, be it resolved that the Carlsbad Unified School District Board of Trustees and the Carlsbad Unified School District Superintendent express their gratitude and commend all classified employees for their service to the Carlsbad Unified School District and join the California State Legislature in designating the week of May 17th through May 23rd, 2026 as Classified School Employee Week. Be it further resolved that the Carlsbad Unified School District this 15th day of April 2026 hereby passed and adopted resolution number 23-2526 by the following vote. Right. Thank you. We now move on to agenda item 11.3 approval of the new certificated position district board

221board certificated behavior analyst, BCBA. Trustees, this is a discussion action item. I will now hand it over to Mrs. Megan Arias. Thank you. As student needs continue to evolve, schools are experiencing a growing demand for consistent and effective behavioral support, especially within general ed classrooms and during less structured times such as recess and lunch. By implementing proactive strategies, schools can protect instructional time and empower staff to use responsive approaches that promote meaningful long-term student success. A strong multi-tiered system of supports is built on proactive, preventative behavioral practices and early intervention. To better meet student needs and strengthen universal and targeted support across our district, staff proposed the creation of a district board certified behavior analyst, BCBA, program specialist position. Although this would be a new position to CUSD, the district currently contracts with external agencies

222to provide BCBA services, including supervision of paraprofessional registered behavior technicians or RBTs, and other BCBA related services. If approved, staff could also explore creating a classified registered behavior technician or RBT paraprofessional position, which requires BCBA supervision. To support student behavioral needs and reduce reliance on external agency staff. Developing in-house expertise will enable more proactive, data-driven support across general education and special education settings, promote positive student behavior, build staff capacity, enhance school climate, and reduce unnecessary referrals to special education. This position offers the potential for improved cost efficiency by reducing reliance on external agency services. The average cost for the program specialist certificated management position is $130,000 plus labor related costs. It is respectfully requested that the Board of Trustees approve the establishment of the Board Certified Behavior Analyst position and place it on the certificated

223management salary schedule range 11 effective July 1st, 2026. Thank you. Okay, this is a time for public comment. Have any blue cards been received? We do not have any cards. Okay, Trustees, do you have any questions? Trustee VerBeth. I guess this would be for Dr. Norman. Um if we were to approve this this evening, this doesn't mean that we're hiring someone, it just means you're opening up a placeholder for somebody should we decide in the future to to hire someone. Is that correct? Correct. We currently have BCBAs working in the special education realm that we contract with. We would look to see if it would be more cost-efficient for us to hire our own, but then also we're looking to be proactive in when the budget does allow to take a BCBA and have RBTs

224work under the BCBA to go into general education classrooms. One of the biggest struggles that teachers share is that they often will have students exhibiting extreme behaviors who aren't in um receiving special education services and it can be a uh quite a a ways, a distance to be able to get those services in place. What the BCBA and the RBT in the gen ed setting can do is provide that immediate service and support and RBTs are licensed and so are BCBAs. So, that will come when we have the funding as we get deeper into basic aid, but the first step would also be to see how can we replace our agency BCBAs that are in special education. Do you have a follow-up? I do. Okay. So, how many current BCBA um agency providers do we

225have? We have one that is services our preschool, and then we have six that are piecemeal throughout the program, throughout our district, which is I think about 37 hours we we looked at. About that. Uh it's 37.5 for the one, and another 34 to 37 for the other. Trustee Rollings. And as a follow-up, um are those exclusively for Carlsbad Unified, or do they help supervise RBT agencies throughout um the I don't know, the area and other unified districts? >> The hours that I listed are just our hours, but um uh Ms. Arias can share where they also service. Yeah, the one preschool one is dedicated to us. That's a full-time one, paid through a preschool grant. Um and the other ones, some just do part-time work. Um they do do part-time hours, so some could

226be servicing other districts as well, or clinics. And that's the BCBA. That's the supervisor. Yes. Correct. So, I have a question. So, the BCBA, if we were to hire one, um you could have RBT Remind me what that acronym is, RBT? RBT, registered behavior technician. >> Okay. So, the re the registered behavior technician, you could have multiple under them, because they would be a classified employee. Mhm. Okay. And then they could help at different schools in the gen ed setting, like at recess, and help with social emotional skills, which could also help lighten the load for counselors, correct? Exactly, yes. And and especially our classroom teachers. Okay. And then help also with some of the MTSS practices that we have to. >> It would be considered like a tier two of MTSS. Okay. Uh trusty

227Emery. And um is there also some benefits of of this position possibly doing some early interventions where then some of those students who might have been pushed through kind of a pipeline through assessments and um and all that to maybe real like um sorry, it's getting late. To um not have quite as many on case loads and not have them go all the way through referrals through that early intervention. Is that the hope and goal as well? Yes, exactly. Um so when students in the general ed setting who have not been qualified for special ed um are exhibiting extreme behaviors, they can go in there to see is it a piece of their behavior cuz they really are trained in analyzing and improving those behaviors or is it really related to a disability? Um so

228sometimes when we're seeing extreme behaviors, um we think okay, there might be a disability there, but it helps to slow that process to really see is it? Can we put some strategies in place where they don't necessarily need to um to qualify for a disability which then sometimes leads to a one-to-one aid and then that increases our cost as well. So we do think um long-term we would see uh less students being referred or needing a one-to-one aid because there was that support um for the student and and for the teachers and staff at the school. Trusty Rollins. Um the current system that we have is that exclusive for special ed and IEPs? Correct? Okay, so what you're Okay. >> sometimes we pull them out if there's a student who is looking to be seen

229for possible testing and we can have a BCBA go out and do some consultative services as well, but for the majority of the supervision, um they're there for special ed currently. Okay, and follow up. So is what you're proposing to expand the use of these positions um for gen ed as well which is not required by an IEP, that that would be an expansion of a program and if that were to happen, what would be the board's role in approving those types of programs? We would it would we wouldn't go back to the board for additional approval. Basically, what we would now be allowed to hire our own BCBA's. We could do that for our special ed BCBA's and then we could also expand it into general ed when we have the funding for that.

230But it wouldn't necessarily come back to the board for that. It would be just just like we have special education teachers. Sometimes we have more students that qualify, we add a special education teacher. I understand that. So I I see I understand the required piece that that if an IEP calls for it, we have to do it and if it's from an agency or from us, we have to do it. But what I'm hearing you say is is that you're planning on expanding that into general ed, which is not required. Correct. And and so but you're saying the board would not have a role in that expansion? That we wouldn't have to say we prioritize this over that. Well, what we would look at is our general fund dollars. It would probably I think we'd

231bring it forward in the LCAP as a support for MTSS. But it wouldn't necessarily it's not a a new program, but it's something that's very effective that I've seen in districts all throughout the state, Orange County, San Diego County. And so we'd hire a BCBA. If we have the job description already approved by the board, then we can hire the job. And if we were to approve the RBT's cuz we employ several RBT's through agencies also. And then how we choose to employ those districts throughout our I'm sorry, those employees throughout our district is at the discretion of the school district staff to meet the needs of our students. And so it would be part of our MTSS tier two is what we'd be looking at. So for instance, we've approved intervention teachers through the

232board, we've approved we've approved counselors through the board and so could if we're in a budget situation, could the counselors be replaced by these positions or could the could the intervention be the intervention teachers? I'm just trying to figure out that It's It's a It's a whole different It's a whole different role. We wouldn't be looking to supplant what we're already doing. We'd want to supplement what we're doing with this resource. It's a way to provide resources in the general education setting that's timely and that's very helpful for teachers. I've gotten lots of positive feedback from teachers that when they have students exhibiting these behaviors that are extreme to have somebody be able to come in and not require an IEP or six SST meetings before you can finally get some help is really beneficial

233and that's our goal. And not just in the classroom, also out on the playground when it's less structured as well. But Yeah, but we wouldn't add it if we couldn't afford it. Do you have any questions? Yeah, go ahead. Um when I asked earlier as far as IEPs are concerned, we don't know how many IEPs that require these now. We We did get some more information in this afternoon. Yeah, I got additional information. So, we currently have about 40 um IEPs that are requiring one-to-one um services that are related to the RBT certified model. Um they don't uh write RBT in our SAIS, but they will write um RBT related services and the understanding from the parent in that IEP is that it will be an RBT certified person. Um so, currently we have about

23440 of those and they're serving as one-to-one aides and and we don't have that position, so we are having to use agency for those 40. And what I found interesting, too, though, just in addition to this, I talked to Emily who's in our fiscal department who was pulling invoices cuz we were trying to track how many do we have. She said we actually have 78 employee agency people working as RBTs. Many times they're being plugged into the behavioral aid position because that's why we're not able to hire um behavior aids is because there are there's the RBT position now which is a more highly sought-after position. And so that's actually who they're providing most of our most of the employees we get are RBTs that either fill the slot of the RBT or the behavior

235aid. I have more questions. So that um And we kind of talked about this a little bit. So the behavior aid the RBTs are being utilized in the in the behavior aid position. >> Mhm. Um but you had said that there are specific restrictions on what's being requested um at at the RBT level. So I'm I'm a little bit confused that is there a certificate that's required or can can behavior aids do the work of the RBT? And what are those that we're looking at that an RBT is absolutely required for that for the >> Right. And not not replacing the behavior aids. Yeah. So it it would be for those students who have it written in their IEP that we got to provide that service because an RBT has um additional training. So they

236have to go through a training program. They have to pass an assessment. They have to be certified. They then have to be um supervised by a BCBA and get additional training to maintain that certification. And they're specifically trained in the ABA or applied behavior analysis um frameworks. And so which is what the BCBA is trained in. So there um that is the difference between like the what we call our behavior intervention aid that we do have um and them. So they they do have that really higher level of training um and certification that's required. What's happening though is um how what Andy was explaining or sorry Dr. Norman was explaining as well was that if we have an a vacant um behavioral intervention aid opening that we can't fill yet, we reach out to an

237agency to ask if they have a BI aid. If they do, they fill it with that. But many times they can't fill those either. Um but they have RBTs and so they're filling it with an RBT instead. Um because that's all they have. They're having a hard time finding that BI piece also. Um and so RBTs seem to be out there uh a little bit more available as well. Okay, and I know we need a motion to extend the meeting, so I'm making that motion right now. And then I'd like to continue with my questions. Okay. Question or questions? Question. Okay. Um I'll second. >> You're you're second, okay. Um Ms. Garcia, please call for a vote. Trustee Rawlings? Yes. Trustee Berbeth? >> Yes. Trustee Ceoci? Yes. Trustee Emery? Yes. Trustee Ward? Yes. >> Motion

238passes 5 to 0. Um thank you. Um so with 44 openings in behavioral um intervention aids, why do we think that we would be able to hire RBTs? So we would hire a a supervisor and I'm trying to figure out what what makes us think that we could hire um that we would actually be able to um uh hire RBTs since we can't fill 44 vacancies in behavioral um intervention aids. Yeah, well, agencies even have or have an easier time hiring the RBTs and that's why they have more of those available that they then fill RBI spots cuz they don't have the BI. Um so it does seem when we look out there even with amongst agencies that they're hiring more of those that have the certificate. Um we right now, you know, we do

