2.6.26 Special Board Meeting

001Good evening. This is a February 6th meeting of the Board of Education of Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District. As present, the meeting is now called to order. It is 5 p.m. Our meetings are broadcast over Zoom to provide the opportunity for our community to observe in real time. Unfortunately, this evening we're having technical difficulties. Our Zoom isn't speaking with our normal audio-visual interface, so we're trying to make do as best we can. I was told that the recording of tonight's meeting should work as far as the internal cameras. So we are going to post it probably Monday, and that recording sound quality will be good. The video quality will be good. And then lastly, video recordings of meetings are posted on our website, typically within 72 hours of each meeting. With that, I'll move

002on to 2.0, and tonight it will be my honor to lead us in the pledge. If you could stand. Let's move on to item 3.0, discussion action items, and the first and only item is budget reduction review. So in December, the district brought negotiations with labor groups to a close with a tentative agreement. Given that school districts operate on finite resources and the cost of a tentative agreement, a process to identify reductions necessary to balance our budget began at the direction of the board. In subsequent meetings, further direction has been given on the process and product. It is my hope that the board can receive an update beginning with the amount that needs to be reduced. Following this, an update on the steps to address board direction following our last meeting. I would then entertain

003interaction with the tiered reduction list. Before that occurs, I would remind us and the community of the purpose of this endeavor. By March 15th, certain employees of the district are not formally notified that they may be laid off for the subsequent academic year. They may not be laid off without cause for law. Since over 80% of our district's unrestricted or general funds will tie these positions with positions, the exercise is built with the March 15th deadline. Our district's budget may change after March 15th, but considerations towards balancing our budget have to be made in advance. With that in mind, I would ask for a presentation on the cost process and product. We'll then move to public comments, close public comments, and then allow the board for discussion and action if needed. Good evening. At this

004time, I will have Assistant Superintendent Wadsley explain the costs, the reductions that are required, and then I will also have her walk, I think President Juneau would ask me Wednesday to walk the board through if those cuts aren't made then what, for what it means to qualify, what it means to be negative, so Assistant Superintendent Wadsley is ready to make that presentation as well. From there, based on the cover of the item 3.1, we are going to go department by department, and each person responsible for that department will do a full presentation of what's in the packet for you. Okay. And then after that, do public comments, and then we'll go to the board. Okay, okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Good evening. So as President Juneau stated, following our first round of budget, we settled

005with our labor partners, and with that comes MeToo agreements, so not only do our Livermore Education Association receive the increases, but we also apply that to our other bargaining units as well. So based off of that calculated cost, incorporated into our first interim budget update that was presented in December, the necessary reductions are $14.8 million for 2016-2017, and $1.4 million in 2017-2018 in order to meet our 3% reserve requirements set by education code. In addition, if the cuts are not made of the $14.8 million, we would be a negative budget of negative $8 million in our ending fund balance in 26-27. With that, if the cuts were not made, the districts would be at a potential of losing independent budget approval authority, meaning that either the county office of education or the state would appoint

006a fiscal advisor to make the fiscal decisions for the district. In addition, depending on the level of reductions, meaning we're in a qualified budget, the county office of education would likely require a fiscal recovery plan in order to get back up to our minimum reserve requirements, and that could come potentially with a fiscal advisor in place to double check the plan and ensure that it's being followed and the steps are being, the process is being followed. They'll recommend corrective actions. For a qualified budget, they would send an early warning. Typically, they send what's called a letter of going concern. It goes not only to the school board, but also to our parent groups, our labor partners, just noting the fiscal position of the district and the concerns that the county office has. If the fiscal

007position is not improved, they can then take additional steps. One step that the county office can take is called a stay or send, which means that any action the board takes that has a fiscal consequence, the county office can undo that decision that is made. If it continues to get worse, the county office can then state that the district is in physical distress and cannot meet their obligations and insolvent, and at that time, typically, an advisor, the decision maker is obtained for the district, and FCMAT comes in as well to review plans and approve plans, and they work with the state administrator that is assigned to FCMAT. Do you want me to provide the information that we have so far from the county, or do you want to wait until you get that formal letter

008that we discussed? So there have been comments made that the estimated costs for the tentative agreement that was reached that got us to 16.1 million is inflated. So both the district and the board made a request to ACOE to audit those expenditures and that amount. I'm going to say roughly 70 percent of that has been completed. So for 25-26, the cost has been validated, as well as the majority of 26-27 school year has also been validated. So those numbers are not inflated. We have asked the county once that is completed to please send a formal notification to the board. Any other questions about any of that? No, no, no. Okay. So at this time, we will start if you just pull up the cover sheet, the background area. As a team, we opted to go

009ahead and just go in the order that everything is on the list. So if you scroll down to human resources, we will start with Dr. Bondaris. Okay, great. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. So under human resources, as directed, feedback has been provided for LMA, CMC, LEA, CSEA, and the survey that also got to SEIU. So I'm first going to go over when and the ways in which I collected feedback and then do a high-level overview for each of those groups. The attachments to this item go into more detail. So in January 27, bargaining unit leadership, LEA, CSEA, and SEIU, as well as CMC, were provided with a survey to distribute to their members. The survey included five essential questions related to proposed reductions ranging from overall concerns to suggestions for additional cost-saving measures. LEA and

010CSEA leadership elected to develop and administer their own surveys in order to get more targeted feedback from their respective members. The data from those surveys was received today. SEIU leadership distributed the survey, however, no responses have been received to date. In addition, Livermore Management Association members were provided a separate survey which included detailed questions aligned to specific reduction areas, operational, technology, district support services, site support services, general ed, stipends, and alternative cost-saving measures. Feedback from the LMA surveys and reviewed is also summarized in the executive summary attached. There is also collaboration with the human resources supervisor to identify potential reduction options within the department and to assess the reductions and the impact associated. So for LEA, in response, the districts need to identify approximately three million in budget reductions. LEA members participating in the structured

011survey reviewing the district's proposed reduction list while also identifying essential services totalling approximately three million that should not cut. The feedback reflects a strong emphasis on protecting direct student services, instructional staff, and site-based support while prioritizing reductions with district level administration, management compensation, and operational expenditures, and non-classwork costs. Across responses, there was consistent support for reducing management work years, adjusting executive benefits, and limiting discretionary spending. Conversely, responding strongly identified teachers, parent educators, instructional assistants, intervention specialists, health service staff, custodial services, and school administration as essential positions that should be protected or reduced only minimally or strategically. Where reductions were acknowledged as unavoidable, members emphasized the importance of careful right-sizing rather than broad cuts. Site concerns related to student safety, instructional quality, compliance, and support. For CSEA, the CSEA executive summary that was shared states that

012the proposed reductions would have a significant widespread impact on CSEA's bargaining unit. Feedback from classified employees reflects a strong desire to minimize impacts on students and school sites and emphasize the importance of preserving core services. Many respondents expressed that budget solutions should focus on organizational structure, leadership configurations, and non-instructional expenditures before reductions to frontline support positions. Additional things included interests in expanding cost saving measures across management and administrative areas, greater use of furloughs or other temporary savings strategies, and reductions in discretionary spending, including technology and operational costs. For LMA, the dominant concern expressed by LMA members is that proposed reductions would remove staffing and structures that currently prevent small issues from becoming high-risk, high-cost outcomes. Respondents consistently emphasized the importance of preserving site-based leadership that ensures safety, compliance, and continuity of services, especially interventional support,

013student services, human resources, alternative education, maintenance, and METU for LMA. Feedback indicated that these reductions would increase workload for principals and remaining staff, reduce structural leadership capacity, and limit timely support to students and families, and elevate compliance and operational risks. Significant concerns were raised regarding unintended consequences, including increased discipline referrals, increased special education referrals, diminished student safety, delays in hiring and onboarding, and potential LCAP compliance with civil rights risks. Overall, LMA feedback emphasized keeping reductions as far away from students as possible while maintaining essential leadership and operational systems. For CMC, feedback was received through qualitative services responses reflect strong concern about reductions that directly or indirectly impact students, school operations, and legally required services. Across responses, there's a consistent emphasis on preserving classroom instruction, intervention support, student safety, and operational systems that ensure compliance and

014stability. Significant concerns were raised about the unintended consequences of reducing intervention services, human resources, and payroll capacity, site support staff, and campus operations. Respondents cautioned that such reductions may result in increased special education referrals, decreased student safety, delayed services, higher workload, and long-term financial equity impacts that outweigh short-term safety. Overall, feedback emphasized keeping reductions as far away from students as possible, maintaining essential systems, and approaching reductions decisions in a way that minimizes risk, preserves trust, and avoids compounding impacts to vulnerable student populations. Thank you. I know that was a lot. Up next, we have our business services department feedback, department feedback, as well as our budget committee's feedback. So for business departments, as a reminder, business departments include fiscal, payroll, maintenance operations facilities, warehouses purchasing, as well as information technology IT. So for our business

015services department feedback, feedback was collected directly from department directors highlighting significant concerns about the operational compliance and safety implications of proposed reductions. The directors then developed three tiered options that prioritize preserving core compliance, payroll, safety, technology access, food service logistics, as well as revenue protection functions. The identified targeted read organizations, workload reductions, program redesigns, and limited work year reductions as more sustainable alternatives to deep staffing cuts. While directors understand reductions will be challenging, we know that districts need to reduce expenditures at the same time they express significant concern about how deeper reductions could affect the district's ability to operate effectively, meet compliance requirements, and provide reliable support to schools beginning in January. I regularly meet with each of the directors of fiscal, payroll, information technology maintenance operations facilities, as well as purchasing and warehouse review

016the impacts and identify high, medium, and lower impact options, as well as look at alternative solutions. I will say the directors are really creative in what they've come up with as far as both workload reductions to try to help streamline making better efficiencies in our processes, but all of those take time and implementation to really determine what those true cost savings are. So we are still actively working on all of those options, but we are considering all of those. All of that detail can be found in the business services appendix for each department. There's a longer executive summary as well as the tiered options and rationale from each of the directors included in that. For our budget committee feedback, so we have both our staff internal budget committee as well as our community budget committee.

