001Welcome everyone. I appreciate everyone being here tonight and uh I am going to call this meeting to order just a hair shy of 6 pm. Um and we're going to start with the pledge of allegiance and Val, will you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance? I will delight. I aliance 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. All right, Miss Scow, will you please take the roll call? Trustee Mansfield, present. Trustee Kamacho, present. Trusty Anderson, Trusty Heatherton, present, and President Keer, present. All right. Thank you. Um, item number two, adopt the agenda. Do I have a motion? I moved. Go ahead, Val. I'm sorry. I move to adopt the agenda. Second. All right.
002I have a motion from Trusty Mansfield and the second by Trustee Anderson. All in favor say I. I. I. Anyone opposed? Okay. Motion passes. And next is item three, communication reports. I first off I have reports from board members. Any board members who'd like to make a report? I'll go. Um I was absolutely thrilled and delighted to attend the senior scholarship night on Tuesday night and um I'm very proud of all the seniors. Congratulations, especially Mia and Scott. Um, and then today I was able to attend the Sierra House demonstration to the Elorado County Superintendent of how math is being taught there. And as a retired teacher, when we used to give the fill in the bubble, you know, they would just do the computations and they did it, you know, they either got them
003right or wrong. It's changed when Common Core came in and you have to explain your thinking, explain your reasoning. And what Sierra House is doing right now makes it so much easier for them to explain themselves, collaborate with each other, and show the process of how they've solved the problem. So I was just thrilled and amazed and every all of the attendees were just kind of blown away. So congratulations Sierra House. There's Mandy over there. So all the teachers did an amazing job. And that's it. Thanks. I'd also like to congratulate all the uh senior scholarship recipients and also a shout out to our community because it's nights like that when our community really shines and and shows uh that we truly care about the youth of our community. So, thank you. And I'll echo
004that as well. Thank you. And I also had the opportunity to go to the National Honor Society uh induction probably a good week ago and that it's just it's wonderful to see such successful students. Also enjoyed this morning. Um thank you uh trustee um Mansfield for explaining that so so properly. It was um just really great to see the excitement with everybody. And then lastly, I just have to do a shout out because I got to go see Susakool the musical a couple of weeks ago at Visio. That was just so that was so much fun. So, um, anyway, that's it. Thank you, Bob. I'm going to open up with a quotation from a Republican senator from Alaska, Lisa Marcowski. Saw her on television last week saying, "We are all afraid." I am oftenimes very
005anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. We live in a time when telling the truth has become increasingly dangerous. Our current government government leaders in Washington DC have attacked those who in public life have served instit our institutions for years and decades always telling the truth. This threatens those in power, unmasking ugly intentions such as ignoring due process and constitutional rule of law. Truth tellers have been ridiculed, denigrated as unpatriotic, and fired from their jobs for just this one simple fact. They told the truth. They have even been deported. Their families have been threatened. The goal of those who, as bad actors, punish truth tellers is simple. To silence those who would uncover misdeeds. To leave no trace of shameful policies and actions. To stifle free speech. We as a society would
006do well to push back against those who would silence the truth tellers among us. We as a school district should support the free expression of thought among our community, our students, our employees who deserve always to who desire always to improve the quality of service to our students. Silencing them with scoldings and threats should be beneath us. Retaliation is real. Thank you, Trusty Anderson. Um, and I just want to echo some of the reports from uh today's ex, you know, just seeing the excitement at Sierra House and the kids learning. Um, I also, uh, just appreciate there's just a lot of really great things happening in the district right now. And, um, and I appreciate all of you being here supporting your students tonight. It's really wonderful to see you. So, we're moving on to
007the student board member report. And we have Miss Mia Valenuela here tonight. Hi guys. I'm so happy to be here tonight. I haven't been here for quite a while because of, you know, snow days and switching off with Scott, but I'm just really happy to be upholding my position. I just wanted to talk about like recently I've been having a bit of senioritis and not necessarily not just like necessarily not doing my work or anything but I've just gotten a little bit sentimental and it's like my second to last meeting. So I just wanted to thank all the board members, Dr. Cutler, oh Teresa, she's a sweetie. just her just her helping me make all these invaluable connections and to shine out the truth that I'm able to represent all students in our community in
008one way or another. I know that it's kind of like what was mentioned before. There's a lot of unwavering uncertainty, especially for education and everything that's been going on, but just seeing us come together as a community, especially for events like the scholarship night to truly bring our students uh one less thing to worry about and something more to continue their education. It's just something that I love and I aspire to do and that's why I'm here holding this position. So, just seeing that was super refreshing. I know a lot of awesome things that have been going on as well, like school records for um sports being broken and you know, just being able to go outside and enjoy the wonderful weather has been so awesome. But uh yeah, just the Earth Day festival. I
009just love the way that we're educating our kids from a young age to kind of care about the environment, especially in our lovely town that we live in. And I just wanted to give news that we've started doing elections for our upcoming student board members. So, we're changing our position to now two years. So, they're truly able to, you know, kind of fit into the role. And I'm not saying being thrown into the position cuz I love this, but just to have a little bit more prior experience to truly be able to connect what we're hoping to do with more elementary schools and with our uh middle school as well. So overall, I'm just thankful that we're uniting as a community to bring forward to light our students and be able to, you know, help
010them thrive. So yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thank you, Mia. That was an excellent report and u we're going to having you on the board. So I'm glad we get to see you one more time before you uh head off to college. So thank you. I really appreciate all the effort and just the yeah the enthusiasm and the positive um change that you've I think you've brought to the district. It's really been wonderful. Um next we have the superintendence report. Dr. Cutler, President Keber, members of the board, I'm really to keep mine short and I following me is really hard. Um um but I say this is I'm really proud of Mia and and Scott and all of the seniors um as we were attending the senior scholarship night. Um just just an incredible
011group of seniors getting recognized and and uh you know Mia, you were just you're amazing and I appreciate you. Um I what do want to say thank you to our to our community that just gave so much money away to our students for their future. Um I and so many shout outs to so many, right? Um but Marcela Foundation just continues to just up their their game in regards to that. I think they gave over $90,000 the other night. Um but that's to all. I mean, so not just just calling them out. I mean, it's just so many groups of of of folks giving to our students. That's too many to just call out right now. Um, but I just want to share that the appreciation and and and thanks to all those that did
012that are participating and doing that and to the staff that all part of of pulling it together. Um, Kathy Haven got a big shout out because she really planned it and and made sure the event happened. You know, it just takes it takes the village and we really do appreciate that. really was the kind of the kickoff or the start to that end of the year recognition celebration types of time and and so it just gets exciting right as we start to move towards that end and and really excited about that. I'm going to stop and pull my uh my my report short because we have all these wonderful people here tonight and so thankful for you all to be out here and to to participate in our board meeting. So I'll close with that.
013Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next we have employee association reports and I saw uh Bernardet Santana in the audience. Do you want to make a report? Defer next time. Thank you. We hope to see you in a couple weeks. And uh we don't have anyone from the teachers association tonight or do we have anybody force report? Okay. And then um next is public comment and this is for public uh comments that are not for any um items on the agenda. Do we have any public comment? Yes, we we've got uh Ann Phills from STHs. Thank you. Good evening. Excuse me. As Dr. Cutler said, I'm Anne Phillips and I'm a teacher at the high school. Uh this week I have heard through the grapevine that our schedule will possibly be changing next year. Just
014so we're very clear, I am not a 4x4 or die type of teacher. I know schedules need to be changed. My concern is we are looking at doing this and it's almost May. The counseling department has been working very hard to create a master schedule. The special education department is supposed to be working next week with the counseling department to set students schedules for next year. Over the years, as I've been a teacher at the high school and the special education teacher, I go in my last week of summer vacation and sit with each counselor and make sure my students have the courses that they need to graduate with a high school diploma from South Tahoe High School. We were supposed to have that all set in stone by next week. If we think to
015change the schedule now that that's going to be happening, that we're going to have those schedules set, it's not realistic. I'm sorry, it's just not. I've also heard recently today that it's to help the lower-end math students so that they will possibly have year-long math. Again, I'm not opposed to that, but if you're doing it to help the struggling math students, that's called tracking. We don't track students in public schools anymore. So, I really would like you and the high school to think about this. Again, I'm not opposed to it, but let's talk about it starting in August. Get the feedback from the teachers who are the ones who work with the students day in day out. We know what classes the kids need. We know what kind of help they need and what's going
016to be best for them. So, I'm just putting it out there publicly. I'd like this to be held off for a year. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Ed. Thank you. Any other comments? I did not receive any other public input. Was anybody Was anybody here to speak on public input that we may have missed? It looks as though that closes public input tonight. All right. Uh our next item, item four is the student celebration, which we're all excited to hear and celebrate um our students accomplishments. Our the first item is item a suroptimist of Taho Sierra presentation with the South Tahoe Middle School students. So Dr. Cutler that uh Paul Peterson is going to kick us off with this. See, you're hiding back there. I'm 5'4. I'm not that tall. Um I'm only going
017to speak real quickly because my name was on the agenda, so I didn't want to like make any Brown Act violations or anything. So I just want to make a quick note because when you talked about scholarships, Sophimus International Taho Sierra, I am president-elect. Last Thursday and we saw Miss Mia there. We we had scholarships for South Tahoe High. We awarded scholarships and awards for Mount Matleac High most improved 8th and 12th graders. So we we try to spread it out and have a great breakfast. So congratulations to all the students. What we also did this year is um there was challenge day at the middle school and our club um for the second year in a row is awarded the kids after challenge day with financial rewards for essay and poster contest. So this
018is Cindy's part. So I just wanted to you know thank you a little intro introduce that but I just wanted to kind of lead the way but thank you for thank you for your support of our students. Yeah thank you. So, we got a few students that'll be actually speaking tonight. It's okay. Right there. Okay. Just want to make sure the clicker works and we're good. Hey, good evening, Dr. Cutler, uh, President Keer, and board of uh, trustees. I'm Cindy Martinez, principal of South Tahoe Middle School. And tonight, as Paula mentioned, you'll be hearing from a group of inspiring students from South Tahoe Middle School, who will be speaking to you about challenge day um as well as their involvement in be the change contest that followed u the two-day challenge day program that was
019supported by Sir Optimist um international Taho Sierra Club. And tonight I also want to extend my our gratitude to Theresa Pepandrea who's in the audience, uh Paula Peterson and Colleen Pence for joining us tonight and representing those agencies that supported our work. Um again, your continued support uh makes a meaningful difference in the student in our students lives. Am I clicking? Okay. Hi, my name is Camila. I'm an eighth grade student at South Tahoe Middle School and we would like to thank thank TASK for sponsoring the challenge day program at our school. We would also like to thank our school leaders, Mr. Landon, Miss Smelton, Miss Chapel, and Miss B Miss Blessing for organizing and planning challenge day. Hi, I'm Mera. This year, I participated in both the challenge day workshop and assembly at South
020Tahoe Middle School. I learned precisely what challenge day is and that is what I would like to share with you all today. Challenge day is a social emotional learning program designed to build empathy and connection between students and their peers. Challenge day focuses on developing and improving skills such as self-management, social awareness, self-awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. Project our words. Hi, I'm Kinsley Papandrea and I'm in sixth grade. I'm here to address the goals of Challenge Day. One of the big goals is to promote a positive school environment and increase a sense of belonging. The leaders of Challenge Day aimed to create a safe space for everyone as well as address bullying, teasing, and isolation. Oh, I'm sorry. Isolation, suicidal thoughts, depression, and other common problems among the peers of our school. Together,
