9.9.25 Board Meeting

001good evening good evening welcome we've got so many teachers in there we do quiet quiet coyote or something welcome this is the september 9th meeting of the board of education of the livermore valley joint unified school district 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 six o one 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 session must be reported out in open session so i would ask trustee vandenhul if he could please report in closed session the board voted five zero in

002favor of the superintendent's recommendation to approve the stipulated expulsion recommendation of student 2526a thank you we're going to move on to the pledge of allegiance and invite mr taylor to come forward and lead us in the pledge one two three i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right thank you uh superintendent gibson are there any changes to the agenda no they're not okay we're going to move on to our favorite part of the evening which is our recognitions we're going to first invite christy starkovich our lawrence elementary principal who will now recognize someone very special from her school let's see her there she is okay good evening board president peruso members

003of the board superintendent gibson cabinet and community members as principal of lawrence elementary it is my honor to recognize maryne grosbeck our incredible library media specialist maryne is truly the heart of our library and a key leader on our campus she embodies lvj usd's core value of collaboration a wonderful example of this was seen recently when she worked alongside a team of parents and staff to develop a makerspace schedule that allows students to participate in art lessons through our lawrence elementary art program her ability to listen and coordinate and create solutions ensures that all voices are heard and that students benefit from the outcome however beyond the library maryne is always stepping in to help she supports after school dismissal ensuring students leave campus safely and calmly in the library she is both kind-hearted and

004approachable building strong relationships with students and staff alike whether she's helping a student find the perfect book supporting them in solving a chromebook chromebook issue or lending a listening ear she models patience compassion and problem solving her expertise with technology coupled with her calm supportive presence makes her an invaluable resource maryne is flexible dependable and consistently demonstrates teamwork teamwork being here tonight i didn't realize how nervous she was going to be but she's collaborating with me and she's here qualities that strengthen our school community she enriches lawrence not only through her leadership but also through her daily acts of care and service so we are grateful for her dedication her collaborative spirit and the many ways she inspires both staff and students and tonight you have a huge crowd maryne so please join me in

005celebrating and thanking maryne grosbeck for the countless ways she makes lawrence elementary a better place every day the core value that we're recognizing her for as i mentioned was collaboration okay thank you we now like to invite mr eric taylor our alternative education principal who is going to recognize the del val and vineyard counselors we'll invite him forward all right good evening board president pruso members of the board superintendent gibson and cabinet i'm eric taylor the proud principal of livermore's alternative programs delval continuation high school and vineyard independent study school tonight with me i also have mr martin our vice principal tonight it's my pleasure to recognize the two most dedicated people i know allison petersdorf direct counselor from dalval and stephanie sabrante the counselor from vineyard the work these two women do to support

006students is nothing short of incredible and i'm in awe of what they accomplish every single day when we think about our core values persevere inspire integrity allison and stephanie embody all of them but the value i want to highlight tonight is persevere if you'll indulge me for just a second let's talk about scheduling i've built schedules for both middle and high schools but an alternative education schedule is something totally different allison and stephanie are absolute masters they collaboratively collaborate tirelessly each year to develop a master schedule for each school hand crafting one each one to meet the diverse and ever-changing needs of our students they manage two quarters and one semester change per year and for each student they consider everything from graduation requirements a through g needs special education plans social emotional factors this

007monumental task that they preserve always putting our students first their perseverance also shines in the work with the students while some of our students can be challenging to engage stephanie and allison are tireless professionals they are constantly communicating with staff to find positive creative ways to connect with our students studying them up for success in both school and long after they leave these two women have powerful and have leave a powerful and positive footprint on our entire school community i am so grateful and humbled to work alongside them thank you allison and stephanie for all that you do okay we are very excited for the next item the next agenda item and that is welcoming our new student board reps we really missed having some here this summer and we're excited to have them and

008we're they're brand new to us so we're excited to get to know them throughout the year we're going to have them do the oath of office we'll invite michelle pichette our assistant superintendent of educational services to administer the oath of office and then we will have them give us their reports so michelle okay i state your name hi isla i robin jeshua deepak okay do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california and the constitution of the state of california against all enemies foreign and domestic. Against all enemies foreign and domestic. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. That I will

009bear true faith and allegiance. To the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of California. To the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of California. That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter. And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter. Congratulations. Okay so now we're going to have our our student board member reports and usually we flip a coin but I'm just going to pick one. We're going to start with Robin and he is the representative from Livermore High School and then Ayla

010will go next. She's a representative from Granada High School. This month this month of August has been an exciting month for the Cowboys over at Livermore High School. This August has marked the beginning of a wonderful year for the Cowboys. Starting off with the Livermore High School hosting the teacher rally on August 11th bring together a community of faculty and staff from all over the district for a fun rally held by both Livermore and Granada leadership. Back to school night was a wonderful time for all the parents and the teachers to communicate with each other and to learn more about the students and children's upcoming school years. In addition to this fall sports are off to a strong start with Livermore's varsity and junior varsity football teams beating Castro Valley in Livermore's first home game

011themed blackout also as a dedication to the late coach Baswell. Livermore's varsity team beat Castro Valley 51 to 19 and the JV team also achieved success beating Castro Valley 13 to 8. Livermore High School held its first rally of the school year and a special style this year with four different sessions for each class such as the rally and assembly a motivational speaker and a field day with many fun and unique activities like a silent disco and a teacher dunk tank. The cowboy corral was a great start to the school year and it brought students together and energized them. The homecoming dance this year is on September 20th and tickets are on sale now. The homecoming festivities are already off to a swing as each class is preparing for their own homecoming skit dances bring

012unity and reinforcing the cowboy heroes title. The homecoming skit dances for each class will be on spear week starting off on September 15th at lunch with the junior class. The class that has the most spirit for this week will win a champion t-shirt and get bragging rights for the year. Make sure to sign up for AP exams as registration for AP exams open up on September 2nd until October 13th. The August focus for PBIS positive behavioral interventions and supports was to teach students the heroes behavioral expectations. Heroes stands for honor education be respectful be open-minded be engaged and be safe. This will continue to be the PBIS focus for the month of September. This year is already off to a great start as you can see by all these events that Livermore has been holding

013and it's exciting to see how this year will pan out. It's a great day to be a Cavalier. Hi everyone we kicked off the school year with great energy at Granada. Leadership launched our kickoff spirit week leading to the welcome back rally on August 29th which was full of performances games and student participation. Now we are hard at work preparing for our biggest fall tradition homecoming which includes planning the dance class skits and carnival. Students have also been adjusting well to our new schedule. Many have shared positive feedback especially about the new access period which has given them valuable time to complete homework check in with teachers and get assignments turned in. Overall this change has been welcomed by our student body and has made the transition into the school year smoother than expected. Fall

014sports are also underway. Granada's boys football team also played their first official game on August 29th with the freshman team earning a strong win to start their season. Flag football began began games last week and are preparing for a competitive season ahead. Cross-country and water polo teams have also shown a promising start with early performances. Girls tennis begins their league matches this week after competing in several pre-season tournaments that have prepared them well for the season. Across the board our student athletes are representing Granada with pride and resilience. In addition Granada's staff has also been working hard to provide opportunities for students both inside and outside the classroom. The PSAT and SAT will be offered on campus this fall giving students the chance to test in a familiar setting. Our counseling and career center is

015also hosting a senior informational night on September 18th for students planning to attend a four-year college. This event will help guide seniors through the application process easing whatever tensions they might have. Also over the summer Granada was recognized by the Alameda county fair with the leadership of our wonderful digital photography teacher Miss Bailey. Granada submitted the most entries of any school in the county and was awarded a thousand dollars for her department. Finally student of the month program with the rotary club is back for the year. In August ASB president and dance team captain Eliza Schultz received the honor. For September I'm proud to share that I was selected as student of the month. Overall Granada has had a fantastic start to the 2025 to 2026 school year and we are excited for the events

016coming ahead. Thank you. We would never know this was your first time you guys were both pros nice job. We're now going to move on to our employee association reports and we will begin with LEA so I would invite Amy Thompson. There she is to come forward and yeah I also want to recognize her vice president Tara Lutz who I see standing in the back. Good evening board president Pruso members of the board superintendent Gibson and cabinet. I'm Amy Thompson president of the Livermore education association representing some of the best people in the world who work tirelessly to ensure that our students receive the support they need to be successful. These are our teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, speech pathologists, social workers, and teachers on special assignment. We appreciate the board's desire to understand our district

017budget and the ordering of a FICMAT review. However we fear this is a stall tactic to avoid negotiations. Last April the superintendent informed me that we would need to forego our re-opener negotiations this year. We declined to do so. In May we set three negotiation dates. In July the district canceled all three previously approved dates one at a time stating that they conflicted with the master calendar. Our bargaining chair and team scrambled to get new dates and to cancel and rebook their substitutes. The TK member of our team was not able to attend the first session since it was now being held on the fourth day of school. You can imagine a TK class with a sub right on the fourth day. At our first bargaining session we shared our compensation comparisons and we determined

018that LEA will bring the initial proposal for wages and benefits. Last week the board informed all of our members that a FICMAT review of finances has been ordered and the board will not give the district authority to negotiate compensation until after the review. To be clear the review ordered is not a forensic audit or even an audit. It is a review of future financial projections. Based on tonight's unaudited actuals and the 45-day budget revision it is clear the district has more than five million dollars available in unrestricted ongoing funds. There is no reason to wait to negotiate compensation. The district has the ability to pay. You should authorize them to do so. We are still waiting for position control. The data that was provided to us so far has a discrepancy of approximately 51 full-time

019equivalents. The difference this makes is that that's potentially 6.9 million additional dollars. There have been rumblings that LEA has been over critical of small issues such as not asking anyone's input for the new district logo. While these issues may seem insignificant individually, when taken together in context they show the big picture that our district's reputation with the community and employees is suffering the death of a thousand cuts. Cutting classroom supply budgets while spending to rent a beach house for the highest paid employees is not a good look for our district. Painting the district office while telling junction parents there is not enough money to address the site needs is not a good look. Charging our PTAs to use district facilities for fundraising activities that benefit our schools is not a good look. Creating new management

020positions and bringing in new managers at the highest step with significant costs increased after having cut from teachers and classrooms is not a good look. While everyone here is feeling the financial hardship of increased benefit costs from their pay, our highest paid employee has the full cost of her benefits paid for by the district. This is not a good look. Stating that management is sharing the pain of budget cuts by showing cuts for one-time payouts towards outgoing superintendents shows a lack of budgeting skills and that is not a good look. Stating all management will take five furlough days to save two hundred and seventy thousand dollars, enough to save classroom budgets, I.L.T. stipends and assistant athletic directors and still have money left over to only not in fact implement the furlough days but to implement

021the cuts for our classrooms and our schools, not a good look. We appreciate the district's effort to show that they appreciate staff by spending four thousand two hundred and six dollars on the highly coveted challenge coins. What would really show that we're appreciated is to treat us as professionals, provide additional support in our classrooms when requested, and offer us a fair compensation plan that the district can currently afford. We would also like the district to lay out a long-term plan to get us to the top quartile and stop wasting money on frivolous things. I again encourage the board to provide management and incentive to get our compensation to at least average by freezing the step and column raises and the me too clauses for all managers with a salary above two hundred thousand dollars until

022we are at least at average. During this time you may also want to freeze the creation of new management positions. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to invite Mamie Kristevich, a president of CSEA, and recognize her vice president Victoria Storti. What she said. Good evening president Prusso, members of the board, superintendent Gibson, and cabinet. I am Mamie Kristevich, president of the Livermore chapter of CSEA, the California school employees association. Joining me tonight is our chapter's vice president Victoria Storti, as well as other dedicated and hard-working CSEA members. Tonight you will be voting on the tentative agreement that resolves our me too negotiations with the district. This represents several months of lengthy and intense discussion and negotiations that began on April 14, 2025, when we enforced the me too language in our collective bargaining agreement. This

023happened in the midst of our re-opener negotiations last year when CSEA also had to contend with the trauma of multiple layoffs, our demand to bargain the impacts and effects of layoffs, and our cease and desist planned transfer of work as a result of layoffs, while others in our district received salary increases. Through all this our CSEA negotiations team stood firm in the strength of our contract language and refused to give up what we knew we were entitled to as negotiated in our collective bargaining agreement. The district tried to circumvent our clearly stated me too in article 25.2 of our contract, which reads, should the cost value of the package agreed to with any other unit include a cost value greater than that agreed to with CSEA, the parties will return to the table to determine

024how the additional value should be allocated. After several negotiations sessions, the district finally acknowledged that CSEA's me too language indeed applied to the increases received by LEA and SEIU. While our collective bargaining agreement requires compensation parity with LEA and SEIU, CSEA was aware of the district's financial burdens and was therefore willing to negotiate a non-precedential catch-up amount that is less than perfect parity on this one occasion. As a result, what you are voting on tonight is the addition of a new column in CSEA's salary schedule, which is retroactive to January 1st, 2025. About half of our unit will be eligible for a 5% increase to the new column immediately, and many others will benefit from the increase in July of 2026 and beyond. On behalf of CSEA, I urge the board to approve our tentative

025agreement, which also includes the close of our re-opener negotiations for 2025, with the exception of any me too negotiations that may apply this year. I would like to express my profound appreciation and gratitude for CSEA's devoted and tireless negotiations team that includes Maureen Scholl, a library media specialist at East Avenue Middle School, Victoria Storti, our vice president and the transportation specialist in the special ed department, and of course our incredible CSEA labor relations rep Amy Buscaya and CSEA field director Deborah Cole. I would also like to acknowledge Tori Gibson and the district's negotiations team, which includes Kayla Wassley, Allison Noble, Donyell Mackey, Valerie Nebel, and the former assistant superintendent of human resources Amy Robbins and her successor Jessica Bonduras. We hope that this has been a valuable learning experience for all parties involved and that

026we can move forward in positive directions to other important issues ahead of us, of which there is never any shortage. On September 3rd, our school board sent a letter to all employees regarding the FICMAT audit. While the board's intent is to build trust, it raises many questions and concerns for employees. It is CSEA's belief that an audit of our district's finances should be completely impartial. We hope that it will truly be directed by the board, include the genuine involvement of our bargaining units as stakeholders, and be unedited and transparent to all employees, allowing for input and questions. The board's letter also includes a reference to a comprehensive compensation study for a broad range of staff positions, noting that a similar study was completed in 2022 for classified staff. CSEA would like our positions to be

027included in this new study, but I must point out that a compensation study of CSEA positions must include a comparison of actual job duties performed, as well as address internal and market equity. Only a thorough classification and compensation study would truly be accurate and meaningful. For example, an executive assistant in our district has greater responsibility for budgeting than those employed in other districts. People who have worked in other districts have shared with me that executive assistants do not typically manage site budgets to the degree that our executive assistants do in Livermore. This does not only apply to our executive assistants, as we have seen similar data for other classifications, like our library media specialists. The board's letter also states that questions have been raised regarding the district's finances, including concerns that funds may be hidden

028or not accurately reported. If I may, I would also characterize it as questions and concerns about funding prioritization and allocation. As you know, much has been said recently about beach retreats, office renovations, large increases in management compensation, and the list is really much more extensive than that. Concerns about those types of expenses are more about how funds are prioritized and allocated, and we wonder if the FICMAT audit will identify extravagant spending and the miscalculation of estimates for things like books and supplies to avoid the perception of funds being hidden or reported inaccurately. Employees are aware of these expenses, and then we have reports from students and families about the horrific conditions at their school site and data that shows that LEA salaries are far below benchmark. At what point will employee compensation and retention for

029classified and certificated be important enough to the district and the board to be prioritized? On a closing note, CSCA would like to acknowledge the recent loss of two long-time dedicated CSCA members, Marilyn Burns, Executive Assistant at Croche Elementary School, and Brett Francois, a Child Welfare Attendance Specialist of Student Services. It is with great sadness for their passing and appreciation for their contributions to students and our district that I extend our condolences to their families and loved ones on behalf of the Livermore chapter of CSCA. Thank you for your support and approval of our tentative agreement tonight. Thank you. Okay, I would like to recognize our SEIU President, Kirsty Governor. I'm not sure if she's here or not. I don't see her. And our representative, our CMC representative is Sarah DeGroote, and our Livermore Management Association

030representative is Jeremy Wilkins. So just as a point of reference, we're at our limit for, not our limit for public comment, but if we go over this number, then we have to shorten the public comments from three minutes to two. So if you, just letting you know, if you want to do a public comment, let me know now so that we can figure this out. Otherwise, we can keep it where it is. We good? And then also, as we go through public comments, if you agree with the person who's speaking, feel free to raise your hand or something, but let's try to keep the cheering and clapping down. It's really hard for us to hear, and it limits their time when they have to pause for that. So maybe wait on that for the end.