017Both committees, we received feedback from the community budget committee. We met January 15th and reviewed a priority survey that they had taken, so we had been working on identifying priorities in relation to district functions in relation to our strategic plan, and so we really looked at January 15th, how did those come into play, and how would they relate to how reductions were made, and then also reviewed the budget status and where we were at. In addition, a budget feedback survey was also set out on January 28th, and we'll have another meeting next week on February 12th to review the summarized feedback as well as receive additional input. Our staff budget committee met February 5th and reviewed the proposed reductions. They worked in small groups to identify low impact, medium impact, and high impact, and had

018some really good conversations, and I think some difficult conversations about what this would look like in reality and the impacts to our sites and our district operations. In addition, a survey was also sent out, and data was collected in that as well, and the committee will continue to meet and receive input, and also think about how it will function as a district moving forward. Both committees emphasized protecting district student services and school site staffing, including classroom teachers, intervention supports, counseling, and mental health services, special education and site-based support roles, and both groups prioritized district office restructuring, administrative efficiencies, and operational adjustments before the classroom facing or supervision reduction, and stress the importance of equity and avoiding disproportionate impacts to our high-ranking students. Overall, the work reflects your commitment to balancing our fiscal savings with our

019long-term operational stability and managing responsibility while protecting our student-facing services, but also recognizing that I would say the operation piece is also important, but it's also the impact on students that I would say was most concerned. For educational services, our first committee that convened to offer feedback was our local control and accountability plan parent advisory committee. Our first meeting was on January 27th, where we convened the initial LCAP parent advisory committee, presenting information to the committee concerning specific reductions within the LCAP. The committee requested a subsequent meeting prior to the special board meeting. They also formally requested supplementary documentation, including a list of items to remain in the LCAP following reductions, and the comprehensive list of proposed reductions. An anonymous survey pertaining to the reductions was subsequently distributed to all members. On February 3rd, we

020had a special LCAP parent advisory meeting focused on a discussion of the survey results, the complete list of reductions, and the inventory of LCAP items retained post-reductions. Further feedback was actively solicited from the committee, which provided recommendations regarding specific items to be removed from the list of proposed reductions. The executive summary from that survey is that across the parent advisory committee responses, feedback is overwhelmingly concerned regarding proposed LCAP-funded reductions in force, with respondents consistently emphasizing that reductions appear to remove direct student-facing supports first, particularly those tied to academic intervention and illness and mental health. Respondents repeatedly raise concerns that cuts would widen opportunity gaps, shift workload to already stretched site staff, and reduce the district's ability to meet the needs of students experiencing learning challenges or social-emotional needs. A second dominant thread is process and

021trust. Multiple comments describe the timeline and decision sequences backwards and express concerns that stakeholder input is being requested in the process. Respondents also proposed alternative cost-saving strategies, for example reviewing office and administrative expenditures. Contracts and software faced reductions before reducing student services. The second group that was surveyed was our educational services directors. On January 23rd, we convened and facilitated a discussion with all educational services directors, including the directors of secondary education, elementary education, assessment and accountability, wellness, and student services. Directors conducted a line-by-line review of reductions lists and offered suggestions based on their expertise, in addition to proposing other potential cost-saving measures. On February 2nd, educational services directors reconvened to review a tiered reduction sheet, informed by feedback from the LCAP parent advisory committee and principal feedback surveys to provide their final deliberations regarding the

022proposed reductions. The executive summary includes that our educational services directors generally supported a tiered approach to reductions that protects core data and compliance systems and high impact student supports, while identifying selected operational and technology shifts that could be implemented with less instructional harm. Directors emphasized that reduction should avoid dismantling LCAP-funded supports for vulnerable students. For example, CWA specialist intervention and connection, and should protect systems required for state reporting and credit recovery. For example, level data, edge-of-climber DNA, and edge annuity. Directors offered mitigation strategies, such as platform substitutions for Zoom, using Google Meet, for Schoology, using Google Classroom, for screencastifying and optional individual licenses, and funding shifts, such as ELAs on stipends shifting to Title III, and site tech lead or PBIS lead shifting to Title IV or other funds. Site testing coordinators shifted to mandate

023a grant, an external partnership support ACO potentially covering TDTIP. They also noted significant downstream impacts if the SBMH funding is discontinued, particularly for elementary mental health supports. Lastly, we surveyed site principals on January 26th. I and the Educational Services Director guided the principals through an interactive session where they were afforded the opportunity to provide verbal feedback concerning the reductions. They were also able to engage in collaborative discussions with their colleagues regarding the reductions and identify additional potential cost saving measures. On January 28th, we disseminated an anonymous survey to the principals regarding the reductions. The resulting survey data was disaggregated and summarized to form the tiered reductions process. The executive summary for principals were that elementary and secondary site leaders generally described the proposed reductions as necessary but highly concerning, with the strongest concern focused on

024tier two supports, such as intervention, SEL counseling, and other student support services, and core operations like front office and cleric staff. Leaders anticipate the most adverse impact on student support services and academic achievement programs, with relatively less concern, though still mixed around instructional materials and technology. A consistent relaying is risk shifting. Leaders caution that reductions may increase referrals and unmet needs, especially for students requiring tier two support. Widen gaps for vulnerable learners, reduce ADG access for alternative education students, and shift critical operational work to principals and learning staff, potentially reducing school responsiveness and customer service. Good evening. So for special education, between December 17th and February 26th, feedback from parents, staff, and advisory groups regarding proposed budget reductions and special education programming through meetings on an anonymous survey to the parent advisory group. Further engagement

025included consultations with district leadership and legal counsel, multiple principal and vice principal meetings, the special education work group, the parent advisory group, and ongoing responses to parent and board correspondence. While there is broad understanding of the district's fiscal challenges, feedback consistently emphasized the importance of transparency, collaboration, and keeping student needs, particularly for students with disabilities, at the center of all decisions. Key themes included maintaining services outlining students' IPs, aligning special education programming across elementary, middle, and high school, adhering to contractual caseload requirements, preserving school safety and intervention support, and providing clear, data-informed communication to staff and families. Specific concern has been brought up from our special education staff that a reduction in interventions and the elimination of our pre-referral processes may unnecessarily increase requests for special education testing, increasing the workload for our staff and

026adding stress for students. An overview and key themes as well as specific meeting dates is included in your packet as an attachment. Good evening board, cabinet, and community. My name is Michelle Dawson. I'm the director of communications and engagement and I'm going to be presenting the feedback and engagement done with our parent club information council, also known as PCIC. So for those who may not know, PCIC is comprised of parent organization leaders from each school site and a sampling of community partners that provide direct services to the students and families in our district. PCIC meets monthly with the superintendent, cabinet, community engagement, and a rotating board trustee to learn about district initiatives, programs, services, and opportunities that they can share with the broader parent population at their school sites or additional staff at their organizations.

027They also exchange ideas amongst each other, share best practices, and inform the group on events and activities they organize to build community and support the students and staff and families at their schools. So they're a very engaged group. The feedback and engagement efforts done with PCIC include on January 8th, our monthly meeting. Dr. Gibson provided an overview and further details about the state of the budget after the communications and present journal was received on January 2nd. Members have the opportunity to ask questions and learn more about the reductions process. Then on January 28th, we issued a budget feedback survey, an anonymous survey sent to all members to provide feedback by February 2nd so we could provide that information to you today. And then on February 5th, we had our in-person meeting where we reviewed the

028summary of the feedback received from the survey and gave members an additional opportunity to provide input before finalizing the executive summary. So the executive summary states that responses received in-person meetings and anonymous survey focused strongly on keeping reductions away from students, schools, and essential services. Overall, the members were most supportive of making reductions that increase operational efficiencies and reduce non-essential expenditures, reorganize or reduce district leadership positions. Significant concerns were raised about cuts that would affect school safety, instructional support, and services for vulnerable students. Across all reduction categories, the feedback emphasized keeping classrooms and student supports whole, ensuring legal and safety obligations are met, and approaching budget decisions in a way that maintains clear communication and transparency that helps rebuild trust with the community. Thank you. Any other aspects of the presentation? Then we will move

029on to public comments. I have 10 new cards on this topic. Once we begin, public comment will close, so I'll call you up one at a time. We have three minutes. So first is Janelle Harris, and Janelle will be followed by Amy Thompson. Good evening members of the board. My name is Janelle Harris. I'm a parent and taxpayer. I just want to reiterate that being in this position was foreseeable, and one thing that is inexplicable to many of us in the community is how a tentative agreement was reached without a lot of due diligence being done into how it might be paid for. Ordinary people who have to budget and decide whether to make an expense and don't just, you know, make an expenditure without thinking about how it would affect their budget don't understand

030the sequence of events here. A second thing that I think a lot of the community is mystified about are the comments that were made at the meeting on January 20th about how everything that the board had been discussing for a half an hour or longer had already occurred, that this whole process had already occurred, and looking at the packet on the agenda tonight, I mean, it appears completely inconsistent with that representation, and a lot of the community was mystified by the superintendent's representation that all of this diligence had already been done before the original budget reduction spreadsheets. So that's troubling to the community that there seems to be a misunderstanding of what engagement or diligence was done when. Now I'd like to move on just to a few comments about the documents on the agenda.

