001Good afternoon everyone. Am I sorry I have not I'm gonna use it. Good afternoon everyone. The time is um 5:41. We hereby reconvene into open session. There is nothing to report from close session. So if you may stand up for the pledge of allegiance. Before we start with today's agenda, um I would like to go ahead and take um a moment um of silence um in memory of some recent losses of staff and students in our If we could take a moment. >> Thank you. >> Approval of agenda. Is there a motion for the approval of the agenda? >> So moved. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Call for the vote. Mrs. Roach. I'm an I. >> I'm an I as well. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving on to showcase principle not. It's
002on. There we go. Okay. We're going to be talking about project based learning today. I'm going to turn this over to our lead AP, Miss Leah Smith, and she will talk a little bit about it, and then we'll hear from our kids. >> Good evening. It's an honor to be here tonight to talk about project-based learning and what our students have achieved here at Merced High School. So, myself with Miss Seleni Venuela, our instructional coach, reached out to our teachers to see who would be interested in showcasing uh project- based learning in our classes. and we had these 11 sorry seven amazing teachers who created projects for their students and then we held a big showcase in um the spring. PBL benefits our students because it is an opportunity for our students to learn both
003content as well as skills as they will present to you soon. It also goes beyond the classroom. We have people in our community that come in and talk to our students about what it's like outside in the community um and and their jobs and what they can do to help support our community. And then our students also reach out and do surveys and bringing that information into the classroom. These are statistics from the showcase. We had 496 students that participated in the cohort, 18 class periods, 164 projects were presented this evening. And to continue what um our efforts are with with PBL is we have nine more teachers that signed up for cohort 2. So we now have 15 teachers that we'll be showcasing this spring. We have Buck Institute which is a leading PBL
004education training program coming to Merced High in October for three days to train both cohorts. And then we have our showcase November 5th with cohort one and both cohorts will be presenting in March. So, we have our students here that we wanted to showcase and talk about all of their learning. >> Good evening board members. My name is Alex Hampton and I'm a student body president here at Merca High. Um, PBLO helped me feel more connected and in the moment with what we were learning. Um, I also appreciated the instructions to go and dive deep into a subject that was interesting to me. Traditional learning methods don't usually allow for a free reign research in my interests but they as they have a specified curriculum to adhere to. PBL PVL gave me permission to identify
005um what I was interested in and motivated and motivated me to learn about it. This experience has been truly invaluable as it's ignited a passion for civic engagement. Um, it started me on a path towards my future college major. Um, and to developing a student civic engagement program for one of the teachers of their, Mr. Manley social class, social studies classes that's connecting our students to um to local elected leaders in the city council and the county supervisors. Um, this program um has helped me become so much more aware and motivated to pursue what I'm interested in in high school and post high school. and I just really appreciate this opportunity. Thank you. >> Good evening board. My name is Addison Lazari and I'm the senior class president here at Merced High. Working with others
006for PBL challenged me to look at problems from different perspectives, not just my own. I plan on majoring in business. Majoring B in business, you have to know how to work and listen to others. With PBL, I had to listen to my teammates ideas, evaluate which solutions made the most sense, and sometimes compromise to create the best outcome. This taught me to think more critically, analyze options, and develop stronger problem solving strategies. PBL showed me that teamwork isn't just about dividing task, but about supporting each other's strengths and stepping up when needed. Also, being a four-year student in ASB, working with PBL helped make me realize even more about guiding and motivating a group rather than controlling it. This project has made me carry more leadership strengths with me today. Everyone plays a role in
007accomplishing shared goals and success comes from collaboration and not just individual effort. Thank you. >> Good evening everyone. My name is Raina Lopez and I'm currently here at Mercy High School. From my experience with PBL, it has been nothing less than excellent, I can say. Um, I've gained multiple different relationships, not just with my group, but with everyone in my class. Um, this project helped me gain critical thinking skills, social skills, and um and multiple different other skills such as problem solving. Throughout this process, my group faced multiple different setbacks which we overcame through the project which I was so happy for. We ended up making a film that um reached out to multiple different areas in our community and really had a great impact. This may include like we asked teachers for time during
008other class periods to assist on our project due that we wanted it to have such a great project. me because it allowed me to connect with my group on something that we all can relate to and something that would have an impact on our present and our future. Out of all my traditional learning experiences, this um this project measures greater than any I am so grateful for this experience and it would definitely help me in the future. One big takeaway that I've received from this project alone is that us as students and as young adults, we do have a voice and it's our job to utilize it and make the best of our community and what we want. Thank you. >> Good evening. My name is Mariah Fentes and I am a senior at Merced
009High School. Working on a PBL project, I feel I gathered a ton of new strengths and overcame many weaknesses. For example, in the process of creating our final project. We did face some challenges when it came to timing and getting everything done efficiently. This caused me and my group members to come together and formulate solutions on our own that would work best for all of our busy schedules. I feel this PBL project taught us valuable skills that will be useful in college, such as growing our research skills, learning how to find reliable sources, and creating MLA citations. The presentation aspect also gave us a chance to test our networking skills. giving us the opportunity to speak with peers and other adults that were coming to the showcase. It allowed us to um figure out how
010to explain things to them and test out those skills. My perspective on leadership and accomplishing the shared goals has definitely flourished following this project. Working with my group has taught me the value of overcoming caution ideas and working towards a common consensus by combining multiple points of views and allowing and allowing room for all of our voices to shine in some way throughout our project. Thank you. Good evening board members. My name is Gil and I'm a senior. Engaging with the PBLO showcase had many opportunities and many challenges along the way, but it allowed me and my team members to take the opportunity to get comfortable within our building our communicating skills, our problem solving skills, and critical thinking skills. Within the project, we end up creating a video that allowed us to inform our
011community members about uh real life situations that many people did not know about. And it allowed us to engage with multiple people within our communities and um communicate with them and build stronger connections not just in our classroom but outside our classroom as well. And allowed us to really think outside the box like it didn't think just basic concepts when it comes to problems within our world, but it had us think of like our actual reality problems that are that need solutions and that we can help provide that solution for present and future generations to come. Thank you. >> Do any of you have any questions for the students before we release them? I I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to come here tonight and for the passion and effort
012that you put into the presentations. I was at the spring PBL and I was blown away, so impressed. Some of you had YouTube channels and websites and QR codes and surveys and I mean your presentations were really great and as a trustee it was particularly interesting to hear about issues that were campus related and things that maybe the board could take to heart and and make some some differences and I'm sure staff from the high school too. So um I just you know really encourage that and want to thank Mr. Manily for being here tonight too to support these students. Uh I also have a son who attends Mercer High and he was part of the PBL showcase in the spring. So I lived through it in my home as well and I just saw
013the enthusiasm, the frustration, a lot of the things that you guys talked about and the big learning and growth opportunity. So kudos bravo Merced High. Very well done with your PBL. >> Thank you. >> Next year the big gym, right? Well, I was gonna I was gonna say something about that. So, I I would just encourage all of you to come. We have the one in November coming up. Yes, hopefully it will be in the large gym. We had to change course last minute last year due to some uh unforeseen circumstances. We'll leave it at that. Um >> I did want to add something to the next thing. I attended as well and just like Trusty Ham said just completely um pleasantly surprised at how how many students were presenting. Uh definitely um you know
014thought out um well attended and then um heard a lot of the presentations and just the passion that all the students had for what they were presenting on was evident. So job well done. >> Yes, we are very proud of our our staff and our students for that. So kudos to them giving them the hand clap right now. So >> I just want to thank the students uh great job and of course staff as well. All right, just moving on real quick. Um, just an overview of how things have been going for us moving into the year. We are bursting at the seams of the healthy population at MHS. We're proud to be um a school that people want to come to. We had, as of today, I checked, of 1999 students enrolled, um, which
015is a little bit over capacity, but we like it. Um, and the start of the school year has been excellent. Our incoming class has been great. Our our freshman um, and our returning students are are leading by example. So, we've had a very good start of the school year. Um, staff has hit the ground running and we're happy with the way the school year has started. Knock on wood. Um, some of the things that I would just like to mention just carrying successes from last year. Um, last year we we began the journey of putting in PLC at work processes which I'll talk a little bit about that a little bit more about that in a second. Um, but our collaboration and data structures, we started to put those into place last year and that's
016something that we're continuing into this year with stronger efforts with our staff. Our campus culture builders are are going strong right now. Um, we've upped our efforts with leadership with some more specific and targeted opportunities that we're trying to present for our kids that involve the entire school. Um, we have the plus program which we we had as our showcase I think last year when we were here. Um, that program is continuing to grow and have an impact. and then our BSB, which is our actually staff and student group that works together to try to make sure that our staff and our students stay connected. All of those things are are still functioning at a high level. Um, and then, you know, out on our fields and in our pools and gyms and all that,
