001i call this meeting to order for the board of chico unified and with that we'll do a flag salute i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you so i also want to read the civility statement that in response to what the governor has also passed the governing board recognizes the role that civility plays in creating a safe and positive school climate and enabling a focus on student well-being learning and achievement civil behavior is polite courteous and reasonable behavior which is respectful to others and includes integrity honesty acceptance dependability observance of laws and rules in effective communication the board expects civil behavior in the use of district electronic digital systems and
002platforms on district grounds and facilities as well as district events including school board meetings students staff parents guardians and community members shall participate in district activities including school board meetings in a civil manner so thank you for listening all right with that um anyone have an announcement okay excuse me i just want to announce to the community or remind we've already heard about it that the 35th annual uh bidwell park and chico creeks clean up is on september 17th the whole community is invited to volunteer we have over 350 people already signed up to participate that day in celebration of world cleanup day so pre-registration actually closes tonight at midnight and same day registration is available at hooker oak park starting at 8 30 a.m that morning it goes till 2 p.m and then a
003volunteer appreciation event follows until 4 o'clock so it should be a really fun day of cleaning up tons of waste out of our parks and streams did you repeat the date yeah it's saturday september 17th okay thank you anybody else all right so i also have an announcement the bidwell park nature center is going to host this saturday i think they said from noon to three an ice cream social for the community so if your kids like ice cream like mine do yeah you want to be there and it's free is to get everybody exposed to what the nature center offers and i'm pretty sure it's noon to three okay thank you for that all right with that we'll move to the consent calendar is there anyone who wants to pull an item from the
004consent calendar and president i have a question on the consent calendar is business services considered part of the consent calendar okay then i'd i'd like to pull the contract approvals okay all right anything else would someone want to pull all right so may i have a motion then i will move adoption of the consent calendar i'll second that minus the um yeah yeah okay so we have a motion by tom and a second by matt to pull i mean to move forward with the consent calendar and we'll take a roll call vote robinson aye landau-eye kaiser i dolby i tennessee i do want to complement the boosters for both high school cross-country teams they are contributing a great deal of financial support for them to go and have these very positive preparatory meets so that's
005really really really positive you know what i lied i have another announcement yesterday the men and women's national soccer teams did the first global ever agreement to share equally men and women salaries facilities and travel arrangements so let's hope the rest of the world pays attention and follows an array for you as soccer yeah all right okay so with that we'll turn to eileen on business contracts um yes thank you madam president um in reviewing this item i came across some information where where did where did our maintenance and operations oh they're hiding um i don't really need any comments i i just wanted one of the things that i found out because i asked whether or not this was a planned replacement rotation or whether or not and whether or not we had the
006money to continue it if it was a planned rotation for replacement and i was informed that the reason why there's a delay in this and where this money is coming from is the the covered monies but because of the amount of money i believe the cost that we have to have it approved by the point of information yeah i want to make sure we're talking about the hvac systems right yes the hvac system yeah but you didn't say you mentioned that part i'm sorry i want to make sure we're on same page okay thanks that we have to wait for approval from the state department of education um but once we get done spending the covered money and we go back to our three percent maintenance money we don't have to wait anymore so if
007anybody's wondering why we don't already have these it's because by law you know by ed code i believe it's by law basically because of the nature of the coveted relief dollars any single item over five thousand dollars has to have uh department of education pre-approval prior to us um purchasing or procuring those items the smallest of these were three tons yeah and the biggest was 10 tons so not your household ac as i i know it's this issue of our air conditioning units has been an issue of late i wanted to let everyone know why these weren't available a month ago so thank you and now i'm ready to to motion to approve those guys that contract you're moving all the contracts correct yes that's true there's what nine of them okay so we have
008a motion by eileen to move business services approval of contracts i'll second that tom seconds and then just as a query so jacqueline do we have any idea about the date that the state will approve the state's already actually pre-approved these so we have gotten confirmation but we had to have that prior to bringing it to the board because of the dollar value so okay we are go if it's approved tonight we will be issuing pos tomorrow okay i'm sure no one has enjoyed the heat levels that we have been having so all right so with that we can um just have a voice vote all those in favor of approving business services contracts please say aye hi all right thank you okay with that i think ted you are on so thank you we're
009excited to talk a little bit about um upk tonight for you also and just looking for feedback from the board about what to share tonight we heard we kind of you guys are looking for kind of a mile-high view and not getting down into the weeds too much about some of the things so we've got a little bit of a in just information to share with you tonight and we're actually excited this is really a huge shift kind of an education if you think of it we're really adding a whole other grade level over the course of the year here over the course of multiple years and it's it's fabulous for families but it also comes with some complications to do those things as well so let's see so the areas we're going to talk
010a little bit about is just what is universal pre-k i mean it's kind of a focus with tk but it's also woven into the pre-k experience also kind of what does it look like in chico unified currently issues we're looking at kind of moving ahead with it because it is expanding significantly over the next couple years here and also next steps for us with it and certainly if you guys have questions at any point ask so kind of to think of it's hard to talk about tk without talking about upk and of course they love their acronyms like that so upk is universal pre-kindergarten so the state is really looking for every child in the state over time here to have a year of a pre-kindergarten experience before they actually go into kindergarten and the