031One is, you know, given the need for transparency, it's really troubling that, for example, none of the survey instruments are included. At least I could find them. I wouldn't know what people were asked. I can't tell that. There are no raw results of the survey. There is no consistency in terms of documenting how many people were consulted. In some cases, it says x number of people answered. In some cases, it says nothing at all. And in some cases, these sample sizes are really small. And so I think it's really important to know how many people were consulted, what they were asked, and what they actually said. And I'm not talking about non-anonymized data. I'm talking obviously about anonymized data, but this data that's been put forward seems heavily massaged, I guess is what I would

032say. And it's really difficult as members of the community to know what exactly underlies it. And then I would also just note a few things. One is there are tears on the spreadsheet, but it's not clear what the methodology for these tears are. There are a number of items that were suggested, for example, by Mama that still have not been added to the proposed reduction spreadsheet. So the idea that this is a comprehensive list of possible reductions I think is inconsistent with the other evidence. And I would just like to end with what I thought it was really what LCAP committee said. Repeated feedback suggests the process feels late-stage or predetermined. And frankly, that's how it feels to a lot of the community, that this should have happened a lot earlier and then done a

033lot better. And I worry that regardless of the results, that they may lack the legitimacy due to this. Thank you. And up next is Ms. Thompson, who will be followed by Amy Christensen. Good evening, board president and members of the board, Superintendent Gibson and cabinet, I'm Amy Thompson, president of the Livermore Education Association. I'm here to address the budget reduction process that quite frankly is fundamentally backward. Strategic fiscal management requires that you plan for your most essential resource, your staffing, at the beginning of the year, not as an afterthought. Case in point, we can see on tonight's list that there are funding shifts of $1 million from unrestricted to restricted funds. If this maneuver is possible now, it was possible in August. By delaying these adjustments to the budget, we have created a manufactured crisis

034that's left our educators feeling undervalued and our community in a state of unnecessary panic. This manufactured crisis has led to us forgetting the important thing that was actually accomplished that will relieve strain on the whole system next year, competitive compensation. Providing a compensation package that is competitive will result in starting next year with fully staffed classrooms and special education positions. This will eliminate a huge strain on the system that's created by scrambling at the last minute to fill positions with substitutes and contractors. It's disappointing to be presented tonight with stagnant projections. We have a spending freeze. We have hiring freeze. Where are the realized savings? The lack of transparency is staggering. While the board directed the spending freeze weeks ago, our members were only notified Monday, February 2nd. Furthermore, we would expect that all budgeted,

035unencumbered, and unspent funds should be released to the bottom line immediately. We find that the data on the cut sheet is suspect. To quote a parent from the LCAP, the math isn't mathy. You claim that the TV tip program costs $600,000 a year, yet the cut sheet shows that cutting it will only save $400,000 a year. Where is the other $200,000 going to go? It is impossible to take these proceedings seriously when the targeted amount remains stubbornly fixed at $14.7 million regardless of freezes and unspent funds. Our expectation is that decisions of this magnitude must be based on accurate real-time data, not stagnant figures that ignore actual savings. We are not just looking for numbers to add up. We are looking for leadership that adds up. Our members, our students, and this community deserve a

036budget process rooted in integrity, not obfuscation. Thank you. Next is Mamie Christovich, followed by Victoria Storti. Good evening, President, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson, and cabinet. I am Mamie Christovich, president of the Livermore chapter of CSEA. The district asked me to survey CSEA members for input about the reductions. I sent five pages of feedback from employees who spent hours writing to me. I was up until 2 30 this morning, in fact, compiling their valuable input into an executive summary that I emailed to Jessica Banderas for her request. I did that because I am a leader who cares and respects about people and values their point of view. I am dismayed to share with you that the result of the many pages and hours of in-depth thoughts and ideas were condensed to two short paragraphs

037in the board agenda without the executive summary from CSEA with many cost-saving ideas as well. That is insulting and disrespectful to all CSEA members. Why ask for input at all if it was merely an exercise to check the box so the board thinks that CSEA was asked? Why make employees believe that they matter to the district when they tragically don't? Why hope we matter to you, the board, and I hope you will listen. Tonight you will be reviewing an updated reductions list and I must point out serious issues that jumped out at me. First, input from my 500 plus members and LEA 700 plus were not taken into consideration in the ranking. That is the majority of employees in our district and that is a problem. Second, ranking decisions appear to be finalized by senior

038cabinet so this process is not at all impartial. For example, the assistant superintendent of human resources ranked the reduction of her own position to director of HR as a tier three. That is not reflective of the overwhelming input I received from CSEA members and others. Then we have the reduction of work years in 26-27 for senior cabinet members and directors but for everyone else it is open-ended. Again, who is ranking these items and who are they looking out for? During our discussion with the district's negotiations teams today, the assistant superintendent of ed services acknowledged that the rankings in her department were ultimately determined by her with input from a variety of groups that did not include the bargaining units. When asked if the raw data would be made available, she said no. Also, the survey

039that was emailed to the budget advisory committee following our meeting yesterday requested a response time of 6 p.m. so that the input could be added to the board agenda that day. Clearly that was not intended as the board agenda was published around 4 p.m. The input I received from members unanimously points to avoiding reductions that affect students. Instead, there is overwhelming support for reductions in connection with the superintendent and assistant superintendents as well as some management positions. I urge you to review these rankings with a critical eye and make sure that CSEA's input is considered before rankings are finalized. Thank you and I have the executive summary that was created that I want to share with you. Thank you. Up next is Victoria Storty followed by Tara Lux. I just want to mention that the

040executive summary is in the attachment under HR, the full executive summary. Good evening President Druane, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson and cabinet. My name is Victoria Storty, vice president of the Livermore chapter of CSEA. I want to speak to the most recent spreadsheet included in tonight's agenda. At the last meeting, the board directed cabinet to consult with the expert and develop cost-saving solutions that would have the least impact on staff. I have to be honest, what we see here does not look meaningfully different from the original list that was previously provided. The things that stand out immediately, first, the list has simply been reorganized. Second, it has been ranked by district leadership ranking the people that do the work at tier one and management are ranked at tier three. And third, 22.5 FTE reductions

041for para-educators have been removed. That raises serious concerns. What happened to this position? Why were they removed from this document? If there's ultimately still an intention to reduce para-educators staffing, then this list is misleading. Transparency matters, especially when people's livelihoods are at stake. As you review these recommendations, I urge you to think critically about their impact and their logic. For example, leadership proposes retaining a director of communications and engagement with a very high salary in a department for two, while ranking the position that actually performs the day-to-day work for elimination. That leads to a very simple question, who exactly will this director be directing? At the same time, the entire student services department appears on this list, a department that is essential to enrollment, transfers, expulsions, five or four plans, and such more. These are

042not optional services. They are vital to the operation of the district. It is deeply disheartening to be here again discussing reductions, particularly when CSEA employees observed the greatest impact last year. This list of reductions this year is massive, and I am concerned about how the work will get done with fewer people, and why would we need the same number of management if the number of employees are significantly reduced? I urge you, the board, to reconsider those recommendations. Please recognize and acknowledge that classified employees are the backbone of a school district. Classified staff make it possible for schools to function at all, and to our classified employees, especially in those in positions in this reduction list, I want you to know that we hear you. We see you. You matter. Thank you. Next is Tara Lutz,

043who will be followed by Kelly Fragoso. Good evening. LEA members were surveyed for their feedback on prioritizing the proposed budget reductions. In order to accurately do so, they were provided with a one-page summarized list of the district's proposed reductions divided into four categories. Members were asked to identify three million in reductions, as well as three million in essential items that should not be cut. Additionally, members were asked to submit their own ideas of reductions that were not already on the district list. A summary of this data was provided to the district this morning to be included as part of the board packet. It is important to note that LEA member input is not included within the document of tiered priorities published tonight, since that was created before we had finished our survey. And although we

044did not use a number system within our survey, items named as essential or less so should be viewed in the same manner as the tiered system on the district list. So with that in mind, LEA is in agreement with some of the district prioritizations. However, there are also some inconsistencies from our members rankings that need to be recognized. For instance, items categorized as a one, having little impact notated cut for the district, were classified as a three by LEA members. They are general education teachers and paraprofessionals, with the qualifier that it would be acceptable to cut the amount those needed to right size our staffing, yet unacceptable to cut more than that. Health technicians and library media specialists. The next following items were categorized as a three, essential by the district, whereas LEA members classified

045them as a one, less impactful if cut. Reducing the assistant superintendent of HR to director, consolidating directors within the curriculum department, eliminating two executive assistants to cabinet, eliminating the director of communication and engagement. In addition, the LEA list contains two items that members strongly support reducing, but were not included on the district list. One, the reduction of the district contribution to health benefits for the superintendent to match that of LMA with an estimated savings of $15,000 a year. And number two, the reduction of paid vacation days for the assistant superintendent of business services from 27 days to 10 days per year for an estimated savings of $24,000 per year. Finally, a few ideas from our members that deserve consideration as additional cost saving measures. The reduction of the one-to-one Chromebook program, a reduction of spending

046on a special education law firm with the believed costs of $50,000 or more per month, an increase in the number of work days to be reduced by district management, a restructuring of two to three assistant superintendents to directors, and removing the advanced degree stipend for district level management. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Kelly Fragoso, who will be followed by Dorothy Timmons. Good evening, President Druhan, Board of Trustees, and Superintendent Gibson. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Kelly Fragoso, and I'm here on behalf of our school counselors and social workers, professionals who support students not just academically, but emotionally, socially, and behaviorally every single day. We are also parents of this community, community members, and former LBJUSD students. As referenced in the Educational Services Appendix through our school based mental