017we had another great year last year and we're hoping to continue that success this year. We were CCC athletic excellence award winners last year. I think we had 10 big titles last year. A bunch of people went going to the playoffs and the highlight of the year, of course, was our girls water polo team bringing home the blue banner. section championship. So, we had a really good year and hoping to continue those successes as well. So, um just going into this year, we have a lot of positive momentum that we're just really trying to keep. So, these are the goals that we've set. Um and this is kind of a condensed version of those goals. Um but the first and the big the biggest one that we're really working on is just really trying to
018dial in the implementation of our PLC practices, the PLC at work practices for planning, assessment, development, and data analysis. That's a huge um a huge thing for us right now. It's obviously a goal across the district as well that we're working on on more data informed decision making. And so using those processes, our teachers have really started to dive into looking at looking at actual performance data and not just making decisions based on what they feel is happening in class. And it's been uh you know there's bumps in the roads when you're when you're doing things like that, but I think it's it's on off to the right track. Um, the second one up there, we talked about college and career credit, uh, excuse me, college and career, uh, goals, college credit and certifications. We
019had last year about 32% of our kids did both of those things. The numbers are higher with one or the other, but the number of kids that got both was only 32%. So, we have a goal this year of increasing that by 15%. Um, some of that has to do with just scheduling, some of that has to do with just encouraging and making sure kids are in the right places and given the right opportunities. Um so that's one of our goals we have as well. Um the second to the last one there is increasing the accuracy and timeliness of attendance. Um we have had some attendance tracking issues on our campus. We are aware of that. Miss Katessie, one of our new APS has been really good about trying to bring processes to our school
020um that make that easier and more efficient and more accurate. So that's one of our goals. And then the last one is just to continue to increase participation. Um last year our numbers were excellent. uh we had really really good um participation. I think our senior class last year was actually 100% which was can't get better than that. Um so we're hoping to continue that and then with our lower level kids and our incoming freshmen just continue to get them involved as well. So just the quote we have there, this has been our focus for the year is just really to improve processes. We didn't start anything new on our campus this year. We're just really trying to dial in processes. Um and so that's what I told the staff at the beginning of the
021year. the better we are, the freer we are to work. Uh, so that's that's been our focus. Does anybody have any questions for me? >> Can you explain some acronyms for me, please? >> Sure. What do you got for me? >> PLC, BSB, and can you expand on what BSB and campus culture are? >> Uh, so PLC is just professional learning communities. That's a that's an educational acronym. Sorry about that. Um, but it's a they're actually it's a solution tree is the company that does the And that's just the name of the professional learning communities. BSB actually stands for Bear Strong Brigade. That's just a a group that we created on our uh on our campus. I don't know, Mr. Med, when was that when we started? Three years ago now. Four years ago now.
022Okay. So, it's been four years. Um really was just kind of one of those brainchilds. It's like, hey, what can we do to get the kids and the staff connected together? And so over the last few years, we've done lunchtime activities where it's, you know, staff versus students or staff with students and just kind of trying to stay connected with them. We also do things like honoring or recognizing staff members. We have students uh take staff members a cold water on a hot day or just stuff like that just to make sure that people feel connected and appreciated at the school. Just an activity basically. So I don't know if I answered your question. Any other questions? Thank you. [Applause] >> So, moving on to general public comment period. Um, please roll back. Are these
023only three we have? Okay. So, before we get started, the meeting is recorded. Individuals addressing the board are asked to fill out a speaker card located in the back of the room. Complete a blue card to speak to an item on the agenda and a yellow card to speak to an item on the agenda. Please return the card to the administrative secretary of the governing board. Individuals addressing the board shall be limited to three minutes each with no more than 20 minutes per topic. During this portion of the agenda, the public is invited to comment on items which are not on the agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board of trustees. The board will take no action at this time, but may refer the issue for further consideration. Individuals who wish
024to comment on agenda items shall be provided an opportunity to comment after the staff report and before the board's consideration of that item. Individuals who cannot wait to address the board when the agenda item is addressed may make their comments at this time. With that, um, I would like to invite D. Heler. My name is D. Heler. I'm president of the Atwater Historical uh Society. We deeply appreciate uh Julianne and Kim which are the drama teachers in Atwater for their contribution to the Bloss home which was has served the museum dedicated to the Bloss family for many years. For the past 25 years, the high school drama program has enriched our community, offering performances that have become cherished traditions. Many individ individuals recall their visit to the Blossom Home annual Christmas program as well the
025most recent uh Halloween productions. These plays have been accessible to both schools and the wider con community fostering a sense of involvement and shared heritage. A dosent training program has been established allowing high school students to volunteer as guides within the Bloss home. Through their services, these students have educated visitors about the Atwater history. Hundreds of people have toured the Bloss home. Further underscoring the role as a violent a vital landmark in our community. We extend our gratitude to everyone who has supported and participated in these programs. I would also like to say that Mrs. Loss who died in the 1970s gave has given over 20 million dollars to this to of scholarships to the Union High School. And I think that's bragging rights. Thank you. I'd like to call Joe Foster. Good afternoon. My
026name is Joe Foster. I've been a resident of Merced County for 80 years. I attended the original El Capitan High School from 1959 until 1962, but I graduated from Merced High 1963 after El Capitan Merced came together and El Capitan was dissolved. Losing our mascot and our colors and her name. Fast forward 50 50 years and a 1962 graduate El Capitan got a group of alumni together similar to the ones here before the board in a similar situation. There was a contest to name the new high school being built out on GN farmland and it was Michael J. Vic, who was had a convincing PowerPoint presentation to the board to name the new high school El Capitan and retain our school colors and our mascot. Once the board voted in favor of El Capitan, then
027Mike really went to work. He established the alumni committee and single-handedly raised over $30,000 to be presented to the new high school. It was unprecedented that a brand new high school would start out opening day with alumni backing from 50 years prior with that much money in their coffers. I was there when Mike gave a speech on the opening day ceremony and he was literally choking up and in tears which was common for Mike anytime he talked about the gauchos. He was so proud to have gotten the school named LCAP. But Mike didn't stop there. He started a project of selling memorial bricks and you can see them out in front of the by the flag pole of the main uh main entrance by the office. Probably 10020 bricks that he talked people into buying
028at $100 a piece. I've got one there that says Joe Foster, class of 63. Um, so it's for this. Oh, let me not let me back up. Sorry. There. I always lose my place even though I have a large font. I would I would u hang on one sec. Okay, there we go. He was responsible for bringing the 1959 cornerstone out of off this building from Merced High to LCAP and had it installed out by that by that brick project. Incidentally, that was done at his own expense. He also formed an alumni scholarship committee and twisted a few um few arms. Get on the phone, Joe. I need $250 for the scholarship fund this year. Holy mackerel. That's three minutes. Whoa. That's I was an auctioneer. I should have gone faster. Five. Five and a
029quarter and a half. 75. >> Mr. Foster, you may continue. >> Thank you. He also uh formed the um Hall of Fame committee. He had t-shirts similar to this made with logos on different events as well as providing athletic awards pins and towels that he presented to the athletes each year after season. All of this at his own expense. Another one he started quickly was the graduation. He participated in every graduation ceremony from 2014 to 2024. He would lead the graduating class into the ceremony, always dressed up in his gaucho costume that had been presented to him at the o opening day of ceremony. He established the tradition of ending the graduation ceremony with a big go gauchos. I would say Mike probably attended every football game and we played that we played both home
030and away. Football was his passion. In fact, that's where I met Mike was on the football out football field out here in 1959. It didn't matter to him that our new gauchos rarely won a game from 2013 to 2024. But he not only attended the football games, he had he was at the basketball games, volleyball games, aquatic events, the whole works, wrestling matches, water polo. He I would venture to say that he knew every coach's name probably as well as mostly athletes. He'd always go down on court afterwards and congratulate the kids whether they won or lost. And for that matter, I think he knew every custodian and every teacher uh all the administration. It's for this reason getting to the point that I'm here tonight asking the board to name the beautiful new board
031new football stadium the Michael Jick football stadium in honor of the man who gave his heart to the high school. Now I admit the school has done much for him to honoring him already. They've named the e entrance and egress Mike big way. They've started a scholarship fund in his name and uh got a lot of photos of him in the trophy cases that he established years ago. He'd be honored by all of this, but the ultimate honor would be to be permanently named the football field after him. I've heard that the name to be considered is the present time was El Capitan football field and I would respectfully that that's not too original and maybe lacks a little creativity. We would have a precedent with our theater that is named after one of our
032board members, item M. Johnson and tremendous educator. Names are a lot more personal and thus our group requests that Michael Jix's name be designated for our new stadium. I see my time's up. No, Stacy Bick, it's your turn now. >> Sorry, I'm jumping. Okay. Hello. Um, good evening. My name is Stacy Bick and I'm Michael Bick's daughter. Tonight, I'd like to take a few moments to celebrate to pay tribute to his life and legacy. a man whose leadership and commitment to his community, I believe, make him worthy of having a Memorial Stadium named in his honor. Michael's story is one of commitment and pride. After graduating from Merced College and earning both a bachelor's and master's degree in criminology from Fresno State, he served his country, attaining the army um serving the army, attaining the