011state has kind of said there's several ways to get that to happen part of it is through experiences like what we have to identify the tk transitional kindergarten experience part of it is through our state funded preschools like what kathleen runs and part of it is our other opportunities in the community as well could be a head start it could be just private preschools so there's a whole bunch of ways that they would like to see students getting a year a pre-kindergarten year under their belt with those things so the term they use for that is upk and of course everything centers around tkpk with those things i have i have a question ted if the goal is to to get all of these students involved is there a like a a tracking system or
012something that lets us know how many kids are still out there that aren't in um how many kids are not participating yes it's it is almost impossible because they don't have to register with us so that's one of the complications for us mandatory correct so we're not ever quite sure what's what what may or may not be happening with it so there's a little bit of guesswork as far as what our expansion and capacity needs will be [Music] kathleen has a pretty steady stream of people interested with her program also and we have a typical 100 person waiting list with some of those things but we really don't know and we'll talk about a little bit further in here eileen too you know families have options and even once they're that age as well they
013can go to tk they can go to preschools so there's a lot of options for families which makes it harder for us to zero in on like how many are actually coming to our tk programs also so just a touch of history this is you know we're talking like nine years ago the state started talking what do we want to do with those students that were missing being kindergarten age and starting with their peers so for for quite a while we had those september october november students that weren't old enough to start kindergarten so the state came back and said we're going to start this thing called universal trend or excuse me transitional kindergarten and i'd say when they started it it was really um kind of there there was not a ton of fourth
014order planning they just kind of told us let these students start school basically for chico unified we had them kind of mixed in with k classes because of space and kind of some of those kinds of issues with it so it was really kind of a slow start with it i would say especially from the state perspective so we've had students in tkk classes for about eight or nine years now with it since the state made it okay uh everybody has to be providing kindergarten excuse me if we have kindergarten we have to be offering tk also that's part of the expectation from the state to do those things we have four hours of tk we do six hours and actually expanding soon more and i'll talk about that a little bit later in the
015in the presentation also really curriculum wise the state was not real specific about that they wanted some kind of a developed curriculum that wasn't quite k but not quite preschool also so they said kind of create some opportunities put some things together one of our recently retired tk teachers laura manning has been part of a lot of the state discussions it's just been really helpful with us putting together kind of curriculum options and what we should order and put in place for those kinds of things facility requirements really kind of the same as kntk they would like bathrooms in all those rooms as the new ones are being built and that's a big issue with it also our push for those things to be happening so this is what it looks like as far as
016what the state calls like a full implementation so they've started rolling out about two months every year and that's kind of an odd term for it but it used to be students could not start if they were born in september october november in decay and those were the tk students so this year they've added on two more months so it's september october november december january so all those kids are turning at that age until that point they're now eligible so they're going to be expanding two years out until 25-26 and basically at that point we will have just added on a whole other grade level on to what's happening in chico unified caitlin this is a really silly question but um this is what i was mentioning i think a few months ago when looking
017at the progression or the timeline gets confusing it's so simple and i think that i should be able to interpret it right but there are no years on those months so september 2nd of 22 to february 2nd 23 is that my interpretation right yes okay and september 2nd of 23 to april 2nd of 24 okay that's that's where it got confusing was what just looking at like it wasn't even when you would look it up from the state level and it was you know a spreadsheet or whatever just so we could even clarify this a bit more okay point taken uh we we can enroll kids if they're missing that age a little bit one of the things that's happened in chicago historically we've not had space to do those things so if students are
018turning you know the age appropriate after that cut off we've had very few spaces it's not that we're opposed to it the other thing is we don't get ada for those students until they turn that age as well so it's possible that it could happen just over the many years we've had very few spaces available our tk's have been very full for quite a while with just the the enrolled age of students who want to participate with it family choice this is what i was talking about your question eileen about knowing transitional kindergarten it's not compulsory so if they choose to come that's great if they don't we have to offer it though and have a space for them there if they would like to come parents have a choice too so they can be
019in a pre-k program i.e a state-funded preschool program or they could be in our tk program also it's really up to those parents and that's been one of the things i think tina's done a really good job we have some elap funding coming that's going to start expanding the school day for some of our tk kids we're actually kind of piloting at a couple schools right now what's happened a lot of parents are able to stay in a state-funded preschool for eight plus hours and our tk's are only going about six hours now but we're working on expanding that so that's not a barrier for them to be in a tk program in our sites also so i'm going to let kathleen who if you don't know kathleen very well she's done it oh i'm