047health grant, our district was able to expand critical services by hiring counselors and social workers to meet the growing student need. Since January 2025 alone, counselors and social workers have served hundreds of students through individual counseling, crisis intervention, family support, and referrals to community services. These services are not supplemental, they are foundational to student success. The impact is measurable. According to district data tied directly to referrals from counselors and social workers through cost, we have seen a significant reduction in suspensions, particularly among students with disabilities and African American students. Today, over 1,100 students across elementary and middle schools are receiving targeted support through cost with counselors or social workers at the center of every tier of this work, providing prevention, intervention, and crisis support across all tiers. The expiration of the SBMH grant coupled with

048the exclusion of counseling and social work from the general fund will result in either the complete loss of counseling services or disruption in the continuity of care at the following schools. Croche, Altamont Creek, Arroyo Seco, Lawrence, Jackson, Maryland, Rancho, Sunset, Smith, Joe Mitchell, Jumshin, and London Hall. Without counselors and social workers embedded in schools, these essential services will not be available to support students, families, or staff when they're needed most. The loss of the SBMH grant with no way of sustaining counselors and social workers in the general fund appears fundamentally misaligned with the district's own strategic plan. Focus area 2.2 explicitly commits to increasing and maintaining mental health positions at elementary and middle schools, while focus area 2.4 calls for the expansion and oversight of wellness centers, efforts that cannot be sustained without qualified mental

049health staff to run them and manage their resources. In addition, linewise and red flag alerts require risk assessments to be conducted by mental health professionals per board policy. Eliminating these positions places the district out of alignment with its stated goals and policies and undermines the various stems designed to protect and support students. While we recognize the cuts to the general fund underneath, the potential loss of this grant should be a wake-up call to ensure counseling positions are included in next year's funding discussion rather than excluded simply because they were initially grant funded. Up next is Dorothy Tibbetts who will be followed by Emerson Visaya. Board President Druin, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson, I am here as a parent, community member, and member of the budget and special education committees. While I understand large cuts

050must be made, we must put students first. I am very concerned about the long-term and short-term impact of these proposed staff cuts on students. I have a middle school student in special education at Joe Mitchell School and some may remember us advocating to stay at Joe Mitchell. Thank you board for supporting the class staying in their schools. Our counselor Kim Woodworth is one of the many reasons we couldn't imagine leaving Joe Mitchell. Usually our class visits her wellness center daily. Every single day they visit the counselor. Every kid deserves to have a school where they feel safe and supported. School counselors are a vital part of the health, wellness, and safety for our students. Counselors for every school should be added to the general budget. I am also extremely concerned about cuts to special education.

051On the committees I am in, we are consistently told that our students will get what they need. This budget proposal doesn't reflect that. We haven't been shown data that supports claims that reductions to 30 parent educators across 18 schools are regular reductions based on need and have nothing to do with budget even though that is what we were told during the special education committee meeting. I am highly concerned about the lack of transparency and the lack of data to support claims. In committees we are giving generalizations and I don't feel like we are truly meeting her. In fact committee members are frustrated and have asked what are we doing here. We shouldn't just be a sound board for decisions already made. Please use extreme caution with cuts to very crucial staff supports, counselors, parents, teachers,

052nurses, interventionists. Thank you for your time. Good evening board and superintendent. My name is Emerson Vasaya and I'm a sophomore at Granada High School. I'm a cheerleader and a sports medicine student. The board has placed the health, safety, and future of 2,072 students at risk. The cost of $211,449 is not equivalent to our health. By cutting athletic trainers the board not only knowingly but also willingly puts almost 50 percent of high school students directly in harm's way. Athletic trainers are our first line of defense against injury. From maintenance to treatment to rehabilitative services, athletic trainers are crucial to any athlete's health. Not only are they essential to athletes, but they play a key role in sculpting the futures of students within our community. They serve as mentors and teachers for students in programs that rely

053on them to learn. Taking them away eliminates a vital resource that paves the path towards students' futures. Make the right choice and please show us that our safety matters. Show Livermore that our student safety matters and is a priority and that we can trust those that we elect to make sure that we are protected. Keep our athletic trainers in our schools. In addition, I would like to mention that the board has received multiple emails from numerous different students that have not received responses. Some of these emails have been sent days or weeks ago. Many of the responses that the students have received, we've also noticed, seem practically copied and pasted and it's disheartening to see that we are not being considered or heard. The lack of acknowledgement that we have received is concerning and we

054are asking that you please do better. Thank you. Next is Gretchen Reynolds. Good evening everyone. My name is Gretchen Ronald Reynolds. I've been a teacher for 13 years at Vineyard Alternative School. I'm also a parent and community member here in Livermore and I'm here to lift up the voice of Vineyard. Our principal has been a strong champion for us, as you all know, and you heard from Ronnie, our student, and she won your hearts a few meetings ago. But I have some more voices here. Here are some direct quotes from Vineyard students. Student says Vineyard is a school where anybody can go to if they feel uncomfortable at their home school. I went for that reason to not feel uncomfortable and to be in a very safe environment where I feel welcome. Another student. I

055have been less stressed, nervous, and have felt so much like coming to Vineyard. I want to interact and socialize more now I know I'm not getting forced to. Without Vineyard, I likely wouldn't be able to graduate high school. Even if I did, I wouldn't be able to take math classes on my level and I enjoy math, so it would really take the joy out of learning. I share these quotes because the voice of Vineyard has not been given an equitable opportunity to be heard. The supporting documents for tonight's board meeting include community input appendix. The Parent Club Information Council, PCIC, is comprised of this is a quote, parent organization leaders from each school site and a sampling of community partners but to my knowledge no Vineyard parents were part of that and I'm not sure

056the LCAP parent community either. So for that reason, the column that we're on which is in the middle of cutting through Vineyard teachers for example, not to mention our vice principal, our counselor, office support staff is in the middle and I don't feel like that's been accurately explored by our parents and our voice heard. So I just want to say a little more. As one of my fellow teachers said today, research has shown that austerity does not work. Please do not allow austere cuts away. Good evening. So I'm here, my name is Tara Boyce, I'm here as a junction parent, I'm an LCAP committee member, I'm a budget advisory committee member, I have extensive professional experience in FP&A, budgeting, reductions, my entire career. So I have with me a PowerPoint deck, double sided because I

057hate printing things, but it's from Pleasant and it's from their last special board meeting that happened about two weeks ago and it's a comprehensive walkthrough of their position, their process, and where they are in their results. We have yet to see one of these from our senior cabinet, either last year's budget reduction process, this year's budget reduction process. Everything that has come out has been very elementary in nature and rarely failed, rarely was able to tell us the story. If we cut positions, what's going to happen, who's going to do the work, like tell us the story. Additionally, as part of the LCAP committee, I have scrawled the calculations back here so I apologize, 942,000 of our LCFF supplemental budget is district level expense and it was the recommendation of the LCAP committee last year

058to not take away direct services from students in order to fund district positions. We lost that, right, so 24% of LCFF supplemental moved from direct student intervention up to district level. So we have four positions at the district level, two directors of curriculum, one director of comms, and partial salary of director of accountability. That's almost a million dollars which represents 13% of our 7.1 LCFF supplemental budget. So think about that, right, directly first generation counselor gone, VP of junction gone, now we're looking at getting rid of intervention specialists paid by LCFF supplemental, kid connection, you must protect every position under LCFF supplemental that has direct student interaction, that is what that money is for. It is the stance of the LCAP committee that nothing should be removed, the 7.1 is what it is, that's our

059budget, it's the share next year. Removing anything that directly impacts our children is a dereliction of duty of the board and the senior cabinet and to even suggest it is really questionable. Additionally, let's understand that the 16 million that we say we're looking for, we don't need 16 million. Two years ago we rolled down 11.5 million in the unaudited financials at the end of the year. Last year we rolled down 90 million. Even if it's restricted, rolling it to the ending fund balance decreases what we need for the 3% reserve. Let's do our math correctly and establish a starting point that's realistic. Questions and discussions from the board. So I think what we'll do depending upon the length of the direction of the comments, maybe one or two and then we'll pass it to somebody

060else and roll around. Yeah that's fine, I have some introductory just comments and then I do have lots but we'll just start with that. First of all I just wanted to thank everyone who's come here today to speak to us and I just want to be clear that the scale of the reductions are difficult decisions that have real impacts across organization and I just appreciate the depth of the engagement that has occurred and the feedback that we're hearing from the community and particularly the desire to keep the reduction as far away from students as possible to be mindful of the LCAP commitments and to avoid cost shifting that creates a greater risk down the line. And so I understand all of those things and some of the things I felt like the themes that emerged

061from this and I went through all the appendixes is the strong preference for keeping the reductions as far away from students and school size as possible and then also high concern about the reductions to the tier two supports, mental health services, intervention and site operations and then the cost shifting, looking at unintended consequences I guess and compliance risks in the cost shifting and then also just a repeated emphasis on equity and safety, legal compliance and long-term sustainability and also I understand and recognize the process and trust concerns particularly regarding the timing of the stakeholder input. I just want to say too, I've been talking to people all throughout the district, talking to teachers, meeting with administrators and talking to community members and this has really been a difficult process for me personally and I'm sure

062I know the other members of support as well and one thing that I have come back with is that in times of growth and stability we add positions because the work is real and the needs are real and then when the resource time we have to take those positions away and that's really difficult and I think it's unnatural for us to wonder how the work will possibly get done without those positions and that's something that I worry about and wonder about and we don't have all of those details yet and I think that that's hard and I guess the honest answer is it's not going to be easy some of the work is going to take longer some of the work is going to look different and some of the work might not get done