031And also, we want to capture everything for the people who are watching at home. So now, with that, we are going to move on to our public comments on non-agenda items. So this is the public comments that are on the TAN cards, and I have several of them. And I just wanted to, before we begin, just to give a few instructions. So this is a meeting of the board held in public, not a public meeting, which means we're here to conduct the board's business in view of the community to ensure that everyone has had a chance to be heard and that we maintain a respectful environment. As I said before, please refrain from clapping or other reactions. If you agree with the speaker, simply raise your hand, and that is much appreciated. Public comments are

032limited to three minutes per person, and I will give a reminder at the 22nd mark. I am not trying to be rude, but it's really important that we ensure fairness and equity in giving everyone their full opportunity to speak and just that. As a reminder, we as board members may not engage in discussion, take action, or give an opinion on items that are not on the agenda. However, the board may briefly respond, ask clarifying questions of staff, and or refer matters to staff for follow-up. So with that, I'm going to begin calling people up. We will begin with Lance Voorhees. And if I mispronounce your name, please just correct me there. I will do my very best. And we'll have Catherine Villesonor on top. Sorry if I said that wrong. Thank you. She'll be next.

033Okay. All right, Lance. Make sure you're going to hit the button on the microphone. Yep, there you go. Hello. All right. My name is Lance Voorhees. I'm a former middle school girls basketball, volleyball, and track coach, and was a special ed teacher here on a three-month contract for Livermore High. And I'd like you to please consider affirming title nine, the resolution to keep males from participating in female sports. And this basically will level the playing field. Overall, teen males are larger, they have larger skeletons, greater bone mass. And take me for instance, I'm six foot five now. In high school, I was six foot four. And in today's world, if I identified as a girl, I could play girls basketball. And I'd be a star. Some girls could shoot as well as me, but I

034don't recall any who could dunk. Do any of you have daughters that could stop me from dunking? I doubt it. My defense would be top notch as well. And basketball, of course, some of the strategies are to personally foul, uh, to in matters of the clock, but I wouldn't intentionally foul any of your daughters. I play nice, but, you know, only 80% of kids before transitioning into the opposite sex consider themselves gay. Me being straight, had I been able to transition to a girl as a girl in high school, would that have made me a lesbian? I'm not sure how to answer that question, but bottom line is, would any one of you want me to compete with your daughters for an athletic scholarship? I don't think so. Thank you. Catherine, come on up. And

035then next will be Ken Williams. School board and all here. Thank you for serving Livermore families. I want to pray that God will be honored by your work, that children will be enlightened by truth, that there is no confusion, and it be known that God created male and female in the image and likeness of God. In Jesus name. Amen. Thank you. Ken Williams will be followed by Tom Wong. Good evening. You hear me? Well, I'm neither religious, nor I'm a particular scholar. I'm not six foot five, but I have a long history of athleticism for about 10 years. I competed at the world level in combination of running and horseback riding. My name is Ken Williams, and I'm a 46 year faculty emeritus from Chabot College in Hayward, California. I'm so proud to say that

036I leave a legacy of about 28,000 students that I've had the privilege to have taught undergraduate economics and finance. From 1977 to 1987, I competed at an elite level, as I mentioned before, both running and horseback riding. And I only cite those credentials as evidence that I'm acutely aware of the essential empathy I have for the challenges of the LGBTQ community. I was at one time, in fact, a faculty advisor for the LGBTQ community club at Chabot College. However, that being said, let me be clear. Biological males, despite their differing choices as to their gender identity, have no place in competing with girls. The observation that zero biological girls compete as elite males is, despite their male gender identity, as compelling logic as to the huge differences between male and female biologics. The reason is

037obvious and clear. The biological male has far too many physical advantages to allow a biological female to compete fairly with males. America has a long tradition of trying to be fair, and nowhere is this more evident, in my opinion, than in the sports arena. Let's consider an example. Think LeBron James decide he wants to be a female athlete. He wants to play for the WNBA, the Women's National Basketball Association. Now, this example may seem far-fetched, but it's not. In 1976, Bruce Jenner, the American male athlete gold medalist in the Olympics, with a world record decathlon of 8618 points at 26 years of age, opted to transgender to become a woman. What would keep, quote-unquote, the best other world men competing as a woman? 20 seconds. Thank you. Does this example have any sense of competing

038fairly? Coincidentally, Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender, came out very strongly that transgender should not be allowed to compete as it would not be fair. Thank you very much. Tom Wong, to be followed by Sy Matten. Hi, good evening, board members. My name is Tom Wong. I'm a reporter for the townhall.news, and I'm here to question why you guys decide to ignore about 160 emails that parents and the community members have emailed you. Last time, there was 100 emails that was sent out to the board, and they received a recognition that they were received. This time, there was 160, and you guys ignored them. It's just like you have ignored the needs of your union, your teachers, and the community. I would seriously question, what is your motive? Protecting girls' sports, it's a no-brainer. Keeping boys out

039of the girls' locker room is a no-brainer. Being able to have girls win trophies and scholarships, help boost their esteems, help them into college, and yet you guys ignore this issue. Not even the discussion. You don't have to vote on the issue, but you guys ignore the issue altogether. It shows that your priority is totally somewhere else. When you choose to give yourself a lot of fancy pay raises and fancy offices, what is your motive? Why were you elected to this board? I want to see what you guys are going to do about this Title IX. It's a hot topic issue. You don't have to vote on it, but you have to discuss it. I encourage you to protect girls' sports. Thank you. Sy Matin, followed by Janelle Harris. I guess it's already on, right?

040Good evening, honorable president of the board and members of the board. I'm calling you honorable because you are taking a lot of your own personal time to really support public and make our students better and our districts better. Good afternoon for everyone and then our superintendent, cabinet members, and public. I'm here to talk about a little bit different subject. As we look at the world today, humanity is in trouble at this point. We have a lot of wars going on. Somebody sitting in the palace, hundreds of missiles go to some country and kill women and children. As a human, I believe we are in a difficult situation. We have light on the way. We have people like Rumi that have been basically enlightening our life a thousand years ago. I'm here to speak a little

041bit about that. There is a book that I'd like to introduce. This book is called The Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dyer, who basically reintroduced me to my own Rumi and the other people that they have been instrumental in this area and trying to make us a better human being. I have a little bit of information to talk about that. His name is called Rumi in the west and Europe because at that time he lived in Turkey for most of his life and a thousand years ago, Turkey was part of the eastern branch of basically Christianity and called Rumi. His real name is Zalal al-Din Muhammad al-Balkhi. He was born in Iran at Persia at that time, September 30, 1207 in Balkh of Persia, which is today's Afghanistan, and died in Konya, Turkey. There

042are some passages from him in this book, which I'm going to read. Main basically subject of his life is to humanity and empowering the human being. Looks like I don't have time to say those, so probably next time I will talk about those. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll invite Janelle Harris forward and then next will be Denise Kerr. Do I need to push this to speak? Okay. Hello, my name is Janelle Harris. I'm a parent and community member. It is not fun to ask difficult questions, which is what I'm here to do, but I really worry that if people are not asking these questions and answers are not received, that the only time you're hearing from the community is on things like bond survey polling and when they vote no, and I really think

043it's important for this district to improve its transparency, its accountability, and its community engagement in order to ensure that we have the resources that our kids deserve. You've heard a lot about the Pismo Beach Executive Cabinet retreat. Like many teachers here, like many other parents, I know I was aghast when I learned that this happened from the May 20th board meeting. I also wanted to understand more. I wanted to understand what the superintendent's gift account that supposedly helped fund this was, because I didn't understand who was giving money to highly paid administrators versus for the benefit of students. So I submitted a Public Records Act request to the district, and I was very surprised by what I found. In 2024-2025, there was approximately $31,000 in the superintendent's gift account. $1,000 came from a community organization,

044and in the board documents, it's designated as for educational materials and supplies. Over $29,000 came from the Jewel Litigation Settlement Fund. The district sued Jewel an e-cigarette manufacturer in December 2019 and represented to this community and the federal court that it was doing so to combat youth vaping. It also made detailed allegations in federal court about how it would use money if it had it to remediate the problem. And instead, it appears that last year, money was spent on furniture for either the superintendent or the board and on the Pismo Beach retreat. And I think this isn't appropriate. I think it's not consistent with what the community wants. I think it's why the community says when approached with the bond, is the money going to be prioritized and go where it's really needed? And is

045it going to be spent how the community intends, or is it going to be spent for something else? And that's why I'm raising this issue, and that's why I'm asking you, it looks like we've received three payments already from the Jewel Litigation Settlement. It stands to receive at least two more. I've looked at the documents. I believe that that settlement was framed as intended for restitution and remediation. And I would like this board to make sure that that money is spent for that purpose, to combat and address youth vaping and nicotine addiction, rather than for administrative perks. I've written a pretty detailed letter, which I've given you, including footnotes. I have a lot of documentation that I'm happy to provide the board. I spent a lot of time trying to run this down. I'm still

046seeking more documents, but was told by the district that it's going to take 60 days to answer even basic questions. So I would really ask you to do something about this. The community is counting on you. Thank you. Thank you, Denise. Denise Kerr, followed by Tara Lutz. Good evening, President Prusso, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson, and the members of the cabinet. This is the first time that I've spoken in a board meeting, but I'm very concerned about the wages. I'm very concerned about health care and the cost of health care. As I am settling into Christensen Middle School for my afternoon of a three period core, I've been going through old paperwork and I happened to come across a pay warrant from 2023. I was surprised to find that I was actually taking home

047more in 2023 than I am today, and most of it was health care costs. It's over $250 a month, and I'm making almost over $2,000 a month more. I know that this is going on with the other teachers in the district. I've heard things. I'm also the site representative for Vineyard, and I am the state council representative for Livermore. I go to meetings four times a year, and we talk about issues like this. I'm concerned that at the end of this month, not only am I going to be making $250 less a month than I was in 2023, but it's going to be even higher because of the cost of health care that it's gone up 11 to 14%, depending on the plan that you choose. It's important to me in my last few years

048of teaching that I speak on these issues because it's important that the board understands that when this happens, we as teachers don't feel supported, and that may or may not be true, but that's the feeling that it has. That's the result. I would encourage you to negotiate with our team. I have sat on negotiating teams in the past many years ago in this district and had very good relationships, but I understand both sides. You have a budget, but we also have budgets at home. I don't know how I'm going to absorb the cost of this. I'm a single person. I'm not married. I don't have a second income. So please, when you are considering increases for teachers, that you take into account what we have in our lives and the things that we deal with.

049Thank you. Tara Lutz. Following Tara will be Steven Grijeda. Good evening. I'm Tara Lutz, a teacher, a parent, and the VP of LEA. Imagine a school for a solid week without teachers in the classroom, SLPs providing services, psychologists, counselors, social workers, counseling upset children, nurses caring for allergies, diabetes, or skin knee. School would come to a screeching halt. The entire purpose of our district to provide a public education to the students of our community would not happen. Yet now, let's imagine if the superintendent and cabinet did not show up to the district office for that same amount of time. The children at the school sites receiving an education would never even know of their absence. It would not have an impact on them and nothing in their life would come to a screeching halt. In

050comparing those two scenarios, it is clear that entirely too much value has been placed at the top rather than those doing the work. Somewhere along the way, the board has allowed so much cost to be placed on the people in these oversight positions and those they hired to consult that you now cannot afford who this district really is and why we're all here. LEA is being told to patiently wait for three to five years for a salary increase, yet we will watch cabinet all have significant salary increases this year. LEA is accused of being irresponsible for asking for an average living wage for our professions even though we don't make the budget decisions that ignore the needs of nearly 700, half of its employees, while the district can still somehow afford duplicate costs for lawyers,

051audits, consultants, and the like, each for tens of thousands. LEA is being told that costs are rising everywhere, so we must accept that health care has increased nearly 30% from our out-of-pocket costs, forcing many of us to essentially take a pay cut. And here we are expected to be patient and quiet while waiting three to five years. By that point, we will be even further behind our neighbors in compensation. We will inevitably have fewer new teachers working here because why would they want to? Forcing expensive contractors or teachers without credentials to be hired in their place and the morale of those remaining working directly with the students will be lower than ever. Right now, our membership feels discouraged, angry, frightened, and overall disrespected. How do you expect they'll feel in three to five years? We

052are professionals with advanced degrees and many of us have years of experience within our field. In the meantime, the board wants us to feel honored by receiving a rare and highly coveted metal coin as a token of hard work, similar to a reward we would give a second grader, rather than pay us for our expertise and knowledge. Let's be clear, we are asking for fair compensation, not false tokens of appreciation. We understand that significant change takes time and your priorities clearly have fallen off course and we'll need time to recover, but that doesn't mean that everything must hold firm for us until then. And if we already believed you truly value us and this was a thriving environment, we would not be here demanding fair compensation. Steven? Steven? Okay. Followed by Emily Faulkner. Good evening,

053board president, superintendent Gibson, members of the cabinet and board. My name is Steven. I'm a parent of two girls that are currently students within the district. This is my 21st year as a teacher within the district as well. This will be my fourth administrative change that I've been through. I'm an optimist generally by nature, but the recent budgetary decisions have left me scratching my head. We've been asked to tighten our belts as teachers because of our uncertain budgetary future, but despite this uncertain future, decisions have been made that contradict that position. Although these small budgetary decisions pale in comparison to our multi-million dollar budget of the district, of the district to a small school like Junction, those small funds would make a huge difference. Instead of teachers spending their precious time scrapping together curriculum and

054making copies that the district won't pay for, they could be lesson planning and collaborating with their colleagues. This misalignment and priorities can lead to friction between staff and admin as evidenced today. Ultimately, burnt out teachers will leave with students and parents bearing the brunt of these decisions. I recently became a math teacher after 15 years in core and five years in elementary. My motivation to switch stem from my daughter's substandard math experience. For example, out of the 110 eighth graders that I currently teach, only seven are proficient in math. This isn't an indictment of our current administration or teachers, but it is a symptom of an ongoing systemic issue that doesn't put students first. Lastly, I ask that you consider how you would explain to our parents and teachers how paying teachers uncompetitive salaries when