021we can all inspire staff and students to be leaders of the change. The challenge day program is a two-day program. Day one is the full day workshop and about 100 seventh and eighth graders attend. About 30 adults, staff, and community volunteers come to help. Some of the activities are ice breakers, group discussions, cross the line, and open sharing. Day two is a schoolwide assembly. All sixth to eighth graders come. So do staff and community volunteers. We also do some activities like open mic or opportunities to share. Cross the line, the opportunities to thank or apologize to others. We also have some great photos that we'd like to share with you. Hello, my name is Julia. I was the second place seventh grade winner for the art poster contest. And we would like to thank the
022sponsors for the be the change contests. Sir Optimus Club of Taho Sierra. Um these contests included two different prompts, one for writing and one for an artistic poster. These prompts encourage students to address a difficult situation, whether that be at home or at school. Examples could be witnessing bullying, exclusion, violence, etc. Students discussed many different um topics at the challenge day assembly such as judging others bullying, violence, discriminatory acts of judgment, and isolation. Students were rewarded with either one to $200 based on where they were placed in the contest. Hi, my name is Charlene. I placed second for the seventh grade challenge day essay. Every student at STMS was encouraged to participate and seven students won the essay contest. In sixth grade, we have Gwen Walker and Kinsley Pap Andrea. In seventh grade, we have
023Evan Maroquin, Charlene Gail Casilla, and Mera V. In eighth grade, we have Colobby Laughlin and Evelyn Anderson. These students worked very hard. They earned a reward of $100 to $200 based on what place they earned. And all have been invited to an award breakfast on May 15th at 7:30 a.m. Some of the award recipients are not here today as they had a track meet. We're all coming. Hello, my name is Emily Mills and I will be presenting the winners for ch the challenge day posters. In sixth grade, we have Ameilia Mills and Naelli Perez. The winners in seventh grade are Emma Dross and Julia Paul. In eighth grade, our winners are Hannah Martone and Varity and Camila Ramirez. The winners also won $100 to $200 in a breakfast to recognize their hard work and understanding
024of challenge day and be the change. Hi, my name is Vita Flity and I was one of the winners for the eighth grade poster contest. But today, I'll be reading an essay by Colobby Laughlin who won first place in the eighth grade essay contest. The issue of bullying and isolation has caused a ton of teens to turn to suicide as a way out. But this shouldn't have been their only choice. Something needs to change. Suicide is one of the most prevalent causes of death for people ages 14 to 24. Many people I love and care about have seriously considered or attempted suicide, especially in the past 3 years. which I think is attributed to the isolation and bullying that happens in school. Something needs to change and I want to help be that change. Part
025of this change must be done by first noticing what's happening. I need to look around and see what's happening around me. To be the change I want to be in my community, I first need to see that people are being isolated and being picked on or teasing someone else. I also need to recognize the different ways people are being teased and how subtle it can be, but can it can still lead people to suicide. Before change can be made, first I have to see what's going on. Noticing what's happening is only the first step. The next step is to choose what to do when you notice that something is wrong. We can do something as simple as asking someone if they're okay. Once you notice that something is wrong, you need to decide what you
026want to do about it. When you choose to make a difference, you are contributing contributing to the change and could even save someone's life. After noticing a problem in your school, you need to decide what to do so you can make a difference in your community. The next step in this journey for change is the most important. Now that you've seen what's going on, seeing that students in your school are being teased and mocked or even considering turning to suicide and choosing what you can do about it, you need to act. When you act, you are actively making a change. I've been in situations where I didn't act. I watched someone I knew get made fun of right next to me, but I was too scared that I would become a target. So, I stayed
027silent. I noticed what was happening, but I chose to say nothing. But instead of staying silent or saying it was too late, I went back and told a teacher. I didn't tell the person directly, but I made a point to someone who could. No matter how big or small of a change you think you could have you made, it could have a big impact. So, what can you do to make change? What can we all do? To be the change is to notice a problem like suicide or bullying. Then choose what we want to do about that issue. Then finally, we need to act, make a point change, and be the change. We can all be the change. Thank you. The message behind Hannah's poster is to not let words define you. As you can
028see, the gray and colorless side of the picture has hurtful words, while the colorful side has kind and inspiring words. It also means that your words can have a strong impact on others. They can impact they can impact people's lives a lot. The message behind my poster is the hard work, dedication, and effort that immigrants put into this country. The man in the painting has dirty clothes and is carrying a box of fruits. Without immigrants, the United States would lack vegetables, fruits, and much more. Thank you all for taking uh the time today to hear from our incredible students. Uh we are so proud of their courage, their creativity, and their commitment to being the change they want to see in the world. We would like to thank again our community partners uh Disruptimus International
029of Taho Sierra and TAS for making challenge day and the contest possible. And I also would like to take an opportunity to a special shout out to Mr. Lamden. See here and Mr. Mr. Lard and challenge day for many many well he is preparing to retire and transition um out of sto school in our district at the end of this year. So, I want to take this opportunity to thank them and to just how just let you know how grateful we are for all the work that you've done and your dedication over the years. Thank you. Thank you, Challenge Day. With challenge day, we've had well probably at least 20 at the middle school, but pretty amazing. That's a lot. Thank you. Thank middle school picture. Larry, we want your picture. Larry, Larry, we need
030you, Mr. L. challenge day. Thank you. Thank you, Paula Peterson and the middle school and Yeah, the challenge day is a very it's a very important thing that happens at the middle school and I think a lot of a lot of students are moved by it. Thank you all for participating and for being the role models. I know a lot of these students uh really serve as role models at the middle school and I really appreciate their efforts to do that. And our next um celebration tonight is with Beiju Community School. I don't know messing with it. Should I try one more time? Oh, yeah. Okay, we're good. Okay, guys. Okay. Good evening, Dr. Cutler, board of trustees and community members. I am Rosie Dpier, principal of Beiju Community School. And tonight, I have eight
031students here to tell you about um some exciting things we are doing at Beiju. And I want to let you know um this is such a special opportunity for the students. So thank you for giving us the opportunity to to allow them to share and to be here. So I have third graders um Camina Miller, uh James Valivia, Emily Cruz Martinez, and Jonah Yakar. And I have fifth graders Emmy Carrera, Hayden Umana, uh, Jonathan Yamas, and uh, uh, Aya Berber. Thank you. Um, I don't know if I need to. Can they hear? Speak out. We are proud that we got to learn in both English and Spanish. This quote says, "Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things." Tonight, we want to
032tell you about a project we worked on this year in third grade. We studied different civil right civil rights leaders and we wrote an essay to compare Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. Here's a part of my essay of the essay I go. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. [Music] In English, that means that both fought for civil rights, but but for different causes and different goals. [Music] Yeah. Both leaders didn't believe in violence and led peaceful protest. They were inspired by Gandhi. They both experienced racism which led to their fight for justice. After we study these leaders, we presented a reader theaters to the school. This year the fifth graders helped introduce the sister Chaveis readers theater by reading about the history, reading quotes, and saying a chant. Here's an excerpt from
033what we read. Let's remember that the farm workers are the backbone of our country. They feed us and without them we do not eat. Their working conditions continue to be inhumane and are demanding better working conditions. Ces Travis's fight lives on. [Music] We finish with some quotes from Cesar Travis, including educa, which means that our education is important for us to be able to stand up and say what we believe. Here is a quicker from our [Music] play. [Music] Foreign speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. [Music] No [Music] lesson Martin Luther [Music] King [Music] foreign speech. Something something else we wanted to share tonight is our school has end of the year literacy tasks where we each write a book. Fifth graders are writing a book about what biiteracy means to us. We have just started
034this project and will display it at open house. Here is a quote from my essay. [Music] To summarize, being bilingual has affected my life in positive ways. It's given me opportunities to to have new friends and to get a good job in the future. Here's a quote from my essay. [Music] um through this program I have learned about other countries. I feel happy getting to do things in two languages. And we would like to invite you all to BG's pathway to bi literacy awards to re and reclassification ceremony. All fifth grade students will be recognized for being on the way to becoming bilingual by litter in English and Spanish and students who pass the ELPAC assessment will receive certifications for the achievement in English. This ceremony will take place on June 6th at 8:30 a.m.
035at Biju. Finally, we love Beiju because we not only learn in two language, but we also but also new things about others and ourselves. Thank you for listening to our presentation tonight. Do you have any comments or questions for us? Thank you very much. I'm so proud of all you. I have three graduates from Beiju and it's absolutely amazing uh being biiterate. So, keep up the great work. Yeah, that's just other questions or comments. Yeah. Any other questions or comments from board members? You guys were amazing and I loved um the the topic that you had on your essays about um Caesar Chavez and Martin Luther King and how much they correlated with each other. So that was impressive. Thank you. Yeah, very nice job. And Mia, well, Mia, what like I was say, Mia's
036got something to say. Go for it, Mia. So, I may be a little biased because I'm a BG graduate, but I absolutely love the program and all the opportunities it's brought forward to me. And I really enjoyed, you know, reading the essays about how biliteracy uh affects the life of even young students now. So, I'm so excited for all you guys in the future. Thank you very much. That's everybody. Incredible. Excellent. They're good. I'm excited. Thank you all for coming, families and students. It's really wonderful. We hope you'll continue to make presentations in front of the public. That's what I want. That's so excellent. Yeah. Thank you. Our next agenda item is an opportunity. Our next agenda item um wait just a second. I know everybody who else is everybody else. Um I'm happy you're
037here and continue to stay here. I hope u take a seat. Yeah, exactly. Thank you Amy coming in. Um, we now have our partner organization updates. And tonight we have um the honor and privilege to hear from Karen Goldberg and the superintendent student advisory council report on the family resource center project. Good evening board president Keer and board trustees. I am very pleased to be here tonight with our superintendent advisory council. We will provide a brief introduction to current work at the South Lake Tahoe Family Resource Center and discuss their service project. We are excited to walk you through our processes of learning and exploring planning our project description and our next steps. Good evening board members. I'm Kira See, a collaborator with Karen Goldberg and some of the projects we have accomplished have been
038a hygiene drive, which was our most recent project we started last weekend. Yerin and I have also come up with the idea to create an Instagram account. Therefore, youth in the community can be up to date with resources and events at the F FRC. Since before we started working with them, they already had an had a Facebook account for community members. But since most people in my age group do not use Facebook, we thought it would be a good idea for we thought it would be a good idea to create something they do use frequently. Right now, we are planning for a food drive in the future and Yerin and I are figuring fig figuring out a way to promote the F FRC through flyer making, establishing donations at the high school, and posting on
039social media. Good evening board members. I am Yolin Hernandez. An overview of some of our projects and programs include food bags. These food bags include non-p perishables as well as fresh vegetables and fruits. At the family resource center, we also provide presentations/conferences for certain topics that aren't fully understood to help answer questions and concerns about the topics. An example of this would be giving parents an understanding of what dual enrollment is and how it would benefit their students as well as the South Tahoe High School CTE classes. One of our projects was to promote the family resource center, more specifically on social media since younger audiences would be able to find the information. We also advocate and help out members of the community. We have a very close connection with the people who come by.