063the way that it was done before and I just want to acknowledge that reality. What matters to me is that we have to be clear about our priorities and that we have to make these decisions that's something that we have been asked to do by our community and it's something that we signed up to do so I guess I just wanted to say that starting out the gate I do have questions and comments like as we go through but I just start with that and then as we get to things on the list well I can jump in with some of my questions I guess any other opening comments it's just to the student when we come up and we're talking about engagement and sometimes we've had that comment before from the public and I

064just want to apologize as someone who does not respond to every email and when I do respond to the email they are somewhat generic and that's kind of a public officials if it's something that's really specific and it's a unique thing and it's one person with one concern or two people with a shared concern it's a little I don't want to say easier but it's sometimes you can be more effective by giving a tailored response but quite often when you get 50 or 100 or 200 emails that are relatively about the same thing yes sometimes the response are somewhat generic we perceive your thing and I would never want students especially because that is to me the only reason I'm on this school board don't ever become apathetic or disengaged or think that this the

065system's not working that's just kind of how public officials use city councils all the way up and so I want you to know that you are heard but sometimes those responses are absent or sometimes they're somewhat generic that does not mean they're not heard we're listening I want to echo what trustee person said I think we're we're fairly aligned philosophically around a lot of these issues I want to say also that hearing from the public and boy these copy shops a little more got my money the last couple weeks to sit there and listen to you and ask you questions what I come away with almost every time is exactly the opposite of a comment that I received just yesterday about seeing some tearing happening losing some you know that really everybody's just trying to

066stay away from their own family and trying to stay from their own job and I am I have not experienced that I have experienced a ton of empathetic realistic but optimistic feedback on what needs to happen I think just so everybody knows this is going to hurt me it's going to hurt my job it's going to hurt what how I do things what I do or the person sitting next to me um so I've been very um I've been somewhat encouraged even as every conversation has been very very difficult um so I want to thank you for that and I also just listened to all these every every email and I just you know and just trying to keep going back to what do our students need how do I how do we still educate

067students how do we still keep our test scores up and how do we make sure that we do not leave any of our most vulnerable students or how do we keep them from falling through the cracks so those are kind of some of the criteria or some of the values that I bring to this conversation if you care I didn't really plan on opening comments I had more questions but um I just wanted to take the time to thank everybody that put in the work whether it was a time crunch or just thoughtful um thoughtful um and meaningful conversations that needed to happen so that we could continue in this process I know it's difficult and I do appreciate everybody that has emailed me the students I do try to get to them and I

068um I actually take time to do it so often in my emails I apologize for getting back to you later than anticipated but I do try to make it very personalized um but I just want to thank everybody for all the work that they do even if you aren't on the list if you are on the list every job matters and every position matters to make this district function and for the students to be better I personally know what it's like to be on the other end of as a student when my parent was um employed not by this district but another district one budget constraints um took a toll on our family and it's painful and difficult and we kind of had to refocus our steps and career due to that so um this

069is difficult I do understand and I'm just trying to do my best through this process to represent all of you fairly so I think I gave opening comments when he introduced the item but I have kind of a big picture question that I'll pose to Dr. Gibson and it's something that I've been trying to grapple with is what what what what what is this what to what extent is this an exercise in relation to March 15 within the scope of the budgetary process over the course of the year I'm not sure I'm able to articulate that by March 15 if we don't notice people about layoffs we can't after the fact and we also don't know you know the final you know the main revise at this point and so my question is how how

070conservative or how close to reality is this or does this reflect and I'm not trying to to to be I'm trying to get a nuanced approach to this I'm not assuming that 20 million dollars are going to come out of the sky they just know that and as I said you know I think 85 percent of our unrestricted funds go to people and so people have different positions I'm just curious how does this fit into March 15 the kind of academic year budgetary process so looking at the governor's budget um and um miss wasley's going to do a presentation on Tuesday for the board on that but I won't go into those pieces but just using those numbers we anticipate again it's throwing a dart at a blank wall but we will anticipate roughly one

071time fund of approximately six million dollars the goal really even though it's 14.8 is and it's going to be a little bit of a gamble that the board will need to make the decision on of how close to that 14.8 do you get um after speaking with the county business department as well as the county superintendent miss wasley and I both have spent a lot of time with both of them in the last few weeks as you can imagine um really if with that six million if four million is set aside let's say and I don't know it could be five million it could be seven million we don't we don't know because it's the governor's budget and the whole system is backwards but we don't get to control that so let's say it's six

072million just to keep it simple math and four million is set aside that four million could be set aside so that it fills this million dollar gap in and out years to keep it so that the district is fiscally solvent at that three percent um even though being qualified means that the board still has local control it's not advisable because the county will still require that the board come up with a plan to get out of a qualified status because the law requires a three percent reserve there's just no way around that so at this point in time the ultimate goal is 14.8 if you ask me for a recommendation based on throwing a dart at a blank wall of the budgets of the governor's budget what we anticipate getting I would say if the

073board can get to 13.5 and I would say within a couple hundred thousand 13.5 I think at that point with the one-time funds then it would give the board a little bit of some leeway to then figure it out as we move forward in hopes that other districts across the state are going to be in a similar situation there's a huge push to put funding on the base um and I know that I sent you and um trustee peruso just some information about that a couple days ago as well so there is that campaign from superintendents that's equally happening and as well as from cta so if I would say 13.5 would be the target give or take a hundred thousand or so on each side of that but that should be the target and

074we hope that at least six million one-time funds then come in that would allow for that buffer does that answer your question yes as much as it can okay um I have a second big picture question so um I teach research methods I'm a qualitative researcher part of doing qualitative research is there's this concept of reflexivity where you're owning your own bias and bias is often thought of as a negative thing you approach something you bring your bias the bias is experience bias is knowledge that you bring to a situation I'm just curious about the extent to which you you're a cognizant of your experience that you popped this process and then in ways in which you try to limit or uh limit your bias so that it's not that this is a process of

075a collective as opposed to of an individual I don't know if that makes sense there you go yes I think um as I mentioned at the last meeting on the 20th the hard part with this particular situation is that the number is so large that getting to even 13.5 million is going to mean that it touches things that are really close to students that is really going to be the hardest part so unfortunately things that normally we would say let's not do that have to go on to this list I would have each of the team members really kind of talk about the work that they did both before the 20th meeting because a lot of work had been done before the 20th as well as post the meeting on the 20th where we just

076kept adding and building while we had time to do that because they are the ones who collected the information and created these summaries and took in that information I can't speak for them unfortunately I wish I could um but I can't because they they ran that work in their departments with their teams and the groups that they that they worked with so then I would entertain I used the word entertaining on this position never before but specific questions from the board either regarding cost process or items on the list and I don't know if you want to go section by section but we'll kind of see how the conversation goes any questions from the board members oh okay yes trust me then based on the information you know that has been collected I don't see

077any changes there's no additional ideas like there was so much work done to get us to this document but the document hasn't it doesn't feel like it's changing at all well there's been some some positions removed that they're educated or whatever but a lot just seems the same even though there's creative ideas even in the summaries that you said um where this seems very um I like the word stack this seems that it's still the same document we're working on is that am I misunderstanding like where do those where do those ideas go where do all those suggestions from staff from directors where have they gone and yeah yeah so from an educational services perspective I would say that they are encapsulated in the survey data um like for instance instead of zoom which is

078one of the items on there using google one thing that was a through line with almost everyone I spoke to and I'm gonna put the caveat of our teachers were not surveyed yet um I'm looking for Amy Thompson because oh she tears right there but one through line we've talked about was a reduction from books um we spend roughly five hundred thousand dollars a year on chromebooks and that's because we're one-to-one starting in first grade when I was talking with I talked to a lot of individuals these past several weeks but when I was talking to a parent group um you know there's a realization that there's chromebooks sometimes one-to-one in kindergarten and so you know those are things that we can look at in the covid era I think that was something that we

079really uh uh increase our use of chromebooks yes we have curriculum that we rely on chromebooks but I think there is a definite cost savings by um going back to a shared model of chromebooks um that's something that was again in line with a lot of different groups that I spoke with yeah I I see a lot of um or I've heard in those conversations a lot of ideas like that I just don't see them reflected much in the document things don't necessarily change another part of this overall document uh sometimes the line item seems like it's a you know we do we're going to rank something here one or two three uh the whole item but I'm like well can we do half or can we just do a little bit of that can

080we just look at it can we look at the can we make a little shift in some I did notice some shifts in that you know like going from 10 custodians to four like there was some of that and I think for me what was helpful about this list and I know it's not perfect is that the thing that we asked for which was to have professionals and community input on how to tier those columns that piece is done and now you know there's some flexibility obviously but but but to me that's what I noticed about the list that's helpful for me as a board member is that the tearing is has been happening yeah yeah I just don't uh maybe because there was a disconnect or a distance between what we did on uh

081Thursday for uh the staff but the advisory meeting and we did a ton of tearing in all my super small group but then seeing what came what what miss wasley sent out it was so different it was almost like like like reverse like did we just do did we absolutely do it wrong you know gave gave the wrong numbers so that's where I was like who wait how did we get to the the numbers were we just where was our little group just really out of sync with what the rest of staff and community is thinking um I can speak a little bit to that um so there were three groups that participated in the tearing um one group only got part of the way through two groups finished but there were some that were

082opposite and so it put everything like in two's area um and so then I used that with the other feedback and I'm still going through refining because I've also got the survey data that I've been reviewing today um and so that'll continue to be looked at and if we need to make adjustments to the ranking then we will um especially as we continue down the process but I will say I think it'll be interesting to go back with the staff budget committee um to see some of those differences and really take the time to kind of dive into that um and I know that even one of the groups I think they had had a lot of discussions and then one person uh helped complete the rest of the list um so then I think