055compared to other districts while asking them to take on more is student-centered. Thank you. Hey, Emily Falker followed by Tara Boyce. Hello. Sorry, it's really scary up here, okay. Good evening, board president, person trustees. My name is Emily Falker and I'm a proud product of Livermore schools from MSC Smith to Joe Mitchell to Granada High. I now teach TK at Arroyo Seco. Every teacher I had that the lasting impression on me inspiring me to pursue a career in education so I can one day make the same impact on future generations. I've done everything I was told to lead a stable meaningful life. I earned my bachelor's degree. I completed my teaching credential and I even earned my master's. Now after three full years of teaching in the very district that raised me, I find myself

056barely able to afford my rent. I had to move out of Livermore, my hometown, to afford rent elsewhere and I now commute back to the community that I care so deeply about. I could leave for a neighboring district like Pleasanton and Dublin and earn a higher salary, but Livermore is my home. This is where I want to teach and this is where I want to stay. Yet with rising healthcare costs and a salary that seems to stretch thinner every month, I'm afraid I'm soon going to lose the ability to live by myself. A basic dignity that I believe every working professional deserves. As a young teacher I feel discouraged and not because I don't love my job because I do. It's just harder to justify staying and if I'm struggling then I know that I'm

057not alone. Teachers should not have to choose between serving the communities they love and being able to live independently. We deserve a career path that allows us to support ourselves without roommates, without moving back with our parents, and without sacrificing our well-being. Investing in teachers is investing in the future of Livermore. We want to stay, we want to serve, but we need to be able to live. Thank you. Tara Boyce, oh there she is, and Tara will be followed by Keith Fritto. Too close. I'm ready. Okay, good evening. My name is Tara Boyce, parent, community member, and I've got a lot of random to throw to everybody today. So a couple topics. I'm wearing blue on purpose. Why am I wearing blue? I support these guys. So I am super fortunate. My kids go to

058Junction. They love it because of Stephanie Gonzales, who's also in the overflow room, because of Veronica Velasco, because of Mr. Oz. My kids have never complained about going to school. Not one time. Never push back. Why? They get hugs coming in the door. If I have that energy coming at me, no. But those teachers, day in, day out. I have a child with a neurological condition that has created learning delays. Because of those parents, or because of those teachers, Andre is repeating second grade so he could get the start he deserves in his education. I got push back from every person at the district level when I wanted to retain my child. Directors of curriculum, assistant superintendents of special ed, senior directors of special ed, not the teachers. They worked with me to get Andre

059what he needed to be successful, and he is now almost reading at a second grade level because of that support. So that's Whitney Grace. That is Mr. Wilkins. That is Mrs. Garza who made that happen. Nobody sitting on this dais helped me with that. So we need to pay these people what they are worth. I work in tech. I am doing fine financially. If I was a sole parent making a teacher salary, I would be like the teacher who just left this desk and not be able to live in Livermore. I'm a sole parent of two kids. Switching topics. That's it for the teachers. October is coming. We're rolling into it, thinking about Halloween, harvest, pumpkins, et cetera. You know what else it is in Livermore? It's pride month. It is time for this school

060district to stand up for pride. June, national, October, Livermore. We have a pride celebration. I expect to see every trustee there. I know I'll see some of them because I see them every year. I go to San Mateo to visit my parents. Pride flags in front of every school. Dublin won a pride flag. Senol Glenn, pride flag. Where is our pride flag? Every student that walks in the front doors needs to know they're supported. The students that are not part of LGBTQIA+, they still want to see it. They are allies. For the people who are talking about Title IX, trans athletes are less than 1% in this country, and you would not even know most of them are trans. Andre's boys' premier soccer team just got their butts handed to them by the girls' team.

061Thank you. We need to think about it. There are certain people on this dais that need to focus in and deliver on their promises. That's your time. Thank you. Good evening, Livermore School Board. I just want to start by asking a question. I think a lot of us probably supported the Me Too movement when it rolled out, did it not? I'm here to speak about the Title IX issue, and I was really extremely disappointed when I heard that the board was actually siding on a 90-10 United States issue, 80-20 against. I wonder who's going to protect girls anymore. It's my question. Who's going to protect girls? How many girls have dropped out of sports, period, because this has happened, because they can't compete? When we say 1%, it's less than 1%. Okay. Then how about

062the folks and the kids that actually are no longer playing? Does their percentage not count? Girls have to be subjected to a visual, mental, and emotional scarring having males in a girl's locker room. Mr. Bueno, I just want to say thank you for your service as a fireman, as a fire chief, and serving our community in sports. I'm just wondering, the school board and its mission statement says that it wants to make a safe environment for students. How are you making it safe for girls? Christian Vanderheuvel, I know you very well. We go back decades. You pastored my kids, and yet you voted to put boys in girls' restrooms. How do you reconcile that? I know you're no longer a Christian youth pastor, except I know you're at Heartland Camp, I believe. Do the leadership

063there know that you voted for that? Do the parents that send their kids there know that you voted for that? I saw your bio. When you ran for school board, you said you would put boys in girls' restrooms. You had no problem with that. Two words, abominable and appalling. You're talking about funding tonight. I keep hearing about funding. You're about to lose $4 million of federal funding. How's that going to deal with the budget that you seem to be in a crunch on? 20 seconds. Well, I think it's time that you stop playing politics and protect girls. It's all about their safety. I have two girls that I love dearly. If I had them in sports today, they wouldn't be in sports if this is what it came down to. Thank you. That concludes our

064public comment. We're going to move on to our communications. This is formal written correspondence to the Board of Education. Will be acknowledged if received by the board or in the superintendent's office by 2 p.m. the day of the meeting. Formal 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. And I'd ask our clerk, Trustee Druin, if there is any correspondence for the board and if so, he could please summarize. Yes. Pooja Aurora requested the board prioritize teacher compensation in the upcoming budget discussions. Marcus Chow requested that the board prioritize

065teacher compensation in the upcoming budget discussions. Sarah Borgen asked the board how the district intends to prioritize and support its most experienced teachers. Elena Edwards expressed concern about the current counselor caseload sizes and Dave Von Heater complimented the Junction Administration and especially the seventh grade teachers highlighting their talent, impressive backgrounds and enthusiastic dedication to supporting his son as well as all students. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Before we move on to our discussion action items, Trustee Bueno has a clarifying question. It's just one I know we can't address now. Sometimes it's very difficult for board members and for people up on the dais because you can't answer and for people who may be new to meetings, the Brown Act precludes us from making comments or coming back and answering questions to people who can't make

066public comment during the comment section. But as board members, we are able to make clarifying questions. So just a single clarifying question is there was one public records act request and perhaps not now, but perhaps you can apprise the board because we don't know what's an allocation or how accurate comments are, but it didn't sound in norm with the district to be that long to get a PRA satisfied. So perhaps you could shed some light on it or at a different time, just clarified for us. Because I know you guys are normally very responsive. Yes. Do you want me to answer that now? Sure. If you are able. Yeah. So normally, so the PRA process is that we have 10 days to respond with how long we believe it will take. We use that 10

067days to ask any clarifying questions, making sure that we're providing the documentation. The statement that was made tonight about the 60 days, that is correct. We have received a plethora of PRAs, not from that particular individual, but for all kinds of things that unfortunately, as they come in, they're prioritized based on the date that they are received. And we have some that are very large that aren't even from companies, even in our area. They're people who are looking for environmental reports for the last 20 years, as an example. So those take precedence over. So at this point in time, it could be 60 days. And we want to make sure that we have enough time to pull whatever records are necessary and go through the full process. Of course, our goal is to always get

068them done much sooner. Thanks for clarifying. All right. We're going to move on to our discussion action items and to 13.1. One, our presentation of the polling results from the FM3 and Clifford Moss. And we will, I will turn the time over to trustee Bueno, Dr. Gibson and Ms. Kayla was. They're going to leave. Yes, trustee Bueno is. I thought you were going to lead. Well, they're going to lead. I'm just going to chill right here. Yeah. Clarifying questions. Yeah. So I'll just walk us through. Do you want to walk us through, Craig, our last couple of meetings? Go ahead. Because you have the history too, as to how we got to where we are today, both prior to this team, as well as where we are now. Yes. So this is we're going out,

069looking to see, exploring to see whether the community would support a financial bond to do facilities work. We've brought in Clifford Moss and they're here and they have some statisticians that conducted some polling. And so I would ask you guys are probably better at just leading it off and letting us know kind of how we got here as we did a facilities bond in 1999. And we did one, I believe in 2016. And the last one is what allowed us to be able to do our marquee projects, Livermore High School, East Avenue, Joe Mitchell, and some of the stuff over at Granada and the backside of the Aquatic Center. And I don't think the stadium, that was some different money. But the way the funding goes in California now, we don't get money to do

070facilities. It's not part of the budget. And so you have to pass public bonds in order to do facilities work. So it's one of those things where you have to check the temperament to see if the community is there and support it. So you bring someone in to ask the community directly and in a scientific way that the board can make a determination whether or not we're going to go out in public to see if it's still there. And so currently that's what the process is. And Amanda, perhaps you can pick it up from there and talk about what Clifford Moss has done. Thank you. Board President Purcell, members of the board, can you all hear me? Sorry. Move it closer to me. Superintendent Gibson. Thank you all for having me. I'm Amanda Clifford with

071Clifford Moss. We actually worked with you guys back in 2016 on your last bond. And we are all about educating and informing your community about what's going on with the bond measure should you choose to move forward. But as you mentioned, that the first step is feasibility and doing a polling, doing polling to see if there is a path forward. And we want to take into consideration what your community thinks. So that is the first step. And that has been conducted. And I'm going to turn it over to Lucia from FM3 to take you through those results. And then I'm here if there's any further questions about next steps. Thanks, Amanda. Good evening, everyone. I'm Lucia Del Pupo. I'm a senior vice president with FM3 research. I also worked on the 2016 effort. So it

072was a pleasure to be back here this evening walking through the data of the most recent survey that we conducted. This data is really recent. The survey was conducted in early August. Before I dive into some of the key findings of the research, I'll just touch on quickly on our approach. So we spoke to a random sample of just over 400 likely November 2026 voters. Looking at a likely November electorate also gave us a snapshot of the likely June electorate of 252 voters within that November sample. What that means is that we have a margin of error of 4.9% on the November data. I promise I will flag this as we're going through and it'll make sense as we look at the numbers together. So any of the November data kind of has that plus

073or minus 5% margin. And the June data, it'll be about six points plus or minus. The survey was conducted in English and in Spanish, and it was a dual mode survey online and via phone with the opportunity to take the online survey via email or text message. So kind of an inclusive approach. We're giving folks a variety of ways to participate. So getting into the actual findings. So we asked folks a series of questions about their perceptions of public schools. And we asked them about a series of statements and asked them if they felt like each of these statements characterizing different elements of the schools was accurate or inaccurate. What we saw was that three in five voters in your community view that repairing and upgrading schools will help retain and attract quality teachers by

074offering up-to-date classrooms that are clean and safe. So that was something that a majority really agreed on. A majority also agreed that many Livermore school buildings are deteriorating and in need of repairs. When we asked about financial management of the district, folks were evenly divided. 31% felt like the taxpayer money is being spent effectively and efficiently. Another third disagreed and another third were uncertain or didn't have an opinion. We also asked whether folks felt like their local school was receiving its fair share of funding. And this was something that about half of voters didn't really have an opinion on. Those who did were pretty evenly divided. And finally, we asked about whether they felt like schools were in need of safety upgrades and security upgrades. And this was something that about half of voters actually

075felt like was inaccurate and that the schools are not currently unsafe. And then as we get into kind of the core of the survey, looking at the actual proposed bond measure. So you'll see here on this slide, this is the ballot language that we tested. When we do these surveys, we test a 75-word ballot question, really mimicking what is on the ballot to kind of get a clean read and a good sense of how voters will react to this information, the way it actually looks on the ballot when they get it in the mail. And we tested a base case of a $450 million bond to kind of match what the district's need is. And this has a 55% threshold for passage. What we saw was that among a likely November electorate, 56% of voters

076said they would vote yes and 36% were opposed. Among a likely June electorate, it was 49% yes to 43% no. What that essentially means is that support among those November voters is right at that threshold. So if you factor in that margin of error of plus or minus 4.9%, it's kind of going under and over, right? It's a 10 point, it's like 51% and then 61% is kind of the range. For the likely June, you're starting below and it's kind of a precarious position there to look at a likely June electorate for a $450 million bond. When we tested a lower, oh sorry, before we get to the lower amount, we asked voters who said they would vote yes on the measure, what was motivating them and we kind of took their responses and coded

077these out thematically as you can see here on this slide. And really what was motivating those yes voters was the desire to fund schools to support education or the perception that their facilities are outdated and unsafe. To a lesser extent was a desire to fund new technology, support teachers or folks who said they need more information. When we did this exercise on the no side, it really was motivated by anti-tax and cost of living sentiment as well as concerns about waste and mismanagement. And those are typically the arguments that we see when voters tend to be opposed to bond measures. That's kind of the common no argument. So now jumping into the lower amount that we tested of $350 million, what we saw is that a lower amount actually didn't lead to significantly stronger support.