040The family resource center also has activities like cafeestos and fclloric dances with Soi. I'm a part of her flororic dance class and I love being able to embrace my culture in the same space I am able to help the community. Lastly, we have our hygiene project that we promoted on social media on high school on high school campus and I also promoted during the clubs that I am committed to. We decided to do a hygiene project for several reasons such as preventing any health issues or diseases in the community. By distributing these items, we not only help with the struggle but also build help confidence in how they feel and look with these simple items. This helps the community because when people cannot meet their hygienic necessity, public spaces could become less sanitary and healthcare
041visits that could have been prevented weren't. Everyone in the community is impacted, not just those who need it. Next, we'll talk a little bit about our planning process. Here you see Kira making a poster that was used during the distribution event with one side in Spanish. Thank you, Yalene, and one side in English. You also see posters promoting a drive to collect additional hygiene products to be distributed at this and future events. We started by meeting at the F FRC, introducing the advisory council representatives to more of the work we are doing at the F FRC, talking about their areas of interest and how they might like to participate with the F FRC community. Due to busy schedules, we transitioned to online meetings generally on Saturdays, submitting several times as they narrowed down on a
042particular focus. After choosing a focus on hygiene products with additional social media support, they created promotional materials to for a product drive, worked on the F FRC Instagram, discussed the product purchase, and then came in bright and early to unbox and organize products, create 120 bags, and prepare signage for distribution, work with other volunteers and staff, and serve community members. I'll note that they were very well received by the staff, by the volunteers, and by the community members. On the day of the on the day of the distribution, we gave out hygiene products such as shampoo bottles, conditioner, deodorants, rolls of toilet paper, toothpaste, soap, floss, and any other hygiene products. I started writing posters to put outside and that told people what time our distributions distribution started and ended and where they could find
043us. It jumped ahead, but we will find it. We started by meet up. So sorry. Okay, here we are. Here we see photos of the products each family received and these were based on requests received at the family resource center. Um and they include all the products that um that Kira just mentioned. And we also see the organization of the products, the making of the bags, and in the foreground, um, lots of bags with Kira helping assist a client at the reception window. I'll note here that the center serves any community member in need who comes to our door with no requirements for eligibility. So in this photos you can see all the 120 bags and how they were organized as well as the products that we used and the amount that we had for
044left over for next event. So this quote is from a previous hygiene product distribution and another comment from this event repeated that it really helps because the products are very expensive and it's something everybody needs. And another client commented that getting the hygiene bag allowed them to have some funds for Easter for their children. In my experience establishing a hygiene distribution on school grounds, I would say the hardest parts to accomplish during this project were finding extra volunteers to get help distributing products on the day of. Although it was still a successful morning, another thing that was a bit of a struggle was getting students and or parents to drop off hygiene products at the high school when we promoted it on school grounds with flyers. I can say it is an absolute pleasure to
045work with Kieran yet and I look forward to including steps and there as their schedules allow already posted on Instagram since this event. We started our first hygiene drive last weekend but we knew there would be tons of leftovers. So, we are moving forward with another hygiene drive next month on May 30th so that peers who missed the last event can get a second chance at free hygiene products for either themselves, friends, family members, or whoever they want to give to who cannot come to the F FRC. Lastly, we have mentioned our Instagram a few times. So, here's our Instagram. It is in all caps first SLT family resource center or family resource if you'd like to follow us. Uh, thank you so much. Any comments or concerns? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Uh
046question who how I am so appreciate so appreciative of your efforts and to really um it's really wonderful to see some you accomplish something really tangible and productive like you passed out 3,000 you know over 3,000 products to 120 families. Um, and also to get the Instagram page set up. Who's gonna who's going to babysit that? Like when you go off to solve other problems in the world, we you'll be able to be able to train folks that are already at Family Resource Center that can help with posting and that kind of thing so that it will keep the Instagram page alive and well. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely will. All right. Thank you so much for doing that. I'd just like to make a comment that it looked very organized. You did a great job. Yeah,
047I have a question for Kier and uh um at the bottom uh needs to to to make this more smooth. Uh more volunteers and then I also saw from your obstacles by school office help us understand how we on the day up here can help erase obstacles for your program. Uh so one of the off obstacles that I faced was kind of getting like approval and I didn't see like who I could go to. I was kind of just tossed around and be like oh you can talk to this person but it was like okay this person wasn't really available to talk when I was available. There was just it was just kind of the timing wise of like who can I talk to when I can't you know it was just me. And I
048would say um for the student distribution um I would say since we're students, we can only like promote things on school grounds. So like flyers, students would usually just like walk by them. So maybe like promoting things on other platforms for the school board. And for the upcoming drive May 30th, can people bring donations to the high school or to the family resource center? Either place or to both. To both. Okay. Excellent. All right. Thank you. Appreciate members of what I just want to just say a couple things and and first to to Karen Goldberg. I mean just to reiteration, you know, Karen is the executive director for the family resource center. She's also our director for multi-learn learner equity and she just does a lot of things to serve our community. Um and in
049this partnership with family resource center, the superintendent student advisory council assign assigns two students to work with her and she's done a great job um working with our students and then our students just being able to jump in. I'm so proud of you Karen Yearlin for the work you're doing, the impact you're making and really excited and we'll continue to celebrate you actually as we move forward. So thank you so much. want we want a picture and you know we're gonna skip on the picture tonight with them because there'll be another opportunity. Okay, we'll have another Okay, cool. And also shout out the Tahoe Women's Community Fund who helped support the purchase of several thousand dollars worth of hygiene products in Excellent. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Okay, our next item, we're moving on
050to item six, educational services. And we have the first item is elevated single the elevated single focus update. Are we using clicker here? All right. Uh, good evening, President Kemper, members of the board, Dr. Cutler, Dr. uh, Dr. Reer, and Miss Buttery. I'm Sabrina Zales. This is Dr. Jillian Raymond and we are excited to update you on our progress with experiential learning. There we go. Um so for our single focus in adopting experiential learning, our school has evolved in different um iterations based on community and district needs. We've initially grounded it in Cul's learning cycle looking at educational research and we're still in that learning cycle now even with our six through 12 and primarily online um curriculum. We do still have the opportunity to work with students in person. But what's been really valuable
051is we want to meet kids where they're at. So part of what our program is able to do is there's the concrete learning, right? The tutorials um mastery tests and and learning such as that. And then the students are also asked to engage in more abstract and um active work even through their curriculum taking on the role for example of a foreign policy adviser or creating um you know press releases and things that have them extend the learning beyond that and then the reflection exists in their curriculum and also things that we solicit from them through surveys and data that we collect from students and families. One of the pieces um that we wanted to address tonight is how oh wait um this relates to our LCAP goals and inspiring lifelong learning, fostering curiosity, critical
052thinking. Um a lot of this was about how can we do this through courses. Um we were really happy to bring ethnic studies as an elective and we've been successful with that this year and especially in our current climate is really so valuable to be able to offer that in terms of critical thought and perspective for our students. And then another piece that we were adding in is financial math. And in feedback from students and families at higher levels of math, the kids wanted to do things that related to their real life. And up there is a real sorry, it's a long quote, but it was great. So I'll let you read it at your leisure. I'm not going to read it to you, but it literally aligns with the financial math course description. How
053to pay taxes, how to not go into credit card debt. So we have students now who are actively like, I want more math. And so in being able to add this course in has been really valuable. And this has come from us kind of pivoting on student and family interest and need. Uh we've been fortunate to have formed partnerships um for experiential learning for our middle school students. We have partnerships with uh Blue Granite Climbing Gym. Uh Boys and Girls Club has provided enrichment programs specifically for elevated students providing them with STEM art and social emotional learning um activities. Uh we've also have a partnership with the Winter Wildlands Alliance which has provided us with curriculum and equipment for snow school lessons. We also provide opportunities for our students to get outside, build community, sorry
054about that. Um there we go. Build community and apply their learning. Other examples of experiential learning are our community service uh graduation requirement and many courses have lessons that are active require critical thinking and reflection like um a lesson up there is tracking and analyzing your food intake. Students are asked to keep a log. They're asked to look at food labels. They're asked to go to the grocery store. So there is some more active experiential learning taking place within the courses um that we offer as well. Um, alignment to LCAP goal. Oh, we're at three. Okay. I'm sorry. Did I I'm I clicked two. I can do three. Two is probably there. If not, we'll tell you about it. Um, but relating it to LCOP goal three, this idea of continuous improvement. And it's been
055maybe a lean year could be a polite way to say it. So for us, we've been able to utilize the resources that come within our Adventum platform. We have access to like our tech support when we're like we want to advance our knowledge of, you know, analyzing the reports, collecting data, creating custom courses. So we've done a lot of our PD through our Adventum platform in addition with um incorporating our own diagnostics at Elevated. We're using their exact path. So that's also been professional development we're doing through our existing program. And then we um deal with a lot of challenges related to generative AI in education. So, we've been utilizing free webinars and things that are offered in the field of education so we can kind of be ahead of that because it's something we're
056we're noticing that it's not going away. And so, those have been kind of the main areas that we're focusing on as a staff for our professional development and growth and aligning it to our um goals in the districts. So, here's our LCAP goal number two. There's too LCAP goal number two is to establish and maintain a positive climate and culture through an exclusive inclusive connected school community. Um we do this through utilizing parent um family sensei which is a communication um uh service through our admentum platform. Uh through this we're able to ensure that u families are connected to their students progress. We can also communicate with families directly through uh family sensei. We've offered um several question and answer nights. That's a o an open opportunity for parents um and students to ask questions
057about our program. Um and we're also utilizing this exact path uh program within Edenum which is a diagnostic tool to see where our students are and to provide that information to our families so they can see where their students are. So um for this how does the vision and um how do we match the vision and miss mission of LTUSD through experiential learning students recognize and reach their potential as a cycle of learning allows for students to move through the active learning process at their own pace and to receive the support that they need. Um a few of the elements that are so essential in experiential learning and and all learning for the students and for us is really collecting data and then setting goals based on data. Um our program heavily tests. So this
058year we kind of wanted to analyze like how do we find the best alignment for that because we want to we want to test the students but not overest them. And so this is where we've landed and working with the exact path diagnostic that exists within Edenum because it also provides um students pathways within the course content they're already doing to improve on areas that they need to grow. So we implemented um this is kind of our timeline. We implemented our first one in spring. We'll do an end of the year and then we'll have three throughout next year and use that data to inform instruction and also how valuable we think the program is working um because we have that opportunity to kind of reflect on it in its um practice. And then also
059for our students reflecting again long quotes here but we do um ask them you know how this is working for them. We our interface with them is really unique. We get a lot of opportunities through Google meets a lot of it's through email. It's like you know this just this different way of looking at education. And I love the students who are just like the bottom I'm not really sure what this means. I ask the kids how they think this relates to their lives and they're like but I love learning history and now I know like where the countries are and I've learned a lot. I can actually apply to my personal life. So this is a you know verbatim kid. This was not AI generated. And so we also try to solicit for them
060like how does this fit and sometimes it doesn't work for the students and that's also fair and that's where we kind of look to see to to provide them the best fit within the district for their learning needs. Uh these were the goals that we had set um in previous years and this year. Um this year in reflection we've been successful at implementing best practices. Um we've been able to evaluate these practices their use and effectiveness. We've been expanding our toolbox of strategies for online learning and engagement. And we've created a plan for future funding and how we're going to utilize and analyze uh the school data that we are collecting. In looking at our smart goal, uh this goal supports all students by giving each student access to the educational resources and rigor that
061they need. We will measure this goal through exact path data, pre and post surveys, as well as analyzing the course contents and schedule to ensure implementation. And so together, we're continuing to create this school that we really love and believe in and provide an alternative school of choice within Lake Tahoe Unified um that has rigor, relevance, and relationships. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. Do we have any questions from the board? Thank you. I I had one question just on that last slide. Um Miss Zalis, um you mentioned the testing using exact path to test where they're at and but then the slide mentioned I Ready and I just wanted to check are you using I Ready as well or using the exact path for your students for elementary? Um we since we don't have
062I Ready, we're using exact path which comes in our package with Edenum as our diagnostic. Yeah. Okay. And is that um for six um for middle school middle school is that uh and this may be a question more for Dr. Reers like that data from the middle school are we going to be able to see it you know and I it may not compare exactly to some of the the middle school data at South Middle School. Um but just to get an idea of how your students are growing I guess you know is there an opportunity to see that data just exploring it right now. I think next year as you guys indicated they'll do you know you're going to do a fall check and a spring check and and so I think at that
063time it'd be wonderful if we could share the data share that just to see yeah how how students are improvement improved year two that elevated using it with adventum and this is our first uh first year with exact path so using that okay but yes be nice to see the progress yeah the students are making sure and what you're learning about it so anyway I appreciate yeah you guys continually learning Yeah, exactly. Thank you. And adapting. Well, I think that's one of the keys to this program is that, you know, we started this as a brand new program. Um, you know, this this is coming on the end of the fifth year and um we've had to continually adapt and adjust and staff has just been absolutely amazing to figure out how we going to
064continue to work and then they bring on you know they start somewhat a little smaller then they grow and then they keep growing and sometimes they shrink a little bit then they grow and so there's students in and out of the program too. So lots of little challenges that are faced. Um yet I just really think it's an incredible program that we provide our students an opportunity that really need this type of um schooling. So thank you ladies. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Our next um single focus update is from Mount Tac High School. We're all seeing some parts so we'll all come up. Yeah, that's great. Welcome everyone. Thank you for coming and sharing. Thank you. President Keer, board members, Dr. Cutler, Dr. Reer, and Miss Perry. Um, we're
065here to present our single focus. Do I just go one on you? Great. Okay. Um, so it was a three-year focus and our goals were to increase attendance, to increase our graduation rate, and student employability. So, we have lots of slides on that one. And year three is really just to reflect, analyze, and adjust accordingly. Um, when you first come into Mount Tac, you're greeted by a bunch of very friendly faces every morning, and you clock in as soon as you get there and turn in your phone. So, we have no phones on the campus for the students. And if you're late to school, you stay after school for accountability time for as many minutes as you were late. Um, all of our staff is really good with communicating with students about why you were
066late and why you may not be coming to school and figuring out a solution for you. Um, and the picture Yeah. And our picture is from our one of our attendance incentives from if you have 90% or higher attendance. We had a pizza party and we went to Tube Tahoe and we do some other cool stuff. Yeah. Oh, and my name's Haley Turner. Thank you, Haley. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having us. So, um Sarah had done some hand hand data with our attendance. Um and so being a school of approximately 60 students, it's it's a lot easier obviously to manage data. um than the traditional high school. Um I think one of the we've got on the side there the different tiers of of what we do, you know, as far as tier one being
067incentives and recognition when we have students attending. Tier two, we we meet weekly and look at who is struggling with attendance. We do our SAR referrals. Um tier three can go to a whole another level, which could be home visits. It could be um what we now call our wraparound meetings where we pull the teams together. It might involve students family. It could be their boss. It could be a probation officer. I mean, it could be anybody that's in support of that student. And we start by looking at their strengths. Then we talk about the challenges that are going on. And then we look at the solutions and really assign solutions to who's on that team. And I like to think of it as not us against the student with the problem in the middle,
068but the student and the family and us against the problem. And those meetings have been really beneficial. And this last year, we've just started to use those more and more to help increase attendance. [Music] The goal was for us to move from orange to yellow. We have moved from orange to green. If you really work really hard and you come to school, you can graduate early. I graduated early April and I think I only missed one day of school and two years at TAC. Awesome. Thank you, Haley. And Haley also has the kindest person in award in the world, biggest heart award. Um, and so when we our last third focus was about our employability. So, we have a lot on this. Um, as Amy said, sometimes the data can be hard as well when
069you have a small population. So, uh, we thought it would be really neat to bring some students over the years through our program. And the single focus is about three years, but we went back to where the career program started for this piece back in 2017 when Carlos did his first internship. And it was not the whole school. It was just a select amount of students. And then in 22, 23, and 25. So, they'll share what they did um, as well. But before we do that, I was just going to tell you a little bit about what we do for employability. So, we have our annual community meet and greet. Um, various organizations throughout the community come get to meet the students. They might do some mock interviews and get to um know community members
070in a different format. Um, what we also do that we started just two years ago was on Fridays we are at LTCC Community College. We're housed there. we carry out our classes there. Um so we really have ex um expanded our exploration of values, interests and skills with the students. Um we've gone to a lot of career fairs. We just went to the LTCC one today. Went to Edgewood a couple days ago. Um and we have our dual enrollment course um CPR food handlers and just a lot more guidance in helping them get and maintain a job. Um, as you've heard, Isaiah had got the strong workforce grant. So, we'll be working with that in the coming months and years. And our all of our staff went and visited two alternative schools, Confluence High School
071in Auburn. We went to their east and west just to view their curriculum and how they do things and to look at their internship program. And it was really nice to have another school to kind of bounce ideas off of. And so, now they want to come visit our school and see how we're doing things. And we're pulling things from them. So, that was helpful this year, too. Here's some photos of our field trip to UTI in Sacramento. Bunch of students got to go explore the programs there. Um, we always have about one alumni every year through the program. We have one currently who should be graduating um really soon. We also did some other field trips. So, we went on the tour of the new rec center, which was fabulous. ran into some alumni
072there. We did that with Sierra Con and um Soptimus has also helped us with some visits. So they helped out with a bank visit to get students just that initial setup for their finances and we did a DMV visit. Um just students need to get their real idea real IDs now. Um and just driver all the drivers questions to get them to work. Uh we went to see our Academy of Style. So that was a cosmetology school, Western Nevada College to look at their trade programs. And then uh in a couple weeks we're going to TMCC. The other great thing being at LTCC campus is we have various speakers of all the programs, uh wilderness, fire, everything. So we try to incorporate that on Fridays when we can over at the college and that's been
073really helpful as well. So before we go to this one, we're just gonna have some student intros. Maybe we'll start with Carlos. Thanks. Just because constantly we refer to Carlos. Thanks for coming, Carlos. Hello. My name is Carlos and I graduated 2017 and so I'm kind of stuck. Um, what internship did you start with? Uh, we started doing a bunch of uh, actually before I did internship, I did my senior project and I did it with some plumbers from the school district here and they took me around the campuses and showed me around and how all the plumbing rooms are set up and all that and that kind of got me started with the plumbing. Then after that, uh, plumber came in and he asked if there was anybody who was interesting or interested in
074in what he was doing. And I said I was I was I wanted to do it. And he we tried it out. Um, started with him right after I graduated and then I've been with him ever since years now. All season. Thank you. learned on the job. Yeah. I didn't know nothing. Everything I learned on the job just going every day. That's awesome. He's an incredible young man. And you're doing both. And Carlos, are you doing both the plumbing and the heating now? I mean, so you're doing HVAC and are you getting into the heat pump? Uh like some of the air conditioning, little mini splits. New and Tahoe. Yeah. The mini well the mini splits that people are using those electric ones that like have both heat and air. Yeah. Yeah. Those Yeah. You're
075not doing those yet. Okay. Gas lines and sewer lines, stuff like that. Yeah. And Farless, you've been to my house with Gary a couple of times. So, thank you for your good work. video every year that has him in it speaking at age 18 years. I guess I Well, good evening um board members. My name is Crystal. I graduated from Mount Tac in 2023 and my first intern was interning at the Alt Tahoe sorry special education program and I fell in love with interning and I am currently still there but I got a job there now. So I These are your Welcome. Yes. I love it. Which campus are you at? I'm at Al Tahoe. At Alt Tahoe. Okay. Special ed for younger kids. Is it for the preschool? Okay. Great. Thank you so much,
076Crystal. That's wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. And this is Ariana. She did the same thing. Oh, cool. Hi, my name is Ariana. I graduated in 2022. My first intern was working at Edgewood as a pool attendant. Right after that, I went into working at Sierra House as a special needs aid. Working there for two years. Awesome. Thank you, Ariana. We really where we are headed. Who only knows, right? Um so we're always looking to reflect and revise curriculum to better meet the individual needs of our students. Um, our students are anywhere from 16 to sometimes 19 depending and with all different levels of abilities and gaps and experiences and we have such a unique set of teachers that can meet the needs of each of these kids every day. I can't say enough about them. Um,
077the CCA conference is the annual continuation school conference and I've had the pleasure of going a couple times. was actually presented there in 2024. Um, and I'd like to go again. Miss Buttery's encouraging us to go so we can talk a little bit about our collaboration with LTCC and the unique idea about that. So, um, we're hoping that a couple of us can attend again this year. It feels like such an island to work in alternative ed in this small town. It was so nice to go to Confluence and I felt so proud when we got back from seeing those two sites. I felt like we are so far ahead of the game for how small we are up here and um yeah, I just it was so good for for me to see that.