083it could be helpful to have additional conversations but that is I would say one of the most challenging parts of this whole process has been trying to determine how to put a tier when you have different voices that say different things and does that mean everything becomes a three and then how do we move forward from there and so that was I would say the biggest challenge that I had as in sorting through all of my data is how to rank things when there are differences and so there is definitely differences in some yeah but there was a couple of experts at my table that ranked things to yeah this is going to hurt but I this is in my area and it needs to go so I was surprised to see it we have

084the expert here who's saying we can do this so that was frustrating to me can I ask a few specifics questions go for it okay um I'm actually not sure which area this is in okay so first of all I want to acknowledge the important things that they do um I think from what I have received emails from them I think some of the things that they do are mandated is like compliance and so my question is and I see that they're on the list and I know we also have nurses who support them in that work so my question is uh what are the specific mandated duties that they continue maybe it's more than just the vaccines and then if the reductions do occur how how is that compliance maintained or what are the

085things I know kind of early in the process but um just kind of looking at though that that group specifically other than the vaccination uh compliance they do assist with health screenings um I believe we contract out is Tracy Christmas here no they I believe we contract out for our health screenings but our health technicians help with that but they also assist our nurses as well and so when we talk about like where does the work shift that all comes within negotiating the impacts of layoffs we would have to negotiate where that essential work would fall uh that they do okay so can you unpack that like what does that mean or what does that look like because I I've heard that and understand that but I don't like know what the reality of that

086looks like yeah so let's say you negotiate it does that like add two things to one person's list and then maybe they move up or is this well it's it's pretty in-depth process because uh first of all they're csa employees and so csa work cannot go to other bargaining units so we couldn't just put the work on nurses we would have to negotiate where so if it's um let's just say it was you know the vaccination paperwork and we have a csa employee in student services that it falls within her job description that would be a discussion within negotiations is would it be appropriate for that person to take on that work or do they have the room in their work day to take that work on so it's multi-layer when we negotiate those impacts

087while respecting our employees to not overload work thank you for that explanation but I have a question to follow up with this is so if they support the nurses and nurses are only on campus for a limited number of days would this further decrease the nurses service and availability to help students with health and safety I would need more information to give you um to give you an answer to that question I want to talk to the nurses to see the exact impact of not having health connections yeah okay yeah I'm happy to get that answer for you thank you I think one of the kind of getting into how you articulated trust you through so that in areas of growth adding people because of the needs is clear and then when we don't have

088funds because some of the things that several of the positions on the list I've heard like districts don't have this and they get by without that and I think that that's something that's hard to grapple with and to understand how could you how can you exist without visiting or this person or this service so I think that that's part of the challenge that we're being faced with trust me yeah they're all along the same lines I feel like I've also been told well you know there's a plan or concepts of plan spent same thing there's a plan but I don't know I feel like I don't need to know every detail but more maybe than just a plan and to hear you say we should talk to the nurses yeah we like that should be

089step one well I let me just put that caveat in that when we did our survey we did speak to experts that work with it's not like it's just me personally I've not spoken with nurses to get that specific answer and the expert is not Mrs. Christmas is not in the room to help me answer that question that's that's the only reason I said yes but she is well aware of the job duties yeah yeah yeah yeah make sure that every every person is is considered or they have they have great ideas secondly in that so let's say we we put we leave the health technicians on the list hoping that we can come up with a plan that we know exactly who does the paperwork who does that so that we don't create a

090lot of exposure for us as a district which could cost us a lot of money if we miss that that johnny fell on his head and we forgot to tell the parents big it's nothing usually but it can be something really really big that costs us so we have a really good plan but let's say we we get there we don't have a plan does this does us taking doing this before february 15th does that mean that we can then reverse that and say oh never mind we're gonna hang on to these people we don't we cannot the nurses can't carry all that we now see the lights we now know that it's not possible does that make sense to my mind i think that's why we have a tiered process is if if if

091you know we want more information and then they can put the put you know put that in a different tier put those health technicians in tier two or tier three till we get more information but um this was based on the information that was received now i you know i will tell you as we get more information like like la survey came in csa survey came in today there's more qualitative data specific to health technicians that was not included to um maybe to point so i i think that needs to be notated as well thank you i mean i see some of these things on there obviously and i look at the number and then i think if we move that when we move things into another tier something else has to come back over

092and so that's the challenge it's like it's i mean i think we all wish that we should save everything um but then it's like if not this then what and so that's the hard part um i don't know if there's any other questions about that but i have let go with another health technicians uh i do have a question about the proposal to freeze the site administrators i don't know is that you sorry i'm trying to look at the person okay okay um so our site administrators i think play a critical role in our schools and they're on campus in the summer they're there at games dances performances um i think their work directly supports teachers and students every day and it looks like the freezing of this clause could save 650 000 um i

093do have some questions about it before that though and that is um thinking about uh attracting and retaining good administrators i think is important um i understand that this is the savings and again everything in that in that column if i move it then i gotta move something back so i'm just keeping all these things in mind but i do see these people as student facing leaders who set the tone for their campuses and if we're asking them to absorb this reduction i am wondering what if we have clear parameters and a plan in place for that like for example is this freeze proposed for one year for two years is it ongoing um and if so like to me if it's intended to be ongoing and how do we consider the recruitment retention and

094fairness also considering that administrators the site administrators are not part of the bargaining unit and then if it is temporary what are the parameters for when and how we live with that so i guess there's just some more specific questions surrounding that group specifically about the me too that i have yeah thank you for asking that and that's something that came up repeatedly in the survey from lma as you mentioned another bargaining unit and so there isn't me too that has to be negotiated as part of the process it has been a past practice and so um that is something to keep in mind um the budget and the will of the board and the superintendent will decide when me too if it's taken off when it should be returned and that would be driven

095by a fiscal solvency at that time so we could bring it back at any time okay just on that point as well can you clarify what does all that health contribution mean what's how's that yeah yeah good question um so what i did um because i know the board had previously expressed about employees going backwards because of the health benefit cost increases and so i left and it would be the cost to leave to do the benefit contribution increase that lea receives but not any of the pay increases of the four four seven two percent so they're not going backwards yes okay so it sounds like we could set the parameters if we choose to do that i just feel like that's only fair if if we're gonna ask them to absorb that reduction and

096again that's i see everything in that green column and it's hard for me to to shift because then i know something else has to come over so but i just want to be sort of conscious of all of those things can i just note real quick that i know there's a freeze for cmc as well as lma on there um and the reason that cmc doesn't have that same note is because they have previously gotten the meat off of the csa settlement so that is why that was done the same way for cmc that's right okay thank you any other questions or i'm asking all the questions here i have a question for how many athletic directors do we currently have two right so is it possible is it physically possible for one person to

097be at both high schools for all their athletic audience and events throughout the days and the seasons no not absolutely not possible and then as far as the athletic trainers is it mandatory to have people that perform these functions you do have to have some form of a trainer but it does not have to be in the format that we currently do it um we absolutely need to have support for our athletes in that realm most districts do it in a different way that doesn't have the breaks that we have do you know what that looks like or does anyone have a sense of what that do you want to talk about your experience in the past i know i'm putting you on the spot here but i know you have a lot of yeah

098and if you need to follow up later that's fine because yeah so in my experience um at my previous high school district as well as talking to some other high school districts that we work with um typically you have a cte pathway for um health or health science physical like physical therapy as well as a medical pathway and so typically a stipend is paid to that staff and then students that are in that pathway get credits for the class by working with the trainer like a stipend and so then the students get additional experience um in high school credit and then um and so that works very successfully in my other high schools that i work with the cost savings that's on here now um is uh with a stipend built in because we know

099we have to have something and so the stipend is already built in so this is a true cost savings of moving to that type of a model but i know the two three correct based on the feedback yeah i'm not sure okay michelle okay thank you okay um for the cwa stands for child welfare and attendance and we get paid by our daily average attendance so without these people helping um and these critical roles how would it affect the money that we have coming into our district so there's two line items there's cwa aids and cwa specialists so um but each have two very different roles our cwa specialist work under our student services department um they pair families and students with resources to help them are chronically absent students which is an area of

100growth that our district has um they do a lot of work and they do a lot of outreach where our cwa aids are on our secondary sites and they sit in the front office they um they monitor attendance and they also um help with supervision and so as far as a direct correlation i can tell you there's a need because we do have an area of growth with our chronic absenteeism and that is specifically what these individual cwa specialists target are those students that are kind of absent meaning absent more than 10 percent so how would that affect the money coming into our district it'd be less well yes anytime the student is absent so we really need these people for these positions well i think that kind of going to trust you trust you

101because those are already tiered two and three right but they're still on the list okay i mean i understand that like i prefer to talk about i don't know it's fine that's fine i mean one of the things that i was thinking along trustee prussos comments about uh freezing lma all that help is the realization that as people like as support services go away the responsibility of that is going to have to fall on somebody and thinking about the the challenge that administration is going to have to face if you know if different decisions are made so i see that we have i like that this is broken down with more um details in the last um in the last one and um so i appreciate that we have it in all the different areas

102and i'm guessing that these numbers are estimates obviously um so my guess my question is i mean to me this if this seems like a great thing to do it can save as many because it it helps a lot of people um and possibly could limit the number of people that we um have to just give the pink slip to for march 15 my question is how what does that look like is this is this money is this benefits is it both if it's just benefits let's suppose that this person maybe already has benefits could they then um trade that for money i don't know exactly how that works or what it looks like but maybe you could just give us a little bit more details on that and then obviously i know you don't

103have a you're estimating i'm sure and then if this is something we decide to do there would probably be more um kind of whittle that down to be more specific and maybe how you estimate that so you're stealing our thunder where we actually are really happy to share that we have an agreement on an mou for the return incentive with la and that's on the agenda for tuesday to your question about the options there's both of those there's an option for a long sum for six years and an option in addition to that that they have okay now that's helpful thank you since we're with dr bodorus um if i if i hear your feedback it looks like there's a really strong emphasis on restructuring things or just looking at how to do things differently