239have some BIs that work for us that even have their RBT certificate, but they don't engage in it cuz the the position they're in doesn't require the RBT certificate. So we even anticipate that we would have some internally that could have a pathway. Um we don't have that classified position, so we would have to take it to the personnel commission first, but because it has a higher level of training and a certificate, it would be um placed higher on the salary schedule. Um so that might help attract um more people as well that it's um a position because of that higher level of training and the certificate would place it higher. Would you anticipate then um the since we have such trouble hiring the behavioral um intervention aids that we would basically um just have

240RBTs? Mhm. And and get rid of the other positions since we don't have um since we're having such trouble hiring? Yeah, we'd have to see. We'll evaluate that. I mean, luckily there was five on the report today of hiring BIs, so we're seeing more that we're getting um and and able to fill >> 35 now, right? Right. We are chipping away at it. Um so, you know, I do like the thought of there being the pathway, too, um where we we have an avenue for even uh a learning center aid cuz we always encourage them to have to get some training and experience. We have um our learning center aids who we encourage to do summer school and work with students with behaviors and then qualify to become a BI, which pays a little bit

241more, and this is like one more step that they could do to even get additional training for the certificate. So it kind of also provides this pathway, um which I think will be valuable and a selling recruiting point um for all of our positions as well. But we would have to evaluate to see is BI really going away? Um according to Tim Evanson, the trend that he's seeing right now is that IEPs, especially with some advocates, are really pushing for RBTs now. Okay. All right. May I have a motion for the board to approve the establishment of the board certific- certified behavior analyst position and place it on the certificated management salary schedule range 11 effective July 1st, 2026. So moved, Emery. Second, COC. Discussion. Go ahead, Trustee Rawlings. Um I will not be supporting

242this position. I um I am very concerned that we have all these openings in behavior um aids and that um and we can't fill those, so I'm I'm very um I'm very leery of our ability to hire for this position as well as um I don't want to see us having a management position without anybody to manage. Um and then the other side of the coin for me is is that um I to me we're opening the floodgates with if the board isn't going to be involved in those decisions as far as, you know, bringing these these um RBTs into um into more general ed and that sort of thing. I I feel like the board is being um uh taken out of some of those decision-making and and setting those priorities that, you know,

243I do believe that there's other ways to get at those behaviors. I'm not saying I don't support that. I'm just saying that I think the board needs to be more involved in that decision. So I will be voting no. Go ahead, Trustee Emery. I feel like that might be a little like saying you're not going to hire teachers because you can't fill aids. Um and so, you know, I think we we constantly, you know, hear from our teachers that, you know, they need extra support and they're not necessarily trained behavior specialists for intervention. And it is a it is a shifting environment. I hear you, but I think that the support that they'll be able to um provide is already being provided. We're just looking for in-house, which is what we want to do. We

244want to hire more people instead of bringing in agency. So it to me it seems like just a sliding over of something we're already doing, not an accepting of an something entirely new. So I'll be voting in favor. Go ahead. Um I just wanted to address that that the um with the with the BIAs that we don't need a $130,000 manager to to to oversee what they're doing. And so that's for me, that's part of the problem is is that we're talking about a manager without people to manage at this point. But I think also to what Dr. Norman mentioned is we hire BCBAs from outside agencies, which is typically very expensive. So if we could have an in-house BCBA, that would actually save us money and they could probably play a dual role where

245they are supporting, if I'm correct, they could support special education but also work with the RBTs who would be in the classrooms and supporting students or out at recess. So they wouldn't be directly working with them every single day like on them, managing them, but they can give them direction on what to do and then support special ed, which would lower the cost because we wouldn't be using an agency BCBA. I I and I'm not seeing any evidence of that. That's I mean I asked a bunch of questions before the meeting, too, and I haven't seen like how much are we spending? What where's the you know, where's the breakdown? How much, you know, how much is required and how much are we expanding in a general and all of that? And so without all

246that information, I'm just not comfortable voting in favor of it. Well, I think too, we could potentially request that, but if we don't approve the BCBA, we could never get there to be able to give that support to our general teachers. So. Okay. Any other discussion? All right. Um where was I? Okay, who made the motion? You did. Okay. Trustee made the motion. Okay. Ms. Garcia, please call for a vote. Sorry. Trustee Rawlings? No. Trustee Berbett? Trusty COC? Yes. Trusty Emery? Yes. Trusty Ward? Yes. Motion passes 4 to 1. Thank you. We now move on to agenda item 11.4 CUSD initial reopeners with CUTA. Trusties, this is a discussion action item. I will now hand it over to Mrs. Megan Arias. Thank you. On September 12th, 2025, the Carlsbad Unified Teachers Associations, CUTA, and Carlsbad

247Unified School District negotiated a successor agreement which expires on June 30th, 2028. Both parties have the opportunity to reopen a limited number of articles for consideration. The district has identified the following articles to reopen at this time. Article 7, work day, work week, work year advisory. The district would like to clarify language and expectations for advisory. Article 18, employee evaluations. The district would like to review and revise evaluation forms and procedures for evaluation. It is respectfully recommended that the Board of Trustees receive the district's 2026-2027 reopeners for consideration. Thank you. This is a time for public comment. Have any blue cards been received? We have a total of two blue cards. Um when I call your name, please come to the podium, state your name, and indicate whether or not you live within the boundaries

248of the school district. You will have 3 minutes. We will have the timer on the screen. Trusty Ward, I'm sorry, those those were for a different agenda item. We do not have any blue cards. I apologize. That was my mistake. >> Okay, so we have no blue cards. Okay, okay. I'm Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one making mistakes tonight. That's fantastic. Okay, trusties, do you have any questions? Okay. May I have a motion for the board to receive the district's 26-27 reopeners for consideration. So moved. Second. Trustee COC made the motion, Trustee Rawlings seconded the motion. Discussion? Okay, no discussion. Miss Garcia, please call for a vote. Trustee Rawlings? Yes. Trustee Berbett? Yes. Trustee COC? Yes. Trustee Emery? Yes. Trustee Ward? Yes. >> Motion passes 5 to 0. Okay. We are now at

249part 12, instructional services, agenda item 12.1, approval development of the 2026-27 proposed annual goals and success indicators. Trustees, this is a discussion action item. I will now hand it over to Dr. Brian Broket. Thank you, President Ward. Uh on March 25th, 2026, the board conducted a special study session to examine feedback from a array of educational partner groups and develop preliminary annual goals for the 26-27 school year. After discussion and deliberation, the board decided to keep the three original overarching goals uh for next year. During the study session, the board also asked staff to make changes to the goal to the success indicator uh document, uh which is exhibit A tonight, and bring back the changes for approval. Uh the changes made since the March study session are indicated in red on the uh exhibit

250document, and I'll just run through uh real quickly just a few uh highlights and comments on uh some of the updates that were made based on uh input from trustees. Um first under one uh item 1.1, uh we had some discussion, there was some discussion during the study session about uh capturing growth and performance. Um so, what uh we're recommending at this time is uh something that I discussed in the last meeting or in the study session, which was uh moving 1.1 to look at uh moving students out of the low growth, low achievement uh uh quartile of the the STAR testing. It's It's a little bit esoteric to get into like what exactly the STAR shows, but essentially you can have high-performing students that are low growth because they're already high-performing. Um the previous

251metric sort of captured those students as not showing uh to higher typical growth, which doesn't really make sense, right? What we're trying What we try to do here is to capture students that really are performing at a lower level and not growing at at a uh typically expected level and trying to move them forward. And And in so doing uh capture what trustees had asked for really in capturing sort of that that growth piece along with performance. So, um that's the the modification to 1.1. Um under 1.7, uh we did add uh we we had a couple of requests there um that have been added uh including uh including examining numbers both of students enrolled in but also passing honors advanced placement and community college courses. Um and we would uh we would uh keep

252the same metric to try to increase that by 1% on both of those metrics and we'll have to uh capture a current number for the passing and then go on from there. Uh and then uh we also talked about uh advanced learners encompassing uh CTE pathway completers as well as they're reaching uh higher and deeper levels of learning in those CTE pathways. Uh and so uh we added uh that component in there as well, which is something we've traditionally reported during our uh fall report on our uh career education career pathway strategic plan, but certainly we can add that in here to to highlight that. Uh we had a request under 2.1 to just refine that metric to to think about practical application and how teachers and staff were able to utilize that training. So,

253that relevance kind of honing in a little bit tighter on what the relevance was referring to there and we would modify our our survey to include that piece. Um Uh 2.2 is still depending on direction that we get from the board at the May board meeting. We have indicated in there at this point that it will need to be up updated at a later date and would need to be adopted along with the final LCAP. Uh just some clarifying language on 2.3 that came from feedback at the last meeting to to clarify that we're really looking at school climate and culture there. Uh 2.4 again we're we still have some work to do there. I I would suggest to you that that the that the the metric as it's written right now I think could

254could certainly be left as is because what the metric is is saying is that we're trying to meet the measurable targets for goals related to nutrition, sustainability, etc. Those those metrics this year's metric remember is to develop those measurable goals and put them in the board policy, right? So, this assumes that we've met that goal which I believe that we're on pace to do. Appreciate the work of trustees to help move that along and and get us focused in on on kind of our final targets there. But I I would suggest that the targets themselves don't necessarily need to be in this metric that that the metric here could be that we're meeting those those targets that are that are embedded within the policy. So, just a note on that, but I did make a

255note there that as we talked about last time that we're we're sort of holding that as a placeholder until we adopt have some final verbage in BP 5030. Success indicator 2.5 was the one that trustees had asked to be added. And I just want to just kind of dwell on that for just a second there. in talking to our team and some of the site teams as well as some teachers, we we settled in on on really focusing on one area, which is which is focusing on how we are preparing our staff and our students to respond to and interrupt and report bullying harassment and hate motivated actions and language. And then with a metric really being with the 2% reduction in students self-reporting. So that goes back to the Kelvin surveys that we've talked

256about before. We have talked about there being somewhat of a gap between what students are reporting and what is captured in in Aries in terms of like disciplinary incidents. So we felt like really honing in on on Aries data might not be the most effective step. Well, obviously that's something we want to do too. We want to close that gap between what students are reporting, what's being captured by our administrators. But we really feel like the first step towards getting there are these pieces that are included which again is that training for both staff and students in these areas and then as well as really getting into the the reduction of students reporting harassment. And if you recall, there there are at the secondary in the secondary Kelvin surveys in particular, there are four separate