033rank of spec five. before he um started rising through the ranks of the federal government. He retired as a regional inspector for the southeastern region of the United States. He led with integrity, professionalism, sharp intellect, and a deep sense of responsibility, influencing the government at a high level. He was a naturalb born leader. But perhaps Mike's legacy is here at home. Being a former alumnest of the old El Capitan High School, he fought successfully to name the new high school El Capitan. He didn't stop there. He dressed as the old Gaucho and showed up for the students and he encouraged them with genuine pride and enthusiasm. He attended their various sporting events. He followed their rankings. He offered advice. and led them in the graduation processional, ending with the old gaucho leading the crowd cheer
034of go gauchos. Michael also invited the American Legion color guard to present colors before home games. He would often show up at the county times office in Merrced pitching stories and providing pictures about El Capitan sports and events. In fact, just days before his passing, he was submitting stories about the girls volleyball team, the boys golf team, the cheer champions, and the nationally recognized FFA students. He was planning to start fundraising for the new football stadium scoreboard. The day that he passed, he had plans to attend the team's end of the season football dinner. He had football pins to hand out to the students and he had four huge pumpkin pies in the refrigerator. Michael led with love. Even in retirement, Mike served caring for his family, leading the historical society, and preserving the story,
035the city's story through his book, Bixpics, Mid-Century Merrced Revisited. He worked his work, I'm sorry, his work earned him the he theox pioneer award and secured his place as a steward of Merrced's heritage. Michael was a lifelong learner and caretaker of Merced's history. Mike showed us that true leadership is not just about titles. It's about service, consistency, and care. Michael left Merrced better than he found it, and his legacy continues to inspire. That is why Naming the football stadium at El Capitan Michael J. Bick Memorial Stadium after him would be more than symbolic. It would honor a man whose life embodied service, education, and hometown spirit. It would create a lasting connection for generations to come. And I just want to finish with um as El Capacan's high school mission statement reads, "We learn, we
036love, we lead, we leave a legacy." And I believe that my dad, Mike Bick, the old gaucho, I believe his life exemplified all these principles. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. Moving on to reports and discussions. Oh, reports, sorry. Um 11:01 MUHSCT program. >> Good evening. I am pleased to introduce Tiffany Gong tonight. Tiffany is our K12 pathway coordinator. She joined the ed services team last year after many years in a variety of educational roles both in and out of the district. She has been doing great work in our district with our feeder schools and with other Merced County schools. We wanted to give the board an update on our CTE programs and also give Tiffany the opportunity to share some of the great work she is doing. Good evening, President Ja Singh, board members, cabinet,
037and Mrs. Roarback. The information I'll be presenting tonight supports MUHSD's vision of every student graduating with a high school diploma, a CTE certification, and college credit on their transcript. Our CTE data consists of course offerings among 14 industry sectors. There are currently five in the state of California and we proudly offer 38 pathways among 14. This year we have 139 course offerings which is a couple up from last year offering 671 CTE sections which in the last four years that's grown over a hundred sections. We have 133 CTE teachers with 32 of them currently serving as Merced College adjunct staff and six of them currently in the interview process. And I'll explain why that why that's important during this presentation. As district and site teams, I I I'm aware this is only one year of
038data, but district and site teams constantly are looking at multi-year data in order to help guide our programs. Our CTE programs are based on the essential elements of a highquality CTE program framework. The framework includes leadership and alignment, curriculum and instruction, student supports and equity, teachers and professional growth, partnerships and work-based learning, and data and sustainability. That's a brief overview, and I'll be explaining examples that coincide with each of these elements. So, in terms of prepared and effective program staff, CTE collaborations occur each year. Last year, two were held full days for every teacher by industry. We focused on the four elements that are listed. System align alignment and coherence. We worked on updating our programs of study which include K14 alignment and that's that dual enrollment piece. And I'll explain more about that here
039in a minute. We focused on highquality curriculum and instruction with a focus on career ready practice standards. And these standards include soft skills, employability skills, critical thinking, problem solving. So there was a big emphasis on that in addition to tying that with MUHSD's focus on deeper learning because there are times where teachers think this doesn't pertain to me. It does. It it pertains to every program, every classroom. We focused on planning with industry partnerships. We helped uh use feedback from our industry partnerships and what teachers receive at advisory board meetings to help inform instruction, choosing certifications, and again which employability skills we should be focusing on in our classrooms. This year, a large focus will be on work-based learning around internships, student led enterprises, and simulated work-based learning. There are pockets of these things occurring
040at sites, but what we want to ensure is that there's equity across all pathways and industries with the goal of ensuring that internship, student led enterprise, or simulated work best based learning occurs in every capstone class. This year, I've also created a new CTE teacher support program that will only include our new CTE teachers. It will be focused on the essential elements framework, but it it will also include some of the nuts and bolts that our veterans don't necessarily need to have included in their collaborations, like who do I call for advisory boards? You know, if they're not in our area, who can we connect them to and use that as a networking piece in terms of system alignment and coherence? Dual enrollment is an example of that element. I'm not sure if you're familiar,
041but dual enrollment requirements include a course outline submitted to Merced College and our teachers must apply to Merced College for an adjunct staff position. They must meet minimum qualifications. So, these two things may not seem like heavy work, but it is. And this also is a focus and it's important, like I said, to include this time in our CTE collaborations because it is quite a process. Last year in our collaborations, we were able to plan for the possibility of six new courses for dual enrollment. One in BIS or excuse me, three in business and finance, one in engineering and architecture, and two in information and communication technology. However, that's all dependent upon our ad the adjunct staff coming to fruition. And it also depends on of course the experience and then how many teachers qualify
042to be adjunct staff at each campus. So those are the things that come into play and make a difference in the number of dual enrollment courses that are offered at each site. So this year in the fall we have four courses that'll be offered across three industry sectors, four pathways, three sites. Again always working towards equity though to reach more of our students. And then the plan for spring 2026 is 11 sectors and you see there we'll be expanding across industries, pathways and sites. But as I mentioned earlier, we have six faculty that are pending approval. So if they don't meet minimum qualifications, then our dual enrollment course offerings numbers will change. However, we are lucky. We do get creative because ultimately our goal and Merced College's goal is to get that dual enrollment experience
043for students. Continuing with alignment, each high school campus has a pathway counselor. That's an existing counselor at our site. So, it's not an additional counselor. They are hired through Merced College. They interview with Merced College. Merced College provides trainings, but then I also sit in on quarterly meetings and and provide feedback and assistance to our pathway counselors constantly. Pathway counselors are responsible for communication regarding courses and enrollment to students at our sites. They do that via parent square. They hold parent workshops and then they h they handle all of the enrollment, the applications, everything that has to go along with the Merced College process. Last year, proudly, I had a goal that um I was really trying to get a Merced College staff member at each one of our CTE industry collaborations because that is
044what fosters that K14 alignment. It also helps drive our decision making in the purchasing of supplies and other materials. And we got we touched 10 of the out of the 14 industry sectors. And I have to say the Merced College staff was outstanding. They were very cooperative. our our teachers really really valued that experience. So that's something that we will continue. In terms of K12, it is really important work to focus on the alignment down to our seventh and eighth graders. In my position as a K12 pathway coordinator, this has been an area of growth across the state of California. I'm not sure each community college has a K12 pathway coordinator. So in going to conferences, it is very very interesting also to learn about the the programs and things that are existing across other
045districts and in other community college districts. We by far have the largest amount of offerings for students and dual enrollment opportunities. So I'm very proud to be representing our district when we have those conversations at conferences. But in terms of K12 alignment, last year career awareness work ex um included career fairs, which that's something that usually exists. Feeder districts often just go straight to our school sites. They already have relationships with our teachers, so a lot of our pathways are already represented there. But something that was new was a pilot with a couple of our junior highs to get our eighth graders registered into CCGI, which is the California Community College Guidance Initiative. This is a platform that our 9th through 12th graders use. Our MUHSD counselors push lessons out to our students and they
046go into classrooms. They touch on everything from career exploration to FAFSA support. But getting our kids in in eighth grade is only going to strengthen their their knowledge and then provide more career awareness and exploration. Uh we also were able to connect some of our 78 schools with Merced College staff. So that's where that K14 alignment piece comes into play. We had a Merced College professor meet with Merced teachers and Weaver teachers which has now led into more work for this year. And in terms of pathway alignment, we already have a feeder district that has purchased a platform that our information and communication technology teachers use and we are aligning our work also with Merced College. So what a nice spread now from 8th grade to the K14 world. Very proud of that work. And
047then also I will specify with Merced um we're working on a career awareness campaign that it is going to be a year-long campaign. It's getting every eighth grader and about half of their seventh grade population into that CCGI platform and we're working on piloting a career passport which is part of Governor Nuome's U master plan for career education. So we're piloting it there and then the plan is to incorporate that into our freshman seminar courses next year. So again broadening that alignment alignment that's the goal. New pathway updates for this year. Public service has expanded public safety to BUHack, Atwater, and Merrced. I know BU Hack is very excited to have an all day program. Now, um those that staff has been very creative in ensuring that there are internships for that public safety pathway.