078The overall November support was actually slightly lower, although it was more intense. There were more folks saying they would be definitely yes at this lower amount. And among likely June, it was still below that 55% threshold. What we did see and was encouraging was a no tax increase version of a bond. We didn't test this with the full 75 word ballot language, it was a conceptual ask for both the 350 million and the no tax increase. But we did see that voters were more open to this idea of a lower bound amount of $167 million, which would kind of lead to a continuation. And among November voters, this was a 64% yes. And among June voters, it was 62% yes. So in both instances, support is outside of the margin of error of that 55%

079threshold. So kind of seems more promising than the other kind of higher bond amounts. We did test some pro and con messaging as part of the survey. What we did see the things that really kind of resonate in the community were statements around repairing old schools and making sure that things are up to date and that deteriorating facilities are being taken care of. This was one that 41% of voters says was very convincing and overall two thirds found a convincing argument. Another thing that was highly important was accountability. About a third said this was very convincing and three quarters overall found this to be a convincing argument. Other things that a majority told us were convincing arguments and things that you know were motivating and important when considering the measure were funding vocational education, the

080benefiting from state matching funds, investing in kind of science labs and STEM, investing in classroom technology and just overall improving student achievement and supporting student education. So with that, I will quickly wrap up and just say that overall it's our assessment, as you can tell from how we walked through that data, that the $450 million bond could be viable in November 2026 election. And that's ultimately a decision that, you know, the board will have to make, but it is quite close to that threshold and it would be a challenging path forward. The lower no tax increase version of the bond is in a strong position and then there is the opportunity to kind of consider both a June and November election. I think regardless of the path forward, there is a need to kind of

081have that conversation with the community and also make sure that there's a lot of accountability built into the measure. That was something that really came through as a priority for folks. I don't know if you have any closing comments to add there. I would just say I hope you look at this all as good news. There is a path forward with continued education, but I think what we're seeing, and I will tell you, I've been seeing this across the state in the last few years, there's a tax sensitivity out there and I think that's why the no tax rate increase, which is an opportunity that your district has, that not every district comes across very often. I think when I spoke with your financial advisor, the next one is about 30 years out that that

082opportunity comes around again. So it's an opportunity to go out to your taxpayers, support your schools, but also hear your taxpayers, which is we want a lower tax, we want tax rates not to increase and that would be the goal with that bond. So you are able to accomplish both in that process. Any questions, comments? Steven, then Christian, and then Dina. On slide 12, I was wondering if the second one was accountability and I was wondering if you could explain, I think I know what accountability means, but I was wondering how you think participants interpreted what accountability meant or how it was framed. Yes, and that's a great question. So something I should clarify is these little blurbs on the left. Those are just summaries of what folks heard. So basically the accountability statement covered

083the idea that, and sorry I'm going to look at it really quickly, but basically that the measure is subject to strict accountability requirements, that the source of funding is local and stays local. So kind of all the things that are built into the measure. Perfect, thank you. That makes sense. Trustee Bannon-Hoovill? Two questions. Maybe your first slide had something about 2015 dates or whatever or data. What was that? Yeah, and so I actually think that in these key findings, I didn't include them here, but because we have the polling, our team did the polling in 2015, we are able to kind of compare some of the data from then over time. Okay, and then did you do like A-B testing to know which messaging was more palatable? Because if I read the sample ballot measure,

084it just looks like the language comes up when it comes up. How did you know to test without going into your scientific details? But how do you know that accountability ranked higher than technology? Yeah, so we actually, let me go back to that slide really quick, we did not do an A-B test on all of these items. Some items were split sampled just because of the length of the survey. We try to keep it manageable for folks, but what we did is we actually asked folks who either read it on the online version or heard it in the survey for each message to tell us how convincing that message was. So all of these were evaluated individually by respondents. Okay, and was this the title of the bond the same across all the questions? Because

085I think technology is part of the title. Can you go back to that? Yeah, on the first slide, I think. Yeah, when voters like heard, so it isn't part of the $450 million bond. When we re-asked those lower amounts, we didn't kind of reread the whole ballot language. When we talked about the $350 million or the new tax increase there, we kind of said, suppose instead it was for this amount and cost this much, how would you vote? Yeah, I'm just trying to ascertain or imagine how it would sound to have that, you know, you've got your classroom, school repair, building repair, student safety, effectiveness of school, and then classroom technology, which for, you know, older people is just like, oh, you want one of those smart TVs, you know, or, but like, it's hard

086to imagine what that would be, because I just need you to sit there with my kid and have a book and have a couple of pencils. What do you need that money for? So to have that in the title, I feel like, I don't know, it could skew, Trustee Bueno, I don't know if I'm making sense, but. Historically, technology has been a driving force in ballot measures in this community. Still, okay. I chaired the, co-chaired the parcel tax, which was for small class sizes technology back in 2014. The bond in 2016 that you guys could speak directly to, but STEM resonates in the community. This is one of the most educated communities in the country with the two national laboratories. They have 10,000 employees, many of which live right in the community. So it is

087a consideration to think of an older generation that may not know, but I think in Livermore, one of the values to this public school district is the educational level and the understanding of public education. So the community has stood, as long as I know, and I've only been here for 40 years, but the community has always stood for technology. I'm not suggesting to take it out or whatever, but does the point of technicality, if that language wasn't in that ballot statement, does it mean we can't use it for technology or is it? I think you'd need to talk to get the answer. I don't want to answer that correctly, but a statistician and a man I'm sure can answer. Yeah, if technology were not in the 75 words, but in your longer project list, you

088absolutely could still use it for that. And I just want to be clear that, you know, all of you, there's a lot of programs and or programs, facility needs that were tested, including, you know, wiring, technology goes in a lot of different directions, as you mentioned, STEM, and those things all tested very well. It's just some ranked slightly higher than others. And we see this a lot of times in a more tax sensitive environment where repair and renovate accountability rise to the top because they want to know, you know, it's funding is staying local. That citizens oversight committee, which is built into a bond measure, is all part of it, as well as, you know, the repair and renovate when they're concerned about rising tax rates. So I think that, you know, you had a

089lot of great things that your community supports. And we can definitely our recommendation is to go back to your community, educate them on a lot of the different things that you'd be doing with this funding, continue to get questions and have that two way conversation. And then built into, you know, our recommendation is coming back with a tracking survey to test the specifically test the no tax rate increase in a ballot 75 word ballot question. But we can also, you know, reframe it if, you know, technology is not jumping out in the forefront. But that's not to say you can't and won't still need to incorporate it in the longer resolution. And I think lastly, I really appreciate you, you kind of tagged it on at the end that, hey, what you're facing, we feel

090we're very unique, you know, Livermore is very unique. And we face our very own unique challenges, where you're saying, saying, you kind of said, pointed out that across the state, people are feeling the crunch or having similar, we're having similar results in other surveys. Yeah, I'm working with districts up and down the state. And just in the last few years, you know, we've seen a decline in support levels. You know, Livermore is very unique. But also some of your even more liberal, less, you know, less conservative communities in Santa Clara, Alameda, there has been a decline in the support for tax rates, they still support their schools, they still are supporting bonds and parcel taxes. But there has been a significant decline because people are feeling the pinch, they want to support their schools, but

091they also want the district to think about, you know, how much you're asking for. And I think that was clear here, 450 is a little much, but we like the idea of the no tax rate increase. And you can still garner a good amount of money to do some projects. Thank you so much. Trustee Capuanes. Thank you for sharing your presentation. I was wondering if we can get a copy of your presentation. Is that possible? I didn't even get think of like, screenshotting everything. And then I just wanted to know, how do we ensure the community's input beyond just surveys? Yeah, that's a big part of our next step is we like to go out and share this information broadly with your community. We like to do our own online surveys, not the scientific data,

092but give more and more of your community members an opportunity to share input, whether it's in a postcard written back or an online survey. So that's just one piece of our outreach effort that we would be going forward with. Okay. And that would be in multiple languages? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Trustee Grass, Trustee Deepak, do either of you have any questions for them? It's okay if you don't. Okay. So what? It's okay. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, you go. Oh, I just wanted to thank you guys for putting, because it's always critical, you know, I came out of government my whole life, and it's always a difficult thing to go to the public and ask for money to support a government endeavor. And so you look at the political times right now, and you look

093at economic things, it's imperative that when you do make that ask, that you're thorough about it and that you're methodical about it and you're honest with the public. Having been a community member here for some time, and it's short for this community, I'm not joking about it. I mean, 40 years is short in Livermore. I think that we have to maintain that public trust. One of the things that you'll usually come up against is make sure they're spending their money right the first time. I can assure people and people have, we can look at it. It's always been reported. We bring in critics to be on our citizens oversight boards that are from specific groups, the taxpayers group and from parent groups and from, you know, economic group. And they, it's very specific and they're

094assigned, and then they give us annual, actually, I think it's quarterly reporting. Is it quarterly? Annual, they come into us, but you guys meet with them quarterly. And so then we get the roll up. And we have always enjoyed, the money has always been spent the way it is intended to be spent. There's been no anomalies to it. We've been very, very privileged through some really good calculus that we have a very good bond director on the last one, the 2016. She happens to be in our audience tonight. And our projects have come in consistently on time and under budget. So from a fiduciary sense, the district is managing, that seems to be the biggest concern that I have seen in public, in government when you're looking at bonds. And then going forward, then it

095just becomes a strategy of, you know, what can, what can we tolerate and what can we do? Because our kids do deserve to have the very best. Can we get there? I don't know if we can get them to very best, but we have an obligation. People come in and say, what are you doing for kids and teachers? We have an obligation to make sure that the roofs don't leak and, you know, that their buildings are modern and that they can understand that we have good technology. You know, our aquatic centers now are world-class aquatic centers. We have beautiful facilities in the ones that we've touched. And we simply want to continue on that endeavor to touch our facilities, even if it's not as large scale as we'd like, but it's important that we keep

096that momentum going. Anything else? Yeah. I just wanted, thank you for putting this together. And I, it's funny to me to see that there's not much of a difference when you just lower it until we get to the no new tax, which I'm not surprised about that. I'm assuming this probably isn't even a question. I can assume the answer is that if we did to go for the 167 million, which is the no new tax that that would be reflected in the, in the language on the ballot, right? Yes, we would, we would recommend testing that again, closer to when you're looking to make a decision. I think June is still very viable. So we would recommend probably a January tracking survey to look at specifically the 75 word language that included that ballot language

097of the no tax rate increase your projected current rate. And then for tonight, this is discussion only, are we, are you looking for direction or is this just? Yes, two things. Number one, along with trustee Blaine, I just wanted to acknowledge our bond staff that are here tonight and just what a wonderful job they do. We're happy that they're currently now in the building with us, which makes meeting, especially in these times, so much easier. So thank you for all your hard work, ladies. Second thing is yes, we do not need a vote. We just need some direction. The request is that we continue down this path because we do see a viable option that we think our community can withstand. And we'd like to go out and do a lot of public education explained,

098especially because our repairs specifically ranked as number one. And we have a couple of school sites junction being first on that list of a dire need of a lot, but really going out, doing education, doing PSAs, all those things between now and the end of this calendar year. And then having FM three, along with Clifford Moss and our team go back out, redo the polling. And then from there, we bring that back to the board. And then that will give us the next layer of what do we do? Do we move forward? Obviously based on what we do out in the field, knowing what we know now, we will probably recraft this language. This was just a testing point to get started. And then really look at where does the updated language stand? And what

099do those percentages look like to see if we want to request that the board call for the election, either in June or in November? Did I miss anything? Nope, that was perfect. Okay, great. Thank you. Sound good. So as long as the board as a whole or as the majority is okay with us just continuing to move forward, then we will carry on with our planning and our things we're meeting twice a month. That'll probably increase between now and then at least a small team of us. And we will go from there once we hit just for educational purposes for anyone who wants to understand this piece. And I think this is really critical. Once we hit a certain place and the board, if the board decides to call for an election, it very much

100changes what as staff we can and cannot do. So this is our only time between now and the board deciding if they're going to call for an election that we are allowed to really as staff really engage with the community and be out and be out front and center providing that education. So it's really important that we really spend these next few months doing that work. I think for me, the education piece is absolutely essential. I think, you know, coming on the board, I would say none of my friends understood how large scale facility projects are funded. And most of my friends are in education. So I think that piece, regardless of anything is long-term, that has to happen. I want the Livermore community to understand so that they can make an educated decision about

101what they want. Because I think if people are assuming that we get money from the state and we just need to save up for that, it's not going to happen. That's not how it works. Correct. And I think it was very eye-opening when we did strategic planning last March. One of the big things when we were talking about that particular focus area that directly related to facilities, we did a brief introduction to the 180 people in the room around bond funding. It was very eye-opening, I think, for everyone to see just the lack of information and knowledge that they had. It's no one's fault. Why would they need to know that? So it gave us kind of that bird's eye view into that topic and really knowing that that's an area that we can really

102work to educate our staff and the community as a whole in hopes of moving this forward. We did meet with our bargaining units on Friday and went through just the basics of these results as well just to bring them along prior to this presentation. It was very positive. And so I know that we'll work collaboratively with them as well to keep them updated as we move forward. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay. We're going to move on to our next item, 13.2, which is the 2024-2025 Unaudited Actual Financial Reports. And we will turn the time over to Ms. Kayla Wasley. Good evening. Tonight I will be presenting on the 24-25 Unaudited Actuals. So the reports in Unaudited Actuals cover all financial transactions from July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025.

103Unlike budget reports, these reflect our actual revenues and expenditures for the year. Board approval is required, but these are called Unaudited Actuals because our balance has not yet been reviewed by our external auditors. That audit will be completed this fall and we'll be returning with our final audited balances in December for approval as well and acceptance of the audit report. For revenue, 72% of our total revenue was from LCFF sources. LCFF sources are both a combination of state and local funding sources. The balance of revenue was made up of federal, state, and local funding sources. Of our total revenue, 76% was unrestricted revenue and 24% was restricted revenue. So comparing our Unaudited Actuals to estimated actuals. So in June, when I present the adopted budget for 25-26, I also include estimated actuals and so that

104is where this comparison is driving from. So overall, our revenue did decrease by $770,000, but that was largely due to unspent federal funds, which I will detail out later on in the presentation. Other state revenue and local revenue both increased from estimated actuals in June. The state revenue largely increased due to ELOP or Expanded Learning Opportunities funding as well as state lottery funding. Local revenue increased through a multitude of reasons including donations, interest earnings, and some other things that I will review later on in the presentation. For our overall expenditures, overall salaries and benefits represent 85% of our total expenditures with 59% of expenditures being unrestricted expenses and 41% are restricted expenses. The reason that the spending of restricted and unrestricted doesn't align with our restricted and unrestricted revenue sources is because we have several

105programs that require large contributions of unrestricted general fund dollars to restricted programs. So overall, for 24-25 expenditures, expenditures were $12.3 million less than projected largely due to unspent restricted funds. However, we did have some lower spending in utilities and contracted services for salaries and benefits. Their certificate of salaries and classified salaries non-management were slightly overspent. However, we did have some savings in management salaries as well as employee benefits that helped offset to where we were $257,000 underspent in all salaries and benefits. For un-audited actuals, I will be reviewing the variances from estimated actuals to un-audited actuals by unrestricted programs and then by restricted programs by the funding source to just kind of look at how things fell out in the final un-audited actuals. For unrestricted revenues, there was a slight increase to LCFF revenue of

106$29,000. This is due to non-public school average daily attendance or ADA being slightly higher than we originally projected. Most ADA is funded on P2 attendance, which is in April. NPS attendance is funded based off of the full school year, so we don't know that final amount until the very end of the school year. Unrestricted state lottery increased by $98,000. This is due to some prior year adjustments that we received as well as CDE's final guidance for 24-25 estimated fourth quarter accruals, which we will receive in September. We did receive some miscellaneous state revenue that is unrestricted of $43,000 for 22-23 CASP and LPAC testing reimbursements. Those we received quite a bit after the fact based off the actual testing that was completed in our district, and it's a state calculation. And then for interest earnings,

107that increased by $673,000 from projections. Our third quarter interest postings, which is January through March interest earnings on our cash and county treasury, was not received until June 2025, so I wasn't able to reevaluate what I expected interest earnings to be when I completed estimated actuals. Then we had a fair market value adjustment or FMV that is a required adjustment that looks at what is our cash and county treasury, and if that was all cashed out with investments, what would that actually look like? And so this is a book entry only and is not actually revenue that is received by the district. We did receive also some reimbursements from our associated student body that totaled $85,000, and there was an equal amount in expenditures as well for that. And then we had some various miscellaneous

108revenue as well as Tri-Valley ROP reimbursements for substitutes that increased our total unrestricted revenue by $1.04 million. For contributions to restricted programs, we saw a decrease of $1.96 million from expected contributions, largely due to special education spending decrease by $1.7 million, and I'll be reviewing the lower spending and special education on the later slide. And then due to the lower overall expenditure of the district, our required 3% contribution to our routine restricted maintenance account decreased by $248,000. For routine restricted maintenance, we are required to update that at each budget period with what our expected 3% contribution is based off our budget expenditures, so based off our actuals and the fact that we didn't have fully expended that program, I was able to reduce that contribution and save the general fund. For unrestricted program expenses, overall