257questions um uh harassment based on race, harassment based on gender, uh harassment based on religious affiliation. So, there's some different areas there that we can hone in on uh as we get after that. Um under uh goal three, really there was just one uh minor uh clarification there. Uh there was a request to clarify that under 3.3, uh students were self-identifying these graduate profiles. This is again percept student perception data uh about how they see themselves. Um so, we did clarify that by adding that verbage there. Um so, we'd ask that you uh we're happy to I'm happy to answer any questions. We'd ask tonight that you uh approve uh the goals and success indicators as written uh with the understanding that as we continue through uh the process, there are those couple of areas

258um that will need to continue to do some refinement as we get closer to our final uh our final uh approval of the LCAP. And remember, we'll be back to discuss the LCAP uh as a whole uh and is and specifically uh in the upcoming meeting, the actions and services that get after these uh goals. Uh and and certainly we'll have more opportunity to discuss those items uh as we move forward. Uh and with that, I'll hand it back to President Ward. I'm happy to take any questions. Okay. Okay, this is the time for public comment. Uh we have two blue cards. When I call your name, please come to the podium, state your name, and indicate whether or not you live within the boundaries of the school district. You will have 3 minutes. We

259will have the timer on the screen, and your mic will be muted when your time has expired. The first speaker is Scott Davison. >> I just want to come here and quickly do some fact-checking after listening to the discussion during the L Cap workshop last month. Two things stuck out to me. One was the comment by Trustee Rawlings that there is a discrepancy between our low test scores in proficiency in core subjects like math and English and what Trustee Rawlings believes without any evidence is our actual proficiency of our students in these subjects. If anybody bothers to look and take a brief look at these test scores, whether it's PAR or SBAC, you will see the same numbers in terms of a significant drop in proficiency at the middle and high school level. There's simply

260no way to ignore that only 49% of the class of 2026 at Carlsbad High School is proficient in math. Or that, relevant to the earlier discussion about GPAs, the admissions rate to UCSD last year is 39% at CHS, but only 22% at Sage Creek. But somehow the GPA doesn't matter. But the biggest correction that needs to be noted is the attempt to lower our academic goals and achievement goals in section 1.4 for our most at-risk students. By reducing these goals to the same percentages as the rest of our student populations, you are of course lowering our standards, even while attempting to claim that you aren't. These goals weren't just made up last year out of thin air. They are the key components to our DEI plan in goal three. I say these are the key

261components because for those of us who were there and recall that discussion, the only reason that Trustee Williamson agreed to vote for the plan is if we increased our academic goals for these at-risk groups, including black, Hispanic, English language learners, and socioeconomically disadvantaged students. By abandoning these higher goals, you are in fact affirming your belief in what is called the soft bigotry of low expectations. That you don't believe that these minority students are capable of reaching the same levels of achievement as everyone else. What you should be doing is asking why we can't achieve these goals after 3 years. Although Superintendent Norman used the analogy that you should eat an apple a day, but you can't have seven on Sunday, this DEI plan and its goals have been in place for almost 3 years, essentially

262900 days of eating apples. So, the better question is what's wrong with the apples we're eating? Jen Belknap, I'm a parent in the district and I just want to say I'm very disappointed in the majority who voted to relax or reduce our academic standards in the LCAP. And I'm frankly disappointed in staff who suggested it. Um as has already been stated, well, let me back up. Mission and vision of our district is to provide provide an extraordinary education in an inspiring environment. And there's nothing inspiring or extraordinary in reducing academic standards. And Trustee Rawlings, I saw you smiling when the last speaker spoke about the DEI discussion, so I'm sure you recalled and remember that. I sat through that 5-hours-long board meeting a few summers ago. And there was an exchange between Trustee Rawlings and

263Trustee Williamson. And Trustee Williamson had said she wanted to increase that goal of those academic standards to capture those lowest performing subgroup students. And Trustee Rawlings asked her directly, will you vote for this DEI plan without increasing that goal to capture those students? She told you no, she wouldn't. And so, you supported that amendment and that plan passed. Trustee Ward, you should care about that cuz I know you want to put more funding into the DEI plan and that you'd like to see it be more robust. And I think the whole board should consider the fact that the plan would not be here were it not for setting those academic standards high enough to include improving and helping our lowest performing subgroup of students. Again, I will echo it is not inspiring or extraordinary to

264lower our academic standards. Thank you. Okay, trustees, do you have any questions? Trustee Rollings. Thank you on uh on 2.4, um how can we vote to meet measurable targets when we don't know what those targets are? Well, I would suggest that we're we the once we complete the measurable targets in the wellness policy, the goal for next year, right, would be to meet those targets. So, I understand what you're saying that the the targets don't exist yet. We haven't finalized that. Um we're going to be bringing that to trustees at the May board meeting what those targets are within that board policy. But regardless of where we settle with those board policies, the the goal for next year should be a as as we've talked about it's to meet those targets. Um I don't know

265if trustees would like the targets to be outlined here, then we certainly will need to wait to have those on this, you know, included on this document. Um I think that that the intent though is to whatever those targets uh turn out to be in those specific areas, that our goal would be to meet those targets as we set them. Go ahead. But right now you're asking us to vote in favor of something that we don't have that we don't know what that policy looks like. So, that's my my quandary here is that how can I vote in favor of something when I don't know what that thing is? Yeah, that's I it's a fair I I I get it. It's a fair question to wrestle with. My suggestion would be that we're, you know,

266we we can we're we're going to meet those. We're going to aim to meet those, whatever they end up being. Uh because that's the goal that we've set for this year is to establish those. So, um I like I said, we can we can certainly bring that back for further discussion later if if trustees would prefer to do that. Did you have a question, Trustee Verba? Go ahead. Um regarding this new success indicator, uh 2.5 student safety and behavior. Um there's a lot of discussion following the Point Sette event and um public expression of a desire to include discipline. And what is that discipline? And I wonder if there's a way that we could include that word in 2.5. Um so that it we're being more intentional about addressing behaviors. And that we're recognizing that

267there's a need for discipline. Yes, that's you know, a private issue because you know, there's confidentiality involved. But I think that the the public has asked us to rec- to to stand up and say we are willing to discipline behaviors that are inappropriate. And like the bullying and the discrimination. Um that we recently saw. So, I wonder if there's a way we could include that word somehow without lengthening it too much. Um but addressing >> Is that a Is that a question for the board to decide or the staff? Um I guess that's a question for the board to decide. Uh Trustee Emery. In responding to I'm assuming that what Trustee Verba was referring to as part of discipline. It's not just acknowledging that it happened, but the responding with that include such things as

268discipline or parent contacts and and so forth. Yeah. Yeah, part of I think part of that what we intended to convey there with responding to is partly responding in the moment and partly consistent implementation of existing protocols that we have for disciplinary um follow-up. You know, we've talked about every incident is different, right? And the And the the uh the response is going to be different uh in different circumstances. Um that being said, I think consistently implementing our protocols, even though different incidents may elicit different level of response, uh is part of what's intended there in terms of disciplinary um action that we would take as well. Um so, uh to to answer the question, we we can we can wordsmith that to ensure that that's highlighted in there or clarified in some way since

269that was the intent. I just think that since this is our front-facing document, that it's important to include that, you know, just a simple phrase like you just mentioned. Point of order. We're not in discussion, we're in questions. Is that something that you could wordsmith and put in success indicator 2.5, Dr. Brackett? Thank you. >> I have a follow-up question to that. Dr. Brackett, I'm sorry. I want to understand better um how you're interpreting what Trustee VerBeth is saying. So, what are you thinking in terms of because I don't I don't want to I I don't want there to be a success indicator on an increase in our discipline, all right? And And the amount of students Oh, we went up 2% because we are suspending five times more students, you know, I I I

270want to I want to understand better how you're interpreting this. Yeah, so what I'm what I'm understanding the the ask for is I I what what I'm understanding is a sort of an extension of what we've already included in there not to capture data regarding increased discipline because as I said, I think that's that's there's challenges inherent in doing that and and there are well, I won't go into there there challenges inherent in doing that. I I think what what we did intend to include there when we talk about training for student or training for staff regarding responding to these types of incidents, part of that training needs to be, you know, ensuring that we've got consistent implementation of our existing protocols. For example, we have excellent protocols for responding to hate motivated incidents. What

271we what perhaps sometimes is lacking is is a consistent like from at this school to that school to the next school how those protocols might be implemented in a in a given situation and I think that we all agree that there should be consistency to that. I think that's what we heard in feedback from from families and and so when we talk about responding to these types of incidents, that's I think what I what I understand Trustee Verbeek to be asking and I think that's very much in line with what we were envisioning when we drafted this particular success indicator. So I just think I think perhaps some clarification in verbage there around training on protocols, you know, you know, disciplinary protocols in addition to the interruption and those types of actions. Okay. Thank you.

272Trustee Owens. Thank you. You said the magic word. Isn't this more appropriate in actions and services rather than part of the success indicator? I I think, you know, I I think that we have approached these these success indicators in a number of ways. In in cases where uh I I think we have other examples previously where we've included things like um like training as being the success indicator um that we were going to implement X training and I think to me that's a fair goal and metric to shoot for is that we're going to uh we're going to do this training district-wide, for example, as it's as it's written here. I I do think it's an action. I mean, there's certainly there's certainly some overlap there between what the action and what the outcome is.

273Um but I think that this captures something that we uh feel that we need to get after and that and that is a reasonable goal. And then, you know, to go with that, the the metric of student reporting um I I think goes hand in hand with that to me. My question was is that the discipline of students, wouldn't that be under actions? That as far as what I'm looking at with a 2% reduction in student self-reporting harassment or bullying, my thought process would be the actions that would go with that would be to uh you know, consistent implementation of our disciplinary policies. That that would be an action, not necessarily as part of the indicator. Yeah. We we could we could modify that if trustees uh would like to do so. Uh I think

274what I'm hearing you say is we would as that those kind of second and third columns there are divided into two rows. I'm hearing you say uh we'd we'd get rid of the sort of the implementation on training and the the that would be our action and then we would uh that would be our our and then our our outcome, what we'd be shooting for was a 2% reduction. That's That's what I'm hearing now. Now, what I'm what I'm saying is in response to Trustee Verbet's request is is that in my view discipline is the action, not the not the success indicator. We're not We're not We're not indicating we're going to increase discipline, like more suspensions. Um that that wouldn't be a success indicator. What we're saying is is that we're going to use

275disciplinary policy in order to meet the Correct. Yeah, and that's what I think we I think that's what I heard and I think that's what I heard. >> That's not what I heard. I said >> I said And then I think that's where you could further define what we're responding to. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's That's where what I'm understanding. Okay, that's fair. Thank you. Thank you. I have another new question though, but Go ahead. Okay. Um on 2.2, I'm still confused on um uh that piece as far as if it's a placeholder. I'm again, I'm not being I'm not sure what we're being asked to vote on. Yeah, so so what what we're as we've talked about it with our instructional services team is that we Dr. Ecker, as I think he shared previously,