048So, I'm excited to hear about that. Now, we have public safety at Outwater and Merrced, and that teacher is very motivated. So, I'm excited to see what he's able to bring to our district. In art, media, and entertainment, El Capitan has implemented a dance pathway. And for those of you who are not sure, Merced County is very large in the dance world. Not sure. You know, there are numerous dance studio studios. So, I'm excited that this pathway now is hopefully catering to a different a new group of students. Sequoia has incorporated marketing which also is now giving a different skill set experience to Sequoia students. Euseite implementing personal services which is also cosmetology. It's titled personal services in CDE and then transportation operations at uh focuses on operations forklift safety and maintenance. on the horizon.
049I'm sure you are familiar there has been discussion and planning on new facilities in order to expand our building and construction trades and transportation programs in addition to HVAC and manufacturing. So I mentioned California has 15 industry sectors. Manufacturing is the one that we don't offer. So excited then we'll get to offer that for our students. just a few work-based learning examples that we have incorporated that were focused on providing internships to industries and pathways that we haven't been able to offer before. Again, that access and equity piece. So, last year, Atwater High School piloted an internship with Bryant Orthopedic. Yes, we've used them before in our health and patient care pathways, but their director of operations actually has a marketing degree. And guys, she is just um starting her CTE teaching credential in the
050marketing pathway. So that's exciting. But she created a two-week program and we had I think 20 students out of the sports marketing class go through. It was a very very impressive impressive curriculum really that she delivered. So a great experience in tapping into our industry partners. She not only provided an experience but also created materials that were aligned with CTE standards. And then also in hospitality, tourism and recreation, we were able to create a new internship at 510 Beastro. Um myself, the restaurant owner and the teachers actually students had to apply. They completed an application. They interviewed with us at 510 Beastro and then there was a six-w weekek internship with the opportunity that if they met criteria they were able to be hired for Saturday events. So we're not we're also going to be
051using 510 Beastro to host our fall uh district advisory meeting. And the other piece is it's great to use these local partners. Two others that are exciting. Um, this simulated work-based learning experience took place over the summer. The University of the Pacific has a high school program that they're growing and so they have patient care last year, but I've talked to the director. We are now a partner and they're going to be expanding over to four other industries this next summer. In essence, the students get to live in the dorms for two weeks. They have hands-on activities. So that's what constitutes the simulated workbased learning piece. And if I may, I would like to read from the BU hack. She was a junior last year. She's now a senior. Just some of her feedback from
052the experience. She said, "Trying new things can be scary. This summer, I had the amazing opportunity to attend the UOP summer college institute, a two-eek pre-ol program where high schoolers like myself live on campus and experience university life while exploring cutting edge topics through hands-on projects and labs. I found the opportunity to take the course finding a cure for cancer. Working in university labs alongside cancer research professors, I learned about cancer biology, drug design, and advanced techniques like protein expression, cell culture, and computational chemistry. This program encouraged my love for science and medicine, and I will always cherish the knowledge and experiences I gained as I pursue my goal of becoming a trauma surgeon in the future. Yeah, very impressive. So last year we were able to enroll five students. I know that seems it
053is a little bit pricey, but we worked with a a local um organization to get some funding for that and we're going to be working to expand that over the summer. Another simulated workbased learning uh tool came to Livingston High School with the purchase of a firetr. I know Mr. Flores is very very excited to use that in his instruction but also to market and try to engage some more interest into that pathway at Livingston. Um public service and health science are obviously two of our bigger industries. They are they are more popular and they are in high demand. But I do want to point out also that our the previous slide of hospitality, culinary, and then the marketing are also in the top five labor market demand um industries in Merced County. And that's
054fresh data that Janette and I were just looking at today. All right, so that is my presentation and I'll take any questions at this time. >> Thank you for the for all that good information. Um so work based learning I noticed that not all our schools. So, is there a plan to um I guess include all the schools or I don't see LCAP on any of the the ones that you just talked about. >> Absolutely. They just didn't make the make the highlights. I will mention also that BUHack and El Capitan are involved in a uh local industry consultancy project that stems and connects with project-based learning that that principal not reported on tonight. So they are involved in other things and sites have tons of work-based learning also that aren't included, but I wanted
055to highlight some things that were in connection to labor market demands and that were newer to our to our district. >> That was really an excellent and inspiring presentation and it's tremendous to see where the district has grown. So thank you for your leadership and and the fantastic update. >> Um question on the CTE teachers that are trying to become adjuncts with Merced College, is it a requirement that they have a master's? Like, no, >> it depends on the field. >> It depends. >> Got it. Um, and do any of those dual enrollment classes fulfill A to G credits as well? They do. >> Yes. Okay. >> Yes. And we do have a graphic on our website that indicates which of them meet A to G and are dual enrolled. >> Fantastic. And then um
056if there are local businesses that are interested in becoming internship partners and that sort of thing, contact you. >> Send them to me. Absolutely. Yes. >> I'm gonna reach out to you for >> Okay. Wonderful. >> Okay. Thank you. >> My mom always said, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." >> Thank you. That was very thorough, very interesting. Like Erin said, um, you mentioned the feeder districts. You're currently working with two feeders. No. Um, so I'll name them. Um, Weaver purchased the platform. Um, Merced City is where we're doing the career campaign. Um, AESD piloted CCGI last year. Merced River piloted CCGI. I've met with Mick Swain. I've met with Winton. Um, so I I'm I'm reaching out. I've contacted Livingston Middle. Um, Yes. >> Well, great presentation and especially with the
057student testimonial. Um, question on the public safety at BUHack Outwater and Merced. What are those? I Well, BU Hack is uh I forgot her name, but she was our SRO in Livingston, right? >> That's correct. >> And and uh what about Atwater Merrced? Does she go to two schools? Right. >> No longer. So now she's just at BU Hack and we hired Joel Warington. He split between Atwater and Merrced. >> And is that also law enforcement or is it >> Yes. Okay. >> Same pathway in industry >> for Atwater and Merrced >> and of course El Capitan. >> I'm >> Yeah, that's right. >> We have a different teacher at El Capitan, but they have the same >> correct. It exists. This this was these were just new. >> Okay. So the but public safety
058also includes um fire. >> Correct. >> Yep. Fire and um law enforcement are in the same industry. They're two different pathways. >> Right now, Mr. Flores at Livingston is our only fire instructor. >> Yeah, I know him well. >> Hey, Tiffany, I just want to mention I like the the 510 Beastro plan. I think that's like the ultimate goal, right, with CTE is to get our kids out into the field and out into that industry. So, thank you for working on that as well. >> All right. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Right. Next is 11:02. Superintendent goals. Good evening. Um I'm here to present on the communications department and give you a couple of updates of what is new um what's currently happening and what's in development. So um if you have
059not noticed uh we currently with Sean's new position we were able to launch now a full-blown legit newsletter. Um, it's been amazing to be able now to produce longer stories, give more context, do more interviews of staff and students, and along with the newsletter that was only usually available to staff or in our emails, um, now we've been able to expand that to a larger subscriber-based newsletter that community members can subscribe to. So, we have added like our county officials and we have asked anybody in our community if they want to subscribe, they can subscribe to the news, get not either through text, which is nice if you're a community member, or through email. And also, we're publishing those stories on the district website, so they're living there. So, if anybody ever searches through Google,
060like um El Capitan, you know, awards ceremony or anything like that, it's just going to pop and filter into Google now as well. And that was one of the things we didn't have the manpower to be able to do that originally, but now it's been great to not only share the news through social media, through email, through parent square, but now we're able to add another layer of it just to make sure we're covering all our bases. So I know everybody's different how like they like to receive their information. So making sure we're covering all those areas. So we also have now grown to 14 plus thousand subscribers on the newsletter. So that has been a big improvement. So I'm able to track with their new platform, which is Mailchimp. Um, how many people are
061opening it, how many people are unsubscribing, subscribing, how many people are actually engaging with the different content on the newsletter. So, it's nice to see what stories are doing well, what people are sharing. Um, and also Jamie's goal is to keep track of how many people are visiting the district news page. So, we're able to see also too from the newsletter where people are going to, whether it be our social media, our YouTube, um, visiting our district website. Um, it's it's really great. to be able to have those analytics now and hopefully track that, but also when we ask for feedback at the end of this part of this year um just to see how people feel about the newsletter and make adjustments for the spring. Um lastly, we also have been able to see
062more community engagement, which is nice because with those stories, people connect or they see things that they resonate, whether it be sports, whether it be a high school they attended. Um and that has been I think the most rewarding part is now um sometimes I get an email saying this is great. um I'm going to share this to so and so or you know I want to I have had students say I'm going to share this with my grandparents because they love to see what I'm doing in sports. So that has been a great positive. Now for social media and digital growth um we have expanded and grown over the summer and I will credit that to my student interns. Um it was great being able to work with three student interns this summer and