078Um and took away some ideas, but honestly, I think we were teaching them more than we were taking away. Um but being at that conference is so helpful because you're with everybody from SoCal that is working in that in alternative ed and it's just feels really good to be with people that are like-minded and understand the students that we work with. um the strong workforce grant opportunity Sarah mentioned we're hoping to be a part of that collaboration with Isaiah. We've done some pre-work with him prior to him writing the grant. So we'll see where that goes. Um and then of course just increasing the career exposure and opportunities through the job shadowing. That's something we just want to continue to grow. Um and it sounds like Miss Russell and Miss Justice will be updating the
079dual enrollment course to um just continue to improve it. And that's a graduation requirement along with the first aid and CPR and resumes and all the things the kids do. So, oh, and there's our Instagram. So, don't forget to follow us. You have any questions for the kids or for any of us? Any questions? Just a comment. Congratulations. So proud of you. Trusty Anderson has a comment. Mia, you might No. Okay, go ahead. Go for it. Thank you. Thank you. I want to uh acknowledge not only the all-star former students here uh but also um certainly an allstar cast of teachers uh at the uh Mount Tac campus. I was there just this afternoon missed I missed both but I am so impressed with the staff at Mount Tac. We're lucky to be back here.
080Yeah. Well, let me tag on to it a little bit. Um, you know, it's obvious evidence that we have been highly successful with our Mount Tilac students for many, many years. Um, and I'm just so proud of the work that you've continued to do to bring the program along and expand it and advance it and make it more and more and and I would agree um that we we should get out and and share the great work that you're doing with others across the state because often times and I've I've walked into several districts that um treat continuation high school in a way that I don't believe is is appropriate or necessary. um and what what you do is you touch our kids' lives and help them prepare for their future and just evidenced by
081the three of you. Thank four of you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that and and look forward us to continuing to grow and develop the program to meet the future needs of our students. Thank you guys so much. Good job. really great. All right, our next item is um South Tahoe High School athletics update and participation for 2024 and 2025. Good evening, board of trustees. President Keer, I'm joined tonight by Coach Hennessy. Uh he's going to be sharing tonight with you an update, a participation update for 2425. We did one last year, intend to do one every year, and so at the end of this year, here we are. Uh, Coach Hennessy has prepared quite a bit of information for you tonight. Um, information that we're proud of and so, um, we appreciate the
082time and opportunity to share with you tonight. I'll be in charge of the clicker. Perfect. Thank you. Um, good evening, President Kemper, board members, Dr. Cutler, Dr. Reer, Miss Buttery. Um, I'm excited tonight to show you the progress that we have. Um before I get to that, I would like to thank um President Keer, Dr. Cutler, Dr. Reer, Trusty Heatherton for coming by our track meet on Monday. Appreciate that. And um Trusty Anderson for stopping by our softball game yesterday. Kids and parents always like to see and um I got some comments from students about Dr. Culler and Trusty being there at the end when we did the senior night, senior day. It was so appreciate you guys being there. Um so let's get uh right into this. Um you can see um how big
083a role athletics plays um with our students. We increased this year um our participation by 97 um student athletes. We went from uh we're now at 833 producing in sports. Um as you look we're pretty much even across the board. Um that increase came to this year we added a freshman football team for men. We added a JV cheer team in the winter and our girls wrestling team, our girls softball and our track team all increased their numbers. So um that's pretty special. I mean especially when you look we have a little over a thousand kids and we have a lot of kids doing things. a good on this slide on that 833 um is that individual athletes or is that to because some some students play three sports or something like that. So we
084have and now we have um almost 500 non-re repeaters non-reers though there's 3 and around 350 that are repeating sports. So as I said we've got a huge portion of our population um fantastic out there doing things. Yeah. You know, can I just interrupt on that just because we you and I were talking and I think it's valuable for the board. We we were talking about North North Valley School. Yes. And North Valley School is 2500 students and growing and growing. And we were talking about how they're struggling in their athletic department and their programs to get students to come out and and and I told Coach Hennessy at the time, I said, "It's because of your leadership, our coaches um talents and and drive and skills and and also just flat supporting our students
085and encouraging them to get engaged and and and again you look at a school like North with 200 students. our school with I think we're,50 right now or so. Um and we far pass our the student activities at our school. Absolutely. It's pretty fantastic. Yeah. Great. Um get the next one. Um so you can this kind of breaks down our sports by season. We're we're right dead even at 16 each. Um as I said, we added a JV each cheer. um this year for the winner, which we hadn't had in a while. And our girls wrestling kind of blew up this year um in terms of numbers. Um so um it's just we had a great turnout for the girls wrestling and for the cheer and especially the cheer. The girls ca came out, they
086tried out and we decided to add it because we didn't want them to go away. You know, they were enthusiastic and and we wanted them to participate. So that's kind of why we added that. Um, this is a telling sign right here. Um, this is our GPA and our attendance. Um, you can see the numbers in yellow are from this year and the numbers in blue are from last year. So, our GPA boys dipped just a little bit down to 3.17, but if you look over to the female athletes, they bumped up to 36. Um, in our GPA for our average, just our non-athletes bumped up a little bit to 2.6. Um, if you look down at our attendance, we're holding, we're just a little bit better on the boys and a little bit better
087on the girls. And I think the big one, not just the athletes, but our focus at school is attendance. Um, kind of a common thread here as you listened. Um, and we got a little tick up on the on our non-athletes, too. Um, I I sometimes tend to think, and I I've said this before, you know, success breeds success, and it changes the culture of the school. And I can see you can see that that that goes hand in hand. Um I mean I think when you add athletics and the band and with Mr. Boggery stuff and what Mr. Nibbon's doing in in the theater, I mean that that attendance is going to go up because more kids are going to be engaged and as we talk about all the time, the whole child, right?
088We're grabbing that and and getting them connected to school. And then maybe one quick note, last three terms we've increased schoolwide GPA. Got a shot uh very good shot. I think at the end of this term it hit 3.0 for a schoolwide GPA. And I think the other thing that I wanted to say because I'm sure you've all heard that word flex. flex has been huge at least on the athletic end of it because when our student athletes miss for a game or they have to go somewhere for a match, they have an opportunity to go back the next morning and get into a flex and and get either get help or make up something. And and I that's something that for me myself, I've utilize that as a tool that when I talk to
089a student athlete, I can say, "Okay, hey, where's going on with your grade?" if it's because I'll pull them out if they're gay to start and ask them. Mia's nodding her head. She's seen me pop into classes many a time, right? And I'll just bring them in the hallway and we'll have a quick conversation. I like, "What's your plan?" Okay, get back into their flex tomorrow. Show them that you care and let's see if we can get going. So, the flex has been huge in helping us um get grades up and and get kids to pass for sure. Um, so this is uh this slide's talking about our practice schedule and I put that up there because I think it's important that people understand that not one team gets a facility that we determine equitable
090practices. So female teams and and the the male teams each get a shot at it. You know, like in the fall we share the stadium. Um the football shares the stadium with boys and girls soccer. They each get a day in there and then uh obviously they play their home games there. Um I'm going to be curious when we do the improvements how much they're going to want to come to the high school once we we get the middle school squared away. But we'll take that on. Um if you can go to the next one. This shows um the winner. And I I think sometimes the public doesn't realize a lot of our coaches are off campus and so practice time is is dictated by when they get off work. Our our our girls basketball
091coach didn't get off work until a little after 5, so he wanted to start practice at 6. So the the varsity girls would practice at night. Now, if you look, we rotate weekly for the younger teams because it's harder for them to get back and forth to school. You know, they don't have cars and so and it's hard. We don't want to put a burden on their parents. So we would rotate every two weeks. So the the young younger teams can can practice right after school and then next two weeks the other other side practices. So that's something that we kind of coordinate together. Um transportation probably the biggest one of the biggest challenges um we face. So when we do transportation we go on this order. Um yellow school bus first, charter bus obviously
092for the bigger teams, school vehicles and rental vehicles. So, and let as I go forward, I want to make sure I give a huge shout out to Coral Leup and Norma Candelerio, the lead driver, and the rest of the bus drivers for everything they do to get our athletes where they have to go and and when they have time, stop them and feed them on the way home, which sometimes is the biggest thing they're looking forward to. So, this year, right at this point right now, females have taken 41 trips on a yellow bus. male 62 and the mixed sports when you see that we're talking about track, swim, uh, Nordic, ski, um, sports where the male and female athletes are traveling together or or the sport dictates that. So that's where we were with
093the yellow. Um, so we've up to 143 charters. Females this year have taken 20 round trips, males five, and the mixed sports 14. Um, and then as you go forward, our school and rentals, um, I can tell you right now we're at 72 rentals for the year and we'll probably tap out at about 90, um, or 92 through our enterprise where we rent Suburbans. We use those for our smaller teams. Um or if there's something going on with drivers, you know, there's been times where Coral said, "Okay, two drivers are sick. What can you do?" And I'll scramble with them and we'll get two or three uh suburbans or more. Um it can be a challenge. Um but you know, it is what it is. I mean, trying to get everybody everywhere and because we're
094traveling everywhere from an hour to Reno to 5 hours to Elco. um and everything in between. Um it can it can definitely be a challenge not for the kids, just for the kids, but the coaches and parents. And one of the reasons why I've been tapping the the rentals so we're all on the same page on that is the sometimes the buses have to leave at 10:30 or 11 to get back to take do the routes. So, we'll send the younger kids there because they generally play earlier, like around 4:00. And the older teams, the varsity teams play around 6:00 or 7, especially in the winter. So, then we'll rent cars for the varsity team so they stay longer at school. And then the JVS and the freshman teams can come home earlier. So, they're
095not coming home and sitting around a gym all day and all night. They can get home at 7 or 6 and still be good for school the next day. So it it it's a juggling act for sure. Um so as we talk about equipment expenditures, uh you can see the the expenditures went up by $1,200 this year. That's attributed to one specific thing. um uh and some others, but the main thing was uh our softball team had Tahoe or Tahoe heartbeat jackets and there was no way I was going to allow that to happen and let them wear that out anywhere to represent our district, our school, or our kids. So, we purchased jackets for the varsity team so that we could get rid of those. Um that was that was a huge you know
096it was a pretty big expense and that's why that number jumped up. And then along with that we bought some other things like you know we had to do some fill-in jerseys for volleyball and softball where things just wore out. Um we had to get cleaning supplies for wrestling mats because we moved wrestling and cheer up to the high school. Well, cheer was already there, but we gave wrestling kind of their own semi-permanent room as opposed to them being in the middle school. So, that came with cleaning supplies and everything for the mats. So, that was another expense. Um, you can go to the next one. Um, our uniform cycle, which we're on a three-year cycle. This year was year three, we'll be starting next year. Um, these are the sports that we bought for.