020sorry eileen sorry about being slow on the uptake but as you were talking about the expanding to the additional hours are we are we going to be covered if we do we get we get the ada for the tk once the t's are qualified yes are we going to be able to afford to expand it those hours that's what the elop funding is for is to kind of create additional opportunities outside the school day so outside the school day would be expanding that traditional tk day and that's what they're giving us money to do those kinds of things and it can be a mix of different ways to to provide that additional up to nine hours a day with it but that that's one of the ways we're doing it we've got a lot of
021feedback that our tk families would like the opportunity kind of like a fourth grader that's in the blast program they would like that for their students also or children okay thank you elop stands for expanded learning opportunity program chris yes okay mr marchand he's on it so i'm going to let kathleen if you don't know we have been i'll let kathleen talk all about our preschools but she's done a bang-up job um just to kind of share with you i'm over at mcmanus quite a bit just doing with different meetings over there and i try to get there early and i'll almost lurk outside the preschool program and we'll just casually ask parents you know and they don't know me i say i work for chico and i just ask them all the time you
022know are you happy with it is going well and just 100 of them are like we love it it's been great kind of things like that so kathleen does a great job with it i'm going to let her talk about the state funded preschool part in this upk thing also for us hello so chico unified opened our first two preschools full day full year cspp california state preschool program classrooms in january of 2017. we are a growing program and we currently have four state preschool classrooms and we're working on opening the fifth at loma vista our wait list continues to grow every day just when you think more families aren't coming every day i'm getting more even more emails just inquiring about the program families have to meet income guidelines and the income guidelines have
023increased this year to 100 of the state median income when um last year it was at 85 percent so just to get an idea a family of four can have a monthly gross income of up to 9 and for the full day program families have to have a need such as working looking for work or going to school our programs serve children the age is 2.9 up to five years old and our classrooms are funded by cde the department of education and we are also licensed through community care licensing caitlin i was looking for the updated um income guidelines and i honestly couldn't find them for like anywhere in the state i even another school to you i believe um it was on the weekend though so you may not have received right but that's
024just not information that's on the website somewhere oh okay okay so we could it's not right now okay i was yeah i was there a lot of times it's very possible that i just don't find that when i go to look for it so i was just asking if it was available somewhere for something okay right we i do share it with families when i'm working on the enrollment and a lot of people will just ask for a family of four you know what's the income threshold um we will happily share that information with erica and see if she can find a spot on the website for it too we'll find a spot thank you question sorry before you move on um the new site at loma vista will it have a focus on early
025identification for special needs or sped students yes all of our classrooms do but we will definitely be offering more inclusion at loma and you want to share like kind of the composition like our kids or all of the classes right and the state is requiring us it's kind of like the other um age thing look like every couple years like right now they're requiring five percent next year they're going to require seven percent seven point five percent of the children um enrolled in our program to have an iep and then the following year it's ten percent so they're they're requiring it but we've been offering it in all of our classes for sure but yeah but the sped site won't the longer business site won't be a site specifically sorry i didn't hear you but
026the loma vista site won't be a sped site specifically no it will be a state preschool classroom offering a little bit extra inclusion because we have those resources available there okay well but kids can have in-home services from two to three right so the early intervention it's zero to three years old typically or even speech kiddos we'll get oh yeah i'm speech out the school district too yeah i have a question now thank you tom for mentioning that why do we only have one group that's targeted for specific look at screening for ieps and special needs all of the children are screened with an asq the ages and stages questionnaire for their age group so all of our programs whether it's the one at loma vista okay absolutely some of the children that were enrolling
027at loma vista already have an iep so i worked with the special education department for that and i would say elaine i think if you look at all the programs that kathleen every kid and every one of not every kid every one of those programs has kids in there that have ieps as well so it's not kids with ieps are going lowers they're actually sprinkled into all of our state funded preschool programs oh thank you that was the answer i was looking for thank you yeah that that's been one of the beauties of our partnership with the innovative preschool was that program and the fact that we now have it you know sprinkled through all of it it is such an enormous benefit to all of the kids absolutely thank you and i would say
028kathleen and her staff have done a great job just integrating those kids and welcoming me and we actually had meetings two days ago with diane and her staff about next year spaces for integration what she feels we're going to need with our preschool kids coming in etc etc so they're actively planning working together to make sure their space is in there and that we're kind of taking them in part of the program also so here's where we are in chico unified right now we have 10 classes and i'm really talking more about the gen ed side of things i think diane's going to talk a little bit more about the sped end of it when she talks kind of a sped update with you guys in a month or two with things so we have
029ten classes right now in our district eight of them are more focused on just gen ed two of them are very blended those two classes over at marigold and they are kind of the composition roughly about forty percent of the kids in there have ieps and about sixty 60 roughly speaking are kids without ieps as well so a lot of support we intentionally try to keep those couple classes a little bit smaller just there's a lot of adult bodies in there providing support via the iep with some of those things but we've got about 240 slots and i would say we've got about 30 slots open right now so all of our classes are around 20 21 ish kind of in the district sprinkle in there uh count eight let's see two additional birthday months