063they gave me a lot of ideas. I was telling we're pretty stagnant in our growth and we came up with some new ways to be able to engage and see what students community members wanted to see. So, we gained over 2,000 followers this summer alone. Um, and this is all natural growth. So, this is not me promoting to promote something or push in anything. It's just being more strategic on how we do our post, how many characters. So, we did a lot of analyzing what does well, what does not do well with our demographic and our area. Um, so now, um, we have 1.4 million views on Instagram just in the past 30 days. We have never had that amount of traction and views like that in the past. Um, on our Facebook, we're about
064400,000 right now this month of people just visiting. And a lot of it is like people that maybe were not even following us, but found us through a post. And a lot of it has been tagging the location, making sure we're collaborating collaborating more with either be the school, the sport, uh the team sport account, and that has helped a lot. Um, also YouTube subscribers because we started a game day as well, but also because we started a student podcast this summer. So, that really helped. Um, when I had my three student interns, um, Jose from Back Colony High School said, "I wish, you know, when I was a senior, somebody would have just given me a couple of things of advice that I wish I would could have taken with me." And through that
065and uh Shminka and Elise um they kind of kind of grew it on their own started inviting parents to come on too and share their experiences. So we did season one where they got to interview p the class of 2025 about their experiences and we made sure we grabbed students that were going to were UC bound uh state university going to Merced College um going out of state. So we made sure we gave a different perspective and it was really great for them to leave that and transform that and again grow our audience and people who had never came across our account. And then we're preparing for season two right now. So that's in the works and that's as October 1 comes along. Um we're working with Brandy Breeze to kind of promote like deadlines,
066what students need to know about the application process. So, we're partnering more with ed services now and seeing how we can promote a lot of the information a different way through Spotify so students can listen to it on YouTube um but still also keep the student voice perspective which um is great. And then for media projects um like I said I covered the podcast and that was great. And like I said um another thing we're going to try to do as well is um this upcoming month, we have planned student interviews. So, um have two interns that are getting community service hours with me at the district office. They're from BUHack as well. They're seniors. And um one of them is writing student story pieces under Sean. And then the other student, we have worked
067out a plan for the remaining of year to do student interviews. He's also doing graphics and things like that. But, um I think one thing that Sean said is great to have it from the adult perspective, but also involving your students and getting the student voice perspective. So balancing those two which has been great and then um yeah so we talked about my student interns and I think one of the greatest part of having these student interest is they're actually interested in communications. So it it was like me and Sean debriefed. It was a pleasure being able to see them grow but also equip them with the skills to be career ready for interviews and actually have projects that they can put on the resume and say well I have run a podcast. I know
068how to conduct interviews. I know how to uh reach out to community members and work work with community engagement and show data analytics of social media and why that's so important. So that's great to have. And then right now I'm working with three students as well that are currently seniors. And then um with this uh accessibility on the website, we were originally on final site and we moved everything to parent square. The whole purpose of that last school year was to unify that we use a parent square platform. is easier for parents to log on. Um, parentsquare has more of the translation features that are necessary for our demographic which makes it very easy. Um, and uh, Jamie has worked with the accessibility aspect with making sure that all the graphics, all the images we
069use are accessible. So, she has improved that by 25% this summer. So her goal is to get to near I have a goal for her which is to get to that 100% but as of last week we're about a 92% accessibility. So we're working on that. She's working also with um parent square to make sure if there's anything glitches or things like that she's addressing those as well. And then lastly um the superintendent's goal with strengthening strengthening communication um especially when it involves guidance on informing parents of if issues arise um what to do. So, one thing um it was great that I was able to work this past week is I had some ideas and I had some layout. I had done a video based on that graphic, but I was given feedback by
070cabinet to change lots of things on that graphic um and get input and also get input from people at the district office that received those calls and see if that information was accurate. So, we're working on refining that, making sure many eyes look at it before we send that out, making sure that is the correct way. Um and hopefully um at the end of this month you you guys will see a campaign that will be on Parent Square social media and there will be a video that was created by a student to show the six-step process on how to address issues and that's it. Any questions? I really more have a comment which is I love your enthusiasm and passion for this and you've done a really incredible job of driving the image of the
071district. Um, in my almost six years as a trustee, I just feel like our um, well, first of all, our ability to connect with the community wasn't there before and it is now. And it's it's so positive. Everything you share is is tremendous. I love that you're involving students now. And this isn't so much a question for you as it is when do we get a communications pathway with some teeth in it across the district? because there are a lot of students I think who could really benefit from you know your direction and beyond. >> Yeah. Thank you Viviana. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I wanted to add um I just love the new newsletter and all the information that's on there. I mean we're finding out so much of what all the schools
072are doing. So it's really it's a lot of fun. join the podcast and I don't think there's anything um there's um overcommunication is not a thing you know the more we communicate in different ways. Yeah. >> So I love the fact that you guys now are doing Tik Tok and Spotify and you know and Instagram and Facebook for people like me. Yes. Go on Tik Tok. >> Um but very nice job. Yes. >> Thank you. Just want to add as well that I I had asked for something similar to this a long time ago and finally it's it's coming along and it's and it's I I agree with with uh what she said. It's it's u uh it's very informative and a lot of information that I can use as as a board member to
073know what's happening everywhere. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. 11:03. >> Can you beat that? >> And usually everybody waits till I present to leave and they went early tonight. So, um, we had some updates that we worked on with the district teachers association uh this year. how we do some extra pay. So this is a presentation on some of those changes and again this is extra pay for certificated staff. So the first slide just shows you that there's a wide variety of resources. So when we talk about any one thing, we have to remember to take that in context that there are a lot of other things that are available to people and a lot of other funds. So if we're only talking about one, we just always have to
074remember there's other things that are out there as well. We have daily rates, hourly rates, and then pay for service contracts or for a little bit more complicated type things that don't tie to necessarily an hour. Uh you might be doing a product. You might have a lot of planning time that goes into something. So there's a variety of ways to do that. And then sites also have a variety of resources. They've got the principles budget, LCAP, title one, assets, CTE funds, Prop 28. So we can go through all of those different types of things. But in 2425 sites had between 590,000 which was Livingston to 967,000 which was Atwater and discretionary funds that the principal has available to them to run different types of things and programs on their sites. A little bit of
075background on why we were making some changes. Uh in 22 Mercedes school district and the DTA signed anou to add a CTE stipen uh for programs that had career and technical student organizations. Theou was for two years. Thatouou has expired. And so we met with them again because we were both interested in tweaking that a little bit but continuing that. Um several other programs that had schedule B stipen were not being offered at all sites and so those were being given for things that weren't really what they were intended for. And so we wanted to make sure that wasn't true. So any stipen was given for what it was supposed to be given for. Um and then we also had um a variety of in which we can pay for those which I just mentioned
076on the other one. So let's get to the important parts. So schedule B is a part of our contract that talks about certain stipens that certificated teachers are available to get. Uh coaching stipens, these have a set number of contact hours set by their league, set by their daily practices. We pretty much know exactly how much time uh they put in for those department chairs is based on the number of sections that they have in that. those two top ones last year was about $ 1.5 million uh that the district provided in extra um schedule B opportunities for students for excuse me for staff others then you have pep squad band music yearbook inter murals drama speech and debate media advisor these didn't have a standard measure like the others do um they were basically
077said do two do two activities and you get the siphon which we know that there's a wide variety different activities and so treating them all the same was not the best way to do that. So there was some more standardization put in there and ways to measure how you were going to get the particular stipen. Um and then theou added stipens. Uh that's in the past. So here's some of the changes that we made. Uh spring became cheer became a spring sport. So we needed to get that into theou. So spring cheer was included in the athletic stipen sideline cheer for fall winter. became hourly just like the CTE stipens. So when they're outside of their season, they're doing the sideline at basketball and at football. That's the same type of thing that band does