097Um, and it's set up to where we we split all the sports up so that each sports gets new of varsity team gets a new uniform every 3 years. Now, if you notice on the bottom where it says 2223, things have gone up since then and Miss Buttery and I have talked about that and um we're going to try to massage that a little bit um so that we can keep supplying those things. So, um, can you go to the next one? And this is our annual costs. Uh, these are that we incur every year. And, um, I've tried to stay away from that uniform replacement as much as I can, more of a fill-in. Um, Miss Buttery and I have talked about adding a few things to the cycle from this to kind of
098cut this number down. Um, but these most of these items are things that you can't save, wash, and give to the next year. You know, you're you can't do that with a pair of socks or at least not my house. Um, volleyball bottoms, um, some of those things. I mean, you just can't. Softball visors, you know, it's just it's it's done after that year. So, um, we have to those are just annual costs we have to incur. And I know these times are, you know, are going to be tough with cutbacks and and expenses, but I mean, if you go back and think about that first slide about how many kids are playing stuff, how many kids are engaged, this is an investment. That's what I see it as. I see it as an investment
099to keep our kids connected and um and I I truly believe that. Um, okay, moving forward. This is our sports medicine injury report. Um, we are so unique. If you've ever been to the high school and you see our sports med and our training room, I mean, we're so blessed. When I go to other schools and see I I went to Fernley, they they got a bond, bought built a brand new gym and I will tell you, I went into their training room and it was maybe about and they passed a bond. We are so lucky to have what we have. Um, and have our partnership with Barton. Um, you can see we had 600 total visits this year, 236 injury evaluations. And so the difference of that is is every time the student comes
100in, the student athlete comes in from the first time to the last time, that's considered a visit. And then every time you come back to get your injury evaluated or treated, right, that counts on the other end. So that's why the number is is that way. You can see it's pretty even between male and female right there. Um can you go to the next one? And then here kind of breaks it down. 604 visits, 236 injury evaluations. Every home game is covered. Every home game between um football, soccer, basketball, volleyball, I mean you name it, it's covered if it's home between Mr. Tenassi and um our trainer Blake Rodman. Blake's there pretty much every day after school treating kids. Um he's there, it's open. Um if you look at the numbers, you can see it
101a little bit better. Uh total number evaluations between female and male. When you take out male, you know, that's a pretty much a big number. Football removed is 185 in terms of the visits. Um, so it it you can get a better realistic of the idea of the numbers. Um, when you look at that. Um, but as I said, we're so fortunate to have what we have to be able to get kids right back. Our partnership with Barton, when a student athletes injured and he has to be referred to Dr. or or someone else, he can maneuver that appointment so it's sooner than 2 weeks out or 3 weeks out, which we've all experienced at some point when we call and we say, "What do you mean you can't get me in until May 15th
102or May 30th?" So, it's it's pretty powerful. And I'm going to say this last thing about the Barton is we're partnering with them um to offer free physicals this year for all the high school kids June 2nd. That's on a Monday and this year they're going to expand it to the middle school athletes because now everybody has to have a physical once a year. Um so that's that's pretty special to get that. That's we're fortunate in our community to have something like that to tell you the truth. Um, okay. Our B Fit room, which is kind of our strength and conditioning room. Um, the access, it's an all access. All students are invited. Um, you can access it before school from 7:30 to 8:30, after school, 3:45 to 4:45. And you can see we have
103three exercise science classes where they can enroll in if they want to do it in the school day or after their freshman year, sophomore on, they can they can enroll in the strength and conditioning class. Um, in the summertime through um, CTE, we offer a summer strength and conditioning schedule for our athletic teams. And you can see it's it's very equitable. Um, girls soccer goes generally goes first. This happened this year. We offer it for all all the fall sports. And then again, there's an open area where anybody can. So, you can see it's open to all. And then we push this out on Aries to everybody. Um, so all of our all of our athletes and our parents know um how they can access that. And then uh some celebrations, you know, we've had
104our boys soccer, two time state champs. Um our girls soccer this year, you can go to the next one. Uh or our boys tennis team, two-year state champs. Our girls soccer this fall um was a state champ. We had some individual champions. Um, we had second place in cross country, Miss Laya Landy. She's been here in front of you taking a picture, I think. Um, we had our girls here from wrestling that all finished third. Um, and then we had Charlie Burkwitz and Cash Hendrick um, our state champs this year for wrestling. And we're anticipating a lot for track. We're We had um, as Dr. Culler and Dr. career. You guys were there. Um we had um one of our female athletes broke two or three school records on on Monday um at our track
105meet. Um she's expected to be a a state champion. Um we have some swimming state champions coming up. We have we've added a dive team this year. We have three young men diving um which is kind of exciting um and anticipating them to come home with some medals. So, uh things are um really really on the uptick. I think um we're moving in the right direction. Um I'd like to give a couple quick thankouts to Jen Trrescott and Norine for and Coral for helping me put all this together. Um Mr. Zenino for all his support, Miss Hart for helping me do this, and um just being on my being right next to me supporting me and um and supporting our our kids. um she does an amazing job at our school and um sometimes VPs
106don't get that kind of recognition and she deserves it. But and lastly, I'd like to thank my um wife for letting me take put all this time into this. Um she she sees the benefits. She knows in a small town how this is is helping everybody. So she's she's behind it 100%. So, questions, comments? I have a question about the dive team. Where do they practice? Where do they dive? Well, we don't have a here. We worked out an agreement with Douglas and they practice with the Douglas team and we have a coach that goes down with them. Um Douglas was gracious enough to have that because they have a dive coach and so we go down there and like I said one of our coaches goes with them attends it and then um it
107I mean from what I've been told in the new rec center there's going to be a diving port and a deep enough end for us to dive there. So the hope is that this grows because because of the boys interest in this. There is a lot of the gymnast um female gymnasts that are in cheer etc that have expressed interest next year to be in the dive and then we're hoping to um do it right here in the new rec center and the new pool. It'd be great. Exactly. It's going to be I said we're we're growing. Yeah. Awesome. Uh, Director Hennessy, I'm not surprised at all to see those statistics comparing non-athletes uh, attendance and academic performance against athletes in the same area. Uh, having visited you and Heather Hart in her office a
108few weeks back, I learned that you really do work as a team to encourage these kids and set limits and uh um help them get to their to their to their goals so they can remain in athletics. I I applaud you both. Thank you. Um I I'll I'll give you this. This is kind of one of the things I tell the kids as we talk in our meetings sometimes when we do our one-on-one pull outs. I'll tell them that life doesn't get better by chance, it gets better by change. And um and I believe that and I try to push that message to them as much as I can. I'd like to thank the administration at um the high school and especially you, Kevin, for the the excellent communication with the coaches that I've experienced
109um through you and the tremendous support for the student athletes. Um I for one truly believe that the sporting fields are an extension of the classroom. So, it's it's really important and and to reiterate what Trusty Anderson said, it it's it's obvious and it it it makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. And I'm trying to save the athletic program by not taking a paycheck for coaching based. Well, thank you for everything. Appreciate you. Thank you, coach. Very impressive. All right. Now, we have um the Meteor classroom environment and library. Hi. Hey, um, board president Keer, board of trustees, thank you for having me. Dr. Cutler, Dr. Reer, Mrs. Buttery, thank you all. I, uh, think my colleague Gina is going to be joining us virtually, so we might be bringing
110her up. It's good to see everybody again. Hey, Brian, let's do a proper uh, introduction of you and and because you just jumped right in there. He's ready. I know. Really think it's important. You know, we didn't even say your name. Okay, go ahead. All right. resident camper and trust. Please welcome or Meteor Furniture uh Brian Whmer in person and Gina Levier virtually uh to provide us an update on the Meteor classroom pilot program as well as plans for updating two more libraries that we're going to learn about today. Additionally, I think Mr. Zebo's going to add some color commentation as well. Right, Mr. Zebo? Perhaps during this agenda. Thanks Brian. Next one. Thank you Dr. Reer. Um, and yeah, thank you, Bord. It's great to be back with you. Um, Gina, do you want
111to say hi before we dive in? Good evening, everybody. Apologies for calling in, but I'm so so happy to be here. Um, so, thank you. Yeah, so I have had the pleasure this week of getting to be back in district and uh getting to spend a whole week in Lake Tahoe, which is always amazing. That's a huge perk of my job. Um, and I was going out to meet with, you may or may not know, the 14 pilot teachers that are spread out throughout the district. Um, it's been a project that I've got to come on with, uh, Gina over the last few years in the district to help support putting in new classrooms uh, with teacher support. It's been going unbelievably well, if I can say so, from just the excitement of the teachers
112and their feedback that we have a little bit uh, in here. So to give you just a little overview uh of the project, we've been working now for about 3 years uh bringing in pilot teachers uh they've had to go through an application process uh to be selected LA going into this school year. Actually we had to you know weed through those because there was quite a few applications and we could only do five classrooms. Uh but it's been really great. So I've got a few just overview shots from my time this week uh in the classrooms. So, I've broken them down into round one and round two. So, this first one's round one. This is the second year that they've had their classrooms. The first one is the preschool classroom, uh, special ed classroom
113at El Tahoe, which a couple of your graduates were working in, which is amazing. They're actually, I'm sure, in that picture, it's a little blurriier though than I see. Um, but the El Tahoe special ed preschool had just some amazing feedback with the students and the teachers in there loving what they're getting to do in their environment. And Miss Jarvis is doing a phenomenal job. uh if I do say so myself. Um and the second grade picture there that is at Sierra House uh with a with a second grade classroom who they they sort of um she did a great job of being very uh flexible with it. She wasn't initially a pilot teacher but got to come in with some different things at the end and has been doing an awesome job. And in
114her morning circle it was awesome to come in and watch the first few minutes the kids were saying hi. they were sharing about what's coming up and she just did such a great job of building a community culture in that classroom. It was beautiful. Um in fourth grade at Tahoe Valley, you can see a picture. This is just from today actually. Uh going into this classroom is always so much fun. She's allowing kids to just really after the instructions happen when you know get a partner, find a place that's comfortable and work on your work. So, you can see right here, uh, we've got one little girl who pulled out a bunch of little cushions and stacked them up and is sitting on them. The other one's kneeling. We've got, uh, a partners working on
115a big pillow against the the cabinets there. So, uh, they were all working on on fractions and it was really great to see. Uh, down here we've got the reading intervention room at Sierra House, uh, which is another great photo. One of the things we've seen and heard from the pilot teachers while being out there is that having a variety of options in seating in the classroom has made a big impact for kids. You can just see right here with these foam uh ottomans in the reading intervention room all the different ways the students are sitting on them. Uh just to make everybody a little less worried, you can sort of see in the one with the boy straddling it, one side of that is flat, so it can sit pretty stable or it can
116rock. Um but but yeah, so they're able to use them in all different ways. uh the PE room at Sierra House. That was a year one pilot. Um which was really neat to see that come together because we haven't done a PE room like that per se and it's we've had great feedback. Uh the South Tahoe science classroom I was in there today um where they were just doing some great things. And again, the teacher was commenting on with the tables being able to be moved around really easily. She's loving that she can go from teams into more of a stadium setup into, you know, groups where they can have big teams of 12 or 16 working together. Um, and just that flexibility she's had a lot of fun with. So, it's been really cool
117for them to be able to change up the environment in that way. And then Mount Tac. Oh my gosh, I am obsessed with this program and just the community in general around it. Uh, Mount Tac has three classrooms that ended up getting done. uh I guess the three main uh instructional classrooms I believe and talking with those teachers is always so inspiring. Um just the work they're doing with them. I they were talking about the community program. I was caught my eye when I walked in. They have a whole whiteboard right as the kids are signing in each morning like jobs that like employment opportunities around town. Uh and you know they were doing financial literacy in one of the classes I was in. I know this is not what I'm supposed to talk about.