030i was talking about rolling it out like that so this is the year for december and january and this year we added a one additional new tea cake excuse me i can't talk we had an additional tk class over at rosedale with kind of a dual bilingual focus with it also and we had the two additional over at marigold this year also so kind of trying to figure out like what those additional months mean as far as enrollment for us is a little bit of a guess as well so we're we actually are in a good spot right now as far as not being twofold but having enough space to accommodate a few more enrollments as they're happening as well man yeah so um in preschool our um iep students our special needs students are
031basically spread out evenly and then in tk they're they're equally spread out also i would say they're just more a focused level of support over the two classes at marigold if that makes any sense but but you just said that there were more in the two groups so they're not equally spread out correct i'm sorry but all of the stu if students with an iep are welcome to go into any of the tk classes just kind of as any student would be the level of support over at marigold is a little bit higher with more adults so kind of depending on the level of need in the iep there's more support there so if students have a need for more support that's where they're attending so both of those classes are gold thank you here's
032where we start having some awareness issues for you guys to start kind of thinking about one of the things that's happening is hiring staff for teaching positions for tks of course the state has made it a touch more complex to hire tk teachers than just a regular teacher if that makes any sense so they have to get their teaching credential and have additional early childhood education units to be a teacher in that role for us so statewide you're here in nc and also it's already hard to hire teachers as it is so they've thrown this additional criteria on there with those kinds of things also we've been fortunate we have some dollars we've kind of started working with people that are interested whether it be classified personnel or certificate of personnel to help pay for
033those units if they're interested and encourage them to go that direction and kind of we're just a perpetual recruiting option trying to encourage people and see if they're interested in doing those kinds of things i think everybody i meet that even expresses an interest i start talking about like we've got money we'll help with you know units and get you there with those things so um that that is one of the issues that is a statewide issue just getting people that want to work in that role the other one and i think julie's actually here to answer questions and is on the agenda to speak about it later is facilities um for chico unified we have i think we are comfortable for another year going out not this year but next year as far as
034our space that we'll need for tk classes i think we started having some problems out about two or three years though as far as having enough classrooms to house us in um julie's done a great job and she's been very pre uh with the right word be preemptive talking about it starting to put plans in place i think mcmanus is a good example of like hey we've got to do something sooner than later there so coming back and changing some of those kinds of planning to build additional space in there for it but we are going to have to have for you guys and we are going to have to have a pretty lengthy discussion at the facility committee about how are we going to make sure we create space for all these incoming kids
035because we're probably going to be adding another you know from three to 400 kids over the next few years and um we can fit for a year or two we can't fit for three or four more years with three or four hundred more students at that point so that'll be a big issue that you guys can talk about and like i said julie's on the agenda to talk about master plan coming up that will address those things uh and just like i said every district is having these problems with it you know the state great idea let's we love upk happening they didn't give a lot of dollars for it so that's certainly part of the problem with the facility end of it with those things so everybody's having those issues did you want to
036make a statement oh i just wanted to say that you'll be hearing from me later when we talk about updating our master plan back in 2016 the board decided to move our sixth graders up to the junior high level because we're increasing in enrollment and we were attempting to accommodate you know higher enrollment at the elementary level i think that very next year we went to full day kindergarten so we needed double the amount of kindergartens at every site immediately so we scooped up those spaces that we created by the movement of the sixth graders to the junior highs so every school needs to be looked at and consider where tk is going to be housed on each elementary campus and that's what we're going to talk about later all right good thank you next
037steps for us um one of the things we started talking julie about is we don't have a tk class on every campus right now and and part of our like how they've ended up on campuses has really just been space available and we've been kind of like hodge podging along so julie's really i'm starting to work on making a very comprehensive plan on how do we intentionally put a tk class or two on every campus going forward from here so that right now you know kids kids not attending their current neighborhood school it's kind of a form 10 process to change schools we're kind of somewhere in the middle with tk kids because we don't have a one at every site so we're just trying to match up parent requests with space available and kind
038of going from there but it'll be very nice if and when we get to that point of having at least one if not two tk's on every campus like that so it would be part of just a neighborhood school kind of enrollment process for families so does that mean we can't do the sibling thing that we usually what we've done or dr kaiser with um with tk enrollment if they've got siblings at that school they've been a priority to get them in there and had a tk at that school also okay we definitely want to keep families together it's hard for them uh caitlyn excuse me i'm still trying to kind of wrap my head around or compartmentalize state preschool and tk because they are different um and it's my understanding and please correct me
039if i'm wrong that our the state preschool goes up to age five tk starts at age four when it's all said and done and fully rolled out and we're looking at having 12 tk classrooms with the next steps having one at each elementary site at least yeah at least and then so that's and it's about 24 students in each of those rooms and so i'm trying to like figure out the numbers here and then for state preschool can you help me understand um kind of the demographic of age for those because there's going to be overlap of those four to five-year-olds i was just thinking that's where the parent choice comes into play at least right now it is still a choice um and i'm not even sure i'm sorry parents are eligible for both