109there was a decrease of $435,000 in expenditures from estimated actuals. So for unrestricted salaries and benefits, we were actually $564,000 over budget. However, we were, supplies were $34,000 under budget due to various site teacher and department budgets being under spent services were under budget by $1.18 million. This is due to a variety of reasons, including our utilities and phone services being $766,000 lower than anticipated. I did drop some of those further in the adopted budget, but I'll continue to look at those to see if I can further adjust some of those utilities down. We did have solar that went live at three of our school sites last year, and so without knowing the full annual picture of that solar, it was hard to project our utilities for that piece of it, and our energy bill

110savings was quite a bit from prior years. IB spending was $42,000 lower. That was largely in professional development. Site budgets were $25,000 lower. Legal expenses were $17,000 lower. Various IT expenditures services was $25,000 lower. Small postage savings, board and superintendent savings for travel and conference as well as evaluation. A direct cost transfer resulted in $56,000 in savings, so that is moving community redevelopment funds that are placed in restricted funds, but we have unrestricted costs that are associated with why we receive those funds, so we were able to have additional savings for that cost transfer that we are able to do of those funds, and then our LCAP services were $204,000 underspent. We knew this and had planned to shift these over to some of our salaries that were overspent as well. Capital outlay was $46,000

111under budget, and this is due to a warehouse van that was on order but not delivered by June 30th. We just received it actually, I believe, last week, so that will hit the 25-26 budget, and then our indirect cost charges to restricted programs were $256,000 lower than projected due to lower restricted spending. So for restricted programs, first I'll review our federal restricted programs. So on both Title I and Title IV, we underspent those grants by $159,000, and so as a reminder, federal programs and some state programs are called unearned revenue sources, and what this means is if the funds aren't spent in the current year, then the revenue is not recognized in that year, and that means that when a program is underspent, both the revenue and the expenditures are reduced, and then that funding

112is carried forward into the following fiscal year. This is why federal revenue decreased by $4 million, and this was not because there was any loss of funding, but just unspent funding that will carry into our future year, and so I'll be working with each program to identify how they plan to spend those unspent funds to re-budget them in 25-26. So Title I and Title IV was underspent by $159,000. Services planned with Title I and Title IV plans were not used as planned, and they will carry forward to 25-26. One planned expenditure for Title IV funds is our Dreambox subscription that we have for three years, and then at Title I, I will be working with Educational Services on developing a plan for those unspent funds. The Magnet grant was underspent by $3.8 million. The 24-25

113budget was based off of the approved budget plan for a Magnet grant, which included $3.4 million in carryover. Several positions were unfilled, and supplies and services were underspent by $3.2 million. The Educational Services and Magnet grant staff are working on a plan to spend the carryover as well as request a one-year extension to the grant to extend the end date to September 30, 2028. Unfortunately, Magnet grant, the reason for the $3.4 million carryover is that they were funded largely upfront, and the expenditures have just not happened as quickly as they thought they would, and so it is being reassessed to ensure that we do fully expend those funds as well as utilize them appropriately and as effectively as we can to serve those sites with those funds. Our school-based mental health grant was underspent by

114$149,000. The 24-25 budget was based off of the approved budget for the mental health grant. The spending was lower in both supplies and services. This is largely due to some SEL curriculum that was budgeted but not purchased within the grant funds in addition to lower tuition, professional development, and some licensing costs for subscriptions. And as a reminder, this is the grant that we are still waiting to hear on the outcome after December 31 of this year to see if we will be able to continue on with the grant or if we will lose those grant funds. So we will ensure that we are spending this $149,000 that was underspent before at the end of December. Now moving to our state-restricted programs, ELOP or Expanded Learning Opportunities funds, the fund balance increased by an additional $1.6

115million above what was estimated in estimated actuals. This is largely due to a revenue increase of $786,000. This was due to a redistribution of ELOP funds by CDE in June when they certified second principal apportionment in June. So what happened is that in the 24-25 school year, school districts had to certify whether or not they spent their first two years of ELOP funds. So that was 21-22 and 22-23 funds. And then once all of those districts reported unspent funds, those unspent funds were redistributed to all of the districts that were spending the funds. So we received an additional $768,000. I believe that will just be a one-time funding increase that will be received and they lowered now the ongoing annual ELOP funding. So we will wait to see when principal apportionment is certified in December

116or February what our annual ongoing will look like for ELOP. There was also expenditures that were $842,000 lower in both all salaries, benefits, supplies, and services. The program is expanding in 25-26 and we'll be utilizing the carryover for some of that as well as some program infrastructure updates. Universal Pre-Kindergarten Planning Grant or UPK grant was underspent by $46,000. This is one grant that is a state grant that is an unearned revenue source instead of an ending fund balance revenue source. So both the revenue and the expenditures were reduced by $46,000. The funds will carry forward to 25-26. Several orders were placed in 24-25 that were not received by June 30th, so those expenditures will occur in 25-26. And we'll continue to utilize these funds for TK classrooms as well as staffing support. We have the

117balance of 25-26 to spend the remainder of these funds as June 30th, 2026 is the expenditure deadline. Restricted lottery, that fund balance increased by $502,000 both because revenue increased by $119,000 based on CDE's guidance of our fourth quarter lottery accruals as well as curriculum purchases were lower by $383,000. The balance will be used for social science as well as ELD curriculum most likely. Continuing on with state restricted programs, our Golden State Pathways program. This is a grant that we received final notification of in June of 2025. There has been a lot of back and forth with this grant with the initial award coming out I believe at the end of the 23-24 school year. Then the state pulled back the funds and then they re-granted the funds in spring of 25. So there's been a

118lot of adjustments as the initial budgets were adopted back in 23-24. Much of the spending because of late notification did not occur in 24-25 as originally planned and so the expenses were $329,000 lower in salaries, benefits, supplies, services and capital outlay. So the balance of these funds will be moved to 25-26 based off of those grant funds. We have about six pathways that receive these grant funds at both Granada and Livermore. Special education was underspent by $101.2 million. Special education is actually a combination of state funds as well as local funds and then general fund contributions. The expenses were $1.2 million lower than projected due to the actual cost of non-public school and non-public agency contracts as well as supplies and benefits. The lower expenses reduce the contribution from the unrestricted funds. So a large

119portion of the unspent non-public school and agency contracts is due to when we assign those contracts we are assuming 100% attendance for both the students attending our non-public schools or the agencies that are contracting the staff and so based off of the actual contract spending our encumbrances did not realize into actual expenditures. So we'll be looking at that throughout 25-26 school year to ensure that if we are able to adjust down some of our encumbrances within contracts, if we don't have students attending that we aren't being charged for or agencies that we haven't been fully utilizing that staffing contract that we're lowering those down so we don't have such a large fallout of those expenditures. And the benefit piece that reason that was lower is due to our other post-employment benefits and that calculation and

120so that is another area that I will be looking into to determine if we are charging the correct amount for those benefits to our general fund. For prop 28 arts and music the fund balance increased by $233,000 this is due to unspent site allocations and supplies and services so all of those funds will roll over into site back into site budgets for 25-26. Our kitchen infrastructure and training funds the fund balance increased by $285,000 due to unspent funds however all of these funds were encumbered by June 30th 2025 just the services and supplies that were ordered through these funds were not expended at that by June 30th 2025. Additional state restricted we have a lot of state restricted programs our college and career access pathways grant increased by $30,000 in the fund balance. We received

121this grant in 24-25 however none of the funds were spent yet. A portion of these funds will be funding our CTE TOSA and the purpose of this grant is to expand our dual enrollment opportunities for our high school students with local community colleges. And then our A to G access grant the fund balance increased by $92,000 due to expenses being $92,000 lower than it projected. The funding will be used to support middle school math intervention sections to ensure that students are ready for high school math. Our STRS on behalf this is another book entry increased by $70,000 based off our final required STRS on behalf so we recognize an equal amount in both revenue and expenditures for the STRS on behalf amount that the state contributes to CalSTRS pension on behalf of any employees in

122STRS pension. And then ethnic studies our fund balance increased by $35,000. We received this these funds several years ago for the purpose of developing ethnic study courses and curriculum so this will carry over into 25-26 to continue this development. For local restricted programs our routine restricted maintenance fund did actually increase by $33,000 even with the lower required contribution and so expenditures were lower due to set lower salaries benefits as well as supplies and services. Our gift accounts that fund balance increased by $2.4 million. So our gift accounts each site has a gift account as well as the high schools have various ones for departments as well as their athletic departments. So all of those funds will carry over into 25-26 and be re-budgeted for the sites and I will be working with sites to identify

123how much balance is being carried over each year as we make want to make sure that we are spending this year's dollars on this year's kids and it is a pretty high balance of gift accounts that seems to be rolling over year after year. Our miscellaneous local restricted funds are for various reasons increased by $40,000 largely due to ELOP tuition so ELOP is free for all qualifying students so if they qualify for free and reduced meal application through a free and reduced meal application or English language learners however students are still able to attend if they do not qualify and pay a small tuition and so that is where these funds are recorded and then we receive community redevelopment funds which are largely due for site maintenance and upkeep and that was slightly higher than

124anticipated. The unspent ELOP funds will carry forward to 25-26 for ELOP expenditures. Project Lead the Way, the fund balance increased by $37,000 due to lower supplies and services at various school sites. Project Lead the Way funds are managed by the school sites that receive those grants in coordination with Jason Kolakowski who helps oversee them as well. Our wellness, we received a wellness coaches grant at the end of the 24-25 school year and that is actually funding a position in 25-26 so that fund balance increased by $70,000 but we actually received the funds in 24-25. SBHIP is funding that we receive and we've been using it for the implementation of wellness centers. That fund balance increased by $41,000 largely due to unanticipated Kaiser payments so SBHIP works through conjunction with insurance companies so Anthem Blue Cross

125as well as Kaiser have given us payments for implementation of health services and so we've been using those for wellness centers and so we unexpectedly got a payment from Kaiser and then expenditures were $13,000 lower than anticipated and the remaining funds will be used in 25-26 for wellness centers. Our school linked partnership grant, we received $207,000 for the implementation of the medical fee billing system that allows us to bill students private insurance for services provided and we are using that to implement the billing system in 25-26 as well as for an intern counselor. Project Build which is our program at DelVal was underspent by $68,000. That revenue is based off of the actual expenditures so both the expenditures as well as the revenue was decreased and we will be working to revise that budget to

126fully expend those funds. And then Medi-Cal reimbursement, our fund balance increased by $2 million. Both the spending was lower as well as slightly higher revenue. The spending of Medi-Cal funds runs through the district's Medi-Cal cooperative which is composed of staff across the district and so the Medi-Cal collaborative will be looking at what the fund balance is and how they can utilize those funds moving forward. So that was all of our main program changes from estimated actuals to actuals. And so our overall change in fund balance for unrestricted funds, we were projected to have an ending fund balance of approximately $9.5 million. This included the $6.3 million required reserve of 3%. For unhonored actuals, our ending fund balance ended at $12.8 million for an increase of $3.39 million to our unrestricted ending fund balance. For restricted

127funds, we are estimated at an ending fund balance of $5.4 million. Our final ending fund balance is $13.5 million for an increase of $8.14 million in our ending fund balance for restricted funds. And then I just combined our overall beginning fund balance revenue and expenditures. Contributions is zeroed out because between unrestricted and restricted funds, your contributions net out to zero. And then to reflect our total decrease in our fund balance of $2 million and $24.25 to lead to an overall restricted ending fund balance of the $13.5 and unrestricted balance of $12.8 million. And then our ending fund balance and our other funds. So we have our student activity fund. It's had a slight decrease. This is all of our student activity funds which are actually ran through a separate bank, but on audit actuals, they

128must be recorded into the district's books for state reporting as well as the audit report. Fund 11 is our adult education fund, decreased from $373,000 beginning fund balance to $250,000 ending fund balance. Adult education, most of their funding comes through a consortium of 10 educational agencies through state funding. And so we will be monitoring the adult education fund to ensure that they have sufficient funds and stay within their budget to not encumber or encroach on the general fund. Fund 12 is our child development fund. So this is our recording of our state preschool contract which we subcontract 100% up to CAPE. So there was just minimal changes in the ending fund balance mostly due to the fair market value adjustment that we were required to make. The cafeteria fund, the beginning fund balance was $3.8

129million. The ending fund balance was $3.3 million. This was largely due to a decrease based off of a transfer of kit funds from our child nutrition fund or cafeteria fund to our general fund to allow greater flexibility of those kit funds. Overall, the program was actually increased our ending fund balance when you just looked at their meal activity for the year and the staffing and expenditures. We have our funding teams, our special revenue fund. This is scholarships that are held by the district and awarded to students. Had a slight increase. Fund 21, which is our building fund, decreased from $31 million to $16 million. This is largely due to spending down of those final bond funds from 2016. And then our capital facilities fund. We actually received quite a bit additional developer fees in 2024-25

130and that ending fund balance increased to $3.6 million. We plan to utilize these funds for modernization or new transitional kindergarten facilities as we expand our transitional kindergarten grade level. Fund 25 is our county school facility funds that increased from $12 million to $20 million. This is largely due to an additional $16.2 million in state facility program funds that were received in 2024-25 for projects that were completed by bond funds. So any projects through fund 35 must also be approved on the bond measure language. So it'll be aligned with bond expenditures as well. Fund 40 is our special reserve for capital outlay. This decreased from $5 million to $10 million. This records other capital outlay that is not associated with bond funds, state facility funds, or developer fees. We have been using these for CalShape and

131our NG loan, which did quite a bit of our energy efficiency work. And then fund 51 is our bond interest and redemption funds. So this is how we repay our bond funds that we have received. And then fund 65 is our self-insurance fund for our property liability and workers comp funds. And so that solid decrease from $95,000 to $4,000 due to an invoice that we received in June of 2025 for $60,000 for about three years worth of claim work on one claim. So that was an unexpected surprise in June. And so we'll be working to slightly rebuild our ending fund balance within fund 67 to ensure that we can manage those surprises of claim costs that come in. So looking ahead, our next step is to update our adopted budget to reflect our new beginning

132fund balances as well as any carryover adjustments, reconciling our position control with new actual hires and assessing whether planned reductions have achieved the savings we expected. We are preparing for our external audit report, which must be completed by December 15th. In addition to updating the adopted budget for beginning fund balances, we'll also be updating for any of the 45-day revision that was presented in August, as well as looking at our enrollment, which is unfortunately lower than originally projected for 25-26. So those will also be incorporated into first NRM that is presented on December 9th. And with that, any questions or comments? We do have a blue card, so I'd invite Tara Boyce to come forward. You're good? Okay. All right. Trustee Capuanes, do you have any questions or comments? I have two questions. Okay. Is

133there a system that we use for some type of accountability on how we spend the money for the students for that year as opposed to the carryover? Like, how do we decide? For restricted grant funds, that's reported through typically state or federal grant reporting systems. If it's local funds like donations, then it's really self-monitoring the district and ensuring that we don't have large carryover. And that's another is not a true system for that. Okay. And then one more question. For the 2.4 million in the donor gifts account that remained unspent, is there a reason why we didn't spend those? That is a great... No, I don't. Well, I have a feeling some sites are saving for specific things. Some athletic programs are saving for specific things, whether it's new uniforms, new equipment, things like that.