078or the same type of thing the CTE teachers did. So they get access to that. Flag football was left off and we're going to go back and add that in there. We paid it last year. We will pay it again this year. It just had never actually got into theou in the first place. And so we're going to go back and make sure that gets in. Um all other coaches, athletic trainers, band directors, everything remains the same. and there was no change to the department. So, we added the uh league stipens for cheer and we will be going in and adding the league siphons for flight. Uh a little bit of other changes then to schedule B. It's only for activities that are offered at all sites. So, they're standardized. We we know what we're
079measuring for everybody. The level that may be received is based on the number of hours spent on student activities. So it was to provide extra types of things outside of the classroom for students to be involved in. The number of hours is based on the amount that we have agreed with with uh DTA which is 6154. That's our general hourly pay that we use for certificated staff for extra types of activities. So roughly 25% of the hours were deducted for planning time because we all know if you're going to put on an event or take people someplace, it takes a lot of planning. It's not just the time that you spend with teachers. Um and so then we came up with the that would be required to meet the different levels of stipen. So a
080schedule B, you can see it on the bottom. A range B is a $5,217 stipen. You divide that by 61.54, you get 85 hours. So to earn that, they had to put in 65 hours with students and different student activities. And then the other 20 hours was assumed to be planning time. So they can meet a variety. So if you have something where you're doing a lot of things, you might be getting a B. If you only do a couple things throughout the year, you might be able to get an F. So based on how much you actually put in and how many activities and things that you do, you can get that type of a stipen. Then it goes even further down if you're going to get one in the fall and one in
081the spring. And so you can see the hours that were there as well. And a lot of this is we tried to match that up with it kind of matches. You're never going to pay anybody for all the time we can. It's just not feasible. We just can't do that. But it's a good representation and it's close at least to the hours that a sport would do and get the same type of So, a schedule B, a range B, excuse me, that $5,000 one is what most of our head coaches get. So, a basketball coach, a softball coach, they get that 5,217. The hours that a CTE person is putting in would need to be similar in that range to be able to get the same stipen. So, that's kind of where that came from.
082>> So, sorry. So the expectation for the CTE stipen to get the fall and the spring is 85 hours for fall, 85 hours for spring. >> If you're doing the same one for the year, then it goes to the bottom. >> Then it goes to the bottom. Okay? >> So if you were going to do the fall and the spring for a bee, which is two of the bees, which would be five $10,000, it's 110 hours. So if you're doing the whole year, the amount of planning time went up a little bit. >> Okay. >> But you don't have to do a year. If you're doing a fall or a spring, you're on the top line. >> You're trying to do two, a fall and a spring, then you have to meet that bottom line.
083>> Right. But that's 110 hours >> With students and then the planning on top. >> Planning on top. Correct. um activities are not standardized across the district will be determined by site principles. Again, I mentioned the 540 to 967,000 that sites have in a wide variety. Um so any of the things that were not standardized were taken off schedule B and they go back to the sites and the sites can do it because it's not standardized. So you have a unique thing that's happening on your campus, then you can use the hourly rate and that schedule B rate to kind of determine a basis for what it is that you're offering that's unique to your site. Principles have access to a wide variety of ways to pay for that. Title one, assets, LCAP funds, they
084get a variety of things. The ones that went back to the sites that were not on the schedule B anymore is yearbook if you're not a CTE teacher. So, a lot of our C our yearbook teachers are CTE teachers and so they would be on the previous slide. They would earn theirs by putting in the hours that they get as a CTE. If your if your yearbook teacher happens to not be a CTE teacher, then it's up to the principal to have a meeting with them and discuss how that's going to work out and what type of compensation they would get for doing that. Drama is the same way. It's a CTE program at all of our campuses. They're available to get the two the fall and the spring if they put in those hours
085on the previous slide. if they are not a CTE teacher, but I'm pretty sure all three of our our three sites are, then they would be able to work something out with the site to be able to do that. Or if they're doing something that's outside of the uh pathway program with other kids or other types of activities, they could work that out with the site intramural speech and debate and media advisor. So those were the ones that were not standardized. If I said you're getting a speech and debate statement, I have no idea if they were doing speech and debate and most of the time they were not. And so those things are going back to the sites. call it what it is. You arrange what the stipen is by looking at the hours
086that are involved. The ones that are coming from schedule B are standardized across the district. Uh the important note that we added here on the end, no double dipping. Um which basically means you can't use hours in multiple ways of getting funding. If you're getting paid hourly after school to do an assets program, you can't turn around and count those hours to get a schedule B stipen. If you're getting paid for Saturday Academy, you don't get to count those for any stipens from the schedule B or from the site. So, you can't be getting paid twice for the same type of hours. One of the things that this also does is that means the activities have to be outside of the day because you already get sections and prep time and being paid for activities
087and everything that you're doing during the day. So, these are things that have to happen outside. >> How do you enforce that? Yes. Um, each one has to actually apply and say, "Here's my plan on how I'm going to reach this." And they actually have to put a plan together on how they're going to reach that, which would look similar to what a league schedule and practice schedule would look like for a coach. They have to put something like that together. And then they submit that goes through a principal and then comes out. >> That's the prepiece for approval. And then how are those checks? So they're still even though they go through that that approval process they're still documenting the hours that they're putting in and then those should be approved by the site
088admin by so can you walk through a scenario of um because I know there's questions around the you know the drama statements. So what would that look like then as drama teacher being CTE teacher? So they're getting fall and spring stipens. >> Correct. >> They're expected to put in how many hours of prep? >> It's it's not necessarily prep, it's how many hours are they spending on the student activities. So >> but they're being compensated for the prep in addition to that >> through the stipen. the cycle. Correct. >> Okay. But it's the student hours that you're really looking at. >> Correct. >> Okay. So, the student hours would be 110. >> So, you would be for 110 for that. Yes. You would be counting up the number of hours they're doing at the theater
089productions, um, practices at the theater outside of the school day. All of those types of things would count up to those. When they go to I know several of our theater programs do field trips and they take students down to LA and down to other places where they get them real industry experience. Those hours count. So, when you say um those hours count, those hours count like eight hours. I mean, you're not paying like 24 hours. >> There's a there's a limitation on it that's not listed in here. You can only get four hours outside of a school day on a on a school day and you can only get >> I don't want to say it off top of my head because I don't it's either 8 or 12. I don't remember what it
090is for a non-school day. >> So, you're not getting hours to be on a field trip and sleeping, >> right? And then where where is that information found? >> It's in the contract. It's in >> the contract. >> And then um I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought. Um hours, the documentation. Um so the 110 hours is for the entire school year. >> If they're going to they put their plan together and then they match where this is going to go. So if you want to be getting a B stipen for both semesters then yes you would have to have 110 hours throughout >> okay and then anything over that so if it's found that there really are spending more hours with students that is time sheetated at the hourly rate >> could be
091>> through principal approval >> but that has to be done in prepar formally through that plan so everyone knows what's going to be paid out >> when they put their when they put their plans in and the stipens come in and for approval. Yes. >> More or less. Yeah. So the site knows I need to plan for this many additional hours at the hourly rate for >> the the ones that are going to be fall or year long are due to the principal by September 15th. So they can review that and get all that information. If there's something that's just in the spring, they have till January 1. September 15 might be a little bit later this year. We're still working all the kinks out. And that was actually >> I I just wanted to
092comment. It seems very well thought out and obviously you worked with DTA on this and with site principles as well and others. So you have a lot of input from >> we started back in March with conversations with principles and going through different a lot of things that weren't necessarily in there before came into that before it was a B stipen and they were like well we have a wide variety you know don't just say it's be or nothing can we have the multiple tiers of that so somebody who doesn't quite do as much still can get something and so there was back and forth >> thank you for the the diligence and partnership to this >> Thank you Dr. Okay. Stay standing. Um, do we have any representatives from the DTA? It's employee associations
093comment period. I don't see anyone from the DTA and CSEA. All right. So then moving on to the consent agenda item 13. Um is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> So moved. >> Second. Thank you. Um Trusty Pickle, would you like to acknowledge the donations, please? District would like to thank the following. donations farm credited Elks Lodge 1240 PH Ranch Paul Vander Van Warmer Soptimus International Merrced Alan Castaloo Sheila and Alan Brooks Food Grade Solutions Carlin Leca and Sir Optimus International Merrced again thank you >> thank you are there any questions the boat. I'm an eye, Mrs. I keep losing connectivity. Motion passes unanimously. Next on the agenda is item 14 action agenda. >> Let's do the other one first. >> No, I'm just talking to them which slide to do first.