040because they do have that overlap katelyn what you're talking about so kind of depending on their family need what the program is they're looking for etc etc they really can opt in to either one at that point so we actually have families that are you know talking tk and they find out kind of the program with state funded preschools they're interested in that so there is an overlap and they can kind of pick and choose which one will work best for their family and one of the major differences is that tk follows the normal school day whereas sorry state preschool can be up to a full day yes okay it's 246 days a year for the full day program also so we're open during summer and all of the different breaks that the school district
041takes okay and we are open 7 45 to 5 every day so some of that is reasons that the parents decide to stay with the state preschool for work cool thank you so the last couple things up here uh just one of them like i mentioned earlier is elap funding to start expanding that school length of the school day for those families because it is hard to leave work do things like that pick up your child at 2 30 and do things like that so there's definitely been a lot of interest in parent interest in having that extended school day and kind of moving up to the nine hour a day opportunity like a lot of our kids are in the blast program have that length of day opportunity one other one we're looking at
042we're looking at potentially adding a sixth state funded preschool over at pleasant valley high school they have a great cte pathway child development lab over there i would say it was almost comical my first conversation with the administrative vice principal over there i think they're starting to have uh interest in it and kind of see we think would be a great option if you think of you've been around chico for a long time chico state used to have child development lab so kind of looking at something in that mode to kind of have experiences for students there the high school students but also be running a high quality state funded preschool because the facility if you've not visited fp is fabulous i mean it's like a cadillac kind of facility over there to run a
043preschool in so that's one other option we're talking about with it also and kind of moving ahead and it's also an opportunity to grow our own employees exactly high school lineup the other thing i blew through really quickly and i was talking fast and i apologize uh right now in the tks the state has said you have to have a 12 to 1 student-to-staff ratio so from our end all of our ks and tks up until this year have had two and a half hours of aid time that's just what we put in place with cuta parter agreement say yes they definitely need some extra help in there so the state has said when they're in school you've got to have two adults and that's like hiring an aide or somebody else to be that
044second set of hands in that class for this year it's 12 to 1. i talk about jack and i went back and re-read it next year there's some trigger language in the state to say potentially they could lower that threshold down to 10 to 1. oh my gosh and it depends on state finances etc etc with those kinds of things so i'm not quite sure how that looks yet for chico unified because the complications of adding a third person into that classroom potentially for seven hours a day is certainly financially um it would be it's expensive to do those kinds of things but ten to one it's just an odd number when we kind of build classes around a 24 or 12 to one ratio and all of a sudden have one in there that's
045a ten to one ratio with some of those things so i think we'll have to wait and kind of see what happens with the state budget if it hits those triggers and goes forward from there with it so that's all i have so questions from you guys about anything yeah i have a question on a change like they're making a rumor about going from 12 to 1 to 10 to 1 who's making that decision when i looked at it and it said it was built into the next year's budget per again to projection or possibility yeah some triggers that if our state budget is at x level of doing well that might be one of the things that they're going to look at putting in place for that uh oh no seriously they know we
046have a staffing shortage they know where the staffing shortages are and yet they're making financial decisions that are impacting you know what we can and cannot do for our kids responsibly um i i get it that the extra bodies and the lower class sizes are ideal we know that's where the gains are made i will say the state kind of in the final budget came through and acknowledged and gave funding for that additional set of hands in that class that extra aid time in there initially that was not in the initial budget but i think when it all passed through it came through in july i guess so they funded it but i agree with you we still have an issue of just even trying to hire enough people to be providing services not only
047hiring but if we can hire the the people and these are non-credential no there's some credentialed and some non-credentialed the classified para educators if we have enough money to do in-service for those those paris we can bring them up to speed to be you know strong contributors to that educational program but if we can't if we can't fund the kind of in-service that we need um and i will say we've been lucky the last couple years because we do have some startup funds with tk and those kinds of things so we've actually been providing professional development opportunities for aids oh yeah just as far as classroom management organizations just how classes run and giving them some front loaded time to make sure they understand the structure of the class and those kinds of things also
048and the the program that cse helped get going where our aides can be helped to to get their profession their credential through leaves and things with the district and the district has been extremely accommodating and used every bit of that leverage um those aids are our primary source of regression oh yeah to help get them credentialed licensed moving to those roles yeah okay i'll be quiet caitlyn um has there been any discussion or just consideration and i feel like there's this is we've had like candid you know passerby conversations about making these classes accessible or making sure that classes are accessible for our staff to utilize those services i mean we have a lot of staff members who have young young kids um and and they might be able to benefit in their job and
049their role as teachers or or peras or whatever their services are on campus as as far as being able to have suit their be able to afford to put their kids into into into that kind of thing you can talk about the eligibility end of it sure the pera's we do have a few of them already with their children enrolled in our preschool program typically teachers don't qualify because of the income guidelines so that's where we kind of run into the bumpy road for those families but it isn't the income uh guidelines only for the preschool yes it is i'm only talking yes i'm only talking about state preschool yeah okay tk anybody can enroll in correct but tk will be will be capped will it be capped so it's as long as there's demand