134So sometimes it's planned savings for larger purchases. And sometimes it's just that you didn't have the needs and you received more than you needed to spend in that year in your gift account. And so it's just carrying over. Okay. Thank you. Trustee Vanden Heuvel. I'll follow up with that too. I'd love to know a little bit more because that comes out to $135,000 per site that they're just sitting on. And I mean, knowing the teachers and everybody else, I don't understand why that would be. So maybe it'd be good to maybe look into that. Like, why is there $2.4 million just sitting there in a gift account? But maybe I don't understand exactly what that can be used for, is used for, should be used for. I don't know. It can really be used for

135any allowable expense within a school district. Unless the donor puts specific requirements on it, which is to be within an account and for in a separate account, it can be used for any site need that is an appropriate expenditure of a school district. I would say this balances vary from site to site. Unfortunately, our more affluent areas have a greater balance typically than our other areas. But I can definitely do some more research on the balances by school site and kind of see. So I'll be working on it. Seems super high to me. So I'm going to ask a follow up just so we don't have to go back to it. It says that it increased by $2.4 million. What is the balance? The balance is? It's slide 13. Let me just pull up. Oh,

136that unfortunately all rolls up. So let's see. Gift accounts. The actual ending fund balance is $2.6 million. So $2.6 million is the actual ending fund balance. So that just increased by $200,000 from estimated actuals. Oh, okay. I mean, I read that it says that the fund balance increased by $2.4 million. From estimated actuals. So at estimated actuals, I had anticipated a balance, a carryover balance of $200,000. And then so the. Just because it didn't get spent. So it's. Yes. Okay. Sorry, just one more question. So just with like an equity in mind, thinking about this, is there a way that we could spread the resources across the district instead of just at particular school sites? Um, yeah, the hard thing would be donations. Typically, if those are received for a specific school site. So I

137don't know how that would go over with the community or the school sites. Okay. I just wanted to ask about that. Thank you. My next question was on slide seven. There was a decrease in the amount of money spent on, I'm looking it up on, um, routine restricted maintenance. That so the, you explained it well, like, you know, we have a decrease in the total. So it's supposed to be 3% of that. So there's a decrease. Is that, is that wise? Then I, what I'm seeing or reading is that we're spending a quarter million dollars less on maintenance of our aging facility. And I'm like, Oh, is that wise? Is that a good thing? Is there a way that we can still do some of that? Yes, we could contribute higher than our 3% required

138contribution rate. Historically, we've only contributed our standard 3% contribution rate. So that is why I only calculated based off of the required 3% for it. So if I'm wondering if that, if as our, some of our facilities age and a bond issue is in the, you know, balance that we go, Hey, let's, let's figure out how to crank that up a little bit. So that, and really, um, routine restricted maintenance is meant for our daily maintenance of our facilities, not so much those larger deferred maintenance items, our flooring, our roofs on all of that, that we are not funded for on deferred maintenance. Um, so that's another reason for it. But you get to deferred maintenance by not spending your money on. Yes. Yes. I turn it off slide 16. I've got, that's my last

139question. I promise. Slide, slide 16. There's an $8 million difference right there. Right. Is that normal? I don't know. Is that a, um, right there, the ending fund balance for all these changes? It seems high. Yes. For restricted programs. Um, if I don't have a yearly budget to plan off of, of what's going to be spent. So I do budget at all. So I have been working on our grant programs of not budgeting unless we plan to expend it in the current fiscal year to not overinflate our, um, revenue. However, there are some, like our donations accounts, our Medi-Cal accounts that because of how the financial system works, if I don't budget that, the sites or the Medi-Cal collaborative won't see that funding sitting there. Um, and so I am working on a method to

140try to reduce some of that. If I can get a better annualized budget of what's planned to be spent. Um, unfortunately it's a messy process at this point. And so I would say based off of fully budgeting our donations and our Medi-Cal, knowing that we're probably not going to spend it, it does make sense that we had a higher, a higher carryover than was anticipated. So you're saying it's not necessarily normal because we are trying to get to a better starting point. Yes. Okay. Thank you. First, I would like to applaud your creativity in working to shift costs from general fund to restricted funds where legal, ethical, and appropriate. I think that kind of accounting into work is amazing. Um, and secondly, I guess kind of building from several of the comments, uh, there seems

141to be, I mean, the whole point of this process is to, um, denote variance between estimated and, and reality. And it seems that there's a large variance between those. And so I think just kind of panning back from that, what's, what's your plan or Dr. Gibson, how do we get closer? Cause I think as, as trustee Vanden Heuvel was saying is 8 million. Is that the kind of threshold that's like acceptable? Cause I see, um, several of these, there's money there and we want to spend it, especially if it's, especially if it goes away, but to know that there's some carryover and there's some planning, I know it's complicated, but just, just seeing all of that variance, um, what is, what is your plan? Cause I know that, you know, this year moving forward is

142your, you know, it's your ship. So I'm just curious about your comments about that. Yeah. So I would say unrestricted funds wise, um, those were more in line with what I would expect to see for fallout, um, of the budget. It's really the restricted funds that I think we need to do some work on for how we are budgeting for them and how we're planning for them, um, both in ensuring that if we have a grant plan, that we're spending an alignment with that grant plan. Um, and if we're not doing more frequent adjustments and looking at those, um, as well as in trying to work with the sites, um, and such on the restricted funds for unrestricted, um, for revenue of the interest earnings. Unfortunately, part of that is just delay in reporting from

143our county treasury. And so that's a hard piece to really adjust for when it, when we did estimated actuals, I didn't even know what our third quarter. So I only knew half of a year of interest earnings. And so that is a harder one to adjust for or plan for. Um, but I will be working on it of trying to see from maybe from ACOE, if they can at least give me reporting that I can make my own calculations on what I think our interest will be before it's posted and such. So there are some other options that I've thought of, of trying to address that issue. Um, but I would say that our unrestricted, um, variance was more in line with what I would expect, um, moving forward and then restricted. We do need

144some work on that, um, or how we plan for that. Uh, when I drive to campus at Stan state, I drive past a billboard in series, you know, in series where series unified district is essentially advertising TK kindergarten, sign your students up. And as you're presenting and thinking about the, I don't know, seeing under enrollment in some of those, I don't know, we might need billboards to encourage people to send their students to school. Um, the last question is kind of a big one. So the big question for me is the ending fund balance of 12 million. So minus the 3%, which I think someone jumped in, I think there was a neighboring school district that had something they were saving like 18% or something like that, which is just mind boggling because as, as

145a trustee Bueno has said, we have money, we spend it now. And I think that that's kind of the tradition and I'm in favor of that. I think that we have students here, but digressing. So 12, 12 million minus the 3% is still 6 million. So this seems like a lot of carryover in coming after we were making deep cuts in the spring. So how do you, how do you explain that or reconcile that? Is that really there's $6 million sitting somewhere or, um, that funding is actually being, has been, was planned to be utilized when we adopted the budget. So we were, um, about $3 million over our required reserve at the estimated actuals that helped us offset some of our continued deficit spending that we still were feeling and having, um, in our

146both 25, 26, as well as subsequent years, um, that helped us meet our minimum reserve requirement of 3%. And so that is where some of these funds will go. And some of them are, will just fall to the ending fund balance. Um, the average unified school district in 23, 24, their unrestricted reserve percentage was 24%. Um, so many districts have a much larger percent. I'm not saying that is what we should do. I'm just, just a fact. Um, and so we are higher, but definitely not anywhere close to average as far as, even as we end the year at about 6% pending fund balance. Thank you. Me? Oh, and I, and thanks for acknowledging the point that I made. I mean, in the time that I've been on the board, um, there's been two philosophies,

147but the overriding philosophy has been to keep the minimum reserve. And I don't care personally, as one person on the board, I don't care if everyone has a 50% reserve, the minimum mandate is 3% and to get to a higher means you're taking away from children within the given year. So when you see a big carryover like this, it appears as though it's an anomaly because in my 11 years on the board, I don't know that I've ever seen a carryover that large, you know, a variation from estimated actuals to unaudited actuals. So it does represent a pretty good size number, but I understand like some of it is trying to calculate interest on the, that, you know, that's, that's a difficult one. I know that that was, uh, the last, uh, CFO assistant Sue,

148um, who noted that that was available to us, did that, right? That was like one of the last things that she did while she was here was to, um, to what they call book the interest off of money that was parked off of bond or something. They were able to move money over or something. It was something like that. 40, there was some funding moved that, yeah, something like that. Um, a question, um, you answered the question I had on the 2.4 and I have a question on, um, the sole, just one thing on these solar is I was here when we put them on and the number has continually gone up and I don't know, do we own any of them or they all under there, an expansion of the original agreement? So some

149of ours are through a PPA power purchase agreement. Um, that's the majority of them. However, the three sites that just went online this last year are owned. However, we did, we purchased them through a lease and so we are repaying that lease currently. So we own them, but we do have a payment on them because we took a loan out to all the original ones we did. There's $0 ever flowed out of pocket. And the agreement was that we buy the energy from the people who installed that over a period of time, but it was $0 out of pocket. So it was always a positive cash flow from day one. And, um, one of the things that I advocated for a few years ago, and I just, as people change, um, is when we, when

150people who have photovoltaic panels know that you gain your advantage in the summer months when the sun is out. And so cleaning them, because we live next to quarries, um, there's an advantage to us. Now, when we pressed that initially with the companies that put in those first 15 arrays, I think it was, they said, well, there's no need, we're fine. We maintain them. But understanding how the agreement works is that we agree to buy the power from them at a given rate. Any power that we buy in excess of that is at going rate with PG&E. So it's going to downgrade or push our savings down because we're buying our power at a flat rate. Over time. And that's how they get their money back. So unless they're not generating any power, so their

151threshold for cleaning is, should be different than ours. So I would just like to see, and I've mentioned this before, and we did do it a while back, but with the change that we brought in people to clean the panels as summer began, because we got, we generated more energy and our savings went up. The amount of power that was generated by those photovoltaic panels under that agreement increases our savings. It's just a financial investment. It doesn't cost that much to clean them. Also on the, on the magnet grant, I'm not sure what slide is, it says page nine, the bottom right. It says we underspent by 3.8. The 24-25 budget was based on the approved budget, which included 3.4 million in carryover. Several positions were not filled. Supply and services were underspent by 3.2.

152What's the annual, if we underspent by 3.2, what is the, is that like a whole year, like we were just a year behind? It's a couple of, it's underspinning in a couple of years. So the average, the annual plan budget originally was about $1.5 million to $2 million in each of the budget years. And so the 3.4 is a cumulative over the first couple of years of the grant that would have been underspent. Okay. You know, when we asked that question earlier, I wasn't sure what the actual, the annual expenditure was just so that we were underspent by 3.2. So the annual expenses for magnet in 24-25, we spent $1.5 million. So if we're seeking, cause I saw in the language that we're seeking to possibly, you know, increase spending and, or possibly extend. But

153if we, if we're only spending at a rate of 1.5 or two, and we underspent by three point, we have 3.8, a one-year extension kind of wouldn't do, we'd have to spend a whole bunch. Okay. Yes. So that is why I know educational services, as well as our magnet grant staff, because we have specific magnet grant staff are working to revise the budget and work on expense, fully expending that and the one-year extension to try to, I think, learn of that outcome sooner rather than later to help us plan for that spending of the carryover to ensure that if we don't happen to receive the extension that we still, still fully utilize all of the funds. Okay. That's it. Thank you. Okay. You're good. Okay. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. So obviously

154we've been talking about the expenditures coming in slightly lower and some significantly lower. I noticed in, especially in books and supplies and services, and I'm curious what of those funds are restricted. I'm imagining that services are probably more restricted. Are books and supplies restricted or is that general fund? Most of the under spending, I would say the majority of the under spending was all restricted funds that were under spent. Okay. Okay. And then, all right, we've already talked about the grants. That was my other question. Oh, and then the one with the, the service savings, I think it was a 3.2 under spend. You talked a little bit about the utilities. Are these one-time savings or is this like a perpetual savings? Does that make sense? I will be reviewing that. Some, I might be

155able to slightly reduce our utilities. Our phone utilities are actually quite a bit lower, but we also had large credits on phone, also incorporates internet charges. And so we, e-rate is what we receive for a discount on our internet services that we receive. And so sometimes that's a federal program. And sometimes as we receive those credits, they're very backlogged. And so we receive a large amount at one time. So that may be only a one-time savings because based off of where we are currently sit with our credits with e-rate and what our invoices are on a monthly basis, we have budgeted appropriately in 25, 26. So we did have savings there that we don't anticipate to receive. And again, in 25, 26, I will be reviewing our PG&E utilities to see if I can reduce

156those further in the 25, 26 budget, as well as some of our sewer charges that were lower. But we also received some refunds due to some water leaks. And so when you have a water leak, our sewage cost is based off of our water usage. And so they will give us a credit back on some of that. And so I will be reviewing all of those. I think that's all I have. If there are no other comments or questions, I already checked in with our student board reps. I do have one question. Are we prepared? Are we doing the advisory votes tonight for our student board reps? Yes. Okay. Get ready. You ready for that? Yeah. Oh, you deferred. That's not the order that we go in. I mean, typically, we do it in the

157order that we do. Okay, sure. Okay. So just for comparison purposes, last year, our carryover was almost identical to what we over. Oh, what's happening? What we're carrying over this year, last year was 10,975. And we're a little bit above that. So we're similar. It seems to be books and supplies and services consistently. So that's concerning from the perspective of why aren't we spending it? As we go through the year, we talked about it in March, there was $7 million that you said were reserved for donations. So do the encumbrances roll forward? When do you do the encumbrance roll forward? In June, before you do the unaudited endings. So encumbrances are now in your 25, 26 budget. Okay. Okay. So typically, if you have questions on the topic. Okay, so we can go back to

158that in the meeting on Thursday. My other concern, just as a parent of children in the Title I school and a second Title I school. So we did a large roll forward last year on our Title I grants. I think we underspent by like 240 or something, right? So this year we spent into 50% of that, but we still didn't spend down Title I completely. With the current climate in Washington, Department of Education, things getting pulled back, mental health grants going away, all of that. That's just very concerning from a parent level that we're leaving any money on the table. So anything that can be done from the board level, district level to ensure that money is spent down to zero in this coming school year in order to not jeopardize the funding would be

159appreciated. And I can tell you that parents are leaning into this topic and understanding more at their site level how money is coming in and being spent with all the stuff going on at the national level. So thank you. Thank you. I'd entertain a motion. I'm going to close public comment. I'm learning still. So I'm moving two years. I would entertain a motion to, for the approval of the un-audited actual. President Prusso, I move to support the superintendent's recommendation to approve the 2024-2025 un-audited actual financial reports. I second. I have a motion by Trustee Druhan, seconded by Trustee Caplanes. Any discussion on the motion? I would ask our clerk to take... Perhaps discussion on the motion. We want to explain to the public about our, what their votes count for. So we have our two

160student board reps. We are changing how we do things. We're bringing them on as advisory votes. We're going to be asking them. They're coming to all of our meetings and they're learning as much as they can. Their votes are just advisory votes. They don't count in the actual, but we are excited to have them here and for them to be able to learn this. And so you guys ready for your first advisory vote? We'll start with the board and then... Well, I'll let the clerk do however he'd like. Trustee Caplanes? Aye. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? Aye. Trustee Bueno? Aye. Myself? Aye. Trustee... Is it Groose? Gross. Gross. Aye. And Trustee Deepak? Aye. And President Prusso? Aye. That motion carries unanimously 5-0 with two advisory votes. That was exciting. We're going to take a short break before

