12.9.25 Board Meeting

001Good evening. Welcome. Good evening. We do quiet coyote. We got a bunch We do quiet coyote. We'd like to get started if everyone could just kind of quiet down just a little bit President will call the meeting in order. Thank you This is very exciting. Good evening This is the December 9th meeting of the Board of Education of the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District And our meetings are broadcast over zoom to provide the opportunity for our community to observe in real time The Board of Education of the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District is now reconvening to open session and it is 601 p.m Please be advised that our board meetings are televised on local channel 28 on Wednesday and Saturday evenings and on Monday Friday and Saturday mornings all actions Approved in closed

002session must be reported out in open session. I would ask Trustee Capuanis if she could please report out During closed session the Board of Education took action regarding the readmins of a stipulated expulsion for student I the board voted 5-0 in favor of the superintendent's recommendation to deny the readmins of student I During closed session the Board of Education took action regarding the readmins of a stipulated expulsion for student H and the board voted 5-0 in favor of the superintendent's recommendation to deny the re-admittance of student H. During closed session the Board of Education took action regarding the re-admittance of the stipulated expulsion for student E and the board voted 5-0 in favor of the superintendent's recommendation to approve the re-admittance of student E. During closed session the Board of Education took action regarding the

003re-admittance of the stipulated expulsion for student K and the board voted 5-0 in favor of the superintendent's recommendation to deny the readmins of student K. And during closed session, the Board of Education took action regarding the readmins of a stipulated expulsion for student G. The board voted 5-0 in favor of the superintendent's recommendation to deny the readmins of student G. Thank you. Okay, before we begin our meeting, I'd like to turn the time over to Dr. Gibson for our organizational meeting. Good evening. At the organizational meeting held at the end of each calendar year, the Board of Trustees selects a president and a clerk to serve for the calendar year. Board members will nominate candidates for the position and a vote will be taken. So what we'll do next is we'll do first the president

004and then we'll do the clerk. The way this works is you can make a motion to nominate someone. I will then ask the person if they accept the nomination. If they do, then we need a second and a vote. If they deny, then we wait for another motion. And then we'll do the same for the clerk. Any questions? Okay. Do I have a motion for the election for the president of the board for 2026? I'd like to move to nominate Trustee Druhan as president. Trustee Druhan, do you accept the nomination? I accept. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Trustee Vanden Heuvel. Let's do a roll call vote. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? Aye. Trustee Druhan? Aye. Trustee Perusso? Aye. Trustee Bueno? Trustee Capuanis? Aye. Congratulations, Trustee Druhan. You will be the president for the board of

005trustees for LVJSD for 2026. Well, you all move seats in just a couple minutes, so let's do the clerk first. So election for clerk. Do we have a nomination for clerk? I nominate Trustee Vanden Heuvel to serve as clerk. Trustee Vanden Heuvel. Sorry, I was going to get that right out of the gate. Trustee Vanden Heuvel, do you accept the nomination? I do. Is there a second? I'll second. Thank you, Trustee Perusso. Let's do a roll call vote. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? Aye. Trustee Druhan? Aye. Trustee Perusso? Aye. Trustee Bueno? Trustee Capuanis? Nay. A 4-1 pass for Trustee Vanden Heuvel to be the clerk. Congratulations. So at this time, I'm going to have you rotate seats wherever you would like to go, other than the two of you know where you're going, and I'm assuming Trustee

006Perusso, you're just going to swap on over. Mrs. Dawson, will you do me the favor of, yeah, thank you, the name text, thank you. And as soon as you're seated, then Trustee, or President Druhan, I will then pass the meeting back over to you for item 5.3, which is approval of the revised board calendar. While they're doing that, I just want to just give a quick shout out to past President Perusso for her time serving on the board as the president for the last two calendar years. So thank you for your time as the president. Not sure if it's allowed, but if it pleases the board, I will ask you indulge me for a few comments. So I appreciate the extension of trust in my leadership. Maria Ressa, Nobel Prize winner, stated, if you have

007no facts, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust. Without these three, we have no shared reality. So I believe that we have trust issues with our community, which means we have truth issues, which means we have fact issues. It's important for us to understand that facts are not just rooted in budgets and numbers alone. Lived experiences are facts for people. When we limit, disregard, or dismiss those stories, we risk breaking the process of building trust. The role of this board is to provide direction and oversight to the district. However, the larger role to the community is to nurture trust. It's my goal to help lead this board to assert itself on all three of these points. Clear direction on the path forward, firm oversight of the district, and finally rebuilding trust with

008the community. I recognize that we have a lot of work to do, and I appreciate the opportunity to lead. Thank you. So up next is 5.3 approval of revised board calendar. So I turn the time over to Dr. Gibson. Actually, I think there's a speaker card first. So we have one speaker card for Joanne Morrison, and you'll have three minutes, as I know you know. Good evening, President Druin. I almost said Pruso. Members of the board, Superintendent Gibson, and cabinet, I'm going to be very brief. I don't know what happened in our last discussion of the calendar. I thought we were going to restore at least some of the numbers of meetings that were eliminated previously on a trial basis, and I don't think that's been done with this revised calendar. All that has been

009done really is some renaming of the morning meetings back to workshops, and to me, it makes very little difference whether it's a workshop or a meeting, per se. These are opportunities for engagement with the community. It's a platform for people to address the board, whether it's on behalf of teachers and staff, on behalf of the community, whoever, and we have reduced those opportunities with the calendar that we have now, and I really want to beseech the board to restore the number of meetings that we had previously, and I know that we can always call meetings if we need to add them, but I think the community needs to see these scheduled meetings to know that the opportunities are going to be there, not on an ad hoc basis. So that's all I have. Thank you.

010Thank you. So we've heard from the public, and so now it's time for clarifying questions or board discussion. Trustee Bueno? I appreciate the reimplementation of the workshop format. It was said by the speaker here, but it appears as though the revisions shift away from the stated intent of the Thursday board meetings, and that was being to engage in school plans, recognitions, things that were less substantive than our regular Tuesday meetings, which would remain the focus of Tuesday evening meetings. When it was implemented, the board was informed that the workshop format, and it was long utilized by previous administrations to dive deeper in the specific subjects like budget, goals, priorities, things like that, that those were illegal at the time, and it wasn't semantics, but that we weren't supposed to do that. So shifting back to

011it, I welcome it because I was of the opinion at the time. I voted against the change, but I'd still remain opposed to the Thursday morning meetings and the elimination. I'm not a big meeting person, as many people know, but I do believe in the public's ability to attend, and I have not seen the benefit of the Thursday morning meetings. So I remain opposed to the Thursday morning regular meetings, and it just seems as though we're going to use the workshop, so you just kind of renamed it maybe, and maybe that's not the case. Maybe it'll play out differently. I know that our meetings were curtailed. We used to have, not that everything has to be as it was. Sometimes you have to revise. So like the 6 o'clock start time, that seems to work

012better for people, and I was opposed to that. I was wrong on that. But I do remain opposed to the Thursday morning regular board meetings as opposed to a Tuesday evening meeting when our employees can attend and when the public has the ability to attend. Maybe I'm confused. I think we, are we, do you not want to have Thursday meetings or just board meetings? I appreciate the workshops. Okay. I appreciate that. But it just seemed, because we were asked the question a couple of times, like on Thursdays, because we kind of get in a crunch where we can't get all the business done on the Tuesdays that we have, and the agreement was for the Thursdays that it would be things that I don't want to say that they're not important, but they were less

013determinative. They were school plans. They were student presentations. They were things like that, more lighthearted things on Thursdays as a regular 9 o'clock meeting. In the past, in those workshops, sometimes they started at 7, 7.30, based on the rendition of the board, but the workshops allowed us for a deeper dive, and I explained that when we made this temporary change or this trial, and it, we were told that you couldn't do that, that it was something with the Brown Act, it was illegal and we couldn't do it, and it wasn't just semantics. But we're going back to it. It's just a matter of noticing and things like that. I'll let the professionals deal with that. But I am simply concerned for the public, and importantly, our employees' ability to attend, because it's my understanding that

014people work during the day and they can't come to the meetings. That's all. So I'm just going to, sorry, I just want, do you want, I'm just going to clarify, so no workshops on the, nothing during the day? I welcome the workshops. Okay, then we're on the same page there. Yeah, I welcome the workshops. So I'm not sure what. But renaming a Thursday morning meeting that is a regular meeting, renaming, apparently, I mean, I'm not saying that's the intent here. I can't see the intent. But renaming a meeting that's on the calendar to workshop so that we can discuss things that are more substantive to the business of the district as opposed to reinstating the Tuesday meetings seems like a little three-card money. Okay. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? Yeah, so we, so we're moving back to

015where we were when I first joined the board, right? We're back to the regular Tuesday meetings and then a couple of Thursday board workshops as well. That's the, that's the, we go, we're changing back to the previous historical. Right now we have, we have before us a plan. Right. Yes. So if we vote on that and that's. The question of the business right now is discussing that plan and we don't have a motion. So it's, it's, and I don't want to put words in Trustee Bueno's mouth, but it sounds like Trustee Bueno is more in favor of moving back to what we were maybe a year, a year and a half ago. Great. So that's the. Yep, yep, yep, yep. So in that case, we add, add some evening meetings but keep the workshops on

016Thursday. I just want to make sure I got, I. I just want to make sure that the workshop, the, the plan, what we were told was the workshop, you guys can clarify, that the workshops had to be calendared and noticed a certain way for them to be legitimate. You can't just start dumping them in. Right. But that was the way, I mean I was board president for eight years, they were, they were agendized, they were on a calendar for the year and then the workshops were canceled as needed. Now if the rules change, I don't know. But if, but it sounds like, and at least the reality has been, that this was somewhat of a trial to give better access in the mornings on Thursday. I don't know that that's the reality because it seems

017like public sentiment is to reinstate as we did it. We used to have the first Tuesday and the third Tuesday and sometimes they flexed a little and there was three months that we didn't have Tuesday, a second Tuesday meeting or something. It was like April and I don't, I'm bad with dates, everyone knows that. But there was about nine second Tuesday meetings as well as, I mean you were on the board. Yeah. And for a long time. The workshops tended to be around the goal, the board goals, priorities, things like that, budget. We did a deeper dive. We held them in conference room C. It was more like that. Yeah. So when we took those off the table, workshops, we had these Thursday morning meetings. I just haven't seen it come to fruition. What the

018stated goal was, attendance, ease of use, I mean it seems like it's contrary to that. I think, so a couple of points, unless you have anything to jump in, Trustee Kaplanis. I'm not opposed to adding the Tuesday meetings if needed. But I don't think we need to like schedule it in advance if we don't, it's just to do business. And if we're doing business on Thursday meetings, then just do it as is. So I have a couple of points. So first, my recollection of how we got to where we are is this. So when I first got on the board, we had speed dating school site plans. And so we would all meet in here and we would, each site would present in kind of five minutes. And there wasn't enough time to meaningfully engage

019with those sites. So about a year and a half, we switched to, maybe two years, we switched to having the presentations be part of the evening board meetings. So, and I should say that that switch, to my recollection, that's not standard practice, that's not something that happens in most school districts is hearing having us engage directly with school sites. So part of that then moving to having administrators here, it made meetings longer, having them come present while they're, you know, during normal business hours was part of the rationale for having the workshop time. So it's kind of two things that we're working together at the same time. So the question then is, and this is the, you know, I've heard from the community, we want more transparency. And I don't know if this is going

020to articulate as well as I would like to, but which transparency do we want or do we want all of it? Do we want us to engage with school sites? And if we do, do we want to do that in the evening or do we want to do that during the day? And then secondly, or do we not want us engaging with school sites and just have all of the business meeting in the evening? And I think that those are some of the kind of challenges to creating a situation where we, a board, can have oversight and have meaningful conversations with principals about what's happening in their school sites, which I think I appreciate. But we have to find a place and a space to have those conversations or not. And so that's the rationale

021that I track for why moving to a Thursday, and I hear, I hear the community saying, it sounds like you're trying to have meetings during the day where we can't come. And we tried to communicate that we wouldn't address meaningful business during that. But, you know, we have levers and we can, you know, be in charge of the agenda. So, but, or any comments on that, because I have some other information that I'd like to share. My preference, I like having the time to have those meaningful conversations with our sites. And it's the same way that we used to do it before. And I think we get that during the day. Now, what's different is it's available on Zoom for people. If people, if people want to add the, if we need, if people want

022us to add more meetings in the evening, not opposed to that, but I, I like having those workshops. I'd like to keep the workshops. I like the workshops, as long as we keep them, you know, about the site or budgetary or whatever. Nothing that we vote on, just, just discussion action, or discussion only. Because I think the difference about semantics of calling it a workshop is that we can't vote. There's no, there's no, it being a workshop means that it's information only for us. So then that, to some extent, the worry from the community was that you're having these meetings during the day, we can't attend, this is a transparency issue. So moving, labeling them workshops denies us the ability to do fundamental action during that time period, which addresses some of the transparency issues

023that was, that was raised by the community. But the other point that I'm not sure if this is going to add much clarity, but so I had the privilege and pleasure of attending the president's workshop at the California School Board Association Conference. And in that, the question came up, do you, how many meetings a year do you have? And when we previously talked about this, I did some, I'm not sure if I would call it research, but I looked at different districts to understand how many have two, two meetings a month, how many have mostly two meetings a month except for December, November, November, December, and January, and how many just have one. And so I have, I had lost that file, but today I went through and looked, and so I'd like to share

024with you all, I didn't bring enough for the whole class, sorry. But I can kind of summarize for you. So with the exception of Stockton Unified, no district meets in July. Everyone takes July off except for Stockton. Stockton Unified and Mount Diablo Unified, Unified, you can see my spelling error, sorry, they have 21 meetings. And these are just in the evening meetings. Oh, can we pass those back for a board? I'm new. And this wasn't comprehensive. I was just going through all the districts in and around our, there's over a thousand school districts. There's 20 that, I'm sorry, there's one, two, Pleasanton, Dublin, Castor Valley, Santa Clara, and Lodi, and they're all unified just for, so we know. Unified has elementary, middle school, and high school. Some districts are not unified where it's just elementary.

025For example, Lafayette School District is just elementary. So two have 21, Dublin, Pleasanton have 20 meetings, and then a slew of other ones, Tracy, Walnut Creek, Ceres, and New Haven have somewhere between 13 and 18 meetings, and then some have 12 meetings or less. San Ramon, San Leandro, Lafayette, Snelling, Merced Falls, and Senol Glen Unified. So I was interested if non-unified school districts would have less, but there's only two non, I think two non-unified on this list. So just to kind of give you a sense, so in this presidential workshop they had people raise their hands, and I was under the impression based upon the last time I looked at this issue that it was mainly going to be two meetings a month and very few, but it was about half and half. But keep

026in mind that there are meeting, two meetings a month, and one meeting a month, but we're us, and these meetings are for our business. So, you know, but I wanted to share what others do. So I'd entertain other discussion items or thoughts or questions about this. Did you include workshops in this? Like, no. Okay, just regular. This is just board meetings, and I will say that just kind of cursorily looking at other districts' workshops, they have maybe three, you know, and because it's similar to what Trustee Bueno had said, the, you know, four or five years where you would have maybe a governance workshop, a budget workshop, and one other one, but because we, as a district or us as a board have got to the position of wanting to hear presentations from each of

027our schools, that's kind of where we are and why we're different. Yeah, and to that, I don't want to call it a workshop because I don't recall, but the single plans, the school presentations used to be, it was during the day, when the teachers and the principals were here and they used to break us up as a board and we'd go, they'd rotate from three different rooms, they'd kind of come through and do their thing. And some people really liked it. That was something that didn't happen before. There was board members that liked that, but it was conducted in the day, non-voting. I don't know if it was called a workshop or, I know it wasn't called a special meeting, but it was single plans, so I don't know how we conducted it because we

028didn't have regular meetings. So it had to be, I'm going to guess, a workshop. So my concern here is simply the moving of a regular meeting from an evening convenience to a daytime, perhaps, inconvenience is detrimental to public discussion. That's my only real point. But Steve, trust President Gerard, we're not doing that though, right? We're not changing any evening meetings, correct? No. Sorry, my button's not working. Compared to a year ago, this is not the same as a year ago, but compared to, because we had adopted a calendar in May of this current one. Right. So compared to the calendar we adopted in May, this is not changing evening meetings. Compared to two years ago, then this is different. Okay. So I just want to understand what Trustee Winner wants to do is go back

029to the previous schedule of two meetings a month in the evening and our workshops. So that would be three meetings a month. Yeah, that would be three meetings a month. Not to paint a false picture. It wasn't literally, we didn't do 12 workshops and we didn't do 12, there was meetings when we didn't meet. There was months we didn't meet and there were some months where we didn't need the meeting. So I'm going to guess that we were probably, to use your example here, somewhere in the area of 13 to 18 meetings a year, which would be similar to Walnut Creek, Ceres, New Haven, Tracy. The 20th was probably a little excessive because you didn't include workshops. And the workshops had a purpose. They weren't, they were scheduled and sometimes they were in the same

030week as a Tuesday meeting and it was to get deeper dive. I mean, they were more in formal setting and I don't know, I'm not looking to go back to exactly what we did because there are some things that I was incorrect about. I didn't think that the 6 o'clock start time would be good. So if there's things that the community would like to see and there's things that work for us as a board, I think that that's the way that we should move as opposed to, and I'm literally not trying to go back and say, oh, let's go back to some old time thing. It's simply I thought that having the evening meetings gave better access, whether that was 15 or that was 18. But it wasn't 24 in addition to 12 workshops. It

031wasn't really that much more of a workload for us. It was, and staff, it really was almost the same. The one point that would carry is that staff, most directors and above, attended the regular Tuesday meetings and so that, yes, that would, is a burden, but one could also look at that if that's your obligation. I don't, that's just, I don't know how you want to look at that. That's all. So is it okay that we keep the same schedule and then add the Tuesday evening meetings as needed? I don't, I don't. We, we, if we need to have another, like, Tuesday meeting for the, for the calendar purpose? I think the, the action likely, there's three actions, I think. It's my first day. We could vote on the, we could vote on the motion