104um staying away from you know student-facing roles um can you i wish we had a whiteboard or something but can you think of like some specific structural or uh management changes that that you believe would produce some meaningful savings that we can look at here so that yeah we have we could save some money there well i think there's a few different management changes that um i know have been discussed in educational services um in terms of you know vice principals and things there's a lot of different positions that are on the list and i don't think any of them necessarily would provide a more efficient system and so i would i would want to have some more conversations i think we've gotten a lot of feedback from csea a lot of feedback from lda

105and lma as well and um there's been a lot of talk about reduced days and reduced e2s reduced um um you know sounds and things like that but there hasn't been um i would want to wrap my head around a lot of the question around condensing and things like that i appreciate that i do think i would love to have more more discussion about just some uh sustainable least disruptive rethinking because i really uh locked my way on to the uh the rethinking of the of the district or just how we provide services um and i think we can based on the conversation i've had with so many of our employees and and um and people they're really close to that it looks like that they're that there's all these opportunities is what i think

106there are and i think that there's a lot of departments and programs that are really closely together and there lies an opportunity to explore yeah so i want to kind of recognize that we are that this is a process uh and hearing that we have uh input from lea on the you know coming in because looking at the technology i mean technology is human but i hear uh so i'm hopeful that the input from lea can provide some guidance regarding some of some of these because in talking with anecdotally with some people i think you know people are super happy to get rid of class link and i think that that's you know i see it as a tier two so i'm hopeful that with some of that further input looking at some of these

107non-person related things we can make some kind of smart that you know perhaps slightly meaningful choices okay um i spent last friday at granada high school ivy class and um i just wanted to ask the question um is there an alternative pathway for the students that are currently enrolled in the ivy program if this program was eliminated currently granada has an ap program those ivy courses do offer tests that that can raise their grade point average which is the same that's realized in an ap class but they it is a different program so i just want to acknowledge but the through line again in in the um in the feedback was to preserve people that work with students over programs or technology or items and so that's where that's where this this one came in

108and just a real quick follow-up question is there any statistic statistical tracking on how many students this program attracts to granada so that question was asked i did meet with ivy parents that's one of the groups that i met with and that question was asked as far as how many inter district transfers um unfortunately when i checked with miss christmas when we do the inter-district transfer process there is no reason code that we ask why students are coming into the district so there's no data gathering as to how many students are in inter and in the ivy program working to the district specifically for ivy so we don't really necessarily know um how many outside students we have because of ivy there's no data okay thank you but this there's a follow-up question with that

109okay sorry i jumped right in um six thousand dollars ivy i think it's on the list something like that um yeah if we lose these three or four students that would you know though that would hurt so with a quarter of the granada students currently enrolled in ivy students in classes um it's uh it becomes like this like i don't know you know who are we saving here how many ivy teachers are we going to lose because they love teaching that in that particular way so it'd be a good thing to take another look at sure i think something that's on the subject of ivy was thinking about the and speaking with different groups is the pipeline between our dual immersion program and ivy at granada high school and i think that that's something that

110i wasn't uh totally familiar with and thinking about the students that are taking advantage of those higher higher ability courses what i want to say higher track courses higher level there um and i think that that's i think the other thing regarding this that um the last time that it came up is i think uh trustee point we talked about that i think that it was i was brought in using a resolution um not to complicate things but i also recognize regarding ivy and other things lots of other things on here they go away it's really hard to get them back and so i think that this is one of those getting back to my initial question of how much of this is march 15 how close do we cut you know and that's something

111that we're going to provide guidance on um i got a lot of uh emails from people advocating for the library of media specialists and then um some of the individuals outlined all the work that they perform so i was just wondering because it's so close to students on a daily basis who would then do that work for them at all the various school sites well again that would be again negotiated in the impact of layoffs so it's hard to say a plan when we have to respect the negotiations process um it is a reduction of hours not a reduction of full ftd sites um and so just i think that that the um although the work that they do of course is important and integral uh and work as they work with students specifically um

112that that was all taken into account when the feedback was given thank you i think it'd be interesting to see how much of our costs or these the things that we know we have to keep it in a tier one are um because of contingencies like we're so nervous about um what could happen if in the unfortunate case of you know we have things in place that are so not it's not nice to have because they're so expensive if we do it wrong but there's there's quite a few of these that have these little asterisks with them they're not there but to me little asterisks because if we don't do this right we are going to be in a world of hurt um that was just a side thought thank you for listening um i

113heard a lot from the community at vineyard and i just wanted to know since it is proposed to offer three la reductions at the vineyard site i just wanted to know if it's possible that we could keep maybe one to two on that reduction list and what that would look like since the vineyard technically functions at a lower capacity so anything on this list i think somebody else brought up earlier can be a partial the reason why the 3.0 for that particular program i don't do you want to talk more about the reason why there's the three one two i mean i'm happy to do it but okay okay um the reason why we did the 3.0 to begin with is because of anticipated enrollment moving forward um right now the anticipated enrollment is set

114to somewhat decline um as students are graduating out of that pandemic the program would still be open and if more students opted to enroll in that program then it would be the discussion of the board to say do you want to cap that program a certain number and go to a waiting list you let everyone in and then clearly it's a matter of how many students are assigned a teacher and some of the other pieces of the puzzle so that number the 3.0 is what gets it to a place of approximately 20 to one a lot of independent study programs across the state are 24 to 28 to one and it's not easy that's it's not an easy position to have 24 to 28 students for one teacher on that revolving door at different grade

115levels and so we staffed it at approximately i think 20 to 22 to one at the 3.0 with the current anticipated enrollment do you want to add anything to that okay okay i think i think i'd like to talk a little bit about this just have some questions there um i saw that you put the two and a half million on the sheet you know just already expected savings at the bottom there um i am getting some conflicting um or no just some questions about uh where these reductions might impact ip compliance uh service continuity you know again the legal exposure how do we how close are we already to that line and how do we make sure that we and then then along with that i mean sure you know exposure and compliance also

116but also uh parent buying i am not sure if we're there yet with i think parents are still nervous and concerned feel a little bit like what one of our speakers said just feel like i think the plans already there we're just ramming through hoping to fill you guys in the way there but we've already have a plan so just let us do what we do so can you speak a little bit to that so thank you that's multifaceted and it's also kind of an addition to the budget it's kind of these two things are working simultaneously because i've been working with the parent group now since the beginning of the year or actually yeah we started in this year and we've had several meetings since september and so um we've been talking about continuity

117of the program from preschool all the way through high school and so for example we have several programs called learning center and they all have a different meaning and so there hasn't been a clear understanding of what each of those programs are so working with the sped work group and the parent advisory group we've been working on program descriptions that are based on our credential and our contract language so for example um we don't have contract language that clearly defines learning center and because we have three different programs at the elementary level we have a learning center program at middle school and no learning center at the high school it's been really challenging even with our parents to understand what the next level of their students education really is so we've been working on clear

118descriptions of each of our programs with that comes some clarity to our program so we have resource we have counseling rich and really a learning center has either been a mild mod program or a resource program so next year we'll be making that clear to families of what their program is called and then we of course have moderate and esn since now um since we have those different names at different levels next year we'll have clarity and we'll have the same learning resource counseling rich mild mod moderate and ce and esn all three of our levels now that doesn't change a student's minutes on their iup it doesn't change the services that they receive according to their iup and it also doesn't change the support that they receive so for example if they have a

119one-on-one para in their iup or something written like this as additional support with another adult and those things don't change at all what we've discovered in kind of our audit of our programs across the district is that we do have an odd number of para educators that support our students from site to site so some of our sites um for example at one of our sites we have a learning center program in elementary that has five para educators that doesn't include any one-on-ones it doesn't include extra support i'm not sure why there's five um but the learning center program in another campus has three and then a resource class has one so we never really had established ratios of the para educators of support for student in our classes additionally we have um it's it's

120great when a student can fade from their one-to-one that's a least restrict environment for our students and when that happens historically we haven't always um reduced that position and so um we've kind of gained additional support kind of i think it was mentioned as when times are good then we are adding positions and things and we haven't done a great job of monitoring and then reducing at the school site so they get used in lots of ways i hear all the time that oh i have a para in my general education class um that's getting paid for at our special education funding and that's not the intention and so again these two things started happening our program audits um kind of simultaneously were happening along with the budget reductions i think in an effort to

121be transparent of what the positions were looking like for next year that was added to the list originally like in january when that was sent out as a reduction but i will also share that the enrollment in some of our programs has declined and so sometimes a class is collapsed as a result of that moment for example mid-year this year we opened a class at jackson elementary to accommodate some new students that moved to our school next year they'll be able to go to an appropriate program at their home site um which will then reduce that position at jackson elementary and so um right now that is a substitute health position but there is money associated with it and so next year we replace and so when we saw on the list that there are

122also three teachers one of those would have been from that position another one we have learning centers at crochet that will have lower enrollment next year we won't be able to reduce at that site and then we were able to reduce at another site but as you know sped is ever changing and kids are still qualifying we're still supporting and so we will actually not be changing that program and so the total reduction of fte for the teachers would be two for next year we've already received and retirement notifications and resignations for various reasons and so and those people will have positions in our district when it comes to the parent educators again just reducing that total number by need not because a student we're not taking away from a child um but we are

123auditing our programs and for us in special education usually about now is when we start our staffing we started doing this work back in december so it's ever changing um as we move forward and we always make our decisions based on one we're going to start with the base ratio and then looking our program looking our student need and making adjustments along the way that was a lot do you have any no this is great so i wrote down something so this cost savings comes out of looking at ratios doing good audits maybe even some fade out fade out fade faders what did you call them fade out there are some students that fade from their one-to-one support but that's through the iu process certainly not because some enrollment some consolidation on different sites moving