276has been really working with the Forward Together Committee to to go through the cycle of of student feedback, panel feedback with the goal this year of identifying identifying core ongoing commitments. That that is something that can be done with or without board direction to write a new strategic plan or update the strategic plan. We think that we have heard some really core things from our committee and our students over the past several years that we think are our core commitments and and and values that we want to continue moving forward with. One of those being I won't won't I won't spoil the presentation in May, but you know, one of those being you know, really engaging that student voice. We that has been a powerful and and valuable tool for us. So, you know, the

277way this was written, I I wrote this originally or for the the study session to kind of capture that sentiment that we felt like regardless of where we go with the with the forward together that we want to establish some core commitments coming out of that work that will continue us moving forward. The feedback that we got was we're not sure where we stand on that. And so, I I think that's where I added some some language in there as we talked about the other day to indicate that that that could be considered a placeholder for the time being depending on direction that we receive from the board. We're planning to bring back report out kind of a year three report out at the May 27th board meeting. I don't yet know what trustees what

278direction trustees may give us coming out of that meeting. But I know that what we what we believe in is is establishing some commitments. And that's the work that we've been doing. So, that that what's on the paper today reflects both what staff had recommended at the study session. And the feedback received from trustees which is we don't know we don't we don't have clear definition on that yet. So, I I don't know really what else to say beyond that for now. And I I would just intervene and say while we like to have finalized goals and success indicators at this point in time, you still have three other opportunities to amend those for the rest of the year. And so, while these are a little bit more vague, those two give staff the opportunity

279to bring those back, modify them, and then you can change them again. You're you're still going to have the opportunity to change them up to three more times at this point in time this year. Um it it could potentially impact the actions and services if you change those, but um you know, not to the degree I don't think it's going to be hopefully not to the degree that we're going to have to go back and do a whole 'nother plan on actions and services. So, it we're just not as far along in those two um and with the understanding that you'll have the opportunity to amend them the next couple meetings as well. Do you have a follow-up? Okay. Any more questions? Go ahead, Trustee >> Sorry, I know it's late, but this is important.

280Um I spoke to Dr. Norman last month about our February presentation where it stated we were meeting our goals. And I still have a problem with reducing our targets for success indicators 1.3 through 1.5. Um I feel like we did set a standard and we did vote on a DEI plan based on that standard um I want to hold our board to that standard. So, um I'd like to request if it's possible to point of order. >> Um We're in questions. Okay, could you please re um go back? Could you revert to the original success uh targets that we had set? Is that possible? If that's the direction Trustees give, then we can do that. Thank you. Sorry, I just put this in my mouth. I have the same thing. It's late. It's your dinner.

281Yeah, it's my dinner. Uh any other questions? Okay. May I have a motion for the board to approve the updated goals and success indicators for the 2026 27 school year and authorize their incorporation into the local control accountability plan, the LCAP. So moved, Emery. I'll second. Um, Trustee Emery made the motion, Trustee Ward seconded the motion discussion. Trustee Rollings. Um, I will not be voting in favor. I I feel like those two are just very vague and it's an incomplete document and I don't feel comfortable voting on something that's incomplete. So, I'll be voting no. And I will be voting no um, until we move those success indicators or sorry, targets back to the original. I have a question of Dr. Norman then, what happens if uh, >> Yes, you can ask a question. >>

282Yeah, yeah, yeah. What happens if there is no decision made today? How might that impact the plan going forward and and our program progress? We would take the input that we gather from discussion and bring it back next month. You can also amend the motion if you do decide you want to raise the targets back up. I'm not opposed to that. I just presented targets based on data that showed trends in achievement. Um, I'm I'm certainly not opposed to putting them back up. If that's something you want to do, you could amend the motion. But if we don't end up passing anything, we bring it back next month. I'm going to be voting for this um, um, mostly because it's going to be coming back a few more times and the next meeting that we

283have is going to be going over the DEIB plan, which means that we could always add to the success indicators or um, whatever the next moves would moves would be with the forward together plan. So, I will be voting in favor of this. Um, I agree. I I understand the placeholders and that, you know, it's still constantly a living breathing document. Um, I also I understand concerns about lowering the standards, but I also, you know, when we're talking about and I think we talked about this last time, too, about having goals that are attainable, you can always overachieve them, but we want to make sure, you know, our our teachers and our staff are feeling like we're not setting goals that are just so sky-high that it's debilitating in a sense for their progress. And

284so, um, I would love to see higher, but I want to give them, you know, bites instead of, you know, larger chunks to to take out of that at a time. I'm still not in favor of the on 1.7, the and passing the advanced class because I I think the whole intent of that was to um, you know, to try something on even if you don't finish it, if you transfer out. But, but I fully understand where everyone else is and with that be amenable to accepting as is, even though that's not my 100% favorite part. Any other discussion? Trustee COC? I I think I agree that moving the uh the standards back um is where I'd like to see. I I think there are so many goals that all of us have that we're

285not quite meeting, but we're striving for. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with not meeting a goal because it's something that we're constantly working towards. I'm very interested to see how we're integrating this in our DEI discussion and so it's it is I agree with Trustee Rawlings, it's a little unnerving to be voting on something with these very vague placeholders that we don't know. So, I'm kind of wafting here where I feel like we're voting on something that we're just going to redo next month anyway. So, I'm not really clear on why we're doing it now. Okay. Any other discussion? All right. Um Ms. Garcia, please call for a vote. Trustee Rawlings. No. Trustee Verbout. No. Trustee COC. No. Trustee Emery. Yes. Trustee Ward. Yes. Motion fails two to three. Can I request a potty

286break, please? Yes. Um 5 minutes. 10:45. >> Mhm. >> future of full-day kindergarten pilot for the 26-27 school year. Trustees, this is a discussion action item. I will now hand it over to Dr. Brian Broket. Uh thank you, President Ward. Uh the current full-day kindergarten pilot is being implemented at Hope Elementary and Jefferson Elementary. Uh it was designed to examine the impact of extended instructional time on student learning, social emotional development, and overall program effectiveness. On March 11th, 2026, the Board of Trustees voted not to implement a district-wide full-day kindergarten program. However, the board expressed interest in further discussion regarding the possibility of continuing the pilot at the current sites and potentially expanding it to additional schools. Uh we're here tonight to seek board direction on continuing or ending the pilot for the 2026-2027 school

287year. I'm joined tonight by Director of Elementary Education Kimberly Fuentes, and I'll now hand it off to Ms. Fuentes. Good evening. Following the March board meeting, we conducted a follow-up survey to better understand staff and parent perspectives to shape our options when it comes to the future of the full-day pilot. Starting with our families, overall, we continue to see strong and growing favorability towards interest in full-day kindergarten. We did take the feedback we received following the previous survey as a concern was raised that families may not have had enough detailed information to fully understand the differences between the two models when making their selection. In response, this most recent survey more clearly outlined both the full-day and early bird lay out models, including details such as instructional minutes and potential class size ranges so families

288could make a more informed choice. In providing that additional context, a misunderstanding surfaced that I do want to clarify. There has been concern that moving to a full-day model will result in kindergarten class sizes increasing up to 33 students. And that's not the case. Our district staffing formula for K-3 is based on a 24 to 1 average. This means schools are allocated staffing to maintain class sizes at or below that level. Ms. Areias and I work closely with principals on staffing and class configuration within their enrolled cohorts. So while class size is a valid concern and one we take seriously, the perception that full-day kindergarten would automatically lead to significantly larger class sizes is not aligned with how we staff our schools. In addition to providing the additional context, we also intentionally branched the survey

289to better understand the perspectives of two distinct groups. Our incoming families, so our preschool, TK, pre-enrolled students and current kindergarten families, those actively experiencing their program this year. This allowed us to capture both perception and live experience lived experience which adds important context to our data. So big picture, from our incoming kindergarten families, we saw 72% overall favorability towards full-day kindergarten which is a 4% increase from the previous survey. And when asked which model they would choose if they had the option this year, 60% of current kindergarten families selected a full-day compared to 40% for the early bird late owl model. And you can see that by um that distinction by site. Other insights that can be seen in this data is that the pilot experience strongly correlates with parent preference. Our Hope and Jefferson

290families overwhelmingly would choose the full-day model after experiencing it. With our incoming kinder families, we see steadiness over time in favorability with Buena Vista and Calavera maintaining favorability in the high 70s. We also see consistency in schools like Magnolia and Pacific Rim maintaining lower favorability. And there were some drastic jumps in favorability likely due to the separating out of that current kinder group to answer a different question. We see this with Aviara who went from 66% favorable on the last survey to 91% Kelly went from 56% on the last survey to 73% and Poinsettia's shifting from 50% to 89%. Now in looking at teacher feedback, we took a slightly different approach with this survey given that our focus has shifted to the future of the pilot. Because there is interest in potentially expanding the pilot,

291we wanted to better understand teacher openness or willingness to participate and to see where that aligns with family interest across sites. So we're seeing a clear point of alignment at our current pilot schools. At Hope and Jefferson, families are highly interested and teachers are also open to continuing the work. That alignment is important both in implementation and program refinement. Knowing that a majority of kindergarten teachers expressed hesitation or were not open to piloting, we used a Likert scale to capture a range of responses. So not just a yes or a no, we wanted to better understand where the door was completely shut and where there might be a slight opening if the board were to consider expansion. For example, at Calavera, we're seeing both a level of teacher willingness and strong family interest, which is

292helpful to understand as we consider next steps. In addition, we asked teachers about their concerns, and those remained consistent: class size, behavioral needs, and adequate staff support. And at the same time, we wanted to better understand what supports teachers would need if asked to pilot or continue in the full-day model. And that input is critical in potentially refining the program and thinking about successful what a successful implementation requires. In looking at this data, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that full-day kindergarten has been somewhat of a polarizing topic within our kindergarten team and within the community. And in that space, I think it's important to recognize that two things can be true. Carlsbad has a strong and well-established early bird lay out model, and our kindergarten teachers are incredibly skilled at creating meaningful

293learning experiences for their students within that structure. And also, our pilot teachers have successfully implemented a full-day model this year, and through collaboration, adjustments, commitments to continuous improvement, we've built an effective and developmentally appropriate program that they can all speak from experience having taught both models. So, when we see that our pilot teachers are willing and excited to continue this work, it's important that we honor their expertise, their insight, and lived experiencing experiences being in that work this year. With family and teacher feedback as context, let's look at where our pilot stands today and discuss options for next year. At this point, our data is stable, but it's not yet conclusive when it comes to long-term impact. We are seeing some promising indicators, but there are two key gaps. We have not yet seen first-grade

294outcomes to understand that lasting impact, and we want some comparison screener data, as we were in baseline data this year, to better understand academic impact. Because of this, additional time and/or a larger sample size would be beneficial in better understanding overall impact. And as we continue this work, our focus as a district-wide kindergarten team will be on deepening our alignment to those learning foundations, um which you heard about with our preschool adoption, and that's kind of the foundation of it, um and then our preschool through third grade continuum. We will also continue strengthening our tier one early literacy instruction, along with our practices using screener data to inform instruction and progress monitoring, no matter which model we're in. So, with that context in mind, along with the survey data, here are three potential paths forward.