032as is, see if it carries. So if there's somebody that wants to put this forward, you could put that forward. If there's a second, then we all have to vote on that as is. The second option is we could table. We could wait until January. We could reach out to the community. We could try to, and part of that could also be to determine what we want workshops to be. If we, if we want to continue with the school site plans. Maybe that's something that can happen separately. Maybe, you know, it doesn't, doesn't have to be that way. This, again, this is our meeting. We get to decide how we want to use it. And then the third, which I would really recommend not, would be to amend the, do an amendment to it on

033the fly. So I think of, of the two, if there's, again, if there's, if one of you wants to put forward, you could put forward and there's a second, and then we would vote on it as is. The other option is that we can table it. We can talk to our community members. We can think to ourselves. And I don't know if we could bring back a few options and discuss, or if we have to bring back one. Okay. We can bring back, I can bring back multiple renditions of this, I think, I think where the confusion comes into play is this, any time the board convenes, we can call it whatever we want to call it. You can call it anything you so choose. But anything that is calendared for the public viewing is

034a board meeting, period. If you have three of you in a room together and it's calendared long-term, which the workshops were. A, it's, it's, it's a set board meeting. We call it what we wish. And it has to be posted 72 hours in advance. Whether those things were happening prior or not, I don't care. It doesn't matter. There's, I'm, I want to get away from what did and didn't happen in the past. Under me, I want to be compliant with the Brown Act. Reason being is that there's just so much more visual scrutiny over school boards as a whole with everything being recorded. Ten years ago, school board meetings were never recorded and your legal counsel would have said, don't ever allow it. And post-COVID, here we are. Everything's recorded and televised on TV three

035times a week. So, I just want to make sure we're compliant with whatever the board would like to do. So, if it's a workshop and it's on this calendar and the two, and we have two Tuesday meetings, that means we have three board meetings a month, however you want to call it. So, it's up, just I think like you said, President Druin, is it's a matter of what the board wants to do with that time and how much time. If we want to just say we'll do workshops as we need them, great, then we talk about, then where do we do the principal data presentations? Do we do the principal? That's a more philosophical conversation that I have with the board and you give me direction and then I create the calendar. So, I can

036create multiple renditions of this calendar and look at the months where historically there are two meetings like the ones that have 13 to 18. There's a reason why certain months, there are two board meetings, March being one of them, August being another one, July there's none, June you're required, June every school district is required to have two in June because of LCAP. So, there are legal requirements that we have to have in place, but it's really just about making sure that we're compliant with the Brown Act. And as long as it's published as a meeting, whatever we call it, we have to post within 72 hours with whatever the content is and we need to hold the meeting. So, if there's no motion, then perhaps I will, we will table this and I will encourage

037us all to do some soul searching on school presentations. Do you want them as they currently are? Do you want them clustered as one or do you want them different? Perhaps provide feedback to, again, Dr. Gibson is the hub. And then what are your thoughts about Tuesday meetings? The number of them and then perhaps school presentations because in the evening meetings at a separate meeting spread out or a separate meeting all clustered together where we do, you know, so for our Trustee Vanden Heuvel and Trustee Kaplanis, we would meet and we would hear 10 or 12, so it was kind of speed dating. So, that's another option for it. And you could ask good questions and one of the benefits of something like that was that we kind of lose the thread of questions that

038we have between the different meetings and so if they're all together, you can kind of have a group focus, group dialogue about it. And then Dr. Gibson, you can come up with a couple plans and then we can decide what's the best for our board. That was exciting. Halfway through, I was like, have we done the Pledge of Allegiance and we haven't because it was all part of the first. So, now we are reconvened back to our regular session. That was our organizational meeting and so now we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance. So, we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance and I'll ask Robin Depock, will you lead us in the Pledge? Superintendent Gibson, are there any changes to the agenda? No, there are not. Okay. So, we're on to 9.0, actually 9.1. We

039have Mr. Garrett Fitch, principal of Mendenhall Middle School. We'll recognize four staff members. Brought a bunch of friends with me to support me today. I'm Garrett Fitch and I'm the proud principal of Mendenhall Middle School. Good evening to Board President Druin, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson and cabinet. I could not be more proud and privileged to be able to recognize the amazing group that I have behind me. And I've done my best to speak to the things that they do that I see from a day to day, but I certainly would need much more time to be able to list all the things that they do. Today, I have Ms. Colleen Small with me. I have Noelle Johnson, Heidi Pittman and Swapna Seraf. Each of them serve a very unique purpose at our school

040and I just wanted to celebrate a few things that I see in them. First, I'll start with Colleen Small. You know what, I'm not going to read. Not that, it doesn't work for me. Colleen Small is one of our resource teachers. She is also a co-teacher for our eighth grade students. I don't think I've ever met somebody who is more patient when it comes to the things she might see. If you can imagine what an eighth grade resource student might present to somebody on a day to day basis. She is the ultimate collaborator. That was the first thing I thought of when I thought of our core value of collaboration for Livermore Unified. She is truly a kind and compassionate person, always looking out for the best of students and ruthlessly going after what we

041can be doing to support them and working so well with teachers and their families. A warm and positive person, never complains, always up for the task and somebody I truly admire in the work that she does. Next, we have Noelle Johnson. She is a sixth and eighth grade science teacher at our school. She took on our learning center science class last year when we pretty much had no idea what that was going to look like and has just been so flawless in her implementation of getting those students what they need in the classroom. But she truly does embody what integrity is. On a daily basis, I see her showing professionalism, reliability, honesty, and always communicating concerns she has for students and asking what we can be doing to better help them and also communicating that

042to families as well. She is truly a valued teammate at Mendenhall and somebody that is looking to support and connect our students with what they need in the classroom. Her enthusiasm and creating meaningful opportunities with students is second to none. And I truly love watching her work. Next, we have Heidi Pittman, somebody that I see as a true innovator for what it means to be not just a teacher but just an amazing person. Heidi is a math teacher but that is such a simple description of all the things that she does. Heidi teaches co-taught math. She teaches algebra. She is taking on math counts this year. She is our acting athletic director. She coaches after-school sports. If I kept going, it would be exhausting. I can't believe everything that she does and there's not enough

043time for me to say thank you for all the things that she means to me and our school. She truly embodies what it means to just give your all to something that she loves doing. And if you were to watch her teach math, you would want to be in that classroom and that is very unique because the math classroom can be a dark dungeon. I was a math teacher, okay, so I know, but I just see her as a shining light on our campus and I am incredibly grateful to have somebody like her to work with. And last but certainly not least, we have Ms. Swapna. She is a parent educator in our moderate SCC classroom. That job creates unique experiences each and every day and I just absolutely love the way that she approaches

044each and every unique challenge, never afraid to ask questions or ask for help, never afraid to admit if she doesn't know what to do or how to support, but always looking to include, always looking for ways to make sure our students in those classrooms are getting what they need and being able to be a part of our Mendenhall community, creating an environment where students feel safe, seen, understood, and genuinely cared for. And I just so love each morning when I get to school at 7.30, she's helping out as our students are eating breakfast and she is the first person to say good morning. So incredibly grateful for her, incredibly grateful for this group and I truly believe they reflect our core values of collaboration, integrity, innovation, and inclusion. Up next, 9-2, we have Ms. Jennifer

045Burkholder, principal of Leo Croce Elementary School. So before you get started, so it's my wife introduces herself to her students. It's like Bruin, but with a D, but it's Druin, so. I got you, I got you. Good evening, board president Druin, members of the board, superintendent Gibson, and cabinet. I am the proud principal of Croce Elementary. Tonight, I have the honor of recognizing two exceptional members of our Croce Elementary team, Belinda Rentaria Toscano and Jessica McDonald. Choosing just two people out of our 100 plus outstanding staff members was incredibly difficult. Every one of them contribute to the warm, caring, and resilient culture that makes Croce such a special place. This year, as we've navigated increasing challenges with behavior and emotional regulation among some of our young friends, these two women have stood out in extraordinary

046ways. No matter which students needed support, whether or not they are on their caseload, in their room, or part of their day, Belinda and Jessica stepped in without hesitation. They never respond with, I can't, I don't have time, that won't work, or this isn't the right environment. Instead, they consistently lead with curiosity, compassion, and collaboration. They are the people who ask, what do you need? How can I help? What do you think about this, or what if we try? Their mindset, their actions embody LVJUSD's core values of collaboration and inclusion every single day. They lift up all of our students, they support all of our staff, and they strengthen our entire Croce community. Whether it is a kind word to a student, a much needed timely joke, or offering assistance in a classroom, these ladies

047are always looking to find ways to lift up our entire community. It is my absolute privilege to recognize Belinda Renteria Toscano and Jessica McDonald tonight in front of the board, in front of their families, and in front of their peers for their remarkable heart and dedication they bring to our school to include all of our students and to support all of our staff, including me. Thank you. Up next, we love 10.0, we love hearing from our student board member representatives in the report on school activities. Up first is Trustee Cress. Granada had an exciting and successful month of November, filled with athletic accomplishments, student achievement, and the start of her winter season. With the ending of our fall sports came many feats worth noting. We are incredibly proud to share that our boys cross country

048team won the North Coast Section Championship and went on to compete at the state meet where they placed ninth overall, and an outstanding achievement that reflects their dedication and teamwork. Our fall athletic season also wrapped up with an exciting playoff run as our boys varsity football advanced all the way to the North Coast Section semi-finals. As we move into winter sports, teams are gearing up and already competing. Boys soccer opened their season with a game on December 3rd. Boys basketball have already won two season games, and wrestling has also begun. We are thrilled to highlight our wrestler, Stevie Martin, who is currently ranked first in the state and second in the country. We are also proud to recognize our student of the month, Katie Vail. Katie Vail was honored as the Rotary Student of the

049Month for November. She's an extremely active member in Granada's campus with her outstanding performance in girls varsity flag football this fall. Additionally, we recently held our fall signing day, celebrating six student athletes who officially committed to continuing their athletic and academic careers at the collegiate level, including commitments to Georgia, UC Davis, and many more schools. On campus, the arts are thriving. Our drama department successfully concluded their fall production with strong attendance and community support. Meanwhile, our choir is preparing for their winter choir concert this Friday, bringing festive music to our campus as we enter the holiday season. The start of December also brings community building traditions on campus. Our senior class created a what are seniors thankful for video to spread positivity as they headed into fall break. Leadership is also hosting our annual staff

050kids holiday party tomorrow filled with fun activities for the children of our amazing educators at Granada. It is a beloved tradition and creates joyful atmosphere for families and staff members to celebrate together. Academically, our students are also working hard as finals approach, preparing to finish the semester strong before heading into winter break. Overall, November was a month full of accomplishments, celebration, and school pride. We look forward to closing out the semester on a high note and continuing to support our students and teachers in all of their pursuits. Thank you. Thank you. Go on to Trustee Deepak from Livermore High. November was an exciting and unique month for Livermore High School Cowboys. As fall sports have slowly come to an end, the Cowboys have been ramping up training and practice for winter sports such as basketball,

051soccer, and wrestling. A rival rally was held on November 7th to bring spirit and hype up to the Cowboys for the upcoming rivalry game which the Livermore football team did not disappoint in beating Granada. The Cowboys celebrated their successful season with winning the E-ball league championship as well. The varsity basketball team has also won its past two games showing itself to be a prominent and exciting team to watch for the future. Livermore High School has also had numerous other thrilling experiences throughout the month as showcased in the various clubs, events, and opportunities available at school. On the weekend of November 8th, the LHS GraviTech X Robotics Club pulled off the first place win at the Madtown Throwdown off-season robotics competition. The club has many new members and new student leadership this year since several students

052graduated last spring. This was a great experience for the team as they prepared for the 2026 competition season, and the club will begin building a new one in January for competitions in March and April. Livermore High School proudly presented the Brothers Grin, a fast-paced and witty twist on classic fairy tales brought to life by our talented student cast. The production blended humor, creativity, and heart, delivering an unforgettable performance for our community. The Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group has honored Livermore High School with the 2025 Dreammakers and Risk-Takers Award, recognizing our school's commitment to student-driven innovation and community impact. A shining example of this work is the Butterfly Garden Group within our Environmental Action Club. These dedicated students partnered with the Fertile Groundworks and the Xerces Conservation Group to build a thriving butterfly garden supporting the local

053ecosystem with essential monarch butterfly habitats. Their efforts promote sustainability, biodiversity, and community education. Looking ahead, the group will host sixth graders from East Avenue and Junction Middle School during Earth Day of 2026, inspiring the next generation of environmental stewards. We are proud to recognize Mr. Gabe Castro, honored as part of the 49ers Teacher of the Game program at the 49ers game. He was celebrated for his creativity, passion, and commitment to creating a classroom environment where students feel safe, connected, and seen. His work through Cowboy Alley Productions, the Cowboy Alley Film Festival, CB&N, and Operation Needle Drop highlights his dedication to amplifying student voice and building community. In addition to this, our ASB team is excited to share that the new LHS swag is now available on the Cowboys' web store. Items are selling quickly, so

054go grab your gear and show your Cowboy spirit before it's gone. As the school year is slowly approaching to an end, already 50% being complete, many important senior events and information are coming to be announced. Like the Grad Night dedications and Safe and Sober Grad Night. As finals slowly approach toward the end of the semester, November has shaped out to be a tremendous month for the Livermore High School. December will be an exciting end of the year for the Cowboys, and we are excited for everything ahead of us. It's a great day to be a Cowboy. Trustee Bueno? Just wanted a small point of personal privilege here. Just for the community, having been on the board for 11 years now, the community chose to support our schools through a bond and through parcel taxes, and

055I was here before that, and I'm here now. And for a lot of people, because communities turn over. The accomplishments that these two student reps are talking about are a direct result of community support giving opportunity to our kids and our students. When you hear about these championships and opportunities and these awards and the arts and kids going on to pursue things in their dreams, that's a direct result of our community supporting, building facilities. It's literally a field of dreams. We use the word transformational when it happened, and we're seeing the transformation now. So I love seeing the smile on both your things. Thank you, Trustee Bueno. 11.0, Employee Association Reports. So up first, we have LEA, Amy Thompson is the president. While she is seating, I will also recognize Tara Lutz as the vice

056president. Is there a cool? Good evening, Board President Drouin, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson, and cabinet. I'm Amy Thompson, president of the Livermore Education Association. I represent the dedicated educators, nurses, counselors, psychologists, speech pathologists, social workers, and teachers on special assignment who serve the students of this district every single day. We are here again tonight to make a fundamental request. We demand a fair compensation package. It is profoundly disappointing to sit before you tonight, months after this issue should have been resolved in September. What we were offered then was not a solution but an insult, an offer that attempted to pit the critical need for teacher compensation against the need for student instructional materials. This battle has been a profound misappropriation of resources, specifically the precious human capital intended for our students. Our teachers

057have been in the classroom all day. They still have papers to grade, emails to answer, and lessons to prepare, not to mention their own families to tend to. Our parents would prefer to be at home with their children, yet we are all forced to be here tonight to make it known that this issue is urgent and requires immediate resolution. We have been told there is not money to properly compensate our teachers, yet we see money for consultants and contractors, new furniture, beach retreats, the hiring of upper management at considerable cost increases. This is the financial equivalent of saying, I can't afford my rent but check out my new sports car. District management has its priorities dangerously wrong. We have heard from the district about, quote, our reality, but the district seems to be missing the

058true point. Our reality is not an excuse, it is a crisis that demands action. We currently rank ninth out of 11 districts for compensation. We rank lowest in compensation compared to our four closest neighbors. We currently have over 20 positions filled by people without proper credentials. We have been forced to hire expensive contractors to fill essential positions. Even after implementing staffing cuts last year, we still needed to hire over 50 people this year and here we are in December and we still have unfilled positions. The reality is simple, to provide the best for our students, which means fully staffed classrooms with qualified retained educators, we must dramatically improve our compensation package. The word strike has been used by some. I want to be perfectly clear, we do not want to strike. This administration needs to

059stop with the divisive tactics and the excuses and start providing solutions. Continuing to offer insults instead of compensation while simultaneously spending money on non-critical initiatives will not achieve stability for our schools. We need two things, an acceptable and respectful offer during mediation on December 12th and a long-term plan to move our compensation forward to an attractive competitive level. We look forward to a resolution that finally respects the educators who serve this community. Thank you. Thank you. Up next we have CSEA, do we have CSEA President Mamie Christovich here? Okay, there she is. I'd like to also recognize Victoria Storti, her Vice President. Good evening President Druin, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson and cabinet. I am Mamie Christovich, President of the Livermore Chapter of CSEA, the California School Employees Association. I hope everyone enjoyed their

060Thanksgiving break, which seems like a long time ago now. Somehow we are near the end of the calendar year and the holiday season is upon us again. For me and a lot of people, this is a time to recognize and appreciate the value of relationships and to take stock of the things that really matter. While we should do so year-round, I believe this is also a time to look within our hearts and embrace empathy and kindness, especially with everything happening in the world around us. There are many things we cannot control, but within the realm of things we can do to affect positive change, even the smallest acts and choices can improve the lives of others. That is why I am still here before you after a decade of volunteer service to CSEA's classified employees

061and 20 years of employment with the Livermore School District. As President, it is truly an honor to be able to serve those who do not feel that they have a voice and I am humbled to be elected to lead again as CSEA President of the Livermore Chapter in 2026. As an elected board, I hope you feel the same way about your role and that we are in agreement on who you were elected to serve. As I said, this is my 20th year with our school district. Back in the day, our school district felt like family and that is important because we spend more hours here at work than we do at home. Employees used to feel more respected and we were proud to work for the district. Fast forward and it is disheartening to know

062that this is no longer the case. Employees do not feel valued or safe and morale has taken a dive. In this current administration, employees, classified and certificated, have had to plead and fight for every penny. In negotiations, we are generally offered nothing and when there is an offer, it is so minuscule that it often feels more like an insult. Then we see where money is spent and it is painfully clear that fair employee compensation for us is not a priority here. We are not a priority. We are left feeling disrespected and no amount of challenge coins will make us feel like we actually matter to this administration. Last month, you heard that we have 56 classified employees attend our reclassification workshop in October, a requirement for submitting for reclassification. That may be a record number

063as attendees spilled out into the hallway. It is democracy at work but more than that, it is a clear evidence that employees do not feel that they are recognized for their work or compensated fairly as their jobs have evolved over time and they have been asked to take on greater responsibility without acknowledgement and additional compensation. Out of the 56 attendees, we now have eight groups of CSEA classified employees who submitted their request for reclassification. Last month, I voiced my concern to Dr. Gibson that the district may already be prepared to deny every submission, citing legitary concerns. But I was assured that this is not the case. The reclassification committee meets later this week and I am counting on the district's committee members to be fair and objective without preconceived plans to deny reclassifications as Dr.