050we have to make sure that there's open space think of it like third grade if we have a third grader enroll we're gonna have to find a spot for them some place and plan for it but state pre-school state preschool is ours we're doing it as we have space available for it i'm not sure who this is a question for whether for you guys or but um would we have the latitude legally to offer some kind of an uh incentive program for teachers and staff to make it easier for them to afford or more eligible or waive some of the eligibility guidelines so we wouldn't get funded for it so would we have to be something that we would have to take out of our general fund and find both facilities for and staff for
051so i hear given that um it might be interesting to see some objections about exactly how much that would cost given how many staff we have just as a potential recruitment tool since we are having trouble everywhere finding yeah maybe it's not a state preschool program it's just a chico unified sponsored preschool program that we can model you know mirror it to to our state preschool program and quite honestly that was what where we initiate initially started with the program at pv we wanted to use that for staff and have staff students be able to go into the child care development program at pleasant valley high since that time the state preschool has come on and so that is a way to do that and get funding and grow our own from within but we
052could certainly put together some numbers we'd have to do some survey enough staff to see how many have students that would fall into that age group but we would need to go into it knowing that we're not going to get reimbursed for it thank you yeah and i don't i don't know that it's everybody's problem but most people who have children under the age of four and a half automatically are paying between 1 000 and 1400 a month and those opportunities are dwindling preschool programs are going away just like like uh mr lando said it is an incentive for for staff or for bringing more staff in it would be great to see some numbers thank you so that's all we have is there any other questions i just think my grandmother who had 10
053kids and my mom who had six so they have done their part to help populate our statement in preschool and fallen over at the idea that they could ship more of them off to school okay yeah thank you for letting us share we appreciate thank you don't pick up your paperwork yet since i have two of our experts on this issue in front of us the statistics on why we're doing this the advantage for the success later on for these kiddos that we pick up this early you want to give us just a little bitty snippet of actually how important this is for this for their success later on i don't have actual percentages but i do know there's been scientific studies done on like not early intervention necessarily but giving opportunities to all children
054it helps close the achievement gap there's a lot of different things that it does so i feel really good about what we do our families are really happy and i know that it does make a difference for their entire life all the way you know as we get older too you can tell one of the other things that i was made aware of too because i have special needs family was that the sooner we can get someone a child involved with special services targeted services the more likelihood there is that they will move on successfully without need of any further special education designation that it it is the key and the catalyst to so many things that that make our our kiddos successful as they moved from the the the three-year-old years on to the
055after third grade where they're you know off into another land the early intervention is like i mean crucial if we can get to it all right thank you very much thank you guys both of you thank you okay so um i see action news is here so everybody has to behave okay so we have business services and the discussion is the architect selection for facilities master plan hello again good evening thank you for your time tonight i'm here to discuss the architect selection process for the updating of our facilities master plan one of the items that we will be addressing when we update the plan is transitional kindergarten we'll also be updating the plan on all of the progress we've made since the update updating each campus on the the work that has occurred on
056each site revisiting the prioritization of the projects with the community the school sites and the board among many other things cost estimating of the remaining projects developing overall dollar value of the work that's required with the master plan so we we put out a request for proposals for architectural services back in july and on august 17th we received four very impressive responses as you read in the lead sheet they were scored on a rubric and the architects are selected by qualifications not by price so they were all neck and neck and they were all very highly qualified firms we're working with tim haley who worked on our master plan updates before he helped with the scoring he is an architect himself so we value his opinion and we discussed it over many hours and we're
057bringing forward the recommendation that we go with lionakis architects for the master plan update lionakas has several very successful projects with the district over the years none of the other architects have worked with our district before lionakas has also designed the transitional kindergarten classrooms for our upcoming project at mcmanus so we're assured that they understand the requirements and the desires of the district when it comes to transitional kindergarten so tonight we're asking for your approval to enter negotiations for the master plan update with lionakas i had according to this one community speaker on this item we don't have a name well i guess that means anybody could be the community speaker were we expecting somebody to call in or we don't literally know okay well yeah does anybody have public comment on this all right
058so what about the board members i actually do have a question about the first of all hi nice to see you thank you it's good to see you too um secondly the bidding process since it is by qualification um i am worried about potential that if flying rockets is the only one who has experience with us so we pick them every time how does a new bidder break in what would a bid like that have to look like for someone else to have a chance sure well they're not going to bid we're selecting them based on their qualifications and then we will negotiate with them so it will be a written scope of work they will estimate the amount of time that they think it's going to take to perform that work and they apply