295The first option is to sunset the pilot, returning all schools to the early bird late owl model. The benefit here is consistency across all CUSD sites. However, that would end our ability to collect longitudinal data, and would not align with the majority of family feedback indicating interest in a full-day program. The second option is to continue the current pilot at Hope and Jefferson, and this allows us to further refine implementation, and continue collecting both longitudinal and comparison data. It also represents a balance between family interest and current teacher readiness. The trade-off is that we would continue to have variation across school sites and would not be able to accommodate all families interested in the program. The third option is to expand the pilot by adding one or two additional schools and this would increase our

296sample size and strengthen our data collection. For example, because this year's screener serves as baseline data, our current pilot schools will be comparing full-day data to their own full-day baseline. However, if we were to expand the pilot, those additional schools would be able to they would begin with their half-day baseline and compare that to a full-day data set. And that would allow us to compare outcomes within the same site across both the half-day and the full-day. And that type of within-site comparison is particularly valuable because it helps control variables and gives us a clear understanding of the true impact of the program among a particular demographic. Expansion would also respond to family demand. However, it is not fully aligned with the majority of current teacher feedback, which is also an important consideration. Financially, all options

297are relatively modest with expansion requiring the greatest investment um primarily in staffing and supports and materials. Based on the data and where we see alignment between family interest and staff openness, we have a few recommended sites for expansion. Calaveras stands out as having both willing teachers and interested families. At Olivera Oaks, while teacher openness is limited, there is the strongest family interest and the principal brings prior experience with a full-day kindergarten model from her previous district both in teaching it and supporting it, which provides insight and an understanding of implementation needs. If there is a desire to include a site from South Carlsbad, Aviara would be a strong consideration. Buena Vista also presents another option. While teacher support is also more limited, um there has been consistently high family interest, and this could be an

298attractive draw for enrollment. Each of these options is being shared to support a thoughtful decision in the future direction of our pilot. So, pending board direction tonight, we're prepared to move forward quickly um with clear communication and thoughtful next steps. This includes communicating tonight's outcomes with staff and families, updating our website, continuing collaboration with CUE to and opening a transfer window if needed. We are also prepared to begin collaboration with school teams right away should the board choose to continue or expand the pilot. And as um we will also continue to monitor outcomes, continue to listen closely to the feedback from our teachers and our families, and make adjustments as needed to ensure that our support remains responsive and supported um supportive to both our teachers and our students. And with that, I'll turn it

299over to President Ward. Thank you. Good job. Um let's see. This is a time for public comment. We have 11 blue cards. When I call your name, please come to the podium and state your name and indicate whether or not you live within the boundaries of the school district. You will have 1 minute and 45 seconds. We will have the timer on the screen and your mic will be muted when your time has expired. The first speaker is Amanda Smith. Hi, good evening. My name is Amanda Smith. Um I live within CSD boundaries and I have a current kindergartner and a child who will be entering kindergarten in 2028. I am here to strongly oppose the move to a full-day kindergarten program. As noted in tonight's presentation, the top concerns amongst parents and teachers in

300moving to the full-day program are class size and teacher support. Unfortunately, none neither of these things were properly addressed in the second survey that was sent out to parents. If anything, the survey was misleading as it stated that classroom sizes would have an approximate 1:20 1:24 ratio. We know that is not true for all school sites and it's frustrating that that narrative continues to be told. For example, Poinsettia Elementary has almost 60 kids enrolled for next year and we only have two kinder classes. Um I'm sure at this point in the school year, we would have an idea of what numbers are looking like across all school sites for next year. Many parents are holding onto um the belief that 1:20 would be a true class size for their children. I know this because I've

301had many conversations with parents who are voting off of that idea. And they would vote differently if they had more accurate information. Um if possible, I'd like to see each kindergarten classrooms expected numbers for the 2026-2027 school year shared with everyone so we have a better idea of what our classes will look like. Um I'm sorry. I want to address an equally important fact that the majority of our kindergarten teachers are not in favor of moving to a full-day program. These are professionals working with our children every day and their perspective should carry significant weight in this decision. Um I also do not think Sorry. Thank you, Amanda. Yousef Miller is next. And after that is Jenna Hibbard. Hubbard. Is he here? Yeah, there's just a delay in the stream. Okay. Oh, yeah, there's a

302delay. Is that Hibbard or Hubbard? If he almost stayed in his room for that. And that seat is so good that I had. Um Well, thank you, Yousef Miller, with the NAACP North County. And um I just like to say before I get started, we're here so late. My wife thinks I'm dating all of you, even you guys over there. So, I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. So, uh to this this issue on uh full full-day uh kindergarten, I'm a supporter of four-day kindergarten, but I do understand the concerns of the uh teachers and and families. A lot of the family support it. And from what I understand, a lot of teachers do as well. But one thing I don't think is count uh captured here is the single parents, the the impact it could have

303positively for single parents to have a full-day uh kindergarten. It opens up employment opportunities to take care of their families, and if not, it it would increase a drain on their income by having to uh have daycare for their kids while they're at work. Uh if it was full-day, at least if they still have to have some kind of daycare, it would be a couple of hours versus four or six. So, I think this is really important when we're interviewing the families on what impact full-day has, that we talk about the stress of work and employment, especially as single parents, and dealing with their kids being in school half-day or full-day. I know how important that is with my family, where we had to take turns picking up the kids and and and all these

304things when we don't have extended family support, it's just us in California. So, um I'm really sensitive to that and what happens to uh parents that are trying to increase their income to take care of their families and have to juggle picking up their kids on a half day. This might benefit uh families a lot and I don't know if we're capturing that in the questionnaires to families. Thank you. Thank you. Jenna Hibbard. Okay. Hi. Um I'm Jenna Hibbard. I am a resident in the district, a mom of a first grader, and an incoming kindergarten student. I also happen to hold a multi-subject teaching credential, a special ed teaching credential, a master's degree in education, and I currently work in the education field. I'm speaking tonight from years of experience as an educator and advocate

305for student achievement and most importantly, a mom. The increase in instructional minutes will only benefit the students as I know it would have for my current first grader who struggled at the beginning of his first grade year. Extra minutes assure students gain early literacy and math skills they need to be highly successful in grade one and beyond. It helps with social emotional learning and with the onset of universal TK for all students, many incoming kinder students have already had a half day of school experience preparing them for the transition to kinder. Early literacy achievement is the key factor in long-term student success. If we have the ability to put more time into the day toward academics and play-based learning to set students up for first grade, then why are we afraid to do it? The

306state has put billions of dollars behind early literacy including, but not limited to, the dyslexia screener, evidence-based teaching practices, curricula for reading, literacy professional development for teachers, and they are always supporting bills to make kinder mandatory for 5-year-olds. Not only are we robbing our students of instructional time, but in this current model, I also struggle a bit beyond the extra time with the late owls. I feel they might be a little bit underserved. Again, research shows that young children learn best in the earlier morning hours. I know both of my kids thrive between 8:00 and 10:00. So, if they were to be a late owl, their prime hours of learning might be um a struggle as they get further in the day. And as Ms. Fuentes mentioned in her presentation, the longitudinal data isn't there

307yet, and I think we need more time for a pilot. Carl Dargets All right, good evening. As you said, my name is Carl Dargets. I have two children at Jefferson Elementary, one in TK moving into kindergarten this next year, and another in first grade. Uh I'd like to begin by just saying thank you. Uh this is my first board meeting, and I really appreciate the passion and considerate nature of all of your comments and thoughts and discussion. Um ultimately, we all share the same goal of trying to make sure that every child in Carlsbad has the best possible education, and that begins in kindergarten with how we structure their time. Uh when we look at how families in our community, based on these surveys, are experiencing full-day kindergarten, there's a very clear pattern based on

308the two surveys that were performed. Support increases with experience. Across the district, there's an overwhelming majority of future and current kindergarten families that favor the full-day model. And then at the pilot sites, we see heavy favorability rising up to 85% and 95% at the two sites. That's not simply a preference, that's a validation from those who have lived it. At Jefferson, I directly spoke with the three teachers there currently serving in the full-day model, who began the year uncertain about how that would their students would deal with the full-day kindergarten, but after experiencing it, they've seen meaningful academic, social, and emotional growth in their students above what they saw in the half-day program. This pilot is showing us that families and a significant portion of the educators involved with it now, and who have firsthand

309experience, believe this model is working and while we can continue to gather more data over time, the evidence already provides a strong basis to move forward. I'd like to urge the board to trust that experience and move to expand the full-day kindergarten program for the 2026-2027 school year. Thank you. Bridget Stringham Stringham Hello, my name is Bridget Stringham and I am a resident of Carlsbad and I have a kindergartner enrolled in the district. I attended last month and I want to thank you guys so much for all of your thoughtful discussions and questions. It was really clear how much you all care about our kids, which was really nice to see. Um so my daughter's current class has 27 students this year and enrollment is already about that for next year. So we are currently

310in an early bird classroom and I'm lucky enough to be able to volunteer in my daughter's classroom every week during the early bird session as well as volunteer pretty regularly during their music class, which combines both the early bird birds and late owls. So I've been able to see first-hand the value of that small group learning compared to when the class is all together. I think it's hard to compare the 20-22 students that are happening in the pilot classes compared to the 27, sometimes 28 students that are in my daughter's current class and I think a lot of energy gets added even with eight more students. I mean these are five and six-year-olds. So it's a lot. And I loved though what the gentleman talks about with meeting the needs of different families, especially single

311parents and I think that is really valuable. Most of the people that want full-day kinder want it for child care, which I totally totally understand. Um and I think our kids care at least at our site is amazing. We enrolled my daughter in that a few months ago just because she wanted more time with friends and they do a lot of like educational things. They She comes back with stuff all the time and it's a wonderful experience for her. So, I don't know if there's the option of like subsidizing that more or like offering child care so that all of these needs can be met. Um again, so. All right. I've got time to kill, so. You know, I also yeah. All right, thank you so much. Thank you. Uh Lisa DeGroat. Oh, I'm sorry.