064Gibson has promised. Employees need to be compensated fairly for the work that they do or they will find employment elsewhere. Focus area 4.5 in our strategic plan includes employee retention and engagement to attract and retain high quality employees at all levels. What is the point of this focus area if there is no plan to do just that? For months now, we have been hearing the plight of our teachers and other dedicated, certificated employees. There is something terribly wrong here and if you do not see that or if you feel that everything is just fine, then you are not paying attention and we have bigger issues. Our LEA colleagues are not asking for wealth as they would not have become teachers. They are merely asking to be compensated fairly so they are not forced to resign

065from jobs that they love or to look for second and third jobs like classified employees must often do. I am perplexed as to why this is not obvious to everyone in this room. I am aware that our administration says the money is not there. As a 20-year employee, I must point out that this is the same script every year. It is never that the money isn't there. It is simply how our administration chooses to prioritize spending. Or we are to temporarily allocate those funds on paper until they get shifted to something else. We should all know this by now because it happens year after year. Plus, if money is truly a concern, then why are we spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on attorneys, auditors, and consultants to argue against fair compensation? It was shared

066with CSCA that the district began hiring attorneys for every negotiation session last year because the current team that represented the district lacked negotiations experience. At what point will the district's team gain enough experience and confidence to not require attorneys to be present at every negotiation session? Or is this our new norm? In light of budgetary concerns, why is the board not considering eliminating the high cost of attorney fees? You will hear that it is not uncommon for districts to utilize attorneys for negotiations. I am not debating that. Rather, I am pointing out that we never had attorneys present in negotiations prior to this administration. Now we have two labor unions forced to declare impasse in one calendar year, which truly says a lot about the climate in this district. Additionally, the district justifies the highest

067compensation for senior cabinet because they want to attract the strongest people to our district. I get it from a business standpoint, but why don't we apply that same concept to bargaining unit employees? Do we not want to attract and retain the best employees in all positions? I am specifically referring to classified and certificated employees who serve students directly and those who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure the wheels continue turning. We have heard many times from our superintendent that it is our school board that authorizes the dollar amount for negotiating compensation. Assuming that this is true, I urge you, here and now, with all these employees, families, and students present, to be effective leaders, to do the right thing, and to authorize fair compensation so that we could retain the talented and dedicated

068employees that we have. I proudly represent hardworking CSCA classified employees, and I also support our LEA colleagues because they speak the truth and have been doing so month after month. They stand up with courage and conviction for what they know is right, and I hope you possess the wisdom and ability to do the same. As I mentioned in my October report, I am still looking forward to that aha moment from each of you. Thank you, and I'd like to acknowledge past president Cruso for her service. Thank you. Up next we have, it is SEIU. Do we have Kirsty Gov. The president, is she here? No. Then next is CMC. Sarah DeGroote is the representative. Thank you. Good evening, President Druin, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson, cabinet, community members, and colleagues. My name is Sarah

069DeGroote, and I am a communications specialist in our district. I am here today representing the Classified Managers and Confidentials Group, or CMC. This is my first time addressing the board, but I felt it was necessary to speak as our group has recently been brought up in public discussions without full context, leaving me and many other CMC members feeling like we need to defend ourselves and our work. We've heard the term classified managers used at previous board meetings when speaking about our group, so I want to respectfully provide the full and accurate context of who CMC is so that the board and community are aware. While our group title is Classified Managers and Confidentials, it is not a fair representation of who we actually are. We are not management. In fact, the vast majority of our

070job titles do not even contain the word manager. Out of the 24 job titles representing 35 employees on the CMC salary schedule, only nine currently filled positions include the words manager, supervisor, or coordinator. And of those, some examples are our IT network manager who oversees the network, and a senior project manager who oversees bond projects. The other 15 positions are roles like occupational therapists, athletic trainers, behavior intervention specialists, and a new teacher induction specialist, not management positions. We are a diverse group of specialized, classified, and certificated professionals who are part of the essential support structure that helps keep this district running, yet we are being unfairly categorized based solely on our group name. Our group has continuously and inaccurately been clumped in with management, and therefore we've heard we should be excluded from future compensation

071increases since we are already paid at the top. To show why that comment is inaccurate, I looked at comparable nonrepresented roles in neighboring districts and wanted to share some compensation gaps. Our executive assistants to senior cabinet, our maintenance manager, and our special education program specialists all have starting salaries in our district that are between $20,000 to $40,000 less than in our neighboring districts. These are just a few examples, but the disparities clearly show that our CMC staff are not consistently paid toward the top. In fact, many are significantly behind market rate, leaving us facing the same higher benefit cost and lower take-home pay as every other employee. And since CMC is not a union, we do not have bargaining power. Therefore, we have no avenue to advocate for ourselves when also facing the same rising

072cost as others. So it has been disheartening to hear other employees say that the dedicated members of our group should be excluded from receiving a compensation increase. Perhaps if we changed our group name to classified and certificated others, it would help our cause. We understand the financial struggles everyone is facing, including our teachers. We are facing the same high benefit costs and the resulting lower take-home pay. We also have members who commute because they can't afford to live here. We also have members working second jobs to provide for their families. We also have food to put on the table for our children. I personally have three teenage boys at home. Imagine trying to keep them fed. It not only costs more to feed them now than it did two years ago because they eat more,

073but also because everything costs more. So we get it. Most of us are required to work year-round, eight hours a day, and still some often stay late, come in early, work on weekends to ensure every employee and student in this district feel supported. Whether making sure all teachers are paid on time or that every student has access to the necessary special education resources they need, we also work tirelessly. I'm not here tonight to claim that our group is more deserving than anyone else or to suggest that others are not deserving of a raise. That's not up to me, so I don't think it's appropriate for me to speak on. I'm simply here to tell a more complete story of CMC and to say that it's discouraging to hear colleagues argue that they deserve a raise

074and that others who also work hard and are underpaid do not. A former teacher of mine once said, you shouldn't have to blow out someone else's candle just to make yours glow brighter. That feels especially relevant right now. I don't think anyone in this room disagrees that teachers everywhere should be fairly compensated. I support teachers. I went to school to be one. I truly hope that the district and our teachers can reach an agreement, but I also hope that it can be fiscally responsible. I believe that teachers deserve to feel valued and supported, but don't we all? Every role in our district matters. Every role supports students in some way. Every role is part of what helps make our district function. We all believe that Livermore students deserve the best, and we all have and

075use different skill sets to contribute to that in different ways. I know the teachers are here tonight to tell you, the people sitting in front of them, that they want to feel valued and supported. I'm here tonight to tell the rest of the room, me too. Thank you. Next we have Livermore Management Association. Jeremy Wilkins, representative. Is Jeremy here? Looks like no. Then we'll move on to 12.0, public comments on non-agenda items. If you'd like to address a topic that is not on this evening's agenda, now is the time to do so. If you've not already submitted your TAN card, please do so now. Per protocol, no additional speaker cards will be accepted once public comment begins. We ask that you limit your comments to, we're doing two minutes. I have 21 cards, and per

076our policy, 1 to 10 is for 3 minutes, 11 to, oh no, we're at 21. So that will be 1 minute each. 21 or more cards is 1 minute. No, it's the policy. We ask that you, and that each speaker may speak once. This is a meeting of the board held in public, not a public meeting, which means we are here to conduct the board's business in view of the community. To ensure everyone has a chance to be heard and we maintain a respectful environment, please refrain from clapping or other reactions, which you so graciously did as Ms. Thompson was speaking. If you agree with the speaker, simply raise your hands. It's appreciated. Public comments. At the conclusion, I will thank you for your time. As a reminder, we as board members may not engage

077in discussion, take action, or give an opinion on items not on the agenda. However, the board may briefly respond, ask clarifying questions of staff, and or refer to matters to staff for follow-up. Well, yeah, and I may take a poll for or against a particular issue to help me. Is there, we're at 21, and the policy is I want to follow the rules. And so is there somebody that would care to lump yours together with someone else so that we're at 20 and that everyone gets 2 minutes? Okay. Yes. In the, in the essence of, I mean, it's not, it was a protocol, you know, it's not a hard set fast roll. I would ask if we could give relief in this instance, and sure, it's your call, but if we could give relief to

078keep it at 2, it is difficult to, as you know, to curtail from 3 to 1, if we were at 27, maybe, I don't know, but 21 right over the edge, because some people are going to come in under, if we could. Trustee Purcell? Only if we're not opposed. Okay. It's just by the board. I mean, just by a head of the board. We haven't gotten to this level before COVID, since COVID, to have this many. And there's a reason that we did it, and that was to, that was for us to not be here for 3 hours, which is what used to happen. So I understand the concept. I think if we, if we could just stay with it, it would be nice to stay within our policies that we're not making exceptions all

079the time. So if there is anyone who would like to combine, that would be helpful. I think it would just be one person, or two people. I see a hand from a gracious participant. Thank you. So when it comes up, if you would just remind me, and then we'll move forward. Thank you. So up first, we have Jamie DiMarco, and if I mispronounce your name, I apologize. And then on deck is Lindsay Ray, and we'll set the time for two minutes. Hello, board members. My name is Jamie DiMarco. I'm a parent at Rancho. I'm very involved in our school community, and today I'm here to represent and voice the concerns of many Rancho parents. First, I want to make it clear. We believe Rancho has some of the very best teachers and staff. Our teachers

080show up every single day to support our students, not just academically, but emotionally. Many of them attend students' sporting events and activities on their own time, making our children feel valued, seen, and supported. They build meaningful connections that have lasting impact. Our teachers give so much. It is deeply troubling to know that these same teachers who make our children feel safe, heard, and cared for are not being heard by you, the school board. Many are working multiple jobs and still struggling to make men's eat, make men's, I can't even talk today. Some teachers who have served this district over 20 years are earning less today than they did a decade ago. This is unacceptable, and this should never happen in a community that values education. We, as parents and voters, are asking for transparency. Where

081is the money going? Why is it repeatedly stating that we have no funds available? The community deserves clear, honest answers. Today, I spoke with numerous parents, and all of us agreed, if Livermore teachers strike, we will not be sending our children to school. We will stand with our teachers. The board must resolve this before it reaches this point. A strike will end, it will lead to a significant loss of ADA funding when students do not attend. The district relies on attendance to receive funding. So let's invest the funds back into our most important part, our schools. There are teachers. So pay our teachers what they deserve so our students can continue to learn, grow, thrive, and enter classrooms where they feel supported. Thank you. Thank you. Up next is, ooh, it might be Lindsay Roy.

082If I'm, yes, and then on deck is Tara Lutz. No, push the button, there you go. What's up, guys? Good evening. My name is Lindsay Roy, and I am a third grade teacher at Rancho Las Positas. I have two soon-to-be-three children in this district. A few days ago, I shared my original speech for Tonight with a Friend. They asked me, what point am I trying to make? Am I trying to present numbers and facts, or am I trying to get my heightened emotions off my chest? Well, I responded that our own Amy Thompson already does such a great job of exposing the true numbers and facts, so I'll speak today with those heightened emotions, in the hope that it will inspire other educators who may have been silenced by fear to find their voice and

083speak out as well. Never in my 10 years in this district have I felt so undervalued and unappreciated. Never have I felt so unsupported, patronized, discredited, and frankly ignored. As a collective unit, we have consistently presented reasonable evidence-based requests for fair pay, yet our concerns continue to be dismissed or delayed. This isn't just a budget line or negotiation tactic. These are real impacts on the real people who keep this district running. We all understand that you're facing budget constraints as well, but equity cannot be the first thing sacrificed. We are pleading with you once again to recognize the urgency of this issue, to recognize that many teachers cannot be here tonight because they are working a second or third or fourth or God knows how many other jobs, to recognize how many of us are

084unable to cope with the rising cost of living, to recognize that I will have to decide which utility bill to put off for one more month so my kids have Christmas presents. So I ask, what would all of you do in my position? Would you sacrifice time with your family for your second job? Would you move to another district with higher pay? I don't know. Would you tell your kids, sorry, Christmas isn't happening this year? I'm guessing with close to a $400,000 salary, those thoughts have probably never crossed your mind. At this point, the continuous delays and dismissals seem less like a budget issue and more like a choice. We are not asking for luxury. We are asking, I am asking once again for you to act with fairness, unrestricted transparency, respect, and solidarity for

085those of us holding this district together. Thank you. That's your time. Up next is Tara Lutz followed by Jessica Mendiola. The board needs to realize it never needed to get to this point between the district and LEA. What has exacerbated this issue is that instead of having compassion and showing unity in the problem, district leadership doubled down. First, by canceling and rescheduling our prearranged negotiations to take place at a time and rate that did not align with our predetermined plan. Then, by starting negotiations with the district team refusing to discuss compensation, followed by proposals that came at the expense of students, then followed by district-wide emails sent to refute our Instagram posts and Tuesday updates to our members, which then led to threats being made to other bargaining units to foster discourse among the different

086groups. I say all of this to point out that we are not the problem as the district's narrative often portrays. We are not fiscally irresponsible for asking to be compensated at an average wage that in all honesty still heavily relies on educators working many hours for free. We are not the ones being divisive and dismissive. Instead, we are doing the one thing that most educators have trouble doing, advocating for themselves, because we know that's what is necessary to do right by our students. Asking to be made a priority within the budget should never have risen to this level of conflict. We should be on the same team and in this together, but the response we have seen and heard never showed any element of facing this problem in a united fashion. Far from it, in

087fact, is we're traveled fast that we were quickly viewed as an us against them problem to be managed and not resolved. And again, this was not our doing, nor did we ever intend to be here again months into the school year trying to justify why our work should be valued. From the start, that should have been acknowledged and handled with a plan. So, take this as a chance to question why we got to this point and how you can be the ones to fix it all. Thank you. Jessica Mendiola followed by Jake Anderson. Good evening. I'm here tonight as a parent who cares deeply about this district and the teachers and support staff who make it work. We are months into this impasse and I want to be very clear, parents are still paying attention.

088Holidays are not. We haven't forgotten the people who show up every day for our children. My daughter has grown and thrived because of the teachers in this district, teachers who pour their energy, patience and skill into our children, including the support staff. They deserve better than what they're receiving right now. I come from the corporate world and I can tell you this, when leadership allows a situation like this to linger, when employee concerns go unanswered and issues are allowed to stall, it signals one thing, that the people who are doing the real work are not being valued and that's the message that this district is sending whether you intend to or not. I want to address something directly. When the superintendent called me yesterday, a call that I didn't expect but appreciated. She told me

089that if it were up to her, this could be resolved. Well, respectfully, it is up to her and it is up to this board. If you agree that our teachers deserve fair competitive pay, then there is no reason it shouldn't be reflected in action. If you truly believe in their value, then show it. And also would appreciate eye contact with those speaking as a sign of respect. So I need to ask, what is the plan if our teachers reach the point of striking? What is the plan for our kids, their learning, their stability and the support staff and their trust in this district? And what is the plan for the parents who elected you to lead with integrity and urgency? Our teachers have been patient, committed and more than generous. But patience should not be

090a prerequisite for this kind of respect. They deserve fair compensation now and not later and not after the holidays. Parents are standing with our teachers and will continue to stand with them until this district does what's right, not just in words but in action because they keep standing for our children. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Jake Anderson followed by Denise Khoury. Good evening. I'm Jake Anderson, a social studies teacher here at LVJUSD here at DelVal. I'm a second generation Livermore educator. But the teacher who inspired me the most wasn't a family member. It was a social studies teacher named Ron Nicola. Ron Nicola was a long time Livermore High social studies teacher and he didn't live in Livermore. Every day he drove to this district past several other districts that today pay more. And

091I often think if that pay gap that we're facing now had existed then, he might have never made that drive. I would have missed out on a life changing teacher. And so, same as thousands of other students. I understand the concern about the district's long term financial future. But when we allow or widen a pay disparity between us and our surrounding districts, we're hurting this district's long term future. We are hurting our students. As a parent of two boys who will grow up in this district, that hurts me deeply. Because their future teachers, my son's future teachers will be making decisions right now about where they can afford to work, live and start a career. This is no longer about a lack of funds. The funds exist. What's missing is the willingness to prioritize the

092people who directly work with kids every day. When you choose not to close the pay gap, it is our students who pay the price. When you allow high quality educators to leave, it is our community that pays the price. Prioritize teachers. Prioritize students. Prioritize Livermore's future. Thank you. Denise is up followed by Noel Matern. Good evening, Board President Druin and trustees, Superintendent Gibson and cabinet, colleagues and community members. My name is Noel Matern and I'm representing more than 700 educators during negotiations. Members of the school board, this labor dispute is not about stability versus teachers. It's about accountability versus waste. We don't need a tax measure to fix this. We need to reallocate the significant dollars being spent on high priced administrative growth and misspending that's exploded over the last year. True stability comes from

093eliminating non-priority expenditures and retaining the high quality educators who serve our students. Right now, the public sees an action, but that perception can change tonight. You have the power, the authority to rewrite this story. The financial direction of this district rests solely with this board. You're in command of this school district's priorities. You can command the immediate reallocation of administrative funds to deliver a meaningful pay increase to educators that meets our cost of living needs. Do this and you'll single handedly resolve this labor dispute. The negotiations will succeed because of your leadership. Imagine the headlines tomorrow, board members become heroes for solving teacher crisis. You'll be seen as decisive, empathetic and effective leaders who put the community and students first, the power to make a genuine community supported difference sits in your hands right now,

094seize the moment, direct the change the community is begging for and become the leaders we all need you to be. Thank you. Thank you. Up next is Wayne Hankins followed by Sarah Pestle. Wayne Hankins followed by Sarah Pestle. How's that, better? Okay. Well, President, congratulations on your new appointment, President Druin. Board, good evening. My name is Wayne Hankins and I come here as a concerned citizen and I love ideas and I come to express ideas that to hopefully you will consider in the days ahead with the difficulties of dealing with our divided country over Proposition 9. And President, you had mentioned that truth is very important to you. You will use your presidency seeking truth. The greatest truth comes from God. It is higher than our own understanding. In the Bible, which is a great