118I just love the program. Um a focus on furniture and classrooms. Um, but you'll see in here just the different variety of ways the teachers is setting we're setting up the the space and giving the kids the options of where they need to be um each day. So, it's been really exciting to see that and they were all so proud. Mount Tac has had the furniture for 2 years and it looks brand new. And one thing that they said, but most of the teachers said they're just amazed at the respect the students bring. especially at Mount Tac, they they kept bringing up like, you know, we're the only campus that all the rooms are done already. And we really feel that the kids, you know, take ownership in that and pride in that. And it's
119it was really cool just to see their excitement on all of it. Now, we're going to jump into the round two pilots. So, these were the pilot classrooms that were installed uh last summer, and they've been in just for this year. So, the first one is back at Tahoe Valley. It's a TK classroom. Uh you'll see just uh they were doing stations when I was over there this week and I was able to snag a picture of them doing Legos on one end and computers at the other. Uh the little boy on the right pulled me down. He said, "You want to see my laptop? I'm playing Minecraft." And he was like so into his little fake laptop that he had made out of Legos and telling me his Minecraft was tricking people. Um but
120again, the teachers were talking about especially in the TK room, getting to develop all the different stations has been really great. Uh if we look at the other one, fourth grade at Beiju Community School, um they were doing ELD groupings when I was in there. So you're seeing she has about eight kids piled around this table. You can notice all the different seats from wobble stools to foam ottomans, regular chairs where the kids are able to just grab them from anywhere in the room and pull them over that they need. Um and the nice thing about that, right, is they're not having to tell kids, "Say stop moving. Stop rocking back in your chair." So, it's helping create a better relationship to that way is not all they don't have to redirect as much. Um,
121but just let kids sort of be how they how they need to be. Uh, here we go. So, Tahoe Middle School. Oh my goodness. Um, the sixth grade ELA uh picture. And these are a little hard and I can maybe send some better images that are a little bigger to Dr. Cutler and Dr. Reer. Um, but Miss Rios and the sixth grade teacher at Tahoe Middle School has been emailing me every day since I have met with her Tuesday because we were talking about how can you use the furniture, move it around a little bit to create Jory does a great job of having kids collaborate and communicate in class, but to change it up a little bit. So, she's emailed me different pictures each day of ways she's actually tried since we've met on
122Tuesday to do these. So, this is one she sent me just this afternoon at lunch of her moving having the kids move into what they call an inside outside circle. So, there's one student inside, one out having conversations. Uh, and what she said with this in this email specifically was this is her squirreliest class. Uh, and she's like, you know, at first I was trying to be like, all right, Timmy, you can move your chair here and Susie, bring this desk there. She's like, I just had to let go. And it was a little scary, but the kids did so much better when I just let go. She said, they moved into this formation from their normal teams in a minute and 39 seconds and were from sitting to sitting, ready to learn again. Um,
123and not only is that great just in in their ability to do that, but that she said it was one of the most productive classes she's had with this group this year because she was able to keep them, you know, engaged by constantly moving. All right, we're having a conversation up, move to the next person, talk. All right, who's going to share next one? Rotate and going. So, it really was able to just keep the kids engaged, which is really great because they were talking about there's been a, you know, some teachers that are like, I don't know that we need this furniture. It seems that type of thing. and she's like, "This is it's not about me wanting a nice classroom, but it's giving kids opportunities to learn differently and to engage in different
124ways." So, I thought this was a great example from some of uh what they were sharing Tuesday on to come over. So, keep on going. Sorry. I'm I'm just excited about these. It's been a great week up here. Um the sixth grade math classroom right next door. Again, you can see just the variety of seating heights. Another thing they commented on is having low and high tables makes it really great for students and teachers to to be able to see the ninth grade uh ninth 12th grade foreign language classroom. Gina called out, "Yeah, you have a picture of a kid just sort of leaning back yawning." I was like, "Yeah, I purposely put this one in here from day cuz this guy when I walked in the teacher, hey, if anybody wants to show like
125I really don't like these the low stools." You sort of see it right in the front there. It's a wiggle stool without a back. Um he was talking about it's got no back support and everything, but she's like, "Well, you got to move down to the rocking chair." You know, there's that option for you to go and you'll see he's rocked all the way back in his seat. Where in a normal chair, he would have been leaning back. The teacher's like, "Hey, four on the floor." And it's this whole back and forth instead of just like move to the rocking chair, you're good. It was the end of the time the top, right? Uh so I thought that was a really fun example from today as well. So, we've had just a great experience with
126the pilot teachers, especially as we are talking about looking at maybe setting more standards as more rooms get done. So, this uh year, just a couple months ago, we pulled feedback from the second round of pilot teachers. So, the five that got their rooms this year, we asked the teachers and the students some questions. And here's just the feedback you'll see. So, I pulled just a few of the quotes from the teachers and and things we're talking about. So, one saying how they love being in a classroom that c that's not only functional but also calming and enjoyable. Uh the bottom one talking about just the ease of being able to move uh into different groupings depending on the activities we're doing. Uh and the teachers have had a great experience which we love saying
127that they've rated their environments just how much they enjoy their environments four out of 4.4 out of five and uh how they would rate their experience being a pilot teacher 4.8 an eight out of five which makes me really happy that we've made this an enjoyable process for them. Um some of the other things so here uh when we started this process Dr. Cutler uh Dr. Reer all the site administrators had come together for what we called a reimagine workshop. They had two different meetings where they really worked through from the board vision all the way down to what should be in classrooms. And in that they created some priority learning outcomes that they wanted to see these classrooms supporting. And that's what you'll see across the bottom. The is it flexible and allows for
128multiple configurations? Is it friendly and inviting? Those were some of the the things that they really wanted the environments to to encompass. And so we asked the teachers, you know, how do you feel that these pilot environments meet each one of these goals? And that's what you'll see there with blue being strongly agree, red being agree, yellow being neutral. we don't even need to worry about green and purple because no one disagreed. They're really feeling good about where this is going. Um, which was great to see. So, that was our teacher feedback from this year. Now, the exciting stuff, the student feedback. So, we had 221 responses when I pulled this. I think we've actually gotten more. I think some of the high school teachers have given it to more kids. Um but you'll see
129in here uh the green we have about 44% of kids saying they are absolutely loving their new environment. 52 saying they like it and about 3% like I don't like it. So you know kids um and we can maybe if we put some Xbox you know maybe we can get those 3%. We'll have we can find out. Um actually I'm going to interrupt you. I think you should find those those three% and and I want and specifically say why. Yes exactly. I know we could go through it. It is it is fun to see some of the comments of the kids. So, uh we were asking feedback from students as well. So, um and this is a few that I pulled a lot of them. I love it. It's great. But these were some really
130thoughtful ones. Um the person the one up top, I'm a person who fidgets and the rocking chairs and the swivel chairs have really helped me. Like that's a lot of what we heard from teachers. Um, the whiteboard tables give them a chance to think when they're writing and not just focus on their work and not just writing, which I think is another great thing that we talk about with the whiteboard tables is giving kids a little bit of freedom. You know, sometimes kids get so nervous they'll erase through their paper and then it becomes a whole emotional experience when if it's a whiteboard table, they just wipe it off and go. It's not as scary. Um, and we've had great feedback on those. So, these are a little small to see. I apologize for that.
131But on the left, we had asked the students just out of all the different types of seating in the rooms, what's your favorite, the really big one is the rocking chairs. The kids love the rocking chairs. Um, followed closely by the swivel chairs. And then it's even so small. Yes. Which are those are big soft seating armless foam chairs that you saw at Mount Tac and like those type of things. So, back to that that student in the 9th 12th grade, right? Having the different options really makes the students feel that they have options. And this is the thing I thought was most interesting. We asked the kids where they like to work most in their classrooms because they've got tall tables, low tables, individual desks, team tables, um, whiteboard tables, where do you like
132to work most? And you'll notice it broke down almost 33% all across the board, which was really cool, between markerboard tables, taller counter height tables, and then just individual desks. So having that mix really seems to be giving kids the place that they feel most comfortable working on in class and again helps teachers have one less thing to know redirect on. So that's been the the 14 classrooms. Uh and then we've also had the opportunity to work on uh some of the high schools. So I'll let Gina jump in and share a little bit about the the libraries starting with the the South Tahoe High School library. Yes. Thank you. Can everybody hear me? Okay, we got you. Okay, good. Uh, thank you, Brian. Good evening, members of the board, President Kemp Keer, Dr. Cutler,
133Dr. Reer, and Miss Uttery. Um, so amongst the pilot classrooms, like Brian was saying, we also completed the South Tahoe High School library of which the students um have compared to your local community college that allows them a lot of choice and flexibility for them to study and collaborate with their peers. One of the things I love most is every time I go there, the library is packed. Um, and your librarian um is constantly tinkering and reconfiguring it. Um, which brings just that newness to the library for the students. Um, it's also multi-use where your community members are meeting, your parents are meeting. Um, and so it's really just changed the focal point of that library for the students and the community. Um, two new designs that we're excited to share with you tonight are
134the libraries at South Tahoe Middle School and Beiju Elementary. During our design discovery meetings with both sites, they shared that they wanted their libraries to foster an open and inviting environment that models the National School Library standards for students that encourage them to think, to create, to share, and to grow. So, South Tahoe Middle School shared some of their challenges. Challenges were line of sight with students, lack of space for students to collaborate with one another, and the built-in circulation desk with removing the built-in casework um that was in the middle of the room. You can go to the next slide, Brian. um it really opened up uh this space um to bring in mobile case work as well as mobile tables and chairs that create a lot of flexibility. And so Brian, if you
135want to just maybe go through the slide deck a little bit to uh share everybody some better images. Um so where you see the tables in the circulation desk, that's where built-in casework is right now. And so being able to I think there was only about two tables in the library currently and they were kind of pushed off to the side. So really opening it up um to the flow of how the library will work. Removing the very large built-in circulation desk and that was actually a request of the librarian. She didn't feel like it needed to be that big and making it modular and moving it to the other side. So now she has line of sight to the entry of the door for students when they come in and out. Do you want
136to go to the next slide, Brian? And then just giving them some more options. Right. So, you'll see some three tables using the pillars that are in the room that need to stay um to make sure that the the roof is stable, but just giving kids some individual desk space that's taller um if they wanted to just be by themselves. And we can go to the next slide. And then here's some just more images where making sure that the circulation desk um is at counter height, but then also making sure ADA is uh accessible for anybody. You have mobile storage. Um you have mobile casework. You have uh shelving along the perimeter. Um oh, we got fast. I I hit the I held the button somehow. Here we go. Sorry about that. Um, and then
137some fun lounge seating. I think uh the students at the high school really really loved this. Um, every time I go in there, students are there. So, we wanted to make sure that the middle school kids had access to this as well. Some lounge seating and then um your your tables. So, we're really excited for South Tahoe Middle School um through that design process. And then for Beiju Elementary, they shared with us their challenges were limited seating, especially for older students, lack of flexible seating arrangements, only having one table, and the circulation desk. Uh with removing the built-in casework in the middle of the room, it really opened up the space for us to bring in some mobile casework, um additional mobile tables and chairs, and perimeter shelving that are all in line with one
138another. And so I think if you go and um go to the next slides and all colors are not final that will be district decisions. Um but we're really excited about how um we were able to transform these to be more conducive to the students and what they need. Any questions? Do we have any questions? Members of the board, just so I just make a highlight, right? So, this is an update. We've created a new title of like for action. You know, we we've been working on this this projects for, you know, few years now. And so, we want to make sure we give you an update of how it's going. We also are looking at another pilot year for classrooms. Um and then of course we'll move forward and make some final decisions on
139the the middle school and be use libraries and get those ordered ASAP and that would be coming up in your consent calendar. Um and uh really excited about how we're continue to transform and change the the classroom environments, the library environments to be effective and conducent to conducive to student learning. Um, and I gota just do a shout out to to both Gina and Brian. A couple things. Gina, um, one of the things when she's here, she is making certain that we are satisfied and that that everything is working the way we want it to be and functioning and and and really kind of holding that bar high. And Brian has just done an incredible job working with our teachers um, and and staff on how to effectively utilize these environments. And just really can't
140do give them enough shout out. So, just want to make sure you know there's an update tonight and and if there are questions, we sure like to fill them. I have I have a question. Um, I love the library. I love at the high school and I love the pilot classrooms and Mount Tac and everything. It's amazing. When is it going to get started on these next two libraries and when is it going to be finished? Well, it's a great question and really it's a it's a it's a making a decision on the final order. Um, and I'll be sitting down with Gina and taking a look at the final proposal based on what the the staffs have come up with. Um, obviously we have to look at our our our we use a developer
141fee money for these classroom environments right now. Um, we eventually will be utilizing bond money as we take like for example when we do Tahoe Valley and we redo that whole entire schools that will be some of the bond money but we're using developer fee money. So we've got to make sure that we meet within our federary requirements. So our hope and Gina to turn to you is that we can possibly have these ready for the start of next school year. Yes. Pending board approval. Um our goal is to get that um ordered as soon as possible to have delivered before the school year starts. And um a lot of kudos to to Dave Zebo and his team in um making sure that we're working together and talking about everything that needs to happen um
142at the sites simultaneously. I have a a comment and a question. Um thank you Brian for being here this week and and I just love having the real time photos um you know from things that are happening that happened today or earlier this week. So that was that was fun and I really appreciate that in the presentation. And on the on budget questions, this I don't know who can answer this, but I I I don't know where Meteor makes their furniture, but I'm just wondering if if you're seeing the impacts of tariffs or in the future of where these where the equipment comes from. That's that's a great question. And I come from our education side, so I apologize. That's again I'm gonna have to point that way to the screen. Going over to Gina.