124forward to looking at 26 27 do you still have elasticity to know to go back and go oh we we underestimated the need at this class or program site what how does that work yeah so right now our numbers again ever changing students qualify for special education every day and so on a we have in my department i keep several different spreadsheets to monitor several different things and one of those is our enrollment numbers at our school sites we work with our student services director to make sure that we're aligned with student seats in classrooms general education seats because our students are general education first so we make sure that they have seats and and then from there we also look at our parent allocation so we're looking at numbers in our classrooms and making

125sure that we have room for growth so we're not so tight that we can't add we certainly don't want to give layoff notices to anybody to say oops we need you back we want to make sure that we're working kind of conservatively because we know that our program grows so again it's still a little early for us to make final decisions on anything so we're monitoring that as we speak we rolled up our 2100 students on december 5th for projections starting on that day that we can start monitoring into next year and i will also add that both of our sped work group and our parent groups have both been we've talked about these things and our principals are having meetings or as we speak with their staff and we intend to roll out kind

126of a family newsletter about some of the proposed changes but again there will be nothing changing the students ips unless it's through the iup process that's really important for us to identify we need to follow iea follow their ips and these realignments is what we're calling them and will not impact students unless it is through the iup process except that pairs are not necessarily just plug and play there's relationships there between so you know how does that do you have a similar thing to the bumping that we hear of in other areas you know where there's some similarity is that the same with pair educators do and then you end up with a different pair and the one that your child is really the one that is really good at helping that particular child regulate

127themselves is now gone and that's concerning so it's twofold one we really don't want our students to get attached to one person because they become prompt dependent on that one person the other thing is in our contract language job descriptions parent educators are they're all the same job description so we don't have one-to-one specific jobs so when it comes to things that we do have to get to a bumping process it's clearly outlined in the collective bargaining agreement of how that stepping works adult transition program they are a different job description and so the process would be a little bit different for them and where do parents go to you know they look at that and they go man this could affect my child how do parents have an easy way to get a hold

128of you or their principal or their parents parents parents yeah so we have the principals we have a couple of our friends will meetings we have rolled out our plan asked for feedback and so they have been rolling it out to their school sites they have the best relationship with their staff and so i went to croci and did a presentation i also did a presentation at aurora saco and then i've offered to principals i'm happy to help i've been to smith and talk to their teaching staff and so we're kind of all working together right now and sending the same message they have a a powerpoint that they're sharing with their staff of explaining these things and the first three slides are all the same and it is also aligned to our strategic plan

129so it is in alignment with the work that we agree that we will be doing for the next five years and continuity across programs and grade levels and school sites is one of those and so we're just happy to get the work started but unfortunately it just it aligns with what we're doing right now and so it has kind of a big key feel yeah thank you so much okay i had a question um glenn sent us an email with reductions in his non-people uh ideas on how we can reduce out of the maintenance department is it possible that we can get some of those suggestions onto an updated list as far as um you know yeah so uh those were some of the when i was in the my summary that i provided that

130some of the ideas were great but they're really hard to put dollars to um like watering less or adjusting age back set points um rewriting facilities leases sharing trade vehicles um they're all ideas that can help us make changes for efficiencies and eventually save money but putting dollar value to that right now is extremely difficult because when we get a water bill for entire school sites it's for that whole school site it's not like our fields are on individual meters so to say we're not going to water this one field and identifying cost savings that i feel confident in um is something that we've been struggling with and so we've been talking about what exactly that would look like in cost savings um i could put it on there as with no cost savings we

131see like for example one of it is not irrigating for unused areas um that would make the appeal the visual appeal the sites look not as great and so we could bring that to the board to see if you would like us to move with that option to have a lower utility cost in water um but knowing that i don't know what dollar amount that i can put with it but like the trash compactor that we just installed the granada i did add to the list um some of the moving portables from sunset elementary that aren't utilized at least however those are our developer fee funds for increased enrollment that we had experienced at sunset selling our almond or our mocho sites unfortunately those we aren't able to use for general fund purposes they have

132to have facility funds so i have been taking each of those that have been provided but the ones that i can't give dollar amounts on i didn't add to the list but i can certainly add them if you would like do the side sales do they also not count towards our reserves correct they do not they don't count towards our reserve or because they can't use return on some purposes and i mean the rationale at least if i understood by the states they don't want districts to be in a position where they just want to sell everything to short term that you know if you have a if you have a structural problem you can have a structural answer to it i guess there's a pun or ironic pun about structures and other questions just

133to be honest just like related to that so the reserve has to be unrestricted it can be one time that are unrestricted um so a reserve if we get one time funds that are unrestricted yes that can be a plot we could save those ones instead of spending them and use them towards the reserve um the one time funds we've been getting lately while discretionary nature states are putting it as restricted so i can move unrestricted expenses over to restrict it to free up unrestricted dollars to fall to the beginning fund balance and help our reserves um which i'm doing a little bit of that by banking part of the settlement out of our discretionary one-time funds but saved enough for our social studies curriculum adoption but reserves in nature are a one-time expense you

134have a three percent reserve or if it's a different destination so six million approximately for our districts and if you spend it down that's a one-time source of money and then you have to build it back up to three percent but it's not like it's you get funding for your three percent if that makes sense thank you okay um i have an opportunity to serve and help in a school office on a busy friday morning so the reductions of the office specialist would greatly impact the flow and service for students at the respective school sites um how have we navigated through that reduction those are realized in the feedback survey as well that's why they're ranked as a two okay so any other comments from the board at this point just again these these are

135the questions i could put at the top of my list but i kind of just want to know from each one of you which one of these items that are on the list would you say no let's veto this if i had one veto vote two veto i would i don't understand why this is on there right along with that what are some items that are not on there that are that are not on there you're surprised because it's we should discuss it it may be a t2 or t3 but it should be discussed and maybe the board find myself you know interested in that and um yeah yeah what i wish you'd not be on the list is what i would know or they're on the list you understand why but now if you

136know what i know it's not a good idea to keep this on the list you don't have to answer it right now but i would love to know from you um because if i've when i've asked that staff members they've given me some really interesting answers that are more yeah since i'm not the expert in some ways i think having that conversation privately with each person that you want to ask that question would be appropriate i know you and i have had that conversation privately i don't i am going to request that we not put um my team on the spot in a public setting to pick one employee group over another because all of these employees are critical to everything that they do every day um i don't think that that's a fair question

137to ask in public yeah point taken any other questions from the board this time question or suggestion at least coming from us as a board is it possible that we could put on the list our um kind of pausing our subscription or our membership to the csba until we're in a healthier financial status because we don't utilize it as much and then to my knowledge is not mandatory and i don't think it would cost anything to restart that membership we how about if we pull that up and bring it on tuesday um there are things attached to our membership our board packets are through csba our board policies are through csba so there are other functions that i think if you're not on a member then you can't access those benefits that they provide but

138staff can look into that and we can add that for the tuesday agenda as an update yeah thank you is that also through policies also yes so gamut is through csba any other questions or actions from the board one more comment um just due to my educational professional background i would never want to eliminate any instructional specialist from students that includes physical education kid connection and intervention specialist just one point of looking forward um for the board just to be mindful of this is there's a regular meeting on tuesday and then i would say either tonight or tuesday night you should probably i'm assuming there needs to be another meeting between then and the 24th so getting that calendar just because um we have staff who need to be here to make the meetings run

139and we're running with some challenges with the additional board meetings that were already added where we're struggling to have staff like run behind the scenes of a board meeting so the sooner we can get those dates to staff behind the scenes the better just to make sure that everything's covered yes i have another tier one question um i'm wondering if you shoot yourself on the foot by cutting this deep to tv tip um the more i learned about it i think we may be you know cutting off our nose and spine our face kind of thing is there is there a rollback thing that we can do is there because it doesn't just affect our district other districts as well and it just in the added cost that we put on new teachers it just

140seems well what i will say is that um we've been you know trying to do a lot of creative thinking around a lot of these reductions and one is not first of all first and second year teachers cannot afford to pay for their own induction so that's not something that would ever be realized here in this district as long as i'm here because that is um an absolute added cost to our first year first and second year teachers so having said that we i am in conversations with the le county office of education about a different methodology to have teachers go through the induction program so right now our tv tip program is a full release model which is amazing to our first and second year teachers to your point they have a straight line

141to those coaches this new model would be more of a traditional model and that teachers veteran teachers would be paired usually on the same site with first and second year teachers in a stipend model and some coordination and so the county office would be assisting us because they do have quite a bit of grant funds for teacher induction and so i am in conversations with them right now but we're in the middle of those conversations i have a i have a fourth third appointment with a coe next tuesday to really dig into the details as a cost savings measure a major savings measure but yeah i'd be super interested in hearing about that i just think looking at the um the cost i think it's a great return on investment it doesn't seem to be

142a ton of money for everything to get forward plus it affects so many of our sites the morale that um well it's retaining it's yeah the retention so i have a real problem with that being you know recruiting anything else from the board on this item 3.1 then we'll move to 4.0 which is public comment on closed session i don't have any gray cards so then we'll move to 5.0 which is adjourned to closed session but this time the board will adjourn to closed session at 7 18 p.m good evening the board of education of the woodmore valley joint unified school district is now reconvening to open the session at 8 15 p.m all actions approved in closed session must be reported out in an open session the board took no action that is required

143to be reported at this time 7.0 next the next regular board meeting uh will be held tuesday february 10th 2026 open session will begin at 6 p.m this meeting is now a charge of 8 16 p.m