095book and I love the Bible, it comes, it is a book of wisdom. It is a book of self-improvement. It is a book that teaches the principles of life and the principles of God. And in that book, it is said that we are created in the image of God, male and female. It is a profound truth and this is the truth that we are being divided on right now. Our President, when he began his tenure, claimed that there are only two genders, man and woman. He repeated what was found in the Bible. It is a contentious issues of men in women's sports, men in women's locker room, and the transition of men into women claiming that a woman lives in their body. These are not the problems themselves. These are symptoms of a much greater

096problem. And that problem is we as a nation have taken God away and it's been 60 years at least in the making and we are seeing the division and the uncertainty of the future because of that. I'm going to end there and do you have any questions for me? Thank you for your time. Up next is Sarah Pestle. They'll be followed by Kelly Carney. Hey there. My name is Sarah. I have twin fourth graders enrolled in two different Livermore Public Elementary schools. My girls were born extremely prematurely and have significant special needs as a result of their early birth. When they started school, they were not toilet trained, could not sit down for more than five minutes, and one had a feeding tube and hearing aids that required constant staff assistance. Since that time, their

097teachers, aides, and school staff have made it possible for them to achieve more academically, social-emotionally, and practically than we ever thought possible. We have not had one teacher or aide that did not show both skill and caring. During COVID, when the girls were in remote learning, one of their teachers gave me personally the emotional support necessary to get through that trying time. In this day and age, when talented, educated people could choose almost any other occupation and get better compensation, we need to pay our teachers more for the incredibly important work they do. This is especially true given recent steep increases in the cost of living and signs that it will get worse in the coming months and years. If education is the silver bullet that research shows it to be, we need to come

098together to pay our vital educators more. Thank you. Up next is Kelly Carney, followed by Elizabeth, something with a C, constatation. Sorry. Good evening, members of the board, President Druin, Superintendent Gibson. My name is Kelly Carney. I am a parent of two Livermore students. Tonight, I am here not just as a parent, however, but as a community member, small business owner, homeowner, taxpayer, and graduate of Granada. After graduating high school over 20 years ago, I left Livermore, and then I came back. This is a story you hear all over this town. My husband and I chose to come back because our parents were still here. We weren't drawn to Livermore because of the schools, but if the schools weren't good enough, we wouldn't have stayed. Part of what makes Livermore a great place to raise

099a family is great schools with strong teachers. Family-friendly equals teacher-friendly. If you're not treating teachers with respect, you can't call yourselves family-friendly. How many Livermore teachers have kids of their own? What happens when losing teachers drives down the quality of our schools? How might those consequences affect the decisions of young families deciding where to put down roots in the Bay Area? Our teachers are making reasonable requests for livable wages and healthcare support. Stop wasting time trying to comfort, assure, and calm down parents. We're only here speaking because our educators aren't feeling heard or respected. So if you want us to calm down, fix it with them. Meet their compensation requests. It is in the best interest of our kids, our schools, and our city for district leadership to have a strong, cooperative, trusting relationship with

100our educators. The teachers have made their ask clear. The only question now is whether this board is willing to work with them to make it happen. Thank you. And then up next will be Dorothy Tebbets. Good evening. I am Elizabeth Costantino, a retired teacher who taught in the Livermore School District for 20 years. While teaching in Livermore, I saw the comings and goings, I think, of maybe four superintendents as well as numerous school board members. While their leadership has had an impact on the well-being, reputation, and efficiency of the district, it is the teacher who has the most powerful and long-term academic, social, and emotional effect on student outcome. It is imperative that our district attract and maintain employment of teachers who every day will close their classroom door at 8.30 and come face to

101face with students. Each day, students are tasked with providing the best academic growth and overall well-being of students sitting in the classroom. The teachers are the front line, the backbone, the players on the field of any school district. We all know the cost of living in Livermore has significantly increased in the past five years. On a new teacher's salary, even a small family cannot afford housing and living expenses in this community. This affects our ability to hire and keep teachers. Teachers must be well-paid and have medical care benefits that will allow them to remain in the teaching profession. Teacher salaries and benefits should be directly tied to the salaries and benefits of superintendents and other high-top administrators. The superintendents and other administrators and school board members should have the same benefits as all teachers in

102the district. No better, no worse. Also, superintendents, administrators, and teachers must have the same percentage increase in salaries. Again, no better, no worse. Why? Because the primary well-being, reputation, and student outcome in any school district is directly correlated with teachers and what happens daily in the classroom. I am told that there's a large discrepancy between teachers and administrations and percentage salaries increase in benefits. Thank you for your time. Dorothy Tebbets will be followed by Allie Felker. Thank you for your time tonight. Members of the board, Superintendent Gibson, and cabinet, my name is Dorothy Tebbets. I am a parent of two middle schoolers and one high schooler in the district. I'll be brief because there are a lot of speakers. I'm just here to share my support as a parent, a fair pay for teachers. Our

103teachers, aides, nurses, therapists, support staff are priceless. And we have seen this firsthand as parents. They mentor, coach, counsel, support, include, manage, celebrate, and cry with our students, our kids. We should all know being a teacher is one of, if not the most important job in this community. As a volunteer member of the community budget advisory board, I have learned a lot about the challenges this district faces. And I know it is not easy. But without teachers, we are nothing. Livermore teachers deserve a competitive and fair wage. And we hear our teachers. Thank you. Thank you. Allie Felker will be followed by, I think it's Sean Megafira, the second. Good evening, everyone. As a parent, I have two priorities when it comes to my child and their education. The first is her emotional, a mental,

104and physical safety. And the second is a quality education. Her teacher is directly responsible for this. As far as I'm concerned, my main priorities are addressed by teachers. My priorities, I'll be blunt, are not the logo of the district. I do not believe emails that say teacher pay is a priority when it is very clear that other things have been prioritized above teacher pay. The board needs to look at all available options to ensure teachers are fairly paid. I have received responses saying that there is a commitment. However, we are not seeing the result of that commitment. We are given emails. I think it's fairly odd that I received an email less than two hours ago, two hours before I was preparing to come and speak. That basically told me that it's already being taken

105care of. It's already being addressed. Imagine preparing to speak in an environment that is somewhat stressful. And before you are even able to speak, you receive an email saying, don't worry about it, we're taking care of it. You're just a parent. You don't understand what the process is like. That's obviously not what was said in the email. But that was what was communicated. And when we look back to the email that was sent on November 7th, it was a list of excuses that made it seem like what teachers are asking for and what parents are asking for is unreasonable. Nothing we are asking for is unreasonable. I want to make sure that my children receive quality education, that their teachers are compensated, and that they do not leave this district. I found those emails to

106be unprofessional, especially the November 7th email that revealed negotiations without context. I think it's important for parents to be able to have transparency, but not at the cost of revealing negotiations. And I'll end by saying, trans kids' lives matter. They'll be followed by Oliver Gibb. You've got to push the button, there you go. Hello, my name is Sean McGoffner II, and I am a fifth grader at Junction. I hear my teachers still aren't getting better pay, so I'm here to ask you all to please work together to resolve this. My teachers and all of the educators out there are working their butts off and they still aren't getting the pay that they deserve. I'll leave you with this. On my sweater, right here, is the great poet and activist Maya Angelou. And one of her

107famous quotes is, do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better. So please do better, and thank you and happy holidays. Thank you. Oliver Gibb, and then followed by Sarah Scopus. Good evening. My name is Oliver, and I'm a student at CMS. I've been a student at Altamont and Croche, and also at CMS Middle School. I've had amazing teachers throughout my entire time at all three schools. My mom and many other single teachers out there are struggling to pay the bills and to support their children all at the same time. They deserve as fair pay as you. They work super hard every day and on the front line. See them, hear them, listen to them, pay them. Thank you. Up next will be Christina, the last name, followed

108by Hayden Siddon. It's okay. Good evening, Board President Druin, Board Members, Superintendent Gibson, and Cabinet. My name is Christina Wooten. I am a teacher and a community member in Livermore. This is my 21st year in the Livermore School District and my first time speaking at a school board meeting. I grew up, like many other people, going through the Livermore schools and have always been proud to be able to give back to the city that raised me. Along with many of my colleagues this year, I too have received a pay cut due to increased medical costs without increased pay. After 20 years of teaching, what other profession with this level of education takes a pay cut after working for 20 years? I have a master's, by the way, in addition to my bachelor's and teaching credential.

109In the years I have been in the district, I have seen a pattern of district leadership claiming there is no money for competitive compensation for teachers, the people who have a direct impact on students, to end up with a surplus at the end of the year. I see school and classroom budgets being cut, combination classes being made. At the same time, money is spent on items that don't directly impact students, like logo changes or coins. This evening, both teachers and community members received an email from Dr. Gibson claiming that the district wants to prioritize teachers. Although I have yet to see that, I sincerely hope that this is true and that the board has directed management to offer a fair and reasonable compensation package during mediation on Friday. That brings us well towards the stated

110goal of being in the top quartile with surrounding districts. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Hayden will be followed by, I think it's Fraisha O'Reary. Last month, and the month before that, and the month before that, we gathered in this room to talk about the exact thing that we're here to talk about tonight, fair pay for Livermore educators. And what has changed in the last month? Nothing. We're still at an impasse, and we still don't have a fair contract. Tomorrow, I have back-to-back finals, and I'll be doing some math because my grade depends on it. Livermore educators will be doing some math, too, not because they need to pass a test, but because they need to figure out how to feed their families this holiday season. You could alleviate that stress by giving them

111a fair contract that pays them what they deserve. That's all we want. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. You all know what a fair contract looks like. You've written a fair contract many, many, many times before, so why can't you do it again? Now, I know you want to protect the six-figure salaries you don't allow to high-ranking district administrators. I know the superintendent likes making a salary comparable to that of the President of the United States. And by the way, you don't have to email every time we have a board meeting. That's just not helpful. And apparently, you like burning cash on consultants and beach retreats, too. But if you can pay for all that, then why can't you pay our educators what they deserve? This isn't Oprah. We're not expecting you

112to give away free money or free cars. We're not here to be entertained. We're here because we want our educators to wake up on Christmas morning and watch their kids open presents instead of having to explain to them why Santa couldn't come down the chimney this year. That's not a big ask, and you know it. Last month, Trustee Bueno said, quote, I've never witnessed this lack of trust before in our administration. All five of you know why this community doesn't trust you, and all five of you know exactly what you need to do to rebuild that trust. And all five of you have the power to do it. So do it. See, I believe everything in life is a choice. You have a choice here, too. You can choose to make this process a lot

113more difficult and painful than it needs to be, or you can choose to give our educators a fair contract with a salary that reflects their true value. You know what the right choice is, and for the sake of our educators' well-being and stability, you must choose wisely. Thank you. Thank you. Frazier Reary will be followed by Lance Voorhees. Frazier Reary, F-R-E-Y, I think J-A-A. Hi. LVJUSD's mission, goals, and vision statement reads as follows. Our equity commitment is apparent in our decision-making and allocation of resources. I'm Frazier Kearthy, here as a Granada High student, to talk about values, not the ones printed in a mission statement, but the ones that show up in how we choose to spend our time and our money. If equity shows up in how we allocate money, then valuing our teachers

114must show up there, too. Every student in Livermore knows what our teachers value. It shows up in the extra hours they stay after school prepping labs, giving feedback, or coaching us through moments of doubt, and shows up when they write letters of recommendation at midnight, or when they show up to support our clubs and teams on their own time. Teachers prove their values every single day through what they give. The question is whether our district will do the same. Budgets are moral documents. They reveal what we believe is worth investing in. And right now, students like me are watching to see whether this district's values align with the ones they claim to represent, which in theory is equitable allocation of resources. I'm here to tell you what it feels like from a student's perspective when

115a district hesitates to value the people who make our schools function. It feels like we're being told that the tireless work our teachers put in, the work that has shaped who we are academically and personally is somehow secondary. But it isn't. To us, it is everything. If Livermore truly believes in supporting youth, then we have to support the adults who support us. Fair compensation isn't just a payroll issue. It's an expression of priority. It tells us, the students, that the district sees what we see, that our teachers are the backbone of every success story that comes out of these schools. Thank you. Thank you. Lance will be followed by Anna Pham. Is that the deal? Two. Oh, I get the two? Oh, well, gosh, I edited this thing down to a minute. Lucky y'all, right?

116Oh, is everything on? Great. Well, my name is Lance Voorhees. I was on contract with Livermore School District for three months as a special ed teacher. So I want to address an issue of one of the school board members, Dina Keplanis, who was criticized publicly for attending a Turning Point USA event, which was the group formerly run by the assassinated Charlie Kirk. So let's consider this. On March 4th of this year, standing amongst gay pride flags in the Livermore Plaza, School Board Trustee Christian van der Heuvel, who I absolutely love, he addressed a crowd of about 300 citizens. He advocated for those he considered to be vulnerable by criticizing some of President Trump's executive orders and policy positions. And I say good for Christian. I can trust that Christian will publicly and passionately advocate for

117and take a stand on issues he believes in, in political areas that he and I might not exactly agree on. Board President Emily Prusso, if I'm saying your name correctly, she publicly advocated for friend Christy Wang when Christy was running for Livermore City Council, praising her for Christy's spirit of volunteerism. Should Ms. Prusso be excoriated for trying to influence an election with her constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech? Well, I sure don't think so. So politicians speak on, at political events. That's how God made them. They're passionate about politics. So to try and bridle our politicians from speaking publicly on controversial issues should leave us with a milquetoast political system, or it would. Politically savvy people want to hear where our politicians agree and disagree. We can criticize their positions, but let's not criticize

118them for speaking publicly by exercising their freedom to publicly speak on issues that some of us will cheer. Thank you. And others will challenge. Oh, up last is Anna Pham. Good evening, board members. My name is Anna Pham, and I'm a Granada High senior. Once again, we are standing in this boardroom advocating for the same issue that you have heard again and again. How many more times do my teachers need to plead and protest for a livable wage before you finally prioritize their needs? How much longer will they need to spread themselves thin, going from paycheck to paycheck, worrying if they'll be able to provide for their families through the holiday season as they grade dozens of essays and finals? And how many more times do we have to crowd this very boardroom until you

119decide that their years of immeasurable contribution are worth retaining through action? The Livermore School District supposedly prides itself on preparing its students for success. As a student in this district for the last seven years, I have never felt prepared for success, knowing that there's a new school contractor or a new consultant or any of the other flimsy justifications that the district has made to avoid fairly compensating teachers. It is the spirit, passion, and energy of Livermore's teachers that have prepared me for success, and they should be prioritized first accordingly. The school district would rather embarrass themselves, pouring thousands into hiring attorneys, than honor the promise to us students who supposedly come first. No matter how long it takes, us students will continue to stand with our teachers. We will show up Tuesday after Tuesday, no

120matter how many patronizations and excuses you hide behind. So for the thousandth time, we beg you, put your money where your mouth is. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Moving on to 13.0, communications. Formal written correspondence to the Board of Education shall be acknowledged if received by the board or the superintendent's office by 4 p.m. the day before the meeting. Formal written correspondence received after the cutoff time will generally be acknowledged at the following meeting. Please note our board electronic communications received via the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District website by accessing the formal written correspondence to the Board of Education link with all fields completed and verified shall be treated as formal written correspondence. New clerk, is there any correspondence for the board, and if so, can you summarize for us? Yes, the Alameda County

121Office of Education thanks the board and administration for a successful Williams Monitoring site visit in August, and no deficiencies were found. There were three community members expressing concern relative to a board member speaking at an event co-sponsored by Turning Point USA, and additionally, more than 30 community members expressed support and requested that increased compensation for our teachers be prioritized. That's it. Thank you, Clerk Vanden Heuvel. Moving on to 14.0 discussion action items. 14.1 is FICMAT Management Assistance Multi-Year Financial Projection and Cash Flow Analysis Discussion Only. I'll turn the time over to Dr. Gibson and Ms. Kayla Wosley. Good evening. As directed by the board, well, I'll say with the board, we brought in FICMAT to provide us a multi-year projection and cash flow analysis. I'm going to hand it over to the amazing FICMAT staff

122so that they can move forward with this evening's presentation. Rosalyn, do you, if they have questions as you go, would you like them to stop or wait? How would you like the board to proceed as you go? Yeah, we're open to that, so yeah, go ahead and ask questions as you go. Okay, great. So we've, I think we've, the presentation they put together is approximately 20-ish minutes, I think, and then we added extra time on just for question and answer. But if you have a question in the middle, please, by all means, go ahead. Okay, thank you. And thank you for being here tonight. Thank you for staying. We know it's a little bit later than we had hoped, so. Thank you, board, again, for having us tonight. I am Rosalyn Manansala-Smith, and this is

123my partner on our team, Andrea Ward. We are both FICMAT intervention specialists, not to go into too much of where we come from, but just to give you a sense of who we are. We have both come from the field. We have both had CBO positions. We've worked in school districts. We've worked in the field for years prior to coming to FICMAT, okay? So, again, thank you for having us tonight. Hold on one quick second. We're going to give both of you a mic just so that. Okay. I'm just going to come in now. There you go, so you're not having to lean in, and so you can each have yours. Yeah, and just pull it a little closer just so our recording picks it up. Okay. Is that better? Okay. So, tonight we have

124these lists of topics that we'll go over. We'll go over a little bit about who we are, the fiscal crisis and management assistance team. As Dr. Gibson shared, we were asked to come in, so we are not here because you are in fiscal crisis. We're here as a management assistance piece, a large part of the work that we do. We'll go over the scope of work and spend a few minutes there to make sure it's clear why we were here and what we were tasked to do. We'll go over our study report guidelines, and then we'll go into the meat of it, which is your multi-year financial projection. We'll go into our analysis and then end with our cash flow analysis. We also want to take time to thank the staff who met with us,

125who also provided hundreds of documents that we requested in order to complete our analysis. It was very welcoming for us coming so that we can go over the documentation and do our analysis. So, about FICMAT. So, again, the fiscal crisis and management assistance team, we were actually created by the California legislature back in 1991. One of the districts in the Bay Area here actually had to get a state appropriation. And so, we were created to help California's school districts, LEAs, avoid fiscal insolvency, right? Public education is a right in California, and we want to make sure that we're able to provide that to our students. We provide management assistance, fiscal crisis intervention, and other services to LEA. Oftentimes, you'll hear people don't want FICMAT here because we're known for our fiscal crisis intervention. But in