312Sorry, Lisa. Hold on. Um Shay Sniders and then Lisa. >> I'm sorry about that. Sorry about that. I'll be quick. Okay. Um good evening, Lauren. Um thank you for having me. I'm Shay Sniders. I live in the district. I have a currently enrolled kindergartner and I have a 3-year-old who will be a TK'er in the fall. Um I'm back. I was here last. Um thank you very much for the uh energy, effort, and thoughtfulness you put in. Thank you for putting out another survey and getting more data. I really appreciate the effort that's gone into this um decision, which you're not taking lightly. Um however, I think you already know how I feel. I spoke last month. I really do hope you consider um option one or option two, or maybe option four. What is

313option four? So, we said that two things could be true, right? That the current um you said the current early bird late owl model is really successful and I'm seeing it firsthand. My son is thriving, our class is happy, our teacher is incredible, and it's going really well. Um also, the pilots are having success. But, what a pilot does is it tests an idea and then it scales it. The class sizes we see at Hope and Jefferson are not the class sizes that our students will experience across the district. And so, I see this survey where it says approximately 1 to 24 students per class, that word approximately is really important. Parents are misunderstanding that as an expectation or a commitment from you. And then when we enroll our student and we see 28 or

31430, which is allowed per the policy, that's a problem for us. We lose confidence. So, what I'm asking if we consider this and we want to move forward, can we go back to option four? I'm going to add that. Which would be a cap. Give us confidence by capping the number of students. Or give us confidence by keeping a model that's been successful, which is early bird and late owl, which I'm loving. Um but I see that if we scale something that doesn't give parents confidence in class size and ratio, which is so important to us, that there could be problems down the road. Um so again, Okay, Lisa de Gore. Sorry about that. Right up here. Okay. Um thank you for your March 11th vote and um I obviously, you know I'm for early

315bird and late owl. I have to tell you at parent-teacher conferences, I had so many parents, unsolicited by me, wanted to talk about the survey and how upset they were. I encouraged them to write letters and I know a lot of them did and I know you've read them. So, um I will have to say this, when I was looking at the slideshow and I saw slide eight, where it talks about your three different options, one of them being sunset the pilot, and the pro for that had nothing to do with children. All it said was everyone will be on the same schedule. Well, um that's offensive to me and I'm going to read you what somebody else wrote, my friend Janna, because she put it so eloquently. I recently reviewed slide eight outlining the

316pros and cons of option one, sunset the pilot. I was struck that the only pro listed was that all sites would operate on the same schedule. This framing is disappointing and misleading. It overlooks what many kindergarten kindergarten teachers believe is the true strength of our current program, small class sizes that allow us to effectively teach foundational skills in reading, writing, and mathematics. Though only one pro was listed and had nothing to do with children, our greatest pro about the early bird late owl model is how it allows us to address multiple learning, speech, emotional, and social needs of our children. Another pro is that is age-appropriate. Children leave maxed out after 3 and 1/2 hours of school and return refreshed and eager to be back. It's disheartening to say the least that the only pro

317staff could conceive is based on scheduling. Thank you. I'm doing this right. Jamie Rushing. Hello again. Thank you trustees and everyone for being here so late. I'm the kindergarten facilitator, a SUSD parent, and a resident. I recognize the pressure to provide the convenience for these families. A full day is undeniably easier for parents, but we're not here to vote on child care. We're here to vote on education. Tonight I urge you to prioritize educational impact over the convenience of a longer day. We must be honest about the math as well. This district will not receive any additional state funding for a full-day model. And to fund it properly will jeopardize other essential programs, our MTSS teachers, our guidance counselors, and the fair comp- compensation of our classified staff. Our kids care program is willing to

318compromise to fill the gap. Have we truly explored how they can help offset expenses while we preserve what research proves actually works, small class sizes. NEA recommends 15 students per kinder class. Decades of data from project STAR to the SEED program and many others confirm small class size is the single greatest predictor of student success. In smaller groups, teachers aren't just managing behavior. They are providing individualized meaningful instruction. Furthermore, we are a unified district. Extending the disc or the pilot creates a rift in our curriculum planning and a wedge in our community between the haves and the have-nots. I urge you to consider any legal and ethical implications of providing unequal instructional time. A unified district has an obligation to provide a uniform equitable educational experience for all students. Please prioritize the L cap goal

319of keeping class sizes low. Please do what is best for the 5-year-olds who deserve our representation. I beg you to choose Thank you. Dawn Ebbs. I promise it's the last time. Okay, it's been a long a long journey for me. I am in all-day kindergarten at Hope. And you know, um I'm not in favor of it. It's been a It's been a It's a lot. It's uh it's managing. It's managing behaviors. And um I get it. I'm a parent. I'm a single parent. I raised four children. My husband passed away. I know what it's like to raise four kids alone. And I also know what it's like to teach kindergarten. And when you have one to 12, you can teach a lot. You can teach them how to tie their shoes, how to hold a

320pencil. Right now, I'm managing behaviors all day long. And I know I'm not the only one. You know, and I know that everyone wants to be open to new things, but this is not in the best interest of our children. I have a solution. Let's keep Early Bird laid out. And then give our classified staff the well-deserved raise that they need and want. Thank you. Lee Ann Nocera. Hi, my name is Leanne Noserra. I'm a Carlsbad resident and I have three children currently attending Calavera Hills Elementary, one of which will be in kinder next year. Uh I'm here representing the overwhelming majority of parents in our school community in favor of full day kinder. 35 years ago I attended half day kindergarten. Today, the school I attended offers full day kindergarten and their reason is

321as follows. Research shows that a full day kindergarten program engages our youngest learners in developmentally appropriate opportunities for deeper learning that better prepares them for academic success and allows time for deeper, more meaningful learning experiences directly related to core content. It also affords time to build 21st century skills, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and confidence. I think Oops, excuse me. I think the conversation is not if we should implement full day kinder, but how and when. And I strongly feel, as do most parents in my community, the answer should be next year for as many students as possible. And I heard the option raised of kids care being an opportunity that we can look into and kids care is a great resource for working parents, but it is not an equal equivalent of being in

322the classroom with a certified teacher. Thank you, Diana Aguirre. Good evening. Okay, I'm speaking to because I support full-time kinder. I It actually so with the presentation earlier, seems that there is a strong interest for full-time kindergarten. Um 72% of the families support it, which is pretty high. And also 60% of the families support full-day kindergarten. And then the class sizes confirmed that are are about 24 to 1. Basically, they're not increasing. And the reason I support it, and by the way, I do live in the district, is because I was 4 years old when I started kindergarten, and I was also an English learner. So, I spoke Spanish. I only spoke Spanish when I entered kindergarten, and it's consistent consistently been proven through studies that full-time kindergarten reduces the achievement gap, gap especially for

323English learners and kids who don't have access to preschool. So, for me, it's all about equity, and I want to make sure that my tax dollars support the children in my community. Thank you. Oh, one more thing. It's about 39 seconds. The state of California is the the initiative to have statewide kindergarten 25-26, and they put 1.4 billion dollars towards TK. So, it's coming anyway. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Trustees, do you have any questions for staff? Oh, I'm sorry. Fell asleep. Trustee Emery. Um and this is for staff and also Dr. Norman. We've had lots of conversations, many, many, many conversations over this. I think one of the factors that was an issue that's different this time is that you're here. Um and can oversee from beginning to start should we move on from

324there. Um, in the second phase of a pilot should that be the decision that the board goes down. What um, things do you foresee being um, implemented that you would like to see or what conversations would you like to have to make sure that a continuation of a pilot would be successful. Uh, we had a conversation uh, with some of the staff at Jefferson when we were doing a site visit and I I do want to compliment Ms. Fuentes. She did a great job this year. It's it's difficult to do any type of a pilot cuz you're doing it for the first time. I think one of the things we've learned is to loop back with the teachers and get their input on um, in continuing the pilot what supports do you need to be

325successful. I do think um, the part about the class sizes is very important. I hear that some classes yes did go up to 28 because of the average, but we would have a commitment to keep them closer to what they were this past year which is between I believe 20 and 22. Um, the other thing is what do you need and and my experience I used to I used to be a Kim Fuentes in the district and I I was fortunate to do an all day K and one of the things some of the teachers I had the privilege of working with talked about having substitutes help them start the year off. Um, the teachers then would also come up with a schedule that would be a soft launch into the school year, but that

326would really be determined by the teachers. I I can have all these great ideas and we can all have great ideas, but we really need the teachers in the room to give us those ideas that they think would be best for the for the programs at their school sites and the children. But that's something that we're certainly open to is how can we help you have the best start to the school year and what supports do you need? And then also and Ms. Fuentes has already talked about this having um, a list of and we talked about this before also with Ms. Rawlings cuz we'd love it for every grade level, but what do we need to make sure you're successful? Because some of the teachers shared they've had to put out their own costs

327for or their own expenses for this, and that's not what we want in in a pilot. So, it really be do you need substitute time? Do you need help with your assessments? Would we start off with half days? What other resources do you need? And and keeping the numbers as low as we can. Yeah. Trustee Verbeth. Okay. Um the presentation reflects a 1 to 20 or up to 1 to 24 ratio, correct? Nowhere in the presentation does it say there will be any aids. Is that correct? Um that is correct. I That would be further discussion um how we staff it, but right now we would um probably continue how we rolled out Hope and Jefferson with those lessons learned and the additional supports that we could provide. And what are those additional supports? Is

328that Are you relying on parent volunteers? No, we would um meet as pilot teams. However, we decide to move forward, um hear from our pilot teachers, and I know that they're eager to share their experience, and and they've identified some things that they need, similar to what um Dr. Norman shared. Is it how is it um the rollout at the beginning of the year and substitutes or supports? Is it the gradual rollout? Assessment support? Those things that often times the principals um Principal Cobb and Principal Gurwitch provided as they were navigating this pilot for the first time. Trustee Rollings. Thank you. Um Dr. Norman, were you able to um provide the rest of the board with the um the overtime surveys with parents. I didn't see it on my end, but I didn't I had

329requested that the board be received the What was it? The the disaggregated data from 25, 26 and then the current data. We did publish an amendment today where that was provided. >> Got it. Okay. I just I didn't see that. Okay, thank you. Trustee Emery. Would keeping those classes at those numbers that you suggested impact the other grade levels across the district or would we be able to say that they're able to maintain those ratios and also the low kindergarten numbers? Should a pilot go forward? >> Across the other grade levels in K3. Can you speak to that and how it impacted Hope and Jefferson? Sure. Um principals and their leadership teams make decisions on class configurations. So, when they receive their staffing dashboard and again, kindergarten is kind of a big question mark. We

330have we don't have that rolled cohort that we can identify. So, we're closely monitoring our numbers, our admin assistants are getting the enrollments processed as soon as possible so we can kind of keep up with those numbers. But we are we do operate under grade span adjustment. So, we have to monitor K3 very closely so that we are not triggering above that number which I think is 24.5. I'm learning a lot in sitting in the room with Miss Arias. And because we'll get penalized. So, that might mean we need to add another teacher. So, again, we're monitoring class sizes. Um As it is now with the early bird layout model, there is a choice made to maybe not have a combo at a grade level if you can increase your kinder because you have that

331the two cohorts that only overlap for about an hour and a half. Um we wouldn't that's not how we ran the pilot because that's um not effective. We want to make the best choice and provide the best environment for our kids. That might mean a one-two combo because maybe you have more first graders that you have to combo. Um and often times that's not desirable and so teachers might think okay, I'd rather have 26 in my class than have a combo. So that's kind of how it fluctuates. It varies every year. I know principals have, you know, plan A, plan B, plan C. I have a question. Can you um share with me with the pilots what the experience for the students were in terms of um your multilingual learners and also the amount of