094So we have the 2425. So yes, I didn't say 2526. We're going back to last year. 2425 unudited actuals. So a couple of notes. The first slide just shows you again here is the process for a budget cycle. Um we're in that part right now where we're talking about two different budget years. And so I have to make sure I'm very clear on which ones we're talking about. So this is actually last year's. You start in June with the passage of the budget. Uh but then June 30th the year ends. We come back in September. We say this is what the numbers actually ended up being. January then we will come back with the actual audit. And the audit again is mostly a review of our processes, not necessarily measuring our numbers or whatever to
095make sure we did our math right. It's it's do we have good internal controls? Were we spending money where we said we were going to spend? Those types of things are what comes out in the audit. And that will be in January. Um couple two slides here. I've compared unodited actuals for a five to six year period just so we can kind of get an idea of where we are at and where the next couple of years are going to be going. And so on this particular slide on on the line graph the blue is our baseline revenue. That's our LCF. That's our major funding source. The yellow is our expenditures and the red is our total revenues. And so you can see back here in 1920 this was like that precoid back when things
096were normal. I'm not sure any of us remember back that far, but that that was back in the normal days. And then you see this first lump of CO funds that came in here and then you see a whole bunch of one-time funds that come in right in here. And so the reason we have some discrepancies on some numbers and things we're going to talk about is you see this gap between revenue and LCFF get really big. That's all of the one-time funds. And so that's not going to last forever. We need to be paying attention to that and the next slide will show really well how we where we are and where that's going to go. But this blue line unfortunately um is leveling off and we're actually right at this particular moment 50
097students down from last year. So that's about a million dollars. So it might go up between now and seabeds which is the second week of October. But as of right now we are down another year. Um we were expecting to go down two years. This is actually the third year. So, we were supposed to start bumping up again this year, but that didn't actually happen from the numbers here. But we are supposed to be stable. If we look at the feeder school's actual um enrollment for the last couple years, we are supposed to be stable and to be going up just a little bit um after this and then just staying in a little bit of a range pretty even. The problem with staying even is you can make a lot of things go away
098when you're going up. when when when you have increased revenues, you get to have easier times at the negotiating table. You get to have easier times explaining to principles what their budget is. As that flattens out and starts to to drop a little bit, those conversations get a little bit harder. Um, and you're going to see that this is going to creep down just a hair probably at the end of this particular year, but the expenses are still going to stay up here because we still have some onetime monies to get rid of. the total revenues is probably going to cross and come below our total expenditures, which usually scares people a lot if your expenditures are above your revenues, but that's going to simply because it's the last two years of getting rid of
099the onetime funds. And once those are gone, that's going to stabilize again. But as you're spending onetime funds on shorter time distances, you you get a little bit of overspending because you have to get rid of those because you have a deadline. And I shouldn't say get rid of the money. We have very good uses for that money. Um, but it is a deadline that you have to meet or you have to give it back. So, you are going to see this stay up a little bit for about another year, but then you're going to see that it's going to match much closer like it did back in here. So, you've heard us say many, many times over the past I want to say three or four, but it's probably been six or seven years
100that we like to stay around that 80% personnel ratio. Well, that gets thrown out the window when you have that kind of one-time funds because you get a little bit distorted on what your ratio is when you're using onetime funds. So, you'll see back here at the beginning we were at about 82.8. That was not really a great time period. That was we were worried about making some cuts and things back here right before CO. So, but you do see we were at about 82.8% of our expenditures was on personnel costs. Now, you see it's 76.2. Well, that's misleading. And a large part of that has to do with this extra onetime money up here. Because we're spending onetime money on stuff, your personnel expense as a percentage goes down because you're spending onetime money
101on stuff. So that's why we include this bottom line as well. So we get a little bit better picture of where we're at. So if we just compare it to the baseline, not these fluctuations from one time money, just our normal what does the formula say we get? You can see that we're at the 91.7% here. You see, we went way up and then we came back down a little bit and now we're sitting about 92.2. So, we're a little bit higher than where we were back there. So, the 76% is a little misleading and that's because of those one-time funds. 92.3 to 91.7, we're we're fairly close to where we were as far as the percentage we're spending on personnel costs of our basic income. So that kind of tells you we're pretty much
102in a stable situation and luckily a lot of the cuts and things that are going to happen are cuts to the one-time funds. So when those go away, the things we are buying with that goes away and it's not going to be back to our basic services. And this one shows that uh also a little bit the blue one at the bottom is restricted funds and and this is their ending balance at the end of each year. So the general fund ending balance restricted funds means you're carrying them over for a reason and they have very limited uses and usually have a deadline and you need to get rid of you can see back in 1920 it was not a very large amount of was not a very large part of our fund balance economic
103uncertainties again we keep 10% for economic uncertainties part in the general fund part in fund 17 so that's the red piece and then the orange piece is the reming balance. So more flexible funding sources that we've got. The big difference is the blue. So you see a little bit of increase right here for the CO funds. And then on top of COVID funds, we also got community schools grant, CTE grants, several big CTE grants. All of a sudden, our restricted balance at the end of the year went up. All of this has deadlines to spend that money. We don't get to use it on whatever we want and it has to be used within a specific time period. And you can see that's coming down right now. And of this blue part, big thumbs, this
104is 36 million total, this is 20 million of the 36 million. And out of that 20 million, 14 million has to be spent within the next two years. Now, we have plans for that and there are things that are identified for those expenditures, but 14 million of that blue will be gone in two years. And so this is going to be down here. But the reason is because the onetime funds are going. So we're going to be getting back down to the normal. We're going to be reducing what we're spending, but it's going to be the onetime funds that are going away, not our basic services and not our bases. But that's the process of where we're at in that particular. And a large part of that, this is no longer co funds. These are
105things like we have a $5 million CTE grant in there. We have the remains of our community schools grant in there. And And there's like 10 different onetime monies that we got over the last five years that have a one year or two year expiration date coming up that will be spent. So our fund balance notes because we're going to get to those here on the on the regular slides. Uh fund 13 is our nutrition services. Just want to do shout out to Erin Tassy who was here before and Lisa Mendoza who is here now and has continued the trend. But back in 201920, we had $288,000 in our ending budget for nutrition services and we were contributing $ 1.5 million a year to to pay the bills. We currently have $9.1 million reserves, which
106means we can spend some more on food and we can spend some more on other things uh to help out in the kitchens and do those types of things. But to be not putting any money in oursel and to have a self-sustaining nutrition program is a wonderful place to be in. And most districts around the state very very thrilled to be in that particular position. So, shout out to all of those who helped make that happen. And pretty soon you will see I know Viviana's got the email and they're setting it up uh the celebration for the 1 million meals served campaign for nutrition services. >> Scott, how did that big change come about? And I mean, is part of that funding from the state? >> Um, a little bit from the state, a lot
107of it's from the federal government. It's through the FDA, the food and drug, sorry, from the agricultural, yeah, USDA, US Department of Agriculture. Um, and so we get reimbursement meals uh for that. And so the better you're tracking reimbursement, and the better you're tracking the number of meals, and the more meals you serve, the better off you're going to be in getting reimbursements. And so our meal count going way up, students being happy with what's being served, we got a lot of reimbursement coming back into the because of that. increase in services and increase its uh fund 15 is transportation has about $4.1 million left. Um at some point we're going to have to start dabbling in the EV bus world. Um it's difficult for the high school district because of the amount of miles