126the most recent years, we have actually shifted to a lot of preventative work, right, to keep districts solvent. And so, part of that is this management assistance team, and we have lots of professional development that we provide throughout the state. To give you a heads up, we are an independent, external agency. We are funded by the state budget, and we have a modest fee schedule to requesting agencies that request management assistance, okay? So, we're not an audit firm, just to be clear, we're an independent agency of folks coming from the field to help school districts with their management assistance requests. So, the scope of the work that we provided for Livermore was to review your district's 25-26 adopted general fund budget. So, we're actually kind of speaking in a historical sense right now, right? You

127guys are going to hear your first interim tonight. And so, just keeping that in mind as we go through the presentation, timing we're a little bit behind because we're doing a study. We were using that as our baseline to then develop an independent multiyear financial projection to help us get to our analysis. It's for the current year, 25-26, and the two subsequent years, 26-27 and 27-28. We also were to develop a cash flow analysis for that same period. So, and then also come tonight and present it to your governing board as soon as we completed the review. And so, through our work building that independent NYP, we were able to analyze kind of the school district's processes and procedures and how they develop their NYP and their cash flow. And so, as we explained during

128interviews, since the district maintains local control, right, we're not here for fiscal crisis. And we're not here as auditors. We were not reviewing individual expenditures for allowability. We were focusing on your process and procedures and your systems for building and how you guys built your NYP and your cash flow. So, study and report guidelines. We came in the first week of October. We interviewed certificated, classified, and administrative staff from the district office, schools, and other departments. We reviewed and analyzed a lot of documents, financial reports, your annual audit, independent audits, your un-audited actual reports from when you guys closed the books, a lot of your financial system reports, your attendance stuff, and a lot of historical information that was provided by the district. The scope of work was limited to developing the NYP and the

129cash flow. And keep in mind that when we write our report, we focus on systems and processes that may need improvement. While the report does not include an in-depth review or comment on areas functioning well, so we write in the deficit model, right? When you're looking to improve, we could have hundreds of pages of all the things we're doing well, but what we speak to are the things that you can improve upon, so keep that in mind. We do have some recommendations related to developing your NYP in this report, and that's the hope that you guys can take those and maybe use that to help improve your processes. You will really hear tonight we're focusing on the systems and processes, not on the budget numbers and the dollar variances, as all of that is in

130your report, right? We are also being very mindful, as I mentioned before, we know that you're hearing your first interim report tonight, and that is actually more up-to-date than our FICMAT NYP. Again, our focus was what are your processes and your systems in building your NYP? That's more long-term thinking of like how do we build that in a better way, right? How do we improve that process? So keeping in mind, our work, we ended as of, you know, we came in October and we kind of stopped our analysis as of September 2025. First interim is obviously two months later, and so you will have much more updated information there. So in this next section here, we'll provide an explanation of our analysis, okay? We have provided page numbers on these next few slides where there

131is more detail in the report for your reference. It can get really confusing if we try to switch back and forth. So I'm going to focus on the bigger themes and the findings and the recommendations that we have for you, kind of summarize that in this presentation. So I think it's very important to understand first what is a multi-year plan, multi-year financial projection, and also why is it important for a board, right, and for a district to have. So a multi-year financial projection, it's a forecast of the future, right, based on today's operations. It's not just a three-year budget, it's actually a mathematical model that assumes that today's services here in 25, 26 will continue unless you make an assumption to change it. It is required by the state, right? It's required at both your

132adopted budget and all of your interim financial reporting periods. And it really is a point of time calculation based on reasonable assumptions, right? It includes student projections, you're always looking at your enrollment, your attendance, your cost of living adjustments, other revenues and expenditures, and it also includes local and other economic factors. So keep in mind, once you get an NYP, you'll never see the same NYP again. If you do, that means someone's not doing their job. So ours is going to be inherently different than what was created at 25, 26 adopted back in June because of these factors. So why is that important? It really is your tool as the governing board and the administrators here for fiscal oversight and accountability. It's used to determine whether the school district will be able to meet your

133financial obligations in the current year and the subsequent two fiscal years. That was a key thing that happened out of that legislation that created FICMAT, was making sure that school districts are able to keep their, be fiscally solvent, not only in the current year, but in two years out. You're aware of timelines with bargaining groups and with layoffs. That takes time, so you need time to plan that. So having a fiscally solvent multi-year plan helps with those decisions, right, being prudent. Strong governance and leadership typically use it to analyze potential changes and assess ongoing fiscal solvency. And remember, as members of the governing board here, it is solely your responsibility to make sure that fiduciary responsibility to keep the school district fiscally solvent. We understand that that's, that challenge is, or that has been a

134challenge in the recent years. Okay? So that's why it's important, right? You want to use this tip for your long-term planning. So we want to go over our process that we use when we provide an NYP, when districts ask us to come in and do this work. So as stated before in the scope of work, our baseline year that we used with the 25-26 districts general fund adopted budget. And a multi-year is only as good as its base year, really, because remember, it's a mathematical model, right, that assumes that everything stays the same unless you make assumptions to change it. So we spent quite a bit of time in that 25-26 general fund adopted budget to update that current year and then went from there. We also used our FICMATS Projection Pro software. It's a

135free software that we offer to school districts to use that maintains, that we also developed and maintained for LEAs. Super important, one of the things that Projection Pro offers is that it actually does a multi-year by resource level. So all of those grants, you guys have a lot of grants here at Livermore, all of those grants that are multi-year, right, federal grants, state grants, it helps track those individually so that when you're doing the multi-year, they don't get lost in that. Super important right now with significant investments in one-time funding that we're seeing and restricted programs. Within the past five years, using that type of development model where you're doing that at the resource level, it helps you ensure that you're tracking your projections accurately to account for those program funds not just in the

136current year but in the multi-years as well. Okay, so making sure that you're doing, you're developing your multi-year by resource level. We also confirmed and updated the budget with information known as of September 30th as I stated earlier, including updating the 24-25 unaudited actuals, the balances that came from 24-25 increased and so we included those in the 25-26 budget that we created as well. So we also applied the industry standard, the school services of California, the 25-26 enacted budget dart board assumptions, all those variables that are in there. A lot of those numbers come from the Department of Finance, right, it has your consumer price index percentages in there as well. Then we also developed student projections and those were also done in Projection Pro based on September 25, 2025 counts so keep that in

137mind that that's what we counted and used in our multi-year projection. We also included historical trends for your enrollment, your unduplicated pupil counts and your ADA. So we developed our revenue and our expenditure projections based on funding notifications, right, things that oftentimes you get a lot of federal updates in the fall, they're on a different fiscal year so you're kind of closing your books with the federal dollars, kind of not knowing full allocations and starting the new year with, you know, kind of guesstimating what the feds will give you and so a lot of those are very typical to get a lot of updates in the fall. We also used district provided program plans, some historical trends and current year activity. As part of the scope of our work, we spent quite a bit of

138time validating that 25-26 salary and benefit projections. As you can see here on that slide, over 94% of your district's 24-25 general fund unrestricted expenditures were spent on salary and benefits and that's common to see a majority of your district funds going to people, right, because we are a people industry, it is our people that provide the services for the district. We also applied our FICMAT standard practices for restricted grants and programs. We always apply the maximum indirect cost rate allowed for all of your grants. It takes some work behind the scenes to keep those programs going and you're allowed to capture those costs through indirect cost rates so we apply those. We also reduced non-salary accounts to balance historically self-sustaining programs. So, for example, like I think this district for your titles, right, you

139stay self-sustaining, meaning if you get $500,000 for Title I, you spend $500,000 and do not contribute to it, right, you stay within the grant funding that you get. Otherwise, what we did is we contribute from the unrestricted general fund if it wasn't falling within like that historically self-sustaining program. We also shift salary and benefit costs to unrestricted general fund for grants that expire within the multi-year projection period. That is a standard that we follow. So next, we'll review budget assumptions and then overall changes to the revenues and expenditures and kind of talk through some of the changes that we made and kind of highlight within that. We're also kind of highlighting some of the recommendations that we're making as well. And again, remember, you'll see those page numbers at the top for your reference if

140you want to reference that later. All right, so your budget assumptions, you can see they're on Table 7, Page 11. Basically, our projections, our assumptions pretty much were aligned with how the district used their projections. You'll hear a theme tonight, timing, right? We did our budget projections and everything as of September 2025. The adopted budget was created in May and then brought to you guys in June. Keep in mind that in June, the state's budget is not even approved typically when most districts are bringing their budget, right? Of which most of what we're funded on is very dependent on that state budget. And so we understand that and so keeping in mind those timing issues, right? So basically, we used a state-adapted budget school services dartboard for a lot of our budget assumptions, the district

141used the May revise, okay? And that's common. So next, we'll go into student projections and then revenue. Okay, so on student projections, again, I'm going to just kind of share how the timing impacts our student projections. As Rosalyn shared, the district's adopted budget was based on information that was known as of May. So what do we know about school starting in May? We haven't seen the students show up yet. It's really a true, true projection. There's early information about registrations potentially, but you don't really know how exactly that's going to shake out. We were able to update our projection with information known at the end of September. As shared, we actually started our, started our, sorry, our field work, this is the word we use, we started our field work on the first Wednesday in

142October. That's a very important day for establishing enrollment information, your unduplicated pupil count information, and information that's very important to our funding. And so we had it kind of in between as the district will present in their first interim after this, you'll see it's a different number yet. And that's because the district has the additional information of finalizing that enrollment information and those unduplicated pupil counts. So that's what you're going to see a lot in our assumptions is it's going to be this in between of information between adopted and also what the district ultimately was able to process as part of first interim. What we looked at in our student projection was methodology. We looked at how is the student projecting their enrollment? How is, or the district projecting enrollment? How is the district projecting

143unduplicated pupil counts? How is the district projecting average daily attendance? And we looked at the assumptions that the district did as well. We outlined those details in the report because there's some variations or deviances I would say compared to like a very standard methodology that you would see under normal times in normal years, probably pre-COVID, being honest. But we agreed with the assumptions that the district had applied. And again, we've noted those details in the report. We did agree with it and we used those as well in our projection. Things like shortening the period of time that we looked at as part of our history so that it didn't create a weird perspective or skewed perspective. Ultimately, at the end of the day, our projections were actually pretty close to the school districts. There were

144a couple of variances. Enrollment decreased a little bit as you'll see again later when the district incorporates that information too. And average daily attendance is projected to decrease a little bit. Unduplicated pupil percentage, you probably have heard me say a couple terms there. Unduplicated pupil count is where we're identifying the individual students who are English learners, foster youth, and low income. And the unduplicated pupil percentage is a mathematical calculation where we take that over three years. So the unduplicated pupil count is expected to decrease. There was a change in district process this year to get more accurate information in there. And so that did affect the projection. We understand where that came from and we agreed with that information and included that as well. But you'll see that the unduplicated pupil percentage in our projection

145wasn't expected to change. Because again, it's like this three-year calculation. It takes time for that to fully implement that impact that we saw. So in comparison, our enrollment projections decreased anywhere from 1.07 percent to 1.47 percent across all three of our projection years, which overall isn't a ton. It's a small percentage, right? But it does impact funding. And ADA is expected to decrease 0.98 percent to 1.49 percent compared to what the district presented and adopted. Again, it impacts funding. We'll talk about that in a second. But overall, as far as projection and methodology and looking at what the district's doing, there's a lot good there. A couple of areas that we noted that could be improved upon. One is a very specific situation we think to this year. It has to do with transitional kindergarten.

146And over the years across the state, districts have had a really hard time projecting that. This particular year, we hit full implementation. We would hope that that's now going to be steady. But that program is an optional program. So it is still hard to go from here's our registration count to, for example, how many students actually show up. If parents, for example, don't get their desired school that they're applying to, what do they do, right? And so that is something that we see in the data potentially as affecting some of the counts here, that that was a challenge. The other piece that we saw in there is that, well, that we weren't able to incorporate. That we normally like to see incorporated is that when you're looking at enrollment to incorporate factors like birth rates,

147what's going on in local industry, what's going on with housing starts, we didn't have that information to incorporate that in. So we weren't able to assess if there would be any variance compared to that. I had to clicker. Can I ask a quick question about that? So the additional housing that's being put in all over the city is not, you don't have information from demographers or whatever to know who's all moving in and how that could change our enrollment. So we didn't incorporate any of that in our projection. It wasn't provided to us. Usually, though, we would want to see that incorporated. You know, housing starts don't affect every district consistently, just like kind of birth rates don't, it's not always a one-to-one. But you can develop a relationship. A demographer can definitely help with

148that. We tend to see sometimes projections for that for long-term planning. And that projection may be for a longer period of time because you want to know, do I have to plan for more classrooms or things of that nature. But it's also valuable information in the shorter term. If you're using a demographer necessarily, you'll have to either kind of look at it through that lens of this was a long-term projection. We're in a further out year, how would we modify it or have it redone periodically? But you're right, we don't have that information included in this projection. All right, so for revenues, I've got a couple, just a couple slides on revenues. There, I will first say revenues for this district are very complex. As Roslyn shared, the district has, is, I don't know if

149the right word to be blessed or how you would say it, you guys have a lot of resources in the way of local grants, state grants, and federal grants, big dollars in some of these cases. But the challenge with them is they are one time. They have maybe a multi-year span which makes it a little bit harder to project. And so you have this multi-year plan to spend it and you're expecting revenues in different years, so we'll kind of get to that in a second. But I'm going to take a step back first and talk about local control funding formula. The local control funding formula is your largest unrestricted funding source, so it's really important to be able to get a good estimate on that. What we found in our LCFF, sorry, local control funding

150formula estimate actually was pretty close to what the district projected once we incorporated the updated accounts and things. We can see that that's the big variance there. Another big change for LCFF is part of what happened in the state budget. The district conservatively projected for a TK add-on rate, which basically helps support funding, bringing the transitional kindergarten classroom down size, down to 10 to 1. And that was not included in the adopted budget, but we did include that in this analysis. So again, that was something that came about as part of the state budget. It's not expected that districts would have included that at adopted. So overall, our estimate was pretty close. My variance was 0.08% in our first year, which is pretty darn close. That's 124,000 roughly, to by our out year, a slight

151increase of 0.18%, and that's about 296,000. So it just depends on the year, of course, but you can see that that variance is very tight. It's not super far off, so we agree with that methodology. So I'm going to go ahead and lump federal and other state and other local revenues here, and that's where I'm getting back to. It's very complex. Our analysis looks at those revenue sources individually. The district also has a lot of very active fundraising accounts for the student body for supporting the activities that the students are doing. We kind of lumped those a little bit more into each other, but the district does have accounting structures to track all of that separately. Overall, our projections substantially aligned with the district's projection. Again, the variances that we saw had to do with

152things like incorporating carryover from the inaudited actuals. Carryover is basically when you had revenue that wasn't able to be, maybe it was part of a program plan or maybe it just didn't get spent because maybe a resource wasn't available or something like that usually. It gets carried over into the new year for and is available to spend. So we incorporated those pieces in, and then we also included the new state revenue sources from the enacted state budget. Again, I took a peek at the first interim, and it has those identified there as well, but they are also identified in our report. There's one very, very difference in how we do our projection versus how, well, there's two really, but one that I'm going to talk about first of how we do our projection versus how

153the district does theirs, and that's that when you look in our projection in 25-26, if you have a large grant that's a one-time grant, carryover grant, whatever, it doesn't have a certain, maybe it has a lot of carryover from a prior year, and the district's going to probably develop a plan to spend that down. We include all of that revenue in there. The accounting treatment at the end of the year would be a little bit different. It kind of pulls it out, moves it into the next year. There's like a whole thing in that, but for transparency, we include that in that 25-26 years. So what you may see in the restricted side is an increase potentially in your unrestricted ending fund balance because of that practice. So we're not trying to estimate exactly how

154much you're going to spend this year, how much next year. We bring it all in, and then we let the resource, because we're, that brings up the second difference, as Rosalyn mentioned, is we analyze each of these programs by resource. So we look at that revenue, and we're comparing it with the expenditures. So that the expenditures for that revenue, that they align in the rules that are allowed, that it's allowed to be spent on. So that's part of our analysis. It's a little bit more detailed than the district's NYP, and that is a practice that we recommend, but just know that when you look at the unrestricted, or the restricted ending fund balance, you will find that it'll look a little elevated in that first year, and then it spends down, and that's as that

155resource basically spends out, those local grants, things like that. Like a big, a really, really big one was the magnet program, for example. There's a huge balance that was getting carried over. Can I ask about that? And I don't know if, so currently, were we just putting in what we thought we would, what we thought it would be for that year, and not the full grant, like you were saying? I think, I think districts, and I can let the districts speak to their own practice, but generally speaking, sometimes what we see with districts is they may have a dollar amount in there, and they know that they're not going to spend the entire carryover amount, for example, and they may push it into a subsequent year, where we're recognizing it in that first year. Yeah,

156so they're still recognizing it. It's just a little bit of timing in which year, for transparency. We include it there. And that's for like the one-time restricted, like grants, right? Potentially. Yeah, potentially. Or there's a particular accounting treatment called unearned revenue, which means you have to spend it and able to earn it, and if you don't spend it, you can't count it, so sometimes districts will. Oh, okay. Okay. They'll follow that accounting practice, whereas for us, we just put it in there. Got it. I'm good. Thank you. Yeah. So overall, in our federal, the big differences in there was about a 1.3 million increase. It was from carryover. We'd like to note that there are two programs in that federal category, mental health and also the magnet program, which have some challenges going on between

157things going on with the federal level and court cases in some case, in one case, and other requirements on the other case. Our treatment of those grant or those revenues was to assume status quo right now. We included them in there. We didn't want to speak on behalf of the district to say what the board would decide on those, but know that that is a risk of the NYP. There are, as Roz will talk about, there are salaries and benefits coming out of those programs, and should those revenues no longer become available, then, you know, you have to decide what to do with that, how to support those programs or modify them. In our other state, it was an increase of $4.4 million, and that was primarily new state programs that came through the state