161we move on to the next item. Okay. Welcome back. We're now going to move on to item 13.3, ratification of employment contract for Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources. And we will turn the time to Dr. Tori Gibson. So this item on the agenda is to seek approval of the employment agreement for the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources, Dr. Jessica Bonduras. Before the board can take action on the proposed contract, it is a legal requirement to provide the following verbal summary of the compensation and benefit terms of the proposed contract. The employment agreement would be in effect from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2027. The assistant superintendent's base salary would be $276,098 annually paid in 12-month installments with a work year of 220 days. The assistant superintendent shall receive the same stipend for earned master's

162and or doctorate degree. As other members of the Livermore Management Association, the assistant superintendent receives life insurance. The assistant superintendent will not receive paid vacation or holidays. Sick leave will accrue at a rate of one day per month. The assistant superintendent will receive all health and insurance benefits that are provided to LMA members. If the assistant superintendent is unilaterally terminated without cause during this agreement, they would receive the amount remaining on the agreement not to exceed 12 months of pay. This includes the summary of the employment agreement, which is attached to the board item. Thank you. I have no blue cards at this time, so I'll close public comment. Any questions or comments from the board? Okay, comment? Go ahead. Yeah, no questions. I appreciate them being clarified. This thing got tabled and brought it

163back. I remain concerned not over the Dr. Mondaire's coming, doing her work here, but I do remain concerned over the optics of bringing someone in at the top space scale when we have tenured people here that are two steps below and the message that that might send. So that is my concern. There's nothing we can do to, you know, rectify that, but that is my concern. Any other comments or questions? I had a narrow question on 4.4 of the contract. It says the district shall reimburse the assistant superintendent for reasonable actual and necessary expenses incurred within the scope of their employment in accordance with board policy and is approved by the board within the budget. So it's just, what might that look like? Are there examples or existing? Yeah, so it'd be anything like supplies

164or food for a meeting, those types of functions. It's very rare that that happens. Usually our EAs do all that for us and they do it through a PO. Thank you. Yeah, just a quick question just for clarification. So the average amount that someone has paid for this position in other districts with the same history and background, is it comparable? I'm going to say yes, but I don't, I can't give you any evidence of that. There's kind of a range depending on where we sit. This is the salary schedule that was here in place before I got here. And traditionally, just like regular staff of certificated employees, management are also placed on the level where they have experience. Okay, thank you. If there are no other questions, I'd entertain a motion. I'll move to ratify

165the employment contract of the assistant superintendent of human resources. Second. Just for point of clarification really quickly, student board members cannot do anything that's personnel related. Okay. Okay. We're learning. Just since it's new, I wanted to just make a reminder. Thank you. Did we have a second? Sorry. I second. Oh, okay. Wait. Trustee Drew, seconded. Okay. Trustee, okay. Sorry. We have a motion by Trustee Bannon-Hoovill, seconded by Trustee Druane. Any discussion on the motion? I'd ask our clerk to take roll. Myself, aye. Trustee Bueno? Nay. Trustee Kaplanis? Aye. Trustee Bannon-Hoovill? Aye. President Prusso? Aye. Aye. What did you say? Oh, did you say it was a aye? I said aye. But it came out wrong. I just wanted to clarify. So this motion passes for one. Okay. We're going to move on to the next

166item, which is 3.4. We're going to invite Mr. Matthew Hart to come forward. This is our public hearing on the sufficiency of instructional materials for this 25-26 year. Good evening, board. President Prusso, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson, members of cabinet, remaining members of the community. My name is Matthew Hart. I'm the director of assessment and accountability, and I'm here to speak to you tonight about the sufficiency of instructional materials in our district. So we're here because, per EDCO, districts must certify the sufficiency of instructional materials within the first eight weeks of school. I'm just going to read it there because I think it says it nice and clearly. Sufficiency is measured by determining that each and every pupil, including English learners, has a standards-aligned textbook or instructional materials or both in the four core

167subjects to use in class and take home, regardless of whether or not homework is assigned, but it does not mean two copies of materials, although we actually do that quite a bit here. We have a class copy and a home copy for students, usually. The four core subject areas are ELA, math, history, and science. Now, that did get expanded later on to include health and world language, as well as the availability of high school laboratory science equipment. So there has to be sufficient lab equipment within for every station in a science class. And also keep in mind this includes things like Chromebooks. Actually, I think that's my next slide. Yes. So instructional materials, we think of textbooks, of course, but also think of Chromebooks because we have several online curricula. It includes access to that

168online curricula, and sometimes access is measured by things like maybe a hotspot, for example. Novels, which are sort of supplementary curricula, but often form a key component of English language arts classes, science lab equipment, workbooks, consumables, those all count as instructional materials. So as part of Williams Act Monitoring, this year Livermore High School was selected for Williams Act Monitoring. The Alameda County Office of Education actually did this yesterday, so I made this presentation before we knew the date. This audit happened yesterday morning. I'm proud to report that, again, Livermore High School had zero insufficiencies reported. We've kept that up for at least four years, or I think actually five years running at this point on our Williams audits, so we're very proud of that. The audits that Alameda County conducts are spot checks. Your board

169resolution involves certifying that the instructional materials throughout the district are sufficient. Again, I spoke about this actually in the spring in a different regard, but Williams is kind of meant to have two prongs. One is that these like the audits, the spot checks, and also like the uniform complaint procedures. And one of the things that they check for when they're checking for instructional materials is also to make sure that uniform complaint procedures are posted in every single classroom and in the office. So it's both the ability for us to have a system for the public to bring to our attention any potential or real insufficiencies and for Alameda County to come in and do spot checks as well. Those two things work together to make sure that we have sufficient instructional materials. In terms of

170just the systems, in place curriculum works with principals and library media specialists throughout the district to ensure sufficiency. In other words, we work with library media specialists. Are there needs? Is there a teacher got back after summer and they're unexpectedly five books short and there's none at the site library, and so we have to order some and get it out to the site. That's handled through curriculum in conjunction with the library media specialists at each site. So the next steps would be to hold a public hearing during a meeting of the board of education, and if the board agrees that the supply and distribution of instructional materials is sufficient, then a resolution would be passed declaring so. Thank you. Any comments or questions from the board? Okay. I will open, let's see, I have to

171find the right, okay, I'm gonna form, let's see, as president, sorry guys, as president, I will now open the public hearing and ask for public comment on this item if you wish to address the board on this item. Now is the time to do so. I have no cards, I see no public comments, so the public hearing is now closed. Okay, we're going to move on to 13.5. Matthew is going to stay there and move on to the resolution. The next step, if the board has any questions, obviously discussion could take place or if the board is convinced that we have sufficient instructional materials, then a resolution could be passed. Indicating so. All right, I have no blue cards, so I will close public comment. Does the board wish to discuss this? Yeah. How is

172sufficiency deemed? Like if a school had textbooks, they had pristine class set of chemistry textbooks from 1962, like would that, would that cross the threshold of becoming insufficient or? Yeah, it's a good, it's a good point because sufficiency isn't necessarily an indicator of quality, it's an indicator of existence. We know that, so for example, you know, two years ago we, you know, you have adopted a social, a K through 12 set of different K through 12 social studies materials, still working on, you know, sufficient funding for that and we know that we wanted to adopt that as a high priority because textbooks were very old. So this measure is about we have textbooks, whether we have the ones that we want at that point, I think is probably a matter for a separate discussion. That

173was my assumption. If there are no other comments or questions, I'd entertain a motion. I'll move to adopt resolution 0042526, certifying the sufficiency of instructional materials for all students in the district as required by education code 60119. Second. I have a motion by trustee Vanden Heuvel, seconded by trustee Drouin. Any discussion on the motion? I'd ask the clerk to take roll. Trustee Bueno? Yeah. Trustee Capuanis? Aye. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? Aye. Myself? Aye. Trustee Gruss? Aye. And President Perusso? Aye. Okay, sorry, my hearing. Okay, that motion carries five, it's okay, five zero with one advisory vote. Okay, we're going to turn the time over to Dr. Jessica Bondoris to present the tentative agreement for 24-25 school year with the SEIU. Am I the right one? Yes, SEIU union. Great, thank you. So on August 21st, 2025,

174SEIU leadership confirmed that SEIU members voted to ratify the tentative agreements negotiated by SEIU and the district teams. So this encompasses articles 14, paying allowances, article 18, transfers and promotions, article 20, safety, and appendix D, salary schedule. So therefore, in the 2024-2025 SEIU salary schedule has been revised to include a new column, column G, retroactive to July 1st, 2024. The step in column G reflect an increase of 1.46% from column F. This is also reflected in the salary schedule for 24-26. The fiscal impact of this tentative agreement, the general fund is $41,934, one time and $70,722 ongoing. The fiscal impact for the tentative agreement for the cafeteria fund, fund 13, is $13,392 one time and $17,851 ongoing. It is the superintendent's recommendation to approve the tentative agreement with SEIU and I want to thank the

175negotiation team for SEIU and also the district for all their hard work. Thank you. I have no blue cards so I will close public comment. Any comments or questions from the board? Trustee Vanden Heuvel? You mentioned that the, I'm looking at the $41,000 one time fund and $70,000 ongoing but it's retroactive to more than a year. I'm not sure how that, wouldn't that be the same? I don't know. Wouldn't that be, I don't understand maybe. That's why I'm asking. Okay. Yeah, so it's retroactive to July 1st so it did take a long time to get to the tentative agreement and the ratification so the agreement is for last year and so it would be retroactive to last year. We'll have negotiations for this year coming up. Got it. So that's about, so from June to

176December 2024 would be the one time and then ongoing it's the $70,000? Thank you. One time is the point 1.46. Sorry I wasn't here at this time so I'm just getting caught up on this part but Kayla do you want to help out for that part? Yes, so the one time amount is, there was a 0.51 off salary schedule that was one time in nature and so that is the one time cost. The ongoing cost is the change to the salary schedule. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I move in support of the superintendent's recommendation to approve the tentative agreement with service employees international union 10 to 1. Second. We have a motion by trustee Bueno, seconded by trustee Druhan. Any discussion on the motion? I'd ask the clerk to take a roll. Dr. Gibson this

177is personnel related, correct? It's personnel related. Yes. Okay, sorry, sorry, Ila, sorry. Go ahead. Trustee Bueno? Aye. Trustee Capuanes? Aye. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? Aye. Myself, aye. President Prusso? Aye. That motion carries 5-0. We're going to move on to 13.7 which is the tentative agreement for the 24-25 CSEA chapter 334 and turn the time again back over to Dr. Jessica Banderas. Great, thank you. So on August 4th, CSEA and the district agreed to resolve the Me Too negotiations for the 24-25 school year and contract negotiations for the 25-26 school year. So this resulted in the creation of a new column, column G on the CSEA salary schedule. So the first increase of 3% above column F is retroactive to July 1st, 2025. For the 24, January 1st, 2025, and for 25-26, column G will increase again

178by an additional 2% above column F, retroactive to July 1st, 2025, and this will result in a 5% increase between the steps and columns on the schedule. On August 20th, CSEA leadership confirmed that CSEA members voted to ratify the tentative agreement and salary schedule negotiations. And again, and this has a fiscal impact of the general fund of $237,317 ongoing for 24-25 and $502,080 ongoing for 25-26. It is the superintendent's recommendation to approve the tentative agreement and for 24-25 and 25-26. And again, I'd like to thank CSEA leadership and their negotiations team for all their hard work. Thank you. I have no blue cards on this item, so I will close public comment. Does the board wish to discuss this item? Any questions? Yeah. No question. Just a comment. I know that this particular process became

179somewhat contentious and it is the order where we had, you know, court order and things. So I want to just express publicly my appreciation to both staff and to CSEA for patience and enduring it and getting us to the finish line in the betterment of the organization. So thanks to all parties. I'd entertain a motion. President Peruzza, I move to support the superintendent's recommendation and approve the tentative agreement for the 2024-2025 and 2025-2025-6 school years with the California School Employees Association Chapter 334. I second. So we have a motion by Trustee Druane, seconded by Trustee Kaplanis. Any discussion on the motion? I think, did you say California School Employees Association? Yeah. Just want to just, it's classified. I just want to make sure we got that. I think we got it. California School Employees Association.

180Oh, it is? Glad I was classified. Great. Glad I brought that up. Very good. Okay. So we had a motion by, did I already do this? Yep. Yeah. No discussion on the motion. That was me. I asked the clerk to take roll. Wow. Myself, aye. Trustee Bueno? Aye. Trustee Kaplanis? Aye. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? Aye. President Peruzza? Aye. That motion carries unanimously, 5-0. We'll continue on to, oh, okay. We're going to move on to resolution number five for 2526. And again, this is authorizing local assignment options of certificated personnel. Turn the time back again over to Dr. Jessica Bonduras. Great. Thank you. So as mentioned, this item is on the local assignment options, which allow flexibility at the local level. Education code 44831 states the governing board by resolution may authorize the holder of a license

181issued by the speech language pathology and audiology board who has earned a master's degree in communication disorders to provide speech and language services if they meet the requirements of section 44332.6. Accordingly, our district will request a local assignment option for the employees listed below. So we have Heather Bell, a speech language pathologist, and Jamie Dorricott, also a speech language pathologist. This is the superintendent's recommendation to approve the resolution to authorize local assignment options for certificated personnel. So again, I have no blue cards on this, so I close public comment. Any questions or comments from the board? Just one small clarify. Yeah. Dr. Bonduras, this is simply my recollection. This is a routine thing that happens each year because the terminology seems like it's a hair off. I mean, not the ear off. It's just, it's

182different. It's just, it sounds like the terminology is, but this is a routine thing that we do each year. It is a routine. It is. You've voted on this before. Yes. Okay. Thank you. If there are no other comments or questions, I would entertain a motion. President Pritzker, I move to approve the superintendent's recommendation for the purchase order summary report as presented. So we have a motion by Trustee Coplanis, seconded by Trustee Wynow. Any discussion on the motion? What did you move? You did something purchase orders? Resolution 525. Can I redo it? Yes. Okay. So we're on 138. I know. Okay. Yeah. 158. Okay. 138. Sorry. I move to approve the superintendent's recommendation of resolution number, right? 005 slash 2526, authorizing local assignment options of certificated personnel. Second. Right. We have a motion by Trustee

183Coplanis, seconded by Trustee Bueno. Any discussion on this motion? I'd ask the clerk to please take roll. Trustee Vanden Heuvel. Aye. Trustee Coplanis. Aye. Trustee Bueno. Aye. Myself, aye. President Prusso. Aye. That motion carries unanimously. We'll move on to 139, the approval of provisional internship permit, which again will be presented by Dr. Jessica Bondaris. Thank you. So the CTC, the commission of teacher credentialing allows educational agencies to issue what we call a provisional internship permit, a PIP, to allow employing agencies to fill an immediate staffing need by hiring an individual or individuals who have not yet met the subject matter competence requirement needed to enter into the intern program. In order to qualify for a PIP, an applicant must possess a bachelor's degree or higher from an accredited college, satisfy the basic skills requirement, and