332time they had um with literacy versus the early bird late owl exposure time. Sure. Um and when when we made the recommendation to move towards implementation for full-day kindergarten, um our primary um motivation in that was access to high-quality instruction for more minutes of the day. And for our multilingual learners, um the teachers, especially at Jefferson because they have um a large demographic there, um showed that they are far beyond what they've experienced in previous years. And we saw um I believe in the last presentation, we saw that 98% of students who were being progress monitored and receiving intervention, um they had jumped from the um uh beginning of year to midyear band. So while the may not have been in the um the meeting or above, they may have moved from far below to

333that um approaching realm, which is not captured in our data because it shows that the scores are still low overall. Um but they're making gains and they were tracking um tracking that. They also um engaged more with their peers and so they're using social language, which often comes first. It's that conversational, it's the um the language among peers, um and then that fill builds that foundation for um the literacy that's a little more structured. Does that answer your question? >> Yeah, so the time that they follow-up, sorry. So, the time that they had in terms of their literacy learning exposure time is it greater >> Increased. Okay. in the full day and they saw gains with their multilingual learners because of it. Okay. Thank you. Uh Trustee Rawlings. Thank you. Um Dr. Narmen, um you

334and I had a conversation about um our last meeting uh concerning the amended motion that I had made that is now um option three. Um I and you had advised me that that that was actually appropriate and we could have moved forward on that amended motion. So, I just want to clarify that if let's say there's a motion on the floor and that gets amended during discussion, that's I heard someone say an option four for instance, um that is possible and could move forward um if that were to happen tonight, correct? Correct. The process that you followed was correct and and so the the board um just know that moving forward. The reason that I proposed that we bring it back is cuz the proposed amendment at the time would impact enrollment, facilities, and staffing

335and so legal recommended that the action be brought back at a future meeting so that the community would be more fully informed. But, um Kathy is our point of order and she does know process and so I want to make sure that she gets credit for following the correct process. >> Well, and I just want to make sure that that um So, again, if it were to happen tonight, you know, that we that we know the process and that um uh and that that in the future and a a motion could be amended and it could go forward that it may not have been it was not out of order, I guess, that it was it was preferred but not out of order. I just want to clarify. Okay. >> And we we also were

336very mindful of how we wrote the item so that you would have that flexibility to amend the motion to how you saw fit moving forward. All right, Trustee COC. Sorry, my mic was off. Come whatever. Whatever at this point. Um I I think there's been a lot of conversation about additional instructional minutes. There's also been a lot of conversation about diminishing returns on those additional minutes with increasing class sizes specifically over 15 or 20. Um is there a reason why when class size was really the reason that we did not pass this at the last board meeting that you did not include anywhere in this any reference to class size? You're saying it verbally, but it is not part of this presentation. I believe it's on um slide five under the top three concerns with

337a full-day program. Number one is class size. Is that what you're referring to? What I'm referring to is that nowhere in your presentation does it list any sort of class cap. You did mention in your comments earlier that misinformation was going around with class sizes. However, it is a grade 1 through 3 average that that it can't exceed 24 in the average. So, there are situations where it can be greater than 24 and it could be up to 33. So, it's well and good to say that that no principal and I've had this said to me, no principal would would design a class that way, but I don't think that's reassuring to parents. They want full-day kindergarten, but they want small class sizes and we're never going to be able to give them full-day kindergarten

338with 12 like they might have had in an early bird or in a late owl. But, I do think it's reasonable for us to give some kind of a parameter that is putting into uh writing that we are committed to limiting the class sizes. I think I'd just jump in there and add that we I think we've consistently talked about the grade span average, um which is the the the standing parameter within which we operate. And if you recall back in March, we talked about any discussion about class caps or things like that would be subject to bargaining and that would be in Ms. Arias's realm to have further conversation about. So, it would be inappropriate for us to necessarily throw that out, but we do know that we operate within those grade span averages

339and that gives us the basis for what we would do. Again, I think that one of the things that gets confused it would that I hear sometimes is that the point that I think Ms. Fuentes made a few minutes ago is that is that when principals are working with their teams at the sites to to develop class rosters, the current model allows them to run those uh kindergarten classes higher than they than they likely would otherwise than they certainly would otherwise because the students are there together for such a limited part of the day, right? So, they can run that class higher, still have, let's say, 13 and 13 or 14 and 14 and they've got those split rosters. So, that looks like a class of 28, but the reality is that class of 28

340is there for a short time. That that, you know, the way that that they would staff those classes would certainly be different and it's certainly something that we would work with with Ms. Arias and with our principals on that that they they would be they would be knocking their other class averages out of whack by by, you know, running classes at that size. So, it's it's really just not a realistic way to approach building classes across that grade span in that scenario, I'd say. It's a follow-up to that. Go ahead, Kim. Thank you. So, um if we can't cap classes because we have to negotiate still, can can you offer aides? Because even the teachers that are in favor of it, including Jefferson and Hope who've been teaching the pilot, they're all saying the same

341thing. This class size is important and more support in the classroom. So, if you can't give us a cap, can you give us an aide and how much would that cost? So, all that would be subject to negotiations, too. And I think that kind of goes back to Dr. Norman's point of that's where we, you know, uh the board makes the decision on if they're going to move forward and then we sit down with our bargaining units to to hear them and and hear what their thoughts are of what they feel like they would need to be successful. And then we we do that through the bargaining session. We would inform the board and and work that out um before we implement the program. So What's the approximate cost of an aid? We said we

342we talked about this in the last meeting. Yeah. I had it in front of me the last meeting. It was like >> It was over a million dollars or something like that. No, it depends. If it's a shared aid, it was 11,000 if it's a shared aid. Not 11. Wasn't it 11 to 15,000? For a shared aid? Yeah, for a shared aid. They're each about 55,000. >> Oh, 55, sorry. Yeah. Okay, really? I was hopeful. 55. With labor added cost. Yeah, I I'd have to look it up. >> Okay. We did also last time discuss that it is absolutely within the board's purview to set a cap. We can set a cap. We it's not done because apparently we leave this up to CUTA to negotiate the classroom size, but it is the number one

343request on the LCAP from parents and the number two request from teachers. So if we're all >> Point of order. Is there a question? >> We're questioning right now. You're on your way, I can tell. Yeah. You know, phrasing. Why are you not being responsive to the LCAP requests of parents and teachers and in our conversation last month about classroom size being the sticking point of why we're not moving forward in our district, are we still sticking with this it's a negotiable thing and we're not going to put this on on our presentation. Yeah, we just say, you know, there's mandated subjects to bargaining that we have to adhere to. Um, and these all fall under those. So, we we do have to bargain those pieces. Follow up. So, if we set a cap of

34420 students per class, you still could negotiate beyond that, correct? It doesn't stop you from negotiating it because we put a cap. Am I correct? Correct, but it's Well, I won't say correct though. We we we want to hear cuz they might have said, "We actually want that money that you used to go toward lowering class sizes to actually go toward aides." And that's where we just think it's that's the important part cuz we want this to be successful. So, that's the part where I think it's it's good to hear from the people who are implementing it to to hear what their needs are, especially when we just did a pilot, um, and really to hear their feedback on what those needs would be. So, follow up to that. Um, so, if there's a if

345we put in a cap, um, doesn't that kind of impact like other positions in terms of um, I mean, negatively it could impact other positions. You mean other grade levels? Other grade levels, yes. Yeah. It could it could then, um, so, eventually what we do is we keep enrolling students until there aren't any more spaces and then they go to the next school. So, if you weren't able to, um, continue enrolling in kinder, they would have to go to the next newest the next school or not participate in that kindergarten program. They'd have to go to a different program. Okay. Right. But, it is nice also to have It's It's not a bad thing to have parameters, but it's also nice to have caveats. Not something you do with your association. You say, "Well, if

346we go up to 22, but let's say we have to go to 23, and teacher gets compensated for that." So, you always want to make sure that if if things go in and out, you're compensating your employees for that. Mhm. Go ahead. Um would it be fair to state that um we would the board would prefer that uh go into those negotiations with the understanding that the board intent is to keep those class sizes low and to direct staff to um handle those negotiations accordingly with those You could give us the same direction. >> Yeah. So, uh follow up. Um so, when you say when if we were to say a class cap, and let's say we say 15 students per kinder class, then I know I know I'm I'm just say I'm I'm saying

347what if hypothetical a hypothetical. But, that that would substantially impact families, right? Because then they couldn't necessarily go to their home school anymore cuz they would have to be moved to another school. Correct. Or, we would spend our resources in hiring more and more kinder teachers, and there would be fewer resources for other programs. Right. Okay. Uh Trustee Verba. Dr. Norman and I were just at Cal or AOE, and we were walking the classrooms. We did kinder and TK. Um currently, they have three classrooms um that are early bird, late owl. And we asked about the numbers if we were to run a pilot there, it would push them to four classrooms. Correct, Dr. Norman? Mhm. If we kept the classes low. Right. So, have you looked at the facilities and considered the options there?

348Because we walked the property, and parents need to know this. If they're demanding full day, they need to know that it's not going to be an equitable situation because there are three classrooms that are designed for kindergarten with bathrooms and a playground. The fourth classroom is not going to have that and it's not going to be in the same building. It will be in a separate building. There is a current TK playground that needs to be retrofitted. There is not a bathroom there. It has to be You have to walk out and then if they want to come over to the other playground during a long day where they're all together, they're going to have to exit that building area and so I guess my question to you is have we looked at facilities closely

349to see what that impact is? Have we communicated that to parents so that they know there's a chance you might not get the nicer classroom, right? Because one of the teachers even over at Hope is saying, "Well, I'm I'm in favor of this, but I want the bigger classroom." Right? So, have we talked about those limitations or um options and then communicated those to all these parents who are saying, "I want it." And teachers. Yeah, and again, every year is different. So, you might have a large cohort come in, which is what we're seeing at Aviara. Um however, the the preschool is downsizing, so we do have space. Now, looking specifically at Aviara, um this is how their TK is operating. They're in a standard classroom without a bathroom and they walk to um the

350kindergarten playground to play. So, it's doable. Um we have kindergarten teachers now that are in standard classrooms and they might loop back up to first grade because that's how the cohort moves and there's a smaller cohort coming in. So, it fluctuates every year at every site. Um and we make adjustments as needed, which is what we did with TK at Alondra. I do think also adding on to that we saw kindergarten classes for years having to move out of the traditional kindergarten classroom with the onset and of TK. I had to do that. At Jefferson. Are you okay? Yeah, I'm okay. Um I just want This is This is a very important topic, but I just want us to be conscious of the time. So, questions, just make sure there aren't questions that you've already

351asked or so we can continue. Trustee Rollings. Uh yes, um Article 6 of the CUTA contract when it says it is understood and agreed that the district retains all of its powers and authority to direct, manage, and control to the full extent of the law and this agreement. And it states 6.1.4 determines the kinds and levels of service to be provided and the methods and means of providing them. Doesn't that include class size? Yeah, if we wanted to discuss me staffing kinder lower, that's something we can adjust like we've we've did that before with uh 4 5 when we had some one-time funding. Um but if we get it to class caps, that's where that we'd want to be, but again, negotiating that piece. Uh again, based on this on this article that's in the

352contract, you already have class sizes that are at whatever it is district-wide. Doesn't this give the authority to the district to determine the levels of service they want to provide? So long as they stay within the contract. Yes. Thank you. Okay. >> However, I I do want to add the caveat that legal does not recommend that the board um set caps. Legal recommends that it is the a bargainable item. Any other questions? Okay. So would someone like to make a motion? I'd like to move that we adopt option three. I'll second that. Um discussion. Sorry, trustee Rawlings uh made the motion. Trustee Ward seconded the motion. Discussion? Go ahead, trustee Rawlings. Um uh I do believe that um the parents have um um are very much in favor at these particular sites. I mean, I

353would say AOE is the least. However, they do have TK on that site already. And 50% of their students are going to um child care. And one of the things that I had heard with the late owl is that one of the transition pieces for late owl is um they they call it uh the the child the child care transition where they're used to their play play play and then now they have to get to work and and learn. And so that takes time away from their learning as well. So the re- and AO- I think AOM or AOE um is also the most appropriate because we do I think we need one in the south. I think if you have CHE BV and um and AOE, there's enough options as far as transportation goes.