158budget, minor carryover, and in other local, it was an increase of $3.7 million, and that had to do with student fundraising accounts, which are basically counted at the point that the dollars are received, which is a really common practice and a very conservative practice. It's going to go right back out to the student program, so it's not exactly available for other things. And then another piece, which was for Medi-Cal billing, the district had a really large receipt, and that's not always expected. Those dollars have a different way of kind of getting reimbursed. They're not immediate, and they're not always easy to count on. So we brought those dollars in because they had already been received, and it was a really large, unusual receipt that came in. Okay, so that was our revenues. We'll look at

159the expenditures next here. So again, salaries and benefits are a big portion of your district's budget, and I talked a little bit about how we spent quite a bit of time reviewing that. I want to give you a little bit more on that. So when looking at your salary and benefits, we were looking at your district. They used ESCAPE to integrate its position control data, which is all of your people tied to positions, all of their statutory benefits, all of those pieces in there, and they used that to integrate position control data with budget and payroll. We used various documents to evaluate the reasonableness of the district's budgeted 25-26 salary and benefit information. They did provide position control and budget reports from ESCAPE that matched their adopted budget, and I say that out loud because

160sometimes we go to districts where that is just not the case. You cannot tie back to their financial system what they brought in SACS. That was not the case here. We were able to tie back what was in your budget to those position control reports. FICMAT also obtained your monthly personnel recommendation lists that come to you guys monthly. We pulled those from July and September, and we made those adjustments in our NYFP, too, so you'll see some of those differences. We also relied on payroll and encumbrance activity that's recorded in ESCAPE through September, and we've also reviewed your historical data to review and reconcile salary and benefits for the year. So, for example, if there were resignations or retirements and there were replacements, we made sure the new person that was brought to the board

161and approved was included, and we adjusted those salary and benefits as well. So those are some of the notable changes that you'll see in the salaries. And benefits. We also updated your salary and benefit costs from those public disclosures that are brought to you on your settlements for your classified staff from 24-25 and 25-26 that were not available necessarily at adopted budget due to the timing. We saw a few of those settlements were in September, so we brought those in, and I think maybe one of them was in the spring, not enough time to get it into the adopted budget. So those are included in there. Those are about $900,000 in there. We also updated salary and benefit costs, right, from those personnel recommendations for all those new hires, any promotions and payroll activity, anything

162that we saw differently through September 30th, including those TK instructional aids since the funding did come in for that. We also shifted budgets. This is kind of a more, a little more technical, but transfer of direct costs budgetary category object. It's a 5,000 object in that other services and expenditures, kind of like where your contracts live. We actually shifted that budget from your object 5710 to teacher salary and benefits, specifically for lottery and EPA, for education protection account resources. That was to more accurately identify those costs as teacher salaries and benefits historically. I believe the current CBO is working on shifting that, and we kind of saw that moving forward, but historically, sometimes it was used for your unrestricted lottery to put kind of transfer over salaries from unrestricted. They're all unrestricted, so the difference

163that you'll see is just in the major object code changes, so not a huge shift in the budget, but a shifting in where you're seeing it. Providing or doing that actually helps you accurately kind of identify budget variances in major expenditure categories more accurately, because at the beginning of the year, I believe what I was seeing historically was that they were budgeting all of those salaries and benefits in a 5,700 account, as opposed to your 1,000s and 3,000s throughout the year. So you're not getting a true picture of what your salary and benefits look like throughout the year until the end of the year when they would do that transfer. So kind of a technical accounting thing, and we're aware. So that's a recommendation we're definitely making, is to make sure to keep that in

164your 1,000s and 3,000s, which we've already discussed with the CBO, that that was something they were already looking to do moving forward. We also shifted costs from restricted to unrestricted resources for those expired programs or grants. It is our practice to not eliminate salary and benefit costs without a board approved plan. We did not see one, so we followed our practice on that. So all other expenditures, we lumped all of those together. All of your books and supplies, your services and other operating expenditures, capital outlay, your transfers, your inter-fund transfers in and out, and then your contributions. So we lumped that together just in this presentation, but in the report, they're all separate. But basically, we found that you guys, again, we were substantially aligned with your district's projections, the methodology behind that. The only

165differences that we have were the, again, because we use Projection Pro, and that is our standard, we did individual resource expenditure analysis, and we balanced it per our standard practice that we talked about earlier. And then we also assumed that the district will fully spend all of your expiring grants by their deadlines. So you may see some increases in some of your restricted side. We're assuming you're spending those by the time their deadline comes around, and that's always best practice, right, is to spend your restricted dollars first, spend them by their deadline. And so we assume that in our report. In addition to that, again, here's another one of those timing things. We updated the CPI, which is your consumer price index. We used that for your non-salary expenditures for the out-years, for your restricted

166programs as well, and your unrestricted. And then we also updated expenses based on carryover from the prior year actuals, all of the expenditure, or all of the carryover that Andrea brought in from the revenue. All right. So at the end of the day, we did concur that the district, you know, remember at the time of adopted budget, with the information known at the time, the district was estimating about a $600,000 cut required to meet your minimum reserves within your multi-year period. We concurred with that, that the district will need one. The timing might have been slight, the timing in ours was that you would need it in the third year out, again, based on those differences in how we apply our standard processes when we do NYPs. The total that we came up to was

167about $450,000 for adjustments that might be needed by 27, 28 to barely meet that minimum legally required minimum reserve of 3%, which remember is pretty low for most districts. That's just your minimum required. Most districts need at least two months of operating expenses for their reserves at minimum. So again, keeping in mind, this was in comparison to adopted budget. So always thinking ahead when you're making adjustments if you have to make budget adjustments, whether that's increasing revenues or decreasing expenditures, making those adjustments earlier can always have a positive compounded effect on the project, you know, on your projections. And lower fund reserves, keeping in mind, they directly weaken your cash reserves. So keeping that in mind, as you see your district's fund balance drop, that may impact your district's cash reserves. And so we'll go

168into cash next, but you can, but at the end of the day, substantially we didn't see any huge errors, any huge things in the multiyear budget. We concurred with most of the methods that they were using and applied our standards from that. So that was kind of just a summary of our NYP analysis. So next, Andrea, we'll go into the cash flow analysis and give you that summary. And I'll add just one more point of clarification on that 450,000. Again, our fieldwork, I don't know why that word is escaping me today, the fieldwork was as of October 1st and the district was convening a budget committee to come up with solutions and so that was not, any information from the budget committee was not included in our projection either. Can I go back real quick

169to slide number 19? How much is approximately the inflation or the CPI, what's the percentage on that that you, I guess that's just available online, just to look that up or whatever, I don't know. Is it substantial or is that a minimal? It's pretty minimal. So what we used, actually what page it was, here it is, so our table is on page 11 of your report and so the CPI that we used, very, actually minimal, under 3% in 26-27, it was 2.82% and 27-28 is 2.72%, a very minimal difference from what the district used in June. They were slightly higher, I think in June, maybe about 3%. I think they were about 3% and I do always include those numbers in my narrative for each budget period as well, so you can find those there

170so you don't have to go home. That's in table 7? Table 7, yes, and so one, fifth line down on table 7, page 11, yeah, so very, very minimal difference and again, the one that we used was just from the enacted state budget, the one that the district used was from the May revise. Yeah. Okay, so as we exit a little bit about the multi-year projection and we start talking about cash flow, I just want to do a little foundation on what cash flow, a cash flow projection is. It has a relationship to the multi-year projection, so it's really important to have a good solid base year budget in order to have a solid cash flow projection. Basically, what we do is we take a look, again, it's a mathematical model, we take a look

171at that budget, that budget says within this fiscal year, this is the activity we expect and we take that activity and we break it down to a monthly activity, so then we can see how is that activity projected to impact our cash that we have on hand to pay for everything, right? So it's a forecast based on that information, you know, it's going to be reliant on our budget and it's also going to be reliant on actual cash flow inflow, outflows. It's also a statutorily required projection as part of the first interim, adopted budget second interim and again, it's one of those things that you'll never see the same cash flow twice because you're constantly getting new and updated information, so it's a point in time. It's also very important for oversight and accountability. Your

172multi-year projection gives you kind of a nice long-term peek at what's going on in the future assuming that services for the most part stay current, like stay consistent, my apologies, cash flow is going to take that and look at it a little bit deeper level, so a school district doesn't enter what's called insolvency unless it runs out of cash. So your multi-year projection, you can not meet your minimum reserve and that's kind of like your red flag, right? Hey, we have some time, we need to go figure this out. If your cash flow shows a negative cash flow amount, that's very urgent. So that's ultimately what we're looking for in our cash flow projection is if the district has a month where it has negative cash, is that a temporary issue or is that a

173long-term issue? Long-term is insolvency, temporary means the district has some means of borrowing and will be able to continue functioning normal. So moving forward, the factors that we used in our cash flow is our adopted, excuse me, our adjusted general fund adopted budget as we presented in the multi-year projection, that's what we used for our cash flow. Again, we used a component of the projection pro software and within that component, we look at revenues or receipts as it's called on the cash flow side, we look at the receipts by resource and that's really important because different programs, the district has no control, I always go like this, we have no control, we as working in education, right? We don't have control when someone's going to send us money, that's ultimately what the challenge is. So

174we have to look at it by resource so we can determine what's that frequency that that payer is going to pay us. And so we do our projection by resource, that is something that we saw that was a little different than the district's cash flow, we don't see the revenues by resource. The amount of detail that you put into a cash flow though really kind of comes down to a district's risk tolerance and so it may not always be necessary to look at it at cash flow by resource but looking at a cash flow projection and reflecting back and seeing how big that variance is and whether the district is needing to borrow cash, that kind of ups that, you can see that risk tolerance elevate or the tolerance goes down which means it's more

175risky and then you would want to incorporate more detail before I get into the results. We also had actual cash flow activity through October 31st, obviously very different than a district creating that same cash flow projection before the fiscal year even started and we applied funding schedules through that same date, October 31st. In our projections for our disbursements, really where the district has control or in revenues where a schedule wasn't available, receipts where the schedule wasn't available, we used anywhere from one to three years of history depending on what was going on in that history but we had all three years available for us to evaluate. So our results was that we concurred with the district's assessment that they would need to borrow, that you would need to borrow cash. Our estimate was for November

176and our estimate was approximately three million dollars between two to three million dollars. That's the amount, the minimum amount that would have needed to be borrowed. Depending on how long the district would expect that cash flow need to occur, they may choose to borrow more. There are different ways that a school district can borrow and we agreed that this, concurred again with the district, that this was temporary borrowing because the district had methods identified and that we reviewed and were able to confirm as well as options. So those two options were to temporarily borrow from another fund and the particular fund we identified actually ended up matching the districts which was special reserve for other than capital outlay, Fund 40. And there also is the opportunity to borrow from the county treasury in this county,

177different counties handle that different. The district had taken action for both of those so not only does it have the ability to borrow from its own funds because you guys passed the resolution but also should that not be enough you have the opportunity also to borrow from the county treasury. So that's what we had from the cash flow. Is there anything else? Do you guys have any final questions or do you have anything you'd like to add? There's no blue cards on this so Trustee Peruzza. Okay. I really made an attempt at going through this whole thing so we'll see how I do. One of the things that I noticed and I don't know maybe this is just more of a statement because I don't know if there's an answer to this is that it

178seems like we have an unusually high percentage of our budgets on salaries and benefits. Is that okay? I see some nods happening. Yeah. I don't really know what to say or do about that but I'm just curious if you had any insight on why that is or? I'm assuming you're talking about the table in the background on the introduction page? Yes. Yeah. So we typically look at that when we do our what we call our fiscal health risk analysis and it's always something, it's always good to just kind of pull back and get a perspective of where we're at in comparison to the statewide average. And so you can see it has grown I think especially during COVID years specifically. We had that huge infusion of one-time dollars and what we've seen throughout the state

179is districts are struggling who may not have had plans prior to those one-time funds coming of how to then address their salary and benefits or those programs and those one-time funding that came that districts were able to bring in more employees. A lot of districts are having a difficult time figuring out okay, where do we then now fund those employees from and they're falling to the unrestricted when the restricted dollars went away. Okay. So we're seeing that throughout the state but yeah you can see for your district it's a fairly higher number. I guess in relation to that and again these are just kind of comments or maybe question is that the other trend that I noticed is that we, I do think that we are, it seems like we have too many ongoing staff

180funded with one-time funds either grants or other one-time funds and then that, my question is then what's the plan when those drop off which obviously we probably still need to work on that but that's also something it seems like you recognize as well. Yeah, so there is, you do have a lot of fun, a lot of grants, a lot of restricted grants where I think the main focus is bringing in a program so you need people for that. Our recommendation is that when you have grants like that it's always good to before you even accept the grant to have a plan in advance of okay if and when these grants and programs go away, when they expire what is our plan? How do, are we integrating them into the unrestricted side? Have we saved enough

181to ensure that we can keep that program going? Do you re-prioritize then? Right, because as the funding goes away you need to understand then how are we going to continue that without those funds? I wonder if this is kind of down more to you guys is I have concerns about that and I think that's maybe why we got to the high percentage that we have of those, whether it was COVID or grant funds ending and then just sort of rolling those salaries into the general fund and then you know that's an issue and I know that we have multiple people that are currently being paid through those restricted funds. Could we possibly get a list of who or maybe not specifically who but what positions are being funded that way and then do we have

182a sustainability plan for those and if not maybe we need to start thinking about those things. Whether it's like hey we only need these for this amount of time then these positions might go away or we want to keep these positions like you know with our mental health grant obviously like we don't want those to go away but then what's the plan for that? So I guess that would just be my ask is maybe we need to start thinking about that. Obviously that's not an answer for now but if you want to respond. That's one of the topics that we have on our list after the first of the year when we meet in our special meeting that we have planned. Yeah because that's obviously and that's just going to keep getting bigger as we

183do as you said we do have a lot of restricted. And remember last year when we did the six million dollar in cuts we had a lot of unspent one-time funds that are expiring and so now it's a matter of eliminating things from one place to be able to shift our priorities into those spaces at the same time as well as looking at the priorities that are going to come out of our two budget committees. We plan on bringing that forward mid-January as well to the board so that we then start prioritizing these are things that as a team we say we have to figure out and everything else then below that line we have to be committed to having those tough conversations as to that prioritization and that I mean the elephant in the

184room tonight if nobody was paying attention is then prioritizing additional pay for for staff on top of that. Okay and then one more again this is kind of my theme for tonight my takeaway is that if are there opportunities to secure new restricted funding for some of those things? We're looking at that every day. Assistant Superintendent Pichette and her team every day are looking at what's out there what's available they're working with CAP on a regular basis. I think one of the hardest things for us is that we have a large number amount of money I'm not going to say the total number but we have two very large federal grants that we are at jeopardy of losing right now and so you know with the feds some of those funds are out there for

185that that we won't qualify for any longer under this administration. That's going to make it very difficult for us to retain if we don't get to retain these two as they sit currently which we still don't have any updates on. Yeah I think I just I also I should have said that I appreciate the work that you guys did and I know I had the opportunity to speak I don't know I can't remember I think it was you guys specifically and it's just helpful like I this is obviously not my profession but I feel like I have come a long way in the seven years since I've been on the board and understanding even what what the acronyms are LCFF we're good we got that but I do appreciate it because because it is it

186is so complex and that's one of the things that I think is frustrating for the community is just it is a complex uh education finance budgeting all those things is very complex and it's taken me a long time to figure that out and so one other question before I before I end and if I could pause you for just a second I just want to reference you to page 28 of the report just to kind of see at least to get an idea of the programs where we move those dollars from restricted to unrestricted. So on page 28 and then on page 30 we talked about some of the grants that are in there where we didn't put expenditures in yet because there was no plan so I want to give you just so that

187it'll take a while I'm sure to get the it'll take a minute to get the employee list but at least so you know what programs we're referencing on that okay um I guess why I can't now I can't oh I'm sorry no it's it's right there um I had one final thought it's going to come back to me oh wait let me see if I have it on my notes sorry let me double check it'll come back to me when someone else is speaking so I'll let trust you man darn it yeah come back uh not not a lot of questions um trying to make it through this as a person who doesn't live in this world is really it's really complicated and I'm so glad that we have people who know what they're doing

188and it sounds a little bit like if you were a teacher you'd give Miss Wasley a you know a solid grade here in how this you know this compares to what we to the our internal numbers and reporting so but thank you for for making this palatable for somebody like me and for helping us see where we where we are and um where we're going to go so thank you I remembered um do you have any suggestions or have you seen um other districts who who have uh used methods for educating the community on how budgeting works like restricted versus unrestricted stuff like that that's been successful or just I mean it's all right if you don't have something we can probably get down to I can speak to that a little bit um I

189I was a cbo at a district that was um qualified right where they they weren't sure that they were going to meet their reserves um in within their multi-year projection year what we did at that district um we did what we called a road show and we broke down school business 101 we broke down the funding we broke it down in very um like layman's terms I guess is the right word to say make it just more digestible right work it down to like okay this is you know when you run a checking account you need your savings right and you kind of make those alignments with like okay a savings is like your reserves you don't want to just have one month of of mortgage and rent right you want to have something that

190exceeds that so kind of making those kind of simplified analysis but then also breaking it down at the program level that's makes it a little bit more digestible when we talk about the magnet program you're using those terms and and really simplifying that um and we did a road show to really break down here's what we're doing at our district here's where our funds are going so that before you go um you know to those budget committees they kind of have a better understanding of like how the funds work and and some of the complexities around that um but that's what that's what we did and really it's a lot of breaking down what's happening at the district by program and sometimes by school too i don't know if you have anything to add to

191that thank you oh you need a microphone thank you i knew that so i was a little slow moving forward but mike find ceo at fic mat the california association of school business officials has a publication they update annually i don't recall what it's called but i can send you a link that you can share does a decent job it's difficult to keep it at a high level right and still have it make sense they are also about to release i've seen a draft of it and made some edits to it a publication i think specifically for board members um really in the context of those maybe running for office so that they can start to get up to speed and have reasonable conversations during the campaign process and then finally school services of california