059their hourly rates for the individuals in their firm to accomplish the work there will be you know office time there'll be administrative time most of the time we'll be visiting our school sites having public meetings meeting with the facilities committee and coming to the board and reporting to you so there's quite a bit involved our initial mr master plan back um at the very beginning cost about five hundred thousand dollars our most recent update in 2019 was about a hundred thousand dollars we are doing more scope of work than we did in 2019 so i'm expecting it to be somewhere between two and four hundred thousand where we end up um we have written into the board agenda that if we're unable to satisfactorily negotiate with linocus we'll move on to the number two firm
060and negotiate with them so we have an out yeah i guess my question though is do we have a process by which we avoid linox becoming our de facto go-to every time because i'm sorry i didn't really answer that for you i'm really sorry um we carefully select the architects for every project and dr kaiser and ms robinson have both sat on the committee for selection and i think they can attest to that we we have selected a wide variety of architects for our projects rainforth growl lionakis skw i know i'm forgetting several eagle architects we really have spread our work around quite a bit between those architectural firms we don't have a favorite and for the record um i am quite happy both with our choice here and with the system we've got i
061just the way you said it i want to make sure it's on the record that we're not leaning that way because we said it made it sound like maybe it was a snowball effect okay thank you i want to affirm if i may that's your points are really valid you know um is there never a lowest responsible bitter process used in selecting an architect no by law it's a qualifications based selection process but when it comes to construction we do the load construction work is definitely a bid yes and so what would happen if you had a school district any school district that always went to the same architect all the time what would is there anything that would kind of prevent them from doing that you know there really isn't anything to prevent that
062you are required to go through a process you are required to put out the request for proposals receive them have a rubric have a scoring process that you go through on the proposals that were received but unless someone comes forward like maybe an architectural firm that didn't get the job comes forward and files some sort of suit or something like that i don't believe that there's any oversight over that process i would have to add having been on this committee at the state level and and locally that it's a very detailed uh deep dive into what the architect is offering and architects that we have chosen have won statewide awards at the last conference we were at they were being recognized so it is very much on the ability to a have experience with districts
063and to have the vision that a particular school district is looking for and while i hear that i think the concern is just that processes often last longer than people but i trust our current people implicitly so we really do um attempt to be very transparent with our process and follow a process even when we're not required to we follow a process and i have to say again that all four of the firms were really exceptional um some of the scoring you know there were two ties and the first place was only one point ahead so i don't know that our rubric was really that helpful in this election process really we know lionakas and they know us they know all of us and the three of the others were completely unknown to the district
064my eyes are always on the pocketbook and if we don't have to teach a new firm who we are and how we operate we're going to save money so that went into the decision um of who to recommend as well absolutely i think we're just noting that there is a potential uh question in the process not this particular one thank you and tom i i appreciate your you're questioning this and which is one of the reasons why we have always been so diligent about having two board members as a subcommittee we sit in on you know all of the interviews all the decisions all of the grading so that there is an oversight and the oversight is your fellow board members and it's it's a very rigorous process all right so can i have a
065motion unless there's a comment from the audience i asked for that earlier but okay may i have a motion i'll move approval a second okay we have eileen moving and caitlin seconding the choice of lionakas again we do have a second team potentially listed all those in favor signify by saying aye aye thank you okay so jacqueline heating ventilation and ac can't think of anything more telling right now quite appropriate i think this evening so as you're all very aware um just walk into your car every day and your pg e bill at home i'm sure you can tell we have excessive heat the last couple weeks and here at the school district we've felt that certainly the other piece i just want to comment is oftentimes these excessive heat days are in the end
066of july and early august when we don't have kids in school yet and we've seen you know two i'd say two plus weeks of really high 100 plus degree days where systems have really been taxed to be able to keep the air down so just for perspective i do want to let you know that we have about 1400 units in the school district so it's a lot to maintain um you know if one percent go out that's 14 and that's 14 too many but it is only 14 units and we have three full-time hvac technicians and i do want to shout out to them that they are doing an amazing job right now they are working diligently and they have been flexible and amicable and they're coming in on weekends to make sure that our
067that our facilities are adequate and safe and secure for our students and staff so i do want to put that out there there have been some times where we've had to utilize some outside hvac companies there's two in chica that we've utilized as well as one from sacramento that has come up to help us out when we've been in a pinch some of our units are so large that we need two of the three hvac technicians on our roofs at a given time so it really limits their ability to hit multiple school sites at one time so real quick jacqueline this is uh we have how many campuses 22 campuses 20 22. i i did the math at 23 and came up with units over 60 units per per campus yeah our high schools have
068a lot in particular when you compare that to an elementary yeah a lot of each individual classrooms have their own so that that adds to it as eileen talked about earlier this board approved three million dollars in covid relief funding to go for hvac replacement units and a climate control software program energy management system you'll hear it called ems so i want to say thank you to the board in the consent agenda you approved 105 units at four school sites bidwell chico high chico junior classrooms and sierra view um so we will get those pos in tomorrow now that we have pre-approval from cde as well as board approval there's been a couple other additional orders we have some orders in for hvac units for our chico junior gym parkview classrooms pv high school wrestling