143No worries. No, that is a great question. Um, and so Meteor doesn't manufacture any furniture, but we do have over 200 manufacturers. And the manufacturers that you see here are represented um and based here in the United States. There are some components that they do need to get from, you know, Taiwan or or wherever, but all of the manufacturing is done here. And so the the highest tariff that we've received so far and it's all on pause um pending decisions is 2 and a half%. So um and that's because we want to make sure that our partners are here in the United States. Thank you. That's awesome. Yeah. So that that shouldn't be in the way then for moving forward. Yeah. That's one of the other things working with meter. They they they have a
144large group that they pull from and work with. So if I could add one more thing and Dr. Cutler had mentioned more a couple more pilots. I in going around I will say the first year it was you saw we did a PE room and the reading intervention room. Um we were able to take all applicants year one because there was only a handful. Uh last year we had to cut and then going around um not cut but make decisions. Um and then going around this time I've heard from principles like they've got people really excited and people are asking. So I I see I foresee again if the applications open up that we'll have more applicants than availability. Um which is exciting because means positive you know positive trending. Exactly. Thank you so much.
145If there's any other questions please thank you. Thank you both. Thank you. Yeah. Get home before the snow flies. Oh whatever. I don't know what's going to happen. All right. Item number seven is personnel services and it's the superintendent contract extension and step in colin step in column and this is an action item. Uh good evening president Keer and board of trustees. Um as noted in the Lake Tahoe Unified School District agreement for services of superintendent section 10 C says should the superintendent receive a satisfactory evaluation pursuant to this agreement. This agreement will be extended for an additional year. An amendment for the extension for the term of this agreement shall be approved at the next regularly scheduled board meeting following the superintendent's evaluation. The board reported a satisfactory evaluation at the special board meeting
146on Wednesday, April 16th, 2025. With a satisfactory evaluation comes one-year extension of his contract to June 30th, 2028. In addition, section 5A of the agreement says the superintendent shall receive a compensation increase in alignment with the administrative management salary schedule steps. Dr. color for 2024 school year is on step four and is set to move to step five on the executive management salary schedule. Uh this is an action item. It is a staff's recommendation that the board of education approve the amendment extending the superintendent service for one year to June 30th 2028 and approve the step and column increase from four to five. Are there any questions? Do I have any questions? Do I Thank you. Uh, Mr. Simmons. Do I have any a motion? I move to approve the superintendent contract extension and stepping
147column uh pursuant to the satisfactory evaluation. Um, do I have a second? I'll second that. All right. Um, do I have any comments or discussion? All right. Um, then all those in favor say I. I. I and those opposed say nay. Nay. All right. The motion passes. Uh four to one. Thank you. Uh four eyes and one nay. Members of the board, thank you so much. Um I look forward to continuing to serve our school district. Um it's an honor and a privilege. Thank you. Item number eight, um facilities and and just before I go on, does do you does anybody want to explain their vote? I would just want to give you an opportunity to go on record if you'd like to the naysay because I've done we haven't had we haven't had any
148nays in a while but that is something that as a practice as a president of the board I'd like to give people that opportunity if you would like it. Yeah. Okay. Speaks for itself. All right. Thank you. Um moving on to item number eight. uh fields, facilities and transportation trying to move ahead to the end. Oh sir, right at the last slide. I know it goes really quickly that way. Good evening and members of the board. I'm happy to be here this evening to provide an update on our current initiatives and the exciting projects ahead as we transition into summer op. It's hard to believe that just three weeks ago our team was clearing more than a foot of snow from our parking lots. Now they're in full spring preparing our campuses and fields for
149summer activities. We've we've charged the irrigation lines, cleaned up the fields, and are actively supporting our students and community through baseball and soft softball events. Uh this is an exciting yet demanding time for our grounds crew as they ramp up for the season. For our maintenance department, our maintenance team has been shutting down roof and gutter heating systems along with heated pathways. This is all to reduce energy costs. Um once school is out, we will begin essential maintenance work that cannot be completed while campus is occupied. This includes servicing our boilers, replacing our air air filters, cleaning smoke detectors, and tackling larger projects that require uninterrupted focus. Um, additionally, our crew will be constructing six new office spaces at the middle school, high school, and Beiju elementary to support our wellness centers. While the materials
150for this pro project are grant funded, labor costs will be covered through our maintenance budget. Another major initiative which you just heard about is the complete renovation of the middle school and libraries. Um these spaces will be entirely refreshed in including new carpet, paint and furniture tailored to the new student needs and development. So yeah, I I do spend quite a bit of time with Meteor to get this all dialed in. Um, we've also partnered with our local fire departments last fall with a wildfire mitigation and fuels reduction project for our high school. Tree thinning will start on campus in July to create defensible space campuswide. Our students, our CTE students from Richard Ket's class will also be participating in this project, which even makes this more rewarding. Mr. Ket has over 85 high school
151students that will be involved with both day and after school sessions this spring and next fall. This includes learning about dispensable face dispensable space, excuse me, flagging the protected sugar pine trees that we have on the property and they will also be responsible for clearing all the shrubs, small trees and branches within 5 ft of our high school buildings. Uh this will provide the students up to six hours towards work-based learning experience credits for participating. Uh the Myers walk-in refrigeration project is on the consent agenda this evening which will take place late summer and will be a great addition for our food service team. Uh we have the electric bus infrastructure project coming to fruition which I will go in more depth here in a minute. And last, we have Measure U project starting this
152summer that George from the coming group will be discussing. More on that here shortly after this presentation. Head on over to the transportation department. So, our mechanics will continue servicing our fleet and we will be replacing a B bus lift that has been inoperable. Um, lastly, the electric buses and infrastructure. Thanks to our most recent HVIP grant, we have received 10 electric buses. Seven of those buses are currently stored at our vendor's yard in Sacramento, awaiting the installation of additional charging stations at our bus garage. Uh just last week, we received $275,000 in grant funding for this project and we anticipate being awarded an additional 353,000 by June. uh that with a total project cost of 950 thou 915,000 for the district or for this project, the district will be responsible for covering the remaining
153287,000. Uh Liberty Energy will be providing a new electrical service to our bus garage this summer to support the infrastructure. And with this grant reward, we were just able to order the switch gear this week, which is on a 20we back order. So that said, I'm confident this project will be done by the fall. And once this is completed, this the good news, we will have a total of 15 electric buses in our fleet. And all of our route buses will be electric. And our diesel buses will only be used for field trips and backup buses. So that concludes my presentation and uh I appreciate your time this evening and I'll open it up for any questions if you have any. Any questions? Great update. Very good update, Dave. Thank you. A lot of great
154work. All right. Item number nine, um, business service operations with, uh, our chief business officer, Kelly Buttery, and, um, item number A is the review of special education budget and spending. Good evening, President Keer and board trustees. Tonight will share a little information about both special education and SULPA budgets and spending. We have the presentation coming. Okay, there we go. Let's do go back and forth again. This slide explains both special education and special education local plan area or SULPA. Special education are services and/or instruction we provide to students with an individualized education plan or IEP. It is governed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IEDA and overseen by district special ed education staff with support from the SULPA. The SULPA is our oversight. The Tahoe Alpine SULPA is a two district SULPA
155and includes Alpine County Office of Education and Lake Tahoe Unified. Lake Unified operates as the administrative unit or AU, meaning we manage a majority of the funding and reporting. I'll give you a moment to read through the remaining bullet points. I recognize they're a little small. And education is notorious for having a lot of acronyms. And I think special education like takes it to a whole other level. There's a lot of acronyms. I tried to spell them all out at least once through on uh these slides. This slide shows the revenue for the SULPA budget and the budgeted contributions from the unrestricted funds. It also shows the budgeted contribution to cover additional expens expenses. So again, these are our budget numbers. This is what we are planning what we've been told by the state. we're
156going to get our contributions are dependent on actually how much we spend through the year. So, this is our budgeted contributions. Once the we get to year end closing, we true those up and make sure that they align completely. And you'll see that in our year-by-year comparison. So, this is analysis for uh shows a graph of revenue and contributions which equal the expenditures. There's one caveat with this graph as the 127 $127,000 is not included in any portion of this and as it doesn't qualify as either revenue or a contribution. In the multi-year analysis, I've included it as a separate line item. We contribute as a pass through $127,000 and change to Alpine County Office of Ed to cover our special their special education expenses. it doesn't qualify really as any of these categories. So,
157it was difficult to kind of navigate how to put that in, but every year it's the exact same amount, $127,841. Um, and you'll see that in the next slide as well. So, that's that lovely yellow line is the pass through to um Alpine County Office of Ed, meaning we get the money from the state, we immediately just pass it off to Alpine County, they spend it as they see appropriate for special education. You can see over the last three years we've continued to increase the amount that we're spending. Um every year we analyze our maintenance of effort which is um and we try not to increase oure because if we increase it the following year we have to maintain that effort. So we have to maintain at least that amount. So you try to keep
158it flat. Um and it's difficult to reduce. There are instances where you can reduce it. um losing students that don't require us paying for a non-public school. That's a reason we can reduce that cost. And we expect so 2425 again it looks like uh we're going to end the year at about 15.5 million. That's an estimate because we don't know what our full expenditures are. I actually believe we're going to end closer to where we ended last year around 148 149. This is an information item only. Are there any questions? Can we go back to that slide? Thanks. Oh, sorry. Just disappeared. Um, so the so I just want to understand a couple things. The Alpine County, they get the same so they they get the same amount of money every year and they've that's
159what they've been spending every year or do they have their own local funds that they might contribute to? They may be contributing their own local funds. So that may change based on their need. amount was um sort of a mystery that we're trying to unravel a little bit uh why it's this amount, why it doesn't change, and it actually looks like uh in some information we've gathered in the last two days. Um this goes back to an agreement made with Alpine County in 90 1999 2000. So we do need to analyze the amount that we are passing through to see if that needs to be increased or potentially decreased. And then so just to comment to that, right? So in our budgeting practices prior to um prior just in the past uh it just re
160we just rolled over last year's budget and then made adjustments to get to make it work. Mhm. And what we've been working on the last few years is to really actually iron out where do the budget need to go? who who's you know what based on what formula for example and we're really trying to work on for example schools getting a certain dollar per student in that budgetary component and so when we looked at this dollar we're saying okay what is and why and is it based on the number of students in special education right because this is SULPA dollars um and and one of the things that is going to be a little different right now is that the SULPA director is right that we currently have is a Alpine County employee So that'll
161be an adjustment just based on that they're paying for that employee. Um so it might we we think that this might need to go down a little bit based on a per pupil, but then of course when we look at those other things and to answer your question, they're spending more than this that passed through for special education. Yeah, for sure. Okay. And then our and then the blue which is the revenues that's that that blue that has gone well it went down and then up. So the the revenue from the state has changed. It hasn't stayed exactly the same. Um, and then then we still have to cover the then we cover the expenses. So I I'm the reason this charts are confusing to me because the blue and the red the the revenue
162and the contributions are our budget that we spend each year that equals the 7 7,792 pretty close to that. It does 2223. Yeah. And 2324 including that pass through money. It does match exactly. Yeah. It does it on 2425 because that's the budgeted amount 23 22 23 and 23 23 there's a lot to say 20s uh those first two years those are actuals the that's the audit's been done everything is the true information we won't have the 2425 finalized numbers till after we close the books in August and then get our actual September yeah I guess the what's confusing is the adding the expenditures to the u contributions and revenues in other words the way I think about it is we get money from the state, we contribute, we spend close to $8 million on
163special ed. Um I don't know what the point of adding what we spend versus what we receive to come up with the 15 million. That doesn't that seems irrelevant to me. I mean I'm I'm not sure why we're look talking about it, but because it really Yeah, it's we're really just looking at how much do we spend each year and where do we get the money from? I think it's important to recognize that we never get enough money for special ed, which is why um and I actually worked with my FICMAT coach on this graph as well. I did receive your email, looked at about 17 different ways to try to visualize this, right? Um but I think the key point is that the exp excuse me, the expenditures need always match those contributions in
164revenue. Um and so when we have um people potentially say we don't we're not spending enough on special ed because we've I've we've heard that we contribute as much if not more to our special education needs than we receive. So that's the red box unusual. This is very this is normal for any school district. Um but that to me is why it's important because it's not just our revenue we're spending because otherwise if I'd excluded the um contributions then you have four million almost $5 million where it's like wait a second how did you that's not myion that's but the yeah anyway that I guess my point is just that they're apples and oranges the the money we get and I mean the money we spend is really the critical piece. So we spent we
165spent in 2023 24 approximately uh 13 14.8 14 million and then approximately 15 last year. That's that's those totals and then we budgeted and we budgeted for this year 155. Right. And we have we haven't closed those books out yet. Okay. So that's that's really important not to misread that piece is that's the total spending. That's so then what? Yeah. So this is even more confusing now um because the blue box is money we get from the state. The red box are contributions that are we find from other parts of our budget from our unrestricted money unrestricted funds. So that that is approximately this I'm just rounding things up. 7 million 8 million whatever close to that amount of money that's much money we get and we spend about that much money. the exact same.