354>> So you want to do all three schools? So I I and the reason I'm saying this as well is that um uh and I've asked this question of of everyone multiple times is that when you look at surrounding districts, and I'm talking Solana Beach, uh I'm talking uh Encinitas, Del Mar, um uh that you know, Cardiff, all of them have um full day and we don't have any significant higher outcomes than those than those districts do. And so I think we can compare to that that the Early Bird Late Owl is it's been tradition and I think we can keep it in some schools, but I think we do need to move forward based on based on the taxpayers that are paying for these schools. Trustee Emery. Um I agree. I think the things

355I've continually heard again and again is um the need for class sizes to be small which I fully understand is a bargainable. I would would like the intent of the board to keep it small, but also with the freedom, you know, just because we can doesn't always mean we should, with the freedom to have those discussions with the people who are there on the ground and have them, you know, um say what they need most. Is it an aide? Is it lower class? What? So I I would like that flexibility. Um I think we don't have enough information, so I I support going forward. Um the one school in question is AOE, but I hear what you're saying. I think that was a great idea that you brought up last meeting. Um and that's one

356of the reasons I was in favor of bringing really in favor of bringing this back. Um CHE and BV definitely has um from conversations and the data really strong showing. So um the AOE is the one that I'm kind of on the fence on, but you know, I'd like to hear from my other board members as well. When we met with the BV Oh, may I speak? Okay. When we met with the BV teachers, they Yes, they wanted a full day program, but they were adamant about a 20 to 1 ratio. They were adamant. And if you look at their comments, they still are adamant about it. So um again, I think we see this um we see people supporting the full day program, but yet the way they see it is 20 to 1.

357Small class sizes with all of the bells and whistles that some of the other programs have. So, I'm not in favor of option three. I would be in favor of option one and maybe two. I think perfecting uh what we started this year and rolling out uh this two same sites is what I'm most comfortable with and seeing how we do by perfecting those two sites. If not, then going back to our early bird layout. Any other discussion? Okay, so does everybody know what the motion was? Ready, Trustee Rawlings? Option three, all three schools. Okay. Ms. Garcia, please call for a vote. Trustee Rawlings? Yes. Trustee Verrett? No. Trustee Ceo-C? No. Trustee Emery? Yes. Trustee Ward? Yes. Motion passes three to two. Okay, thank you. We now move on to agenda item 12.3, approval resolution

358number 27-2526, reaffirming commitment to non-discrimination, anti-harassment, and bullying prevention. Trustees, this is a discussion action item. I will now hand it over to Dr. Brian Brocket. To Dr. Brian Brocket. Thank you, President Ward. No, you're good. Uh the Board of Trustees is dedicated to providing a safe, supportive, and welcoming school environment that ensures all students have equal access to the district's educational programs and activities. This resolution before you tonight reaffirms the district's adherence to several key board policies and administrative regulations designed to protect students and staff. It's respectfully recommended that the Board of Trustees approved the resolution number 27-2526 reaffirming commitment to non-discrimination, anti-harassment, and bullying prevention attached to tonight's agenda as exhibit A. I'll hand it back to you. This is a time for public comment. Uh we have four four blue cards. Um

359when I call your name, please come to the podium, state your name, and indicate whether or not you will live within the boundaries of the school district. You will have 3 minutes. We will have we will have the timer on the screen, and your mic will be muted when your time has expired. The first speaker is Yusef Miller. >> Point of Point of order though, if we have go to the 3 minutes, we won't have time to vote on the resolution, so we might need to shorten that time. Okay. So, I'm going to give each speaker 1 minute. Sorry. We just want to make sure that we get through this. >> This should be a no-brainer anyway. My name is Yusef Miller, uh North County Equity and Justice Coalition and the North County NAACP. And

360um this is the time for us to meet the moment. The moment here is from uh events that have happened here in Carlsbad and not not only here and other places. Time for us to rise and meet the moment. And how you vote on this moment is going to determine your standing in history. So, this is the moment you need to really think really careful about on how you protect our children. Uh at the City Council four out of five met the moment. Four out of five uh were anti uh for a statement that is anti-discrimination, anti-harassment, anti-bullying. Four out of five reached the moment that they should have, and I hope that we are unanimous in reaching the moment so that we can look back and say that we've seen this milestone. We're trying

361to turn that corner, and we're trying to make a difference. And not only just for the students, for also re- meeting the moment for the staff, meeting the moment for educators, meeting moment for the parents. And we've seen a lot of issues when it comes to those areas as well. Thank you. Scott Davison. Okay. Diana Aguirre. Hi, my name is Diana Aguirre and I do live in Carlsbad and I'm here at midnight because this topic is very important to me. I also wanted to bring up that our Carlsbad City Council did approve the anti-bully bully proclamation that was presented by Dr. Bob Patel and our council approved it 4-2-1. I think that's just an indication of the commitment of our city to make sure that our public spaces remain safe, especially for our children. It's

362very sad and disheartening that this incident hate crime happened close to where I live. However, our community showed up. We showed up and we are supporting each other because this isn't right. So, I'm asking you this evening to please pass the resolution. In addition, keep in mind that this type of incident further proves the importance of supporting ethnic studies. Thank you. Nakaya Wilson. Good evening, president, board members and superintendent. My name is Nakaya Wilson. I am a Carlsbad resident, a parent in this district, and incoming PTA president at Kelly Elementary. I appreciate the district's commitment through this resolution and I'd like to offer a few solution-focused recommendations moving forward. First, ensure all students receive consistent access to grade-level instruction with targeted interventions layered in for those who need additional support. Second, implement proactive supervision and

363identified high-risk areas such as recess and transitions. By strategically placing trained staff to prevent incidents before they occur. Third, invest in ongoing district wide training and trauma-informed practices, de-escalation, and culturally responsive approaches to better support an increasingly diverse student population. Thank you. Trustees, do you have any questions? Trustee Rawlings. Um I just wanted to ask, when is the appropriate time to um to ask uh or to present actions that could go along with this resolution so it's not just words on a page? Probably with the DEI stuff. In May, when we present our DEI board together plan. And then would would we be able to attach it to the resolution itself um if if uh if this was being included with the DEI plan, then could we talk about that as well um in order

364to attach the actions to the resolution? Yeah, some of the parts of the DEI plan actually cover this. I I just want to make sure that we're able to to to connect those two. And and the appropriate time to do it is next month. Thank you. Any other questions? No. Okay. Uh may I have a motion for the board to approve resolution number 27-25-26 reaffirming commitment to non-discrimination, anti-harassment, and bullying prevention exhibit A. I'll make the motion. Can I have a second? So moved by Trustee COC. Trustee Ward made the motion, Trustee COC seconded the motion. Discussion? Okay. Uh Ms. Garcia, please call for a vote. Trustee Rawlings. Yes. Trustee Verbout. Yes. Trustee COC. Yes. Trustee Emery. Yes. Trustee Ward. Yes. Motion passes 5-0. Okay, following the adoption of the resolution, the trustees and the

365superintendent will read the resolution aloud. Doc Dr. Norman will begin. Whereas the Board of Trustees is committed to providing a welcoming, safe, and supportive school environment that allows all students equal access to and opportunities in the district's academic, extracurricular, and other educational support program, services, and activities. Whereas Board Policy 0410, Nondiscrimination in District Programs and Activities, mandates that the district programs, activities, and practices shall be free from unlawful discrimination against any individual or group based on actual or perceived race, color, ancestry, nationality, national origin, immigration status, ethnic group identification, ethnicity, age, religion, marital status, pregnancy, pregnancy, parental status, reproductive health decision-making, physical or mental disability, medical condition, sex, sex, sexual orientation, um gender, gender identity, gender expression, veteran or military status, genetic information, or association with a person or group with one or more of

366these characteristics. Whereas Board Policy 5145.3, Nondiscrimination and Harassment, explicitly prohibits unlawful discrimination, including discriminatory harassment, intimidation, and bullying targeted at any student by anyone at any district school or school activity. Whereas the Board recognizes the harmful effects of bullying on student well-being, learning, and attendance as outlined in Board Policy 5131.2, Bullying, and prohibits any individual or group from harassing, threatening, intimidating, or cyberbullying any student or school personnel. Whereas board policy 5145.9 hate motivated behavior reaffirms the board's commitment to protecting students from any type of behavior motivated by hate included including bigotry bigoted slurs epithets force or vandalism intended to cause emotional suffering or physical injury. Whereas administrative regulation 5131.2 5145.3 and 5145.9 establish clear procedures for the superintendent or designee to implement preventive measures provide staff development and ensure that all complaints of discrimination harassment

367or bullying are investigated promptly and resolved in accordance with districts uniform complaint procedures. Now therefore be it resolved that the Board of Trustees of the Carlsbad Unified School District hereby reaffirms its dedication to maintaining a safe and inclusive learning environment for all students through the consistent enforcement of the aforementioned policies on non-discrimination harassment hate motivated behavior and bullying. Be it further resolved that the Board of Education calls upon all schools to promote culture promote a culture where every student is safe seen and supported encourage students and staff to speak up and report incidents provide ongoing education that builds empathy respect and responsibility engage families and community partners in fostering inclusive school environments. You want me to just finish it off? Passed and adopted by the Board of Trustees of the Carlsbad Unified School District this

36815th day of April 2026. I guess there's no need for the other parts. Okay, it is I'm sorry. I'm sorry. is 11:59 and the regular meeting is now adjourned. Our next regular meeting will take place on May 27th, 2026 at 6:00 p.m.