184satisfy successfully complete coursework for the permit type. And we have one candidate here, Isaiah Campbell, SDC teacher at Maryland, who will be on a PIP. And it is the superintendent's recommendation to approve the provisional internship permit for Isaiah Campbell. I have no blue cards. We'll close public comment. Any questions or comments from the board? I think earlier in the year, we approve a certain number of PIPs, right? Like we estimate how many PIPs we're going to use, and then this is us spending those PIPs. Am I correct in that? Yes, we have to, I can't remember the name of that, but it's coming, it'll probably come back to you in a few months because we have some more, I think, than we originally projected. And you're allowed to have 10%. And so we underestimated. It's

185a disclosure. I'd entertain a motion if there are no other comments or questions. President Prusso, I move to support the superintendent's recommendation and approve the provisional internship permit. I think there's only one. I second. We have a motion by Trustee Druin, seconded by Trustee Capuanes. Any discussion on the motion? I'd ask our clerk to take roll. Trustee Capuanes? I. Myself, I. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? I. Trustee Bueno? I. President Prusso? I. That motion carries unanimously, 5-0. Move on to 13-10, which is the approval of the revised 2526 board calendar, Dr. Tori Gibson. So this request is moving the Thursday regularly scheduled board meeting for November the 20th, which is a Thursday morning, to Tuesday, November 18th in the morning as well due to an event that is held to honor some of our students. I have

186no blue cards on this item. I close public comment. Any questions or comments from the board? If not, I would entertain a motion. I move to approve the 2025-2026 revised board calendar. Second. We have a motion by Trustee Vanden Heuvel, seconded by Trustee Bueno. Any discussion on the motion? I'd ask our clerk to take roll. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? I. Myself, I. Trustee Capuanes? I. Trustee Bueno? I. Trustee Gruss? I. President Prusso? I. That motion passes unanimously, 3-5-0, with one advisory vote. Okay, we're going to move on to our consent items. We have 16 consent items on the consent agenda this evening. If there's anyone that would like to discuss one of them before we go? Yeah, one that I'd just like, not pull, but if we could just, yeah, I just want to just discuss

187it, and it's 14.3D, and it just, that is the trip, the visitation. I believe our maestro is right here. Mr. Enright is in the audience. And it's just, some people may not know or maybe realize, especially if you're of my era where, you know, kids ate glue, art really wasn't appreciated, but the arts in Livermore are highly acclaimed, were very accomplished, and in this instance, their teacher's going to be taking them to Prague, Istanbul, and, oh, Budapest, yeah, and Vienna, so they can play their musical instruments, and that is a childhood development at the highest level, and I just want to show my appreciation publicly for you and the program. You're doing a great job over there. Thank you. Yep. Here, here. Yeah. Want to make a motion? Any other? No, I've got two I

188want to pull. Oh, okay. Another one, sorry. 14.2.F, 14, not to discuss, 14.2 alpha, 14.2 Frank. Okay. I'm going to have to find them real quick. That's it. Oh, you want to pull those? Pull those, that's it. Oh, okay, okay, sorry. All right, so I would entertain a motion on the consent items minus 4.2A and F. President Prusso, I move to approve consent items with the exception of 14.2.A and 14.2.F in their entirety. Second. So I have a motion by Trustee Druhan, seconded by Trustee Bannon-Hoovill. Thank you. Any discussion on the motion? Okay, then I would ask the clerk to take roll. Will our student trustees vote on consent items? Yeah, okay. Oh, because there are. Sorry, Isla. Yeah. Yeah, hang in there. All right, that's it. That was my question on the motion. Okay,

189so we had, all right, I did that. So can you just take roll? Yes. Okay. Trustee Bueno? Aye. Myself, aye. Trustee Caplanes? Aye. Trustee Bannon-Hoovill? Aye. President Prusso? Aye. That motion carries unanimously, 5-0. Okay. 14.2A. Now we can move on to. Yes. Okay. Two quick questions that I caught late. On page 3 of 15 on that item, the board report, rec pay 11B or something. I guess it would be item ending in 984. I'm wondering what that is. It just looks like town and country or something, lodging. And if you don't know now, that's, probably just looks like a line item. If we could just get an answer on that later. I'm not, you know, actually opposed to anything. I just want to make sure that I get an understanding. It just seemed odd. It

190looked like an anomaly. And in the second one, I didn't know if it was just categorized right or if I'm missing something. Page 5 of 15, the item ends in 1,085. And the vendor is Perry and Villarreal, which is our SPED attorneys, but it's listed under business services. And I thought that was our SPED attorney, or is that because it cohabitates or something? And that's the limitation of my questions. For our attorney in bills, we've always coded all of those to business services as that's who's put in our requisitions for all of our attorneys. And so that's why that's coded to that. But we do get approval from each department that accesses any of our attorneys. So even though it's coded under SPED as the order location, any department that accesses our legal firms, they

191all sign off on our legal bills to ensure that they're invoiced correctly. Does it skew or SPED expenditures? No, it's coded to special education. But on here, it just comes across differently. Yes, that's how it is. So there is our location that's entered into the purchase order. And then there's an account code that codes it differently. And so we will actually be amending this report to show where items are charged starting next month. Got it. OK, because it seemed odd to me that it was there and I just thought it might have been wrong. But all right, you have an answer. OK. And the town and country is for a CASBO registration. So CASBO has an annual conference, which is California Association of School Business Officials. And so one of our employees is attending their

192annual conference. And so it is the lodging for that conference. And it's listed under purchasing warehouse. Yes, so it is our purchasing director. Oh, OK. Oh, because it's purchasing slash warehouse. Got it. OK, that's it. And she oversees warehouse. So she goes in both for both purposes. So if there are no other questions, if you want to make a motion. Yes. OK. Yeah, I move in support of the consent item. Second. We have a motion by Trustee Bueno, seconded by Trustee Druhan. Any discussion on the motion? Ask the clerk to take roll. Trustee Kaplanis. Aye. Myself, aye. Trustee Vanden Heuvel. Aye. Trustee Bueno. Aye. President Prusso. Aye. That motion carries unanimously. Five zero. They were on our board reports. Is that true? No, we have one more. 14.2. Yeah. Oh, that you pulled. Sorry. Yeah,

193go ahead. I was like, where is it? I would. There's no added questions from the last one because we tabled this one. So I have no added questions unless there's anything to add. Like if there was anything that we clarified, I had some concerns over conflict of interest and things like that. Yes. So I did do some research into that. So because several of them are out, not California contracts, that's why the conflict of interest statement for California is not included. However, we do go through a process of a checklist to make sure that the contracts are compliant with state law. In addition, any PO we issue with a contract also has our terms and conditions and listed within terms and conditions addresses conflict of interest and such. And so when we issue a PO,

194we state to the vendor that they are held to those terms and conditions as well. And then for larger contracts, for piggyback or cooperative contracts, we also will do an amendment for any additional information that we would like to include, such as conflict of interest, if we would like that binded before we issue the PO for a larger purchase. Okay. Not as part of this, but could the board at next week or in the coming days get a copy of both those correspondents that you're talking about? I'd like to see that. I'd just like to see the legal review. I know the piggyback works. There's a lot of advantages to it, but it's ripe for perception issues. And you really, really have to be careful with piggyback issues. So I'd like to see, make sure

195that we're, I don't doubt that you're going to keep us legally compliant, but I want to see written, you know, document that's been legally reviewed that says this is what we're going to do on each piggyback because there's nepotism and there's all kinds of things like that, you know, conflicts of interest. And I just want to make sure we're good on that. Yep. We can do that. That's all. If we can get that, then I'm good. So entertain a motion on 14.2, 14.2 F. Is that right? Yeah. I would move in support of 14 consent item 14.2 F. Frank? Second. I have a motion by trustee Bueno, seconded by trustee Druane. Any discussion on the motion? I'd ask our clerk to tape roll. Trustee Capuanis? Aye. Myself, aye. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? Aye. Trustee Bueno? Aye.

196President Prusso? Aye. That motion carries unanimously. Five, zero. We're on to our reports, our board reports, and we will begin with trustee Capuanis. Okay. First, I'd like to offer my sincere condolences to the family of Mr. Brett Francois and all who shared a love for him. May it be comforted during this painful time of grief. Since our last meeting, I was able to attend the first day of school at Junction, various PTA meetings, back to school night, and I got to make it to LHS varsity flag football game. Lastly, I would like to draw attention to the board. Lastly, I would like to draw the board's attention to a violation of our code of ethics, 9271-E that has been brought before us in this very room by members in the community. I'd like to request

197that we have a discussion and maybe an action to get back in compliance with this for our next public meeting in October. Thank you. Trustee Vanden Heuvel? Yes. I attended a bunch of different things. The things I wanted to highlight was the district budget advisory committee meeting where we looked in detail over like org charts and number of staff members in specific roles and comparing those with similar or neighboring districts and really looking at how we can streamline and make our district better. There's so much work being done there and it's really, really cool. Also really loved attending a CSBA lunch on AI and its impact on school districts with representatives from, I don't know, Dublin and San Ramon and San Lorenzo, and it was really eye-opening and got me thinking about how we use

198that technology in our classrooms and amongst our staff. And then lastly, just based on conversations, having had conversations with people in the community, I want to underline kind of what I've heard some others speak about this meeting also, about the direction of our district. And then when I observe and hear about the tireless work, leaving sweat and tears and maybe even blood, I don't know. Hopefully not. But during the hard work of teaching and molding our students, I'm so positive. I'm so proud of the work that this body and this whole district is doing and providing our students with an amazing education. I'd say we're on the right track. Trustee Buena? Yeah, I attended a service or over one of the school sites that would approach you for round burns and very well attended. I

199mean, there's, you know, a complete multipurpose room full of people and it's pretty emotional. And I saw like the people came back out of retirement to attend it. And you really feel, you know, sometimes people talk about all the impact. I mean, this woman had been at the school so long, it was like everything ran around her and through her and very, very sad. And suddenly, it just kind of gives you a reflection on how fragile life can really be. Tended some budget stuff. I'm on this budget to both things like the community part and the staff part. And it's, I don't want to say it's interesting because it's convoluted. So I don't know that educational funding is interesting, but it's necessary. And I think it's a good, clean process. It's well-participated and I think

200it'll give us some good yields moving forward. You have to build trust and alliances with everyone so you can continue to progress. And in that light, also the bond committee, working a little bit on the bond committee with some of the partners there in the community. And lastly, I just want to, we've talked about a little bit, but Mr. Francois is just really beloved and I hope the man rests in peace. He had a long battle. Trustee John? I think the most significant action I've taken since our last meeting was meeting with various groups, discussing the direction of the direction of our school system, talking about FICMAT and board decisions and trying to, you know, rectify the district's financial standing. But I was also, for the first time, I believe, ever able to attend back-to-school

201nights. Back-to-school night usually happens on Thursdays and all of my friends and family know that I work Thursdays, but LHS had back-to-school night Wednesday and it was a pleasure and it was a trip. I hadn't been to back-to-school night since I ran back-to-school nights, but it was a pleasure watching parents amble around, wondering where classes were and things of that nature. And then we'll see how I'm able to articulate this. I think the last couple days and talking about budget talks, I think I would like to thank, initially I was thinking about the stress that I was experiencing and the stress that my fellow trustees were likely experiencing as well, as well as administration, staff, faculty related to these contentious times. And I think that one of the things that we all have in common

202is that our focus on trying to do what's best for our students. And I think that as we have disagreements, if we can focus on that core value of that we're here for every single student, that we can try and find the common ground. And so those kind of two juxtapositions of hyper stress, but also the focus on what we're here for. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. In that same vein, I just wanted to take a moment. It has been stressful and contentious and I was able to attend the Tri-Valley ROP board meeting last night. And I wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of the really amazing things that are happening in our Tri-Valley ROP for our students and our teachers. And so I just wanted to focus on some positives tonight. So

203over the summer, there were several camps and classes that TV ROP set up all happened at Las Vecitas College. One of the classes, public speaking, they had 32 students enrolled with 24 competing the course for three college credits. And they almost all earned A's. I believe there was one B plus and everyone else got A's. Wait, it gets better. Representative Eric Swalwell joined the class and he talked about communication and leadership. The thing that I thought was really cool about them describing this class is that you heard about the grades that they received. When they were forming this class, they purposely and carefully chose to offer the opportunity for students who are in credit recovery, have IEPs and come from first families going to college. So these were maybe what people would consider low achievers.

204But at the end of the course, the instructor thanked the staff for giving him the high achievers. So he had believed the whole time that he had the high achievers and he was able to just do such amazing things with them. So that is one of the classes that is required basically at every university. And so these students now have the opportunity to just have that class done. They also have a girls who design and build program. 30 young women brought 30 young women together from across the Tri-Valley to learn hands-on design and construction skills. It is also a week-long class. They had a robotics and manufacturing and a drone coding and flight. Two different camps. Also gave nearly 70 students the chance to build, code and fly while learning teamwork and technical skills. These

205are all high school students. And I just want to point out too about all of these courses were free. They were paid for by grants. And they were able to pay the teachers and everyone, everything through the grants. The teachers also benefited. There were some externships at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. There were several teachers that attended that. And also STEM summer camps for teachers that gave them opportunity to gain cutting edge experience with energy technology, AI in the classroom and data analysis. And then finally they had a summer CNA Academy that prepared 14 students for healthcare careers. Complete with training, exam prep, CPR. And at the end they attended a job fair. And thanks to the partnerships with the regional organizations, every single one of the students was offered a job at the end of

206training. So I think we should celebrate. Yeah. So I just wanted to highlight those amazing things that are happening in our valley, not just in our district, but I will say that they did put on there how many students from Livermore, how many from Pleasanton, how many from Dublin. And in all of these cases, most of the students were from Livermore, which I thought was really great. So that concludes my report. And now we'll turn the time over to Dr. Gibson. So both of our budget committees continue to meet. The staff budget committee has met twice. The budget committee has our second meeting later this week. So we're really excited about that. We did kick off our strategic plan leadership team that includes all bargaining unit representatives, site administration, district administration and a board member.

207We'll continue with our bond education. As we discussed earlier, we're going to move that process forward and in hopes of making that a successful effort. We had our first PCIC meeting. We have many brand new members of PCIC. So that's always fun and exciting as new parents come in to volunteer and spend time with us once a month. We are switching up those meetings just a little bit and we're doing a lot more training with them. Just everything from Facilitron to budget to SPED, just a lot of that versus a little, they're doing more of their roundtable check-ins and the roundtable discussions around go to Chipotle on whatever night to support our school type thing. They're doing that on a group chat that we now have a system and a platform thanks to Mrs. Dawson

208in the back there. So we appreciate that. Our district admin are continuing our weekly site visits and I think those are really important that we are out of the building and at sites and we're visiting with principals and in classrooms. So that's always fun. And just a quick update on our board policy manual. We have done our portion. We sent it to CSBA quite some time ago and now we're just waiting for them and we continue to check in with them and Lori and I are emailing them every day waiting for a response. So as soon as we get that response what will happen next is we will do a 30-day public review. We will shout that from the rooftops, we'll send it out, we'll send a link, we'll do all the things. We'll do

209a 30-day review just like we would do with curriculum and then once we have all that feedback and we do any changes or what have you then we will bring that manual to the board for final approval. Those are all my updates. The next regularly scheduled board meeting will be held on Thursday, September 25th here at the district office. The open session will begin at 9 a.m. This meeting is now adjourned at 9 29 p.m.