192so we do a lot of professional development but ours is focused on the the chief business official right so bless you so school services california offers a workshop every fall it's only three hours it's available on zoom called i should know this unraveling the mysteries of school finance it's really meant for the non financial person so our instructional colleagues our hr colleagues board members superintendents and those folks um i'm sure you could i shouldn't say i'm sure i suspect you could pay for the workshop that already happened back in october just to get the materials if you would like if that's helpful and then finally assembly bill 640 was passed this year and signed by the governor that requires all of you to go through training on the budget up to four hours we are

193tasked in the legislation figmat is to develop the curriculum and update it once a year we have till next october to develop it and then the training starts to go in fact i suspect csba will be the one that wants to deliver that training to you they want to put their own spin on it i suspect using the curriculum will develop do you think though that's helpful our student trustees will get extra credit for that um student trustees i don't i know that over the weekend you had lots of time to read through 70 55 pages but do you have any questions or thoughts or clarify clarifications no okay thanks can i ask you one more question about the 94 let's say 95 percent of the funds that are already allocated in general fund does

194that include does that 95 percent already include the three percent reserve that we need to have in the bank or is that three percent go on top of that so now you're left with two percent to kind of move around are you just clarifying are you talking about again the table where we're talking about the the statewide average so the way we calculate that or in the district average of salaries and benefits i'm talking about salaries benefits all that yes okay so the 90 yes you're rounding it to 95 i just wanted to make sure uh so the way that we calculate that is actually your salaries and benefits against your total costs for the one year so it's not related to your reserve at all it's the total cost of running your district it's

195the percentage of the reserves are on top this is of 100 percent of what is budgeted as an expenditure your reserves aren't budgeted as expenditure they're setting in the bottom line yeah so and and let me say this you do need to break that down between unrestricted and restricts an easy calculation to do 94 percent is an unhealthy level so and you have to separate your salary conversation right this doesn't mean you're at the high end of compensation you've just got a lot of people is what it tells me if i if i take tonight in context right and and assume the numbers cited tonight are correct as far as comparisons this is very unhealthy level because between it normally it's around 85 that's kind of where you want to be but influencing this will

196be all those restricted grants if you have a out kind of out of the norm amount of restricted programs which are probably supporting a lot of people so that will push that number up but just bodies are probably driving that number more than compensation levels so keep in mind if it's at 85 then 15 cents of every dollar spent on non-people things of those your utility costs your non-public school non-public agency services for students with disabilities and if your transportation is contracted for if it's in-house and and it's not here but if it was in-house it'd be over the salary and benefits but it's contracted for those three things make up the bulk of that 15 cents and so when you just target supplies and technology and my favorite travel and conference to cut you're

197literally talking about pennies in the context of things you've got to go you've got to work on that 94 is what you actually have to focus on the most difficult task right and if i could add just one clarification the numbers that are in the background are not based on our projection those were based on the district's 24-25 an audit actuals but the 25-26 budget is the adopted budget not the first center not ours i will say though in our projection for software we have a report that spits that number out really easily as well so if you're interested in that we can get that to you well i think i'll round things out just thanking you for the work and the time and looking at our district i think that we approach this with

198an overall goal at least i my understanding was to have an outside agency help us the board understand our financial situation and i think that the the end result was different but helpful in different ways than we had initially anticipated and i think that i'm kind of surprised at how much not that i'm an expert but just how much i understood about what was being stated in there and i just wanted to say that's you know the facts that were presented here suggest no easy answers or low-hanging fruit to address the budgetary issues that we face however the recommendations that you provide appear to be a mix of practices that we're already enacting which i heard a lot of agreed with assumptions some of those recommendations we have played with thinking about position control and

199using that as a budgetary tool to make decisions and then also some that we need to adopt as best practices and so i think that some of this was for us but some of this was also for miss wasley and thinking about moving forward um and i think i mean i there were some specific recommendations that i have questions with but most of the questions are geared over this way about how and to what extent we're doing those so um i think that's it any any other thoughts or questions from the board thank you so much for your time appreciate it and we will take a five minute recess we'll be back at nine oh eight welcome back there we go we're reconvening at nine ten p.m and we're moving on to 14.2 approval of

200the first approval of the 2526 first interim financial report and i'll turn the time over to miss wasley good evening um this evening i will be presenting on the 2526 first interim budget so the purpose of the first interim budget is it's one of three required financial reports each year and covers financial performance through october 31st of the fiscal year it allows the district our county office of education and the state to review our fiscal health for the current year and the subsequent fiscal years and the report is based on the most current data available and serves as an important tool for guiding budget decisions moving forward as we move into the spring this slide shows where we are within our annual budget cycle from adoption adopted budget in june to first interim in december

201and then in march we will see second interim in between first interim and second interim we will receive the january's budget proposal for the 2627 state budget so a quick summary of the first interim budget for 2526 the district's projected unrestricted reserve is 4.4 percent of total expenditures this is on our unrestricted fund balance but on total expenditures restricted and unrestricted as a result the district meets the criteria for a positive certification meaning we're projected to meet our financial obligations in the current year and the two subsequent years and exceed our or meet our three percent reserve requirement included in the budget is increased lcff funding from our tk add-on the new one-time student support and professional development discretionary block grant and partial restoration of learning recovery emergency block grant all salaries benefits reflect current

202staffing and vacancies as well as restricted categorical budgets that were updated in alignment with the 2526 expenditure plans total projected revenues are projected at 215 million with total projected expenditures at 223 million leaving a decrease in fund balance of 7.78 million dollars of that three million dollars is unrestricted and 4.8 million is restricted our projected ending fund balance for unrestricted is 9.9 million dollars of that 6.7 million is our required three percent reserve and then in the restricted we're projected at 8.7 million dollars ending fund balance with a good portion of that being our new professional development and student support discretionary block grant because we haven't fully determined how we'll be spending those funds for revenue 72 percent of our revenue was else is from lcff sources which is a combination of state and local

203funding sources the balance is made up of federal state and local revenue of the total revenue 74 percent of total revenue is unrestricted and 26 percent is restricted the total revenue increased by 8.4 million dollars from adopted budget largely due to new grants and new one-time dollars now go into some specific revenue highlights lcff revenue decreased by 181 thousand dollars this is due to our actual 25-26 enrollment coming and lower than projected our projected enrollment dropped by 135 students this is largely due to pre-registrations for tk or transitional kindergarten and kindergarten not achieving into actual enrollment by the time we got to august as well as our historical cohort survival rates weren't achieved as expected so when you project enrollment you look at historically how many students move from one grade level to the next

204and do this over a weighted average and typically you receive see close to the same amount we did see some unexpected drops in various grade levels as well that would have been a much smaller impact had the tk and kindergarten registrations been realized but it did impact the total overall our districts on duplicated pupil percentage also decreased slightly from 24.97 percent to 24.88 percent so very minor it was a decrease of about a hundred thousand dollars in supplemental funding that is projected however because of the increased tk add-on funding it helped offset the loss of funding from the decline in enrollment and so we resulted in the net decrease of 181 thousand dollars in lcff so being that lcff is 72 percent of our funding i wanted to look at cola and how cola is

205impacted by enrollment as well as unduplicated pupil percentage and the change in cola and so i took our 24 25 lcff revenue without any add-ons so an add-on is like our transitional kindergarten staffing ratio funding that we receive as well as home to school transportation so it's not things that necessarily fluctuate with cola necessarily and there's some other add-ons and then on with the base i then added the 2.3 percent cola that we received for 25 26 which would have netted us 3.4 million dollars for a total potential lcff revenue of 150 million dollars however our actual 25 26 projected lcff base revenue which does include our supplemental funding is 148 million dollars so that's only a 1.1 percent increase in lcff funding from prior year and so just to show that while we see

206a statutory cola of 2.3 percent our funding may not necessarily go up by 2.3 percent i think i know i i think the the clarification that you just made is very is impossible for the public to understand they see cola 2.3 they assume that is 2.3 percent money not the complex calculation that you just gave but i guess that's why we were elected to sit here understand that make decisions from that reality and a little later in the presentation i do have some more information on cola just because i do feel like it is kind of a mysterious number that is just kind of thrown out by the state and so i just wanted to provide some context to that later in the presentation as well so then for federal revenue we saw an increase

207of 1.18 million dollars the funding increased primarily due to carryover of 1.13 million dollars in magnet grants 75 000 in carryover title one funding 23 000 in title four carryover that was offset by a decrease in our current year projection of in revenue based off of cde allocation the gains were partially offset by decreases in title two as well as special education for other state revenue we saw an increase of 3.9 million dollars this was largely due to the the increase from the new student support professional development block grant of 3.83 million dollars this new block grant is reflected in our restricted ending fund balance this is due to how the state has categorized these funds so while they are discretionary in nature and there are no true spending requirements there is an expenditure deadline

208and we will have to report on it but we can spend it on anything the district needs for our daily operations or professional development or anything of that nature and so i do feel like grants like these muddy the waters or one-time funds when they're put into restricted categories but have really no restrictions in place for how they are spent your typical restricted dollars are very restricted in nature of what you can spend it on and the plan that you have in place to spend the dollars so you do see those in the restricted dollars but they are relatively unrestricted in nature are they are they in restricted because it's one time they are restricted because that is the resource code that the state used for the funds okay so the state when they give

209new money they give us what's called a resource code so there's our general fund that's the main pot of money that the majority of our funds sit in and then within the general fund fund01 are different resources so we have our general resource and then there's a variety of other resources and the state depicts which resource new funds are going into and so when they develop this new one-time block grant they put it to a restricted resource under governor brown's administration he typically put the one-time dollars that he gave out in unrestricted funds so it didn't muddy the waters yeah okay in addition to the student support and professional development block grant we also had a partial restoration of the learning recovery block grant of 364 000 increases to prop 28 arts and music funding

210the participation in our classified summer assistance program match increased based on participation and we had several smaller grants and reimbursements that also increased we also had some carryover from our universal pre-kindergarten planning grant and this is our last year to spend it so we will be fully spending those funds in 2526 we did have a few reductions in elop funding some lower home to school transportation reimbursements based off our prior year expenditures and decreases in law lottery that were tied to our decline in our reduced enrollment in 2526 for local revenue we saw an increase of 3.5 million dollars this was due to several sources increasing the largest was an increase of 2.12 million dollars and medical reimbursement funds as fic matt referenced earlier that's a really hard one to project because they come at

211random intervals you get prior year adjustments that you're not told about until you receive the funds so we recognize those reimbursements when they are received and don't plan for them we also had an additional 829 000 dollars in donations based off of the amounts received to date 250 000 increased in projected interest earnings based off of our prior year and our first quarter interest as well as additional gains from parcel tax growth elop tuition and a few grants that are locally restricted based off of who we received the grants from for expenditures overall of our total expenditures restricted and unrestricted 81 percent of expenditures are for salaries and benefits but 92 percent are from our of our unrestricted budget is for salaries and benefits of total expenditures 50 percent of expenditures are unrestricted and 44

212are restricted this is largely due to special education being a restricted resource and doing a large contribution into special education that's not reflected in the expenditures so for salaries and benefits all salaries and benefits were updated based off of current staffing positions staffed as well as vacancies that are projected increased staffing was primarily due to staffing additions and transitional kindergarten instructional assistance expanded learning programs assistance special education paraeducators as well as negotiated labor settlements for classified staff that have been approved since the adopted budget certificated staff on the unrestricted side slightly reduced due to final bell schedule adjustments as well as the reduction of one transitional kindergarten classroom based off of enrollment benefits increased a little bit which was offset the reason they didn't increase more in comparison to our salary increase was because i

213re-evaluated our opeb expenditures which is our cost for retiree health benefits and looked at how much we expect to act to spend in 25 26 and was able to reduce that cost by 380 000 staffing in total increase from 1286 fte to 1310 fte the largest increase in fte this is a summary chart of all of our bargaining units and different labor groups of fte from adopted budget to first interim our largest increase within csa due to as i mentioned the transitional kindergarten instructional assistance our elop assistance as well as additional special education paraeducators for books and supplies and services and capital outlay for books and supplies and services we saw decreases overall in our unrestricted funding for both categories so all of the increases to books and supplies as well as services was all

214restricted grant or restricted dollars that have been budgeted now books and supplies shifted restricted supplies increased by 6.5 million dollars from grant carryover and new funding and unrestricted supplies decreased by 120 000 as some costs moved to different portions of the budget like salaries and services the restricted services increased by 1.1 million dollars driven by donations medicall and prop 28 and special education services we were able to reduce those expenses for non-public agencies and non-public schools based off of our current contracts in place and i do have all of these detailed out more in my narrative as well as in the presentation but i don't want to read through all this and then for capital outlay it increased by 298 000 dollars unrestricted was for a replacement warehouse vehicle that we actually ordered last school

215year but it wasn't delivered by july 1 so we had to rebook that expense in this year and then elop vehicles are planned as well as kitchen infrastructure improvements are planned for the restricted capital outlay so we've heard a lot about the multi-year projection tonight i included this slide i know it's a lot of information but it's some primary assumptions of how the multi-year budget is built so it has um information on projected cola our funded average daily attendance lottery projections calsters and purrs required employer contributions to highlight a few key ones our enrollment while our enrollment grew by 20 students from 24 25 to 25 26 we are projected decline in 26 27 and then another decline in 27 28 this is largely due to our transitional kindergarten classes and kindergarten classes being smaller

216than our outgoing 12th grade classes and it's really the kindergarten classes and that's really attributed to lower birth rates we will see we'll have our demographic study coming out next week at our workshop that is planned or special or board meeting that's planned for next week to review where we see enrollment going in the next five to ten years we do see that building will help offset this loss of lower birth rates however we do we'll see a initial dip before it kind of stabilizes and potentially goes back up a little bit it also has our p2 average daily attendance so that drives the majority of our funding for p2 ada and then our percentage of ada so that is our enrollment to our what we actually receive an ada which drives our funding of

21794.4 percent this year and 94.5 percent next year what we actually expect to be funded on for ada our tk ada and such so just to provide that for then now how i got to where i am with our unrestricted multi-year projection so in 25 26 we have an ending fund balance unrestricted of 4.4 percent we do have deficit spending of 2.9 million dollars in the current year as well as projected 2.2 million dollars in 26 27 so our ending fund balance is projected to drop to 3.56 percent in 26 27 then our deficit spending just due to increased revenue from lcff based off of the cola projections um helps offset some of our deficit spending at being at about 500 000 dollars in deficit spending to have an ending fund balance of 3.35 percent

218and just as a reminder the ending fund balance percentage does incorporate our required three percent reserve of 6.69 million dollars and then over all of our combined funds um we do see an improvement from adopted budget just from our 24 25 unaudited actuals improving over what was previously projected which has helped us improve slightly in our current year in our out years at adopted budget we were barely at three percent in our out years and did require a one time 600 000 reduction in 26 27 we no longer have that one time reduction built into this multi-year projection and then in restricted funds we do have 3.9 ending fund balance in 25 26 1.7 in 26 27 and 4 percent in 27 28 and then i just want to note that included in the multi-year

219projection is both of our school-based mental health grant as well as our magnet grant for the school-based mental health grant there is a hearing on december 11th regarding these funds and we are hopeful that the preliminary injunction will stay in place as well as we will be added into that we are still looking at other options for funding sources but as a last resort i have designated a small balance in 25 26 for the remainder salaries for this year if we were to have to dip into our unrestricted general fund balance for those salaries if we were to lose them is that the 495 000 yes okay and then as we look forward into for the multi-year projection we're always looking forward to of what what is the state doing how is the state budget

220going to impact us what does cola look like so the legislative analyst office office released the fiscal outlook for california in advance of the january's good governor's budget proposal that will be released in mid-january there was some good news of the state revenue being up by 11 billion dollars but the state is still facing an 18 billion dollar deficit in the out years the prop 98 guarantee was revised upwards creating 7.4 billion dollars in one-time school funding while ongoing funding will only be enough to cover statutory cola likely the lao is currently estimating cola at 2.51 percent the lao is also recommending using the one-time funds to eliminate deferrals create an advanced payment or restore fully restore the learning recovery block grant the learning recovery block grant restoration would be the only recommendation that would

221actually achieve additional funds for the school district the rest would be really budget maneuvers to help stabilize the state budget so we would either get our money on time or we would get our money early is really what the two recommendations are by lao to help the state balance their budget within each fiscal year so hopefully when we see the governor's budget proposal he does not opt for these two items and maybe put some more money towards schools because the guarantee is there to put money into the hands of schools and not help the state balance their budget so we'll see in january what that brings and then i'll report back as well once we have more in january and then for the cola so we hear the term cola and i personally when i

222first got into school finance didn't really know what that meant i thought it was an indicator of what the state of california and what our expenses were doing at the time and increasing in cost but that's not really the case california uses a government spending index to calculate cola which is not a commonly reported measure like cpi or overall economic growth so it does not fully track what businesses staff families are seeing in changes to inflation costs they're seeing it's really a broader economic assumption that's being used to calculate what the statutory cola will be in california so it's not a reflection of what's actually happening in our state or local economy for increases that we're receiving receiving and then the cola is based on the average of quarter two of the prior year through

223quarter one of the prior year compared against the preceding four quarters of time and the government shutdown has led to this number being currently less sure than it normally would be at this time of the year because normally in october we would have received quarter three of 2025 but we have not yet received that so now we're guessing at three quarters of data instead of just two quarters of data so based off of that i put together some cola projections and so the way this chart works is you take in the top box there's 2024 quarter two through 2025 quarter one and you take the average of those four quarters and then it's the bottom four quarters you compare against the top four quarters to figure out what the cola would be and so i

224projected if we stayed flat from 2025 quarter two all the way through 2026 quarter one cola would be at 1.27 percent if we had the average growth of our four prior quarters then we would see a cola of 2.03 percent or if we had a one percent growth in the last three quarters we would have a 2.8 percent cola we have not seen a one percent growth and i like that that last one yeah me too yes i would say that one seems unlikely based on what we have seen in the prior quarters because one percent i think was maybe seen in one of the five quarters that we do have to date so just to give an idea of how those remaining quarters will impact us moving forward and then taking that i looked

225at our current lcff projections for 26 27 and 27 28 i used a cola of 2.3 percent just based off of trying to look at our range of 1.27 to 2.8 not wanting to go in extremely conservative but give us some room if it does get projected lower and so at flat cola of 1.27 percent it would be a loss of 1.6 million dollars in 26 27 and another loss of 1.6 million dollars in 27 28 at a 2.03 percent cola it would be a loss of 409 thousand dollars in 26 27 and a loss of 420 thousand dollars in 27 28 and at a 2.8 percent cola that we can hope for is seven hundred fifty seven thousand dollar increase in 26 27 and a seven hundred seventy eight thousand dollar increase in 27