166I mean, you you've the red box represents the money we need to spend to meet the needs. And that's around $8 million, seven and a half, whatever you want to call it, something like that. 8 million. That's how much we spend. So, adding how much we spend to how much we I mean, I'm just not in other words, we don't I'm not I'm not seeing here. Now, you could tell me that I'm just not seeing it. I heard you say we're spending $15.5 million on special ed. That's what I heard you just say. Well, we're budgeted, but that's not what I'm seeing words. We're budgeted at 15.5 million and we spend 15.5 million. We'll know for we'll know in September exactly. Why is the green box called expenditures and the red clarify and and I
167also and I guess I would love Yeah, let's uh So, the green box is our total expenditures. That's how much we spend. So, the blue and red up add up, right? So, we don't spend 15.5 million. Not actually sure why that number and that and this is part that's my error. This is part of why this chart was those numbers. They should be on separate pages, right? I mean, or they should just be side by side. Side by side when they're on separate p. Believe me, I ran this so many different ways that it actually made it far more confusing. And when you have the graphs on separate pages, what I found and like with a lot of feedback from a lot of different people is that you look at revenues then expenditures and then
168you're like, wait a second, but I want side by side and I actually want to see them. So, Kelly, I think that, you know, now that we're all spin a little bit and what I'd ask is that for my weekly update for the board, it doesn't have to be for tomorrow. It could be maybe next week. Let's try to get a clarification that helps understand the exact revenues we bring in, right? Well, I think I think this is clear. I mean, this is not clear as well. It's not the way I would present it. Let's just put it that way. But I understand what the boxes now represent. I just wanted to be in other words, but and so my point is just that that top number doesn't need to actually be there. It's it's
169more just a representation. You're showing that above the line is the money we spend, below the line is the money we receive. They're approximately the same, you know, or they should be exactly the same because we we basically are taking our total expenditure, you know, the way we come up with the red box is the difference between the green and the blue box and and that's how we come up with the red box. So it that that's really what you're trying to represent. The 15 and a half million is not a number that we are dealing with. I mean it's not it's not a number we're not dealing. It seems like we've worked through it but I still want to make sure we clarification. And then and then I guess my just kind of more
170detailed question is you know I'm used to seeing your budget reports for our district where we see you know the 80% that's spent on personnel services. And I I was hoping um you might share and maybe this could be in a follow-up thing is just of this money of the seven close to 8 million the total budget. how much of that is is our personnel versus um any special equipment or I was thinking outside like you mentioned um students we might have to send to off-site locations but I was also thinking about other specialists like if we have to send students to uh particular therapists you know occupational therapist or or mental health support or something like that that that's not our staff at the district that we're spending you know I would love to
171just see that those dollars break it down by personnel we don't necessarily get down to that granular of like this is a I don't need to see the details of like occupational finish but just sort of like who's in house versus like maybe other services or equip you know basically be like special equipment or or other uh services I guess would be kind of the way I'd like to see it just I'm just curious about how that works out but because I imagine it's mostly this mostly represents our staff you know so okay thank you I have a question I want to know um with the dismantling of the Department of Education, what is going to happen to our funding? We don't we don't know. um the information we're getting from um oversight groups like
172Fikmat and school services. Uh one of my kind of partner CBO members that I work with at Fikmat was at a session at Casbo last week and heard make your budget as you would any other year assuming you're going to get the regular funding and then you might want to make one without. So that's doesn't sound really appealing because that's double the work. Um I hope to learn more. I'm going to uh my Effectmat training tomorrow tonight um for the next two days. So every time we get we'll get more information. And again the May revise comes out midmay May 15th. I have Fikmat the day after. So it's really good. The timing is really good. So hope to get as much information as possible from those groups who are really in tune to what's
173going on. Do you have anything you want to add? No, I don't think there really is anything else to add. I mean, we we are we we are getting guidance to continue forward as we believe we would be get the appropriate funding for IDEIDA and and other title dollars. Um it's frustrating to to actually hear somebody say, well, you know, design two budgets. We're we're talking a great deal of money. Um and that's where then many districts across the state of California probably going to get loans, you know, and put districts in more debt. um which is just a shame. So those are things we're going to have to navigate. We continue to have our um our engaging with the different leadership across the state that provides us the guidance that we are asking for.
174Um we talked about preparing and what that looks like. Um but but uh it's u it's a little scary and with that said the guidance right now is expect the money right that's not there a public proposal to to cut the title monies it seems like a getting rid of department of ed is is different than title monies IDEIDA is law right and because of that it's funded so it would be going against law to not fund it. Mhm. Now, it's happened. We'll see what happens. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. Um, thank you for um that for that. Thanks for working through that. Um, you know, we'll we'll we'll work out make sure that there's it's all provides clarity. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. And no rush, but because I know you've got you got more schooling,
175so um and uh are you are we moving on to the next the next item? Ready? Um it's bond activities and update. So tonight we have George Rohos, our project manager from Coming Group, here to provide the board with an update on bond. Nice picture. Good evening, President Keer, members of the board, Dr. Cutler, and of course cabinet. Uh my name is George Roas. I am a senior leader with Coming Group and also your bond program manager. I'm pleased to be here tonight to provide you a brief update on what we've been up to on the measure bond program and just share with you quite a bit of progress hopefully that you guys get to hear about um since the last time we met in our uh March 13th board meeting. So, okay. So, to
176help guide of course tonight's update, I prepared a brief agenda. We're going to start by quick quickly looking at what we are what we're doing as far as to develop the program team and how we're developing those folks professionals professional services team to support the bond program. Two, we're going to look at leaseback and of course how the contractor engagement is going. And third, I'm going to walk you through some of the next steps on some key items that we've been working on and what we're going to continue to work on beyond this meeting. So to get started, We're going to start with the program team development. So with any bond program of course um whenever you um I think timing is critical when we do anything with of course we want to be very
177concise as far as our action and so we are facing of course a little bit of instability in the market. I think I hear you guys mentioning that. And so of course we want to get everybody on board very quickly, all the necessary consultants that we're going to need in order to do all the planning and also uh help us meet all the regulatory requirements that we're going to be working on this program. So um very uh similar to what we did or at least how you guys selected the bond program team and also your uh studio W or architecture record. Um we are following the same uh concept basically is following government code 4525. According uh according to government code 4525 the district is required to follow a qualificationsbased process to select um professional
178services. Of course every single professional service is going to be evaluated and selected based on experience technical capabilities and of course the ability to meet the district needs. So, so far we have issued six different RFQS for different types of services and RFQ means request for qualifications of course. Um, those include consultants that include for California Environmental Quality Act. Folks are going to be helping us with wetland delineations, surveys, geotechnical um, storm water pollution as well as uh, special inspections and hazardous materials consulting. So with each one of these we have uh gone through kind of the road map as you see here in the um presentation. It's kind of our road map where we put together the scope of services. We release them for um we release them for advertisement. It goes through an
179advertisement period. There is times for folks to ask questions and so that we can make sure that we can respond and they can provide some adequate responses. So currently um the deadline for submissions for most of these are going to be up to se uh I'm sorry not September May 20th of course and we hope to bring those to you folks for board approval on the May 22nd timeline as well as the June 12 board of board meeting I should say. Okay. So, very important as well and kind of keeping the theme of uh continuing to create a team of course with the bond program in alignment with phase one bond issuance and your priority projects. We do have another very critical task is of course trying to make sure that we get all the
180leaseback entities on board. Now with uh and those folks are going to be supporting both projects of course for South Tahoe Valley Elementary School modernization as well as the phase one South Tahoe Middle School uh project. Now in guidance from educational code 17406 and 17407 uh the district is also following a best value method of evaluating all of these firms. We're going to really look at different things um making sure that we are looking at their experience and approach to school work also experience with division of state architect as well as their work on the basin. We're also going to be looking at some of their performance on previously seps projects as well as some of the references and that's really important to us. um as well as looking at really the qualifications for all
181the project teams, making sure that folks who they're presenting are who we want on the projects as well as looking at pricing and just history of claims and litigation and things of that nature. So, um if we're looking at the wheel, we're following the same process uh very similar to the RFQS for professional services um which include the advertisement period, the also the um we've done someformational walks. I'd like to thank Mr. Dave Zebo, who's actually helped us facilitate some of those walks on both sides. We had six different firms show up and show interest and we're very interested in walking the sites and getting to know the district a little bit better. Um, currently we're in the almost finishing up with the questions period. So, we received a few questions from some of the
182entities, um, which we're going to be responding to with the hopes of getting all the submission deadlines by May 6. So, to talk a little bit about the major milestones, we're going to receive submissions by May 6th. We're then going to go through an evaluation process, an interview process. U that's going to include not only the program team, but of course the partners from Baragy. Um I know Miss Kelly Butter is going to be there, Buttery Dave is going to be also there and I think some of the board members are going to join us in this selection process. So um to talk a little bit more about major milestones, of course, the deadline submission is going to be May 6. interviews are going to be held the week of May 19th and we hope
183to bring those to you for board approval on the June 12th uh board meeting. So, and moving on to just the last next steps, of course, um another key item that we've been working on just to try to get out very quickly, of course, summer's coming, we need to make sure we take advantage of it, is the South Tahoe Middle School softball field. The invitation to be bid was issued on on April 18th, as well as uh and we hope to have everything bid date is going to be 527. We hope to bring that to board approval during the June 12th dead timeline and hope to get started on this project in July 10th after we'd have some of the spring events that are happening on the field. So, um in addition, we've been pretty
184busy working alongside Studio W, our architects of record. So, we've uh just yesterday we actually held our first meeting for site committee at both South Tahoe Middle School and also Tahoe Valley Elementary School. These project committee meetings of course give us a better idea as to what some of the site needs are just so that we can make sure we have alignment as we begin some of the designs on the project. Uh so those were very good meetings to just to hear a little bit more from site committees as far as some of the uh things that they're experiencing and maybe what they may want to see. So we uh we have a second meeting that's going to happen on May 7th here and hopefully we get to meet quickly of course before the summer
185break. We'll probably meet after the summer comes back, everybody comes back, but this is a a good kind of progress just to kind of keep things going forward. So, um, kind of a quick little while we have Brett here of course with Varig, I think it's important to also note that Vary has also been very, uh, busy and so I just wanted to provide a quick update from them and of course the they are performing the investment grade audits of course and those are underway. They also working on an energy baseline development which is also in progress. And today I think they had a very important meeting with Liberty Utilities of course to look at maybe some potential incentives that may help the district as we're going forward with the bond program. So um last
186I'd like to maybe just kind of give an idea maybe what some of the next steps are going to be. So as we're developing the scopes of course um the next process for us is to start doing budget validation. Right? So we want to make sure that the budgets are in alignment with the scopes and one of the maybe the screenshots that you see on the upper upper right hand side that is cap analytics. It is a uh a tool that we help that kind of helps us display and show financial information not only to uh district staff but of course we're going to be using this for citizen oversight committees and so that we can make sure that we show all the different expenditures all the different encumbers of course that we have uh
187going on within the bond measure. So with that that's been a short five weeks since we've been kind of going really fast. Um, it's been a really enjoyable time. Before maybe I turn it back to questions, I just wanted to give a huge thank you to Mr. Dave Zebo, Miss Kelly Buttery for answering a million emails and texts that we've been kind of shooting along their way and, uh, they've been extremely accommodating and trying to get us moving very quickly. So, um, with that, I'll turn it back to you guys for question. Thank you. That was very informative. Anybody have any questions or comment? I would just say that I was just going to say too, but the the only thing I question is about the project committees at the sites. Um who's involved at
188the you don't have to give me names, but just generally like Yeah, we we've asked the principal on I think they had the first meeting this week. Yeah, we had so both to Valley and uh the middle school had their initial meetings. The principles asked for folks to serve and they came up with their committee. I actually would have to defer to uh Kelly just to give it because I'm not sitting in on those at this Yeah. because it' be I'm hoping it's a nice mix of people that do maintenance or you know what I mean or and do the the teachers I mean that we have like a a mix of people on this. Uh they're smaller committees but there are two teachers and at least one if not two classified members on the
189committee from the school. Yeah, it's great. I think I mean I was just going to say this is an update right and as as uh the coming group and our team work through selection of these different groups we'll be bringing them most likely on on your consent calendar unless you give me other direction. Okay. Okay. Great. Any direction anybody? Thank you George. Good luck. I know you got a lot of work to do and thank you staff for being responsive and keeping it the ball rolling. And with that, our last item is the item number 10, the consent agenda action item. Does anybody have a motion for me? I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. I'll second it. Okay. I have a motion from Trustee Kamacho and a second by Trustee Mansfield
190to approve the consent agenda. All in favor say I. I. All those opposed say nay. All right. That motion passed. And with that, item 11, items for consideration at future board meetings. Do I have any items people would like to be considered in a future board meeting? All right. And uh with that item 12, I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 8:40. Thank you everybody.