069room as well as rosedale so the challenge becomes when the when hvac unit goes out we have to respond immediately and we do but parts have been an issue from a supply chain perspective as well as the actual units so right now our vendors are telling us it's about 28 to 30 weeks out to get units we have great working relationships i will give credit to john carver and eric german for that with our vendors and they are advocating for us two-fold supply chain obviously when covet happened things shut down it's been difficult for businesses to get employees to be able to make the units as well as there was so much federal coveted relief dollars that was that were pushed out nationwide that we are one of many individuals many you know entities trying
070to purchase these units so when they do become available they're snatched up very very quickly so we're doing our best to get these in and get them installed to make sure that we have a safe environment for our kids so just i'm sure most people here had some experience like this yesterday perhaps today yesterday the pg e warning went off and the kids were scared half to death they didn't know what it was but it was loud and nasty and um thankfully when they sent the okay you're now out of danger it was 11 30 at night so they didn't send any noise but um do our schools get these pg e blasts as well our maintenance department gets them exactly so we are aware and with the energy management system we're able to control
071the inflow and outflow of the temperature of the airflow coming in and so we do try to acknowledge that so if we have facilities where students aren't in the multi-purpose rooms or gyms in the evening then we will turn the temperature up as to try to you know play our part in in the statewide flex alert okay great tom thanks do we have any plans to increase the number of uh hvac technicians do we have like a preferred ratio of units to i mean it seems like these heat waves are probably going to keep on getting longer and hotter frankly yeah unfortunately i agree with you i think it's um they are going to get longer um right now we just have the three um the challenge sometimes is it's very seasonal is you have
072this big rush of of heating and then you have a shoulder season i call it which is kind of that sweet spot and then you get into the heating part and then you have another kind of you know window that's the other shoulder season before you get into the summer again so we can certainly look at funding [Music] these positions are funded out of our routine restricted maintenance budget so as our entire budget grows that budget grows because they do get a three percent um contribution so it's something that we can look at um but it's a pretty tight budget so it would be if we hire another person we'd have to re-prioritize what projects get get finalized in that timely manner and i'm sure you're looking at whether using outside vendors at which point
073it becomes more affordable to simply hire a new full-time person yeah and that's kind of where that seasonal piece comes in is sometimes it it is advantageous because these three individuals can't be at every school site you know whenever there's a work order that comes in in the month of august so that's when it's advantageous to bring the outside firms in thank you i have a question you mentioned supply chain issues especially with units is there also supply chain issues with parts yeah in the individual parts too and we try to keep parts and a couple units on stock at our corp yard we blew through our extra entire units pretty quickly in the first week of school this year so we're going to double how much we have on on hold at the courtyard
074going forward i've asked john carver to do that but the parts are just as as tricky as well too so that's what i was gonna ask next was about having having parts on hand cool thanks john your name got slung around were you okay okay just don't want to say i didn't give you a shot all right um anything else jacqueline i just want to let the board know in the community node we hear you um we don't like it with the units go down either but we are trying our best to keep our kids safe in their classrooms we do put in portable ac units and we also put in fans at chico junior gym we actually rented for the next two months a portable ac unit that we installed into one of the
075doorways in that building so that's much better than the swamp cooler that we had so we are trying to make temporary improvements to the extent that we can all right yes i have more clarification i think for myself um so we just approved the pos for more units and so is is my understanding right that those units now those won't actually be in for lots of weeks yeah we're hoping i mean they're telling us 28 to 30 weeks so it depends it could be a little bit longer and so could be shorter depending on how quickly they're able to secure them so do those represent classrooms that don't have adequate like cooling or airflow right now or is it just that those are outdated units that could be better the classrooms have airflow now and
076cooling systems now but they're older units so these these dollars and these new units that you just approved are to replace them with more current systems and more energy efficient efficient units and just to be ultra clear for myself and the community all of our classrooms have cooling and airflow when students are in there or if something happens they get moved out of that classroom into a cooler environment when we experience these high heat issues we find an accommodation if the unit for that classroom does go out we find an accommodation either we relocate them or we get them fans or portable ac units so it's not like we have classrooms right now that don't have ac flow it may be down but we have air flow currently and we're fixing those as fast as
077we can yes all right so that was just informational i really appreciate that jacqueline thank you okay that's the last uh item that we had on our agenda uh is there a board member who which wishes to request to agendize an item okay matt i have a question for staff on this topic um i have heard from in the last month and a half to people about campus security and i think that the um some of the security issues involving teenagers here in chico over the past week have uh heightened this in some of people's minds um when is our next scheduled conversation as a board about campus security it's our october board workshop which i think is october 5th okay that being the case i can wait that long to have this conversation thank
078you i will uh note that at my kids elementary school you now have to get buzzed in so that's not the case everywhere it is not the case everywhere and in fact only a few handful have that if that many it's the goal yeah all right so uh seeing no other suggestions then i will close this board meeting we will go into closed session and i'll come back out and announce or anything we decide if you want to hang out in the heat you