22628 keeping all other assumptions that were included in the multi-year projection the same except for adjusting for cola does the two what's the 2.5 percent does that have us in the red or the 2.3 is an increase from 25 26 26 27 yeah that's built into the multi-year so that's why there's no numbers because that's already been built into the multi-year the numbers in red or black on here would be adjustments to our multi-year whether it was a decrease to revenue or an increase to revenue so the next steps in our budget cycle will be the governor's budget proposal that i mentioned on january 10th second interim in march and then we'll receive another update to the governor's proposal for the budget in may and then going into our 26 27 budget adoption and then

227june 30th is when we'll know that state 26 27 budget with that any additional questions we do have one blue card mr keith pickering walters is going the distance with us thank you i'm keith pickering walters i teach at laurence right now i'm living castro valley am i able to ask a question and get an answer on one piece it's just a comment okay then i'll just comment um so a lot of this has to do with the last presentation sorry i was too slow um but bravo um the fic mat presentation was perfectly timed leading up to mediation um emphasize the threat of fiduciary responsibility on new new board members imply that there was fiduciary responsibility issues in the past and then present a report that was constrained by the assumptions that you placed

228on your own budget i'm not part of negotiations right now but i've been involved with negotiations as the president vice president or bargaining chair for the better part of 20 years i'd like to encourage board members to look at the budgets historically and watch the books and supplies budget that category for inflows of unrestricted funds that become restricted leading up to negotiations then when negotiations have concluded those restriction those restricted funds magically become unrestricted and get spent in ways other than employee salary and benefits on top of that notice how much ongoing funds are left over at the end of each year but are suddenly reclassified as one-time funds because they're left over from the previous year making it seem like that amount of money isn't available for ongoing expenditures even though they came from

229ongoing funds when you're looking at your reserve please remember that your staff aren't able to maintain their own reserves when they're not being compensated fairly and keep getting hit with higher benefit costs higher rent more expensive groceries and more um finally i sure wish the board would receive a presentation like this each and every time they're considering hiring an additional assistant superintendent or new superintendent and what you're considering offering them in their contracted in their contract so thank you so much and have a good night thank you questions clarifications from the trustees i have a couple the the medi-cal funds the funds medi-cal reimbursement reimbursement thank you i don't have that in my notes i just wrote medi-cal and i'm like what am i what was i trying to say could you explain i know

230we've had this before but i've forgotten could you explain it yes so medi-cal reimbursements come from services provided to special education students by our speech language pathologists psychologists nurses i believe that's everybody and then they submit service tracking to a company that we contract with because it is a very complex service tracking it's doing really medical billing and submitting that to the state for reimbursement for reimbursable services and then when we receive that money in the funds are spent and planned through our medi-cal collaborative so that is a group of district employees as well as special education mostly special education staff that meet to determine how those funds are allocated and distributed and so with the increase in funds we'll be going back to the collaborative to see how they want to spend the funds

231and we have in the past done and last year recommended a few staffing additions and so we are talking to them about that as well and then with the unrestricted i just want to be it was like 9.9 the bottom line yes so 495 of thousand of that was for the mental health just a placeholder just in case we lose that correct grant okay and then was that is that part of the reserve so i did my math 6.7 million is the reserve so the yeah the required reserve is the 6.7 so we have 9.8 million or 9.9 million dollars then we back out the 6.7 for kind of what's left over and we're going to hold this 495 correct and then that's really our undead the rest the balance is undesignated okay thank you

232any other questions if not i would entertain motion i move to support the superintendent's recommendation to approve the second interim budget with a positive certification as presented second said first interim or second interim did i say first you said second oh it's first let me restate that so i move to support the superintendent's recommendation to approve the second the first interim budget with a positive certification as presented a second i have a first from trustee pruso a second from trustee vanden heuvel any discussion on the motion if not clerk can you call the roll do the student board members vote yeah they can all right no uh trustee pruso i myself i president druane i trustee gruce i trustee grass yes trustee deepak uh so that will be a how do i call that and

233then we have two what's the wording for i'll say it passes it passes three oh three oh with two absent with two absent and everything from this point forward that you have to vote on if it's not just so you know no pressure i promise but if i really mean that i just want you to know when there's three of you if it's not a three oh though it does not pass yeah just so you know okay okay moving on to 14.3 math placement act report discussion only mr jason krulikowski cleared the room out good evening president druane members of the school board superintendent gibson and members of cabinet tonight i'm here to present the annual report on the math placement act of 2015 typically this report is delivered in the beginning of the school

234year as placement of students reported tonight occurred in august on the first day of school the purpose of the senate bill was to ensure that all districts in california that had ninth grade students would report on their fair objective and transparent process for the placement of its students in math courses as they entered high school there are four main areas that must be reported on the exact math placement process how our students objectively assessed the re the revaluation process after the spring assessment and the summer has passed the parent appeal process and the annual review where students were placed to ensure that there are no barriers or lack of access to math classes this is a chart showing how an entering sixth grade student is able to progress throughout middle school math courses our district

235also offers accelerated pathways that are available for students who are exceptionally advanced in mathematics the typical pathway shows that most students will enter ninth grade ready to successfully take algebra one this will allow a student to graduate high school having completed algebra one geometry algebra two and pre-calculus then as an entering college student they might take calculus or statistics depending on the major chosen to graduate from livermore valley joint unified school district all students must pass algebra one and take a total of 20 units of math for the past few years we've established a math placement matrix which is the there are three sections you're looking at the first section that is focused on using objective quantifiable data for placement the matrix the matrix combines data from math course grades that's one that's what you're

236looking at right now the previous year of cas math scores and the results on the md tp which is the math diagnostic diagnostic testing project once we've established a placement we ask the school administration and teachers to review the placements and offer possible changes so once again this is for fifth grade students entering sixth grade and eighth grade students entering ninth grade this next slide is an example or or the rubric we use for the md tp you can see that you get a score based on the percentage based on the grade that you're in and then lastly is our casp scores which is from the year prior year before you can see that if a student gets its actual value based on the metrics within the casp one two three or four so there's

237three sections there's a total of 12 points a student can get to show us where they're at and that's where a student is originally placed and again students schools have the opportunities to review in case a student is showing that they placed in a certain class but actually they were a little bit higher and their teacher thinks they can do a little bit better or vice versa we also have a math placement appeal process so we don't want to hold any barriers for our students if a family or student thinks they're ready for the next level of math while we may show them the data that we've collected through this process we certainly don't gatekeep away for any students who want to pursue math at a higher level if after receiving the course placement notification

238a student parent believes that the placement is inappropriate they may establish follow the established established appeal process they complete the form that's found online and the parents turn the form into the site principal who would forward it to me the director of curriculum and a meeting will be held to review the math placement with multiple measures and discuss options most math placement issues are resolved at the site level with the principal this data on this slide shows you exactly how we did with our placement we're proud to say that we had 100 students place appropriately appropriately at the ninth grade level which means they're all starting at algebra one or the math academy that that we offer some students who need a little support in the sixth grade you can see that we have a

23999 percent placement rate and any student that was placed below was oftentimes it was a situation that we we had to look into and find out what happened but there was not an issue of it's pure objectives students don't have names they have just a score at the end of this and that's where they're placed and with that that is our math placement process and how we place our students for freshmen as going into sixth and ninth grade thank you very much do you have any questions there's this is discussion only there were no blue cards any questions from the board thank you up next is 14 for nominations for the 2026 california school boards association delegate assembly next to that says president emily prusso i think this is are there any are there any

240nominations or self-nominations i asked trustee vanden heuvel he's not no nope right moving on to so no action taken 14.5 approval of appointment of members to the citizens oversight committee for measure a parcel tax miss kayla wasley yes so um over the fall we have um have had five vacancies from our parcel tax committee and so we advertise throughout the committee for new members and we received five applications that we are presenting tonight for approval to join our measure a citizen oversight committee we will begin meeting in january and present the annual report in may to the board and so it is the superintendent's recommendation to approve the appointment of the five new members i have no blue cards on this is there any discussion or questions from the board were these five applications the

241only five you received yes for five open positions yes so the committee can consist of five to seven members this will put us at our max of seven members but we felt like kind of the more the merrier if you want to participate and help the oversight of measure a we welcome it and so we have a variety of parents community members i think one was able to fill we attempt to fill a financial position a legal professional business professional as well as a community member and a parent we're not always able to fill all of them but we were able to fill i believe one of the three ones that are difficult to fill and the rest are community parents what is the time commitment for these um the meetings we meet once a

242month from january to may and the meetings run from one to two hours any other questions no if not i would entertain a motion i move to approve the appointment of members to this is an oversight committee for measure a parcel tax as stated in item 14.5 i will second the motion i have a motion from trustee vanden heuvel a second from trustee pruso any discussion on the motion if not clerk can you take the role myself i trustee pruso aye president druid uh i that motion carries three zero with two board members absent we're on to 15-0 our consent items there are 11 consent items does anybody want to remove any any discussion on the consent items if not i would entertain a motion president druan i move to approve consent items as i

243don't know try to name them all as presented in their entirety in their entirety i have a motion from trustee pruso i'll second that any second from trustee vanden huvel any discussion on the motion clerk if you can call roll trustee pruso i myself i president druid uh i that motion carries three zero with two members absent so we are on to reports and requests we will start with trustee vanden huvel i had the opportunity to attend this year's c s b a a e c the annual education conference by c s b a and it was when i look back on those couple of days it was incredibly encouraging motivate confirming to compare notes about what's happening in our district and districts across the state because the tensions and the frustrations and the difficulties

244that have dominated the conversation here at home are also mirrored in districts across the region it didn't matter which session or workshop i participated in lcff and funding were talked about bemoaned at every corner every time it didn't matter what subject it had nothing to do with finances it would still come up it was also super interesting last month to sit in on the collaboration meeting between lea and cabinet see how mo use and other you know areas of tension are managed and resolved um i saw an incredible choir concert where the menin hall and granada choirs sang and they they're just like up and to the right because if you've heard him before and they're just they're so good it was so great go see them if you have a chance last night getting

245to be with ms garza at junction tk8 for the di open house was so encouraging and they've got such an incredible team there um doing that and to see parent involvement there and parent attendance is really really cool and then a math plc here in the boardroom with a bunch of fifth grade teachers from across the district was is so motivating and so fun to see and they're so engaged every single one of those teachers was just like there to learn and do and work and um money well spent and and it's obviously immediate or directly related to student achievement so um kudos on that team trustee perso if it's okay uh trustee coplanis asked me to read her yes so i'll do that first and then i'll do mine okay thank you so this

246is trustee coplanis she said i'm very grateful for all i've learned and experienced my first complete year serving on the board school site visits athletic games assemblies events meetings and math task force has deepened my love for students teachers staff ptos and public education as a whole i've worked really hard to deepen my understanding of how the board board of education truly functions to advance student performance and achievement i completed a year's worth of masters in governance with the california school board association and now i'm officially considered an alumni but i'll always continue learning success learning to successfully serve the students teachers and staff of the livermore school district i will continue to educate myself on financial grant opportunities creative and collaborative ways to work through difficult times and to always do the right thing

247i'd like to thank all the speakers who have come to speak in favor of our teachers for the past few months i hear you and just and just to have it on record i want to be very clear i very much support the hard-working teachers of this district i've always said this and nothing has changed with that my recent site to del val and vineyard was very special as i walked in to the into the scent of culinary students preparing their thanksgiving feast this made the crisp fall morning feel extra warm and welcoming last week at the aec conference in sacramento was very educational as i was able to attend courses on budgeting bargaining policies and collaborations along with my colleagues i was also very excited to attend my first golden bell awards and witness

248our district receive a math data protocol award upon my return from sacramento i was able to briefly attend a very competitive livermore girls varsity soccer game they ended up with a one-one tie and i love seeing so many students participating in the downtown holiday sites and sounds parade everything everyone was excellent the dual immersion night at junction was very exciting to see all of the work the students pour into learning all subjects in two languages and of course this is a reflection of the awesome team of teachers that are able to instruct those young minds day after day as part of the math task force i found that the math plc fifth grade training very helpful to see how these teams will be applying strategies to teaching essential lessons to their students and i'm looking

249forward to their reports in january and with that i want to wish everyone a feliz navidad merry christmas and a very happy new year i hope everyone has a wonderful relaxing holiday break so that was dina's report and then i'll just quickly report right before thanksgiving i was able to go to maryland steam academy and pass out hot cocoa to the teachers with mr mignet he was dressed as a turkey so that was fun yeah the kids loved it just like my colleagues i was also able to attend the csba conference and in particular the golden bell awards mr kolokowski has already left but i um his work was instrumental in and receiving that math data math protocol award just wanted to congratulate him and all of the people who worked on that and then

250i just wanted to as as trustee uh vanden huvel i'm like what's your name again as trustee vanden huvel stated um at the conference that we attended uh statewide funding was on the top of everyone's minds and while i was at that conference i learned that california is one of only six states that still fund schools based on daily attendance rather than enrollment um csba and several other educational organizations are already advocating for a shift to enrollment-based funding because studies show it has little impact on attendance but provides districts with more stable and equitable resources especially for higher needs communities like ours this issue directly affects our district as we face rising costs difficult negations negotiations increased responsibilities for student mental health nutrition and other services and the added strain of higher health care costs

251um to advocate for our district i've reached out to assembly member bauer con and senator mcnerney to request a meeting i would like our community and our employee groups be part of this conversation as well so that we can push for a funding model that truly reflects the needs of our students and then i just wanted to say as well over the past year it's our community has experienced real strain conversations about compensation programs and our budget haven't just been about numbers they've reflected deep emotions and genuine fears and sincere hopes for our schools and i want to acknowledge that um i also want to acknowledge the people who come to our board meetings and speak to us so passionately and they come because they care strongly about our students and our educators and the

252future of livermore i want to reassure our community that we want to reset our shared foundation our foundation that we believe all students deserve exceptional opportunities we believe that our educators deserve to be valued and supported and we all and we all know that long-term stability matters because a district that isn't financially healthy can't keep its commitments to students and staff my hope is that moving forward we can rebuild trust by focusing on our shared values assuming good intent and speaking to each other as neighbors who want the same thing strong schools supported staff and a sustainable future for our students i just want to thank everyone for caring so much about our schools and for being part of this community and i also just wanted to wish everyone merry christmas and a great holiday

253break so i'll keep my comments brief i too attended the california school board association conference i attended the presidential workshop as well as several several other sessions including one by our own middle college and i think for me csba i was talking with a friend who also attends professional conversations and goes into session sessions and feels like i'm not learning anything and trusty pruso and i have talked about this that's for me for us attending presentations is an opportunity to reinforce that what we're doing is correct to identify new ways of approaching and to also identify ways that aren't right for our school so i think that all three of those occurred as part of my experience at csba some things we're doing most of what we're doing is are identified as best practices there's

254a few things we can do differently which i look forward to engaging with and there's some things that just aren't right for our community and then secondly i just wanted to touch talk i appreciate our teachers staff and community members coming out and speaking writing to help share their lived experience and their i don't know share with us what they see to try to help us understand where they're coming from and what they're experiencing and i think that's for me being on the board one of the hardest things is to reconcile what reality is and i think that hearing directly from constituents and from community members helps to ground reality and influence the decisions that i make and how i vote but reality is complex but i think that that's the the onus is on

255us five to try to deduce what reality is and what's best for our community and i think that's that's really challenging to do so but it's important work and i think that's there's as i had mentioned previously visited germany i think the idea of the local control that our society places over education is fundamentally different from a lot of other societies and i think that that places a large burden on us but it also gives a lot of power to our community community members to shape education as they see best so with that being said i'll pass the time over to dr gibson good evening oops am i on there we go sorry good evening um just a couple really quick updates assistant superintendent peshet and i met with lawmakers november 18th i believe it

256was 17th 18th somewhere in there um and it was right when the government was reopening like literally it was right around that time it was also the same day that the white house was announcing pulling apart the department of education so it was kind of an interesting day all around meeting with lawmakers on capitol hill via zoom at the same time that that was that madness was happening so our biggest push was really educating our local lawmakers around our current situation with our two federal grants and asking for their help and support we still have not had a return response from any of our correspondents with them we were given at 1.5 days to respond we responded we requested a two-week extension we followed up on our two-week extension then after that i have responded

257to them once or twice again asking for a response and still nothing so with that with the school-based mental health grant we you know as assistant superintendent wasley stated earlier we're waiting until december 11th we're really hopeful on that the magnet grant they have gone completely silent so we will continue to follow up cap is also following up on our behalf and so as soon as we have any updates of course we'll update the board and the overall the the school sites or the staff that are directly impacted as well as our general community we continue to hold our budget advisory committees we have two of those if you don't know we had those right before thanksgiving break and we have both of those meetings on thursday one in the morning one in the afternoon

258both groups we had to move one from friday because of mediation and so we cleared our calendars too so that mediation could happen as soon as possible we had our monthly faculty communication council meeting as known to us as fcc so we held that we are holding that monthly now instead of every quarter i believe is what we were doing we just didn't feel like it was it was enough communication with those site reps so that's been very effective and we have another one coming up next week right before break lastly as everyone knows mediation is on friday and i just want to reiterate that i know that anytime an email goes out for me it's it's it's either loved or hated and that's just the life of of where we all sit in the

259world that we sit in in leadership and i'm okay with that but i genuinely meant everything that was said in that email and we're very hopeful that friday we can really come to some sort of a solution and reprioritization it's going to come with cuts i want to make that very clear the the two presentations tonight made it very clear we don't have extra in our budget without eliminating things from our budget so we are going to sit down and go through not on friday but once we have and we know where we sit you know we we will make we will make it work but it's it's it will come with some cuts and it will be painful however i also like to see that as a time to reinvent ourselves and so we

260will stick with that so i'm hopeful that on friday we can do a communication out and provide some of that relief to all of our staff and to the board that we reached an agreement and with that happy merry everything between now and january the next regular board meeting will be held on thursday december 18th 2025 open session will begin at 9 a.m and with that i close this meeting at 10 07 p.m