108we put on a bus in any given day to move into that EV world. But we need to start moving that way. Um as part of the bid package tonight, the infrastructure is in the new business park to be able to add charging stations and things. There's not charging stations in there, but the infrastructure to be able to add those is in. Um, and then we have about 4.1 where we can actually within a year, we probably need to have at least a couple of EV buses so our staff can start getting used to those and learning what's going to have to happen as a transition. We are going to have to move that way. The state is going to make us move that way. Um, they have not answered the question yet of how
109are you going to get our band to to Santa Cruz? How are you going to get our football playoffs up to Sacramento? They haven't answered any of that. So, we expect to have to be able to keep our diesel buses to be able to do those things, but they are going to require us to move at least partially into the EV and so we're going to need to be spending some money on getting some EV in there getting started looking at what that's fund is our special reserves uh paired with the economics uncertainty in the general fund. We are keeping our 10% reserves between those two places. And then fund 20 is oped uh which has funding to cover the bonuses for 25 26 26 27 uh as well as the pars from last time
110and the parts for this time. So none of that will come out of the general fund. All of that is already set aside fund 14 deferred maintenance and developer fees. Uh we have funds available now to complete the business park and the railroad project plus some expansion projects um and then they're reserved for emergency repairs to facilities where we need it to. It's always nice to have money in there in case you lose a transformer, you lose something, a sewer line or something like that that's going to cost you 500 $600,000. We'll have some funds available in there for those types of emergencies even after paying for those particular projects. fund 21 in the building fund. Uh once the bond sale is added, because the bond sale is not in here when we show you
111the balances, the bond sale from the summer is not here because we didn't have it in time to get it into last year's will show up in this year's books. And so that was about $19 million that's not in there. That and 43 capital outlay will complete both the stadiums. And then in October, November, you're going to see uh we need to update our facility master plan to be able to apply for the CTE grants. And so sites will community meetings to be able to take input on big projects on their campus. What needs to be done? What's their priority? How are they going to stack those up there? I'm going to guarantee you they're going to give us a list that well exceeds uh the amount of money that we actually have available to
112us. Economic landscape. Um I don't know any way to say it, but the next year and a half is going to be weird and I don't know that we have any way of getting around that. Um, mostly it's going to be the the federal level. Um, we're looking at a probable, you know, the newspapers today said everybody thinks they're going to come up with a deal. Sorry. Historically, I know that's probably not true. Um, we're probably looking at a government shutdown at the end of the month. Now, it might be only a couple hours, might be a couple weeks. Who knows what's going to happen? That gets chaotic with education funding and a wide variety of things when you get into those situations. So that's potentially there at the federal level here. Their fiscal year
113ends September 30th. So if they don't have a new budget on October 1st, the government stops. Not all of it, but a large part of it stops. Yoseity will shut down. Other types of things like that would get shut down. The other one that's playing out right now, the reason I was not worried when everybody thought our federal funding was going to get caught cut this summer was because that's not legal. Um, basically the way in which a recision works at the federal level is if the president wants to take money back and not spend it, he has to take that to Congress and then they have 45 days to review that and they either say yes or no. So he took some foreign aid to the Congress. They voted to resend that and take
114that money back. So, that money got taken out of last year's budget and didn't get spent. They never did that with the um education money. It just got released. It was just delayed a little bit, but he didn't actually say, "I want to rescend this and take it to Congress." Right now, he is going to try to President Trump is going to try to cut more money from the federal uh from foreign aid. And his argument is going to be that the year September 30th. Therefore, if you don't have 45 days to respond as Congress and say yes or no, I just get to do it anyway because the year ends. Courts have not backed that in the past. But that's what's playing out right now. Um he's he's got a recision package that he's
115going to put in. It's within the 45 days uh of the end of the year. They're not going to have time to respond to it and he's going to say I'm not going to spend it and it's going to go to court. The issue is if that happens, that means you don't know and you can't count on federal money because if we get into this year and we start looking at our title one budgets or our title two budgets or our title three budgets and that can get cut at any time even though we've been told we're going to get it and you can't spend it until the last day of the year because you don't know if you're really going to get it. That becomes problematic. Then we have to start looking at some
116that and is allowed to happen. You will see two very different budget proposals next year. You will see one that has normal. You will see one that says this is what happens if we lose $6 million in federal funds. So, we'd have to look at both of those scenarios for next year's budget if that potentially happens. We'll know here fairly quickly because the end of the year for them is the end of this month. And so, it's going to play out here within the next couple months. Right now you have the Senate which is wanting to fund education at the exact same level it is right now. And you have the Republicans who have in the House who have cut exactly what he wanted to cut in the summer. They've cut a lot of the
117money in their budget. Well, they have to agree. If they don't, we're down to that shutdown and see what happens. So what they're talking about as the potential tradeoff, the potential way in which they might get a bipartisan bill is to basically just extend funding like it is and continue out for another year at the same exact rate that it is right now. If you do that, but the pocket revision goes into effect, then you don't really know if you really get that money or not. And that's why again we would have to have two different budgets at that particular just because they say it. if he doesn't turn around and give it to you, we can't spend it. So, that becomes very uncertain if those two things happen. We'll know a lot more by
118the time we have the October board meeting. We can go into that a little bit more and see what exactly happened. But that's that's about $10 million for us. Only about three and a half to four is actually being talked about being cut. It's not like we would lose all 10 million of it, but it could be in the neighborhood of$2 to3 million. uh at the state level getting a mixed economic outlook. Um California is heavily reliant on the top 1% for paying income taxes. Uh Silicon Valley, the wealthier folks uh having a very everybody's worried about California's economy right now, but the stock market is soaring. And when the stock market is soaring, your what top 1% do very well and your top 1% are paying taxes. So you're worried about California's economy, but
119right now the people who pay the taxes are doing pretty well. So, it's a mixed bag on looking at what the California economy is going to be. And then there's a continued battle on Prop 98 between the governor and everybody in education over some budget gimmicks they keep trying to do. We're supposed to get a certain amount of money every year. And he's trying to say, "Well, you're not going to really get that. You'll get it over here." And there's lawsuits back and forth between CSBA and all the education groups and the governor on how they're doing those calculations. And and it's it's gimmicks. They're pushing money around to try to make sure they meet certain requirements. So those are going to play out in the courts as well. Won't change our budgets for this
120year, but if they win the court battles, they might owe us some more money in the next two years that they may or may not have depending on how well they local level. Um we're down 50 students, but all the heavy equipment's moving again. So it's interesting to see that you have the development around UC Merrced moving forward. It's a matter of when did those two things balance out a little bit. But again, you see all the construction going on around Milan. You see it all along the expressway going out to Highway 99. So you see all of that things moving again, but we were still down a little bit this year. So when does that play out and balance out? So that's that's the local. Any questions on that before I just let you
121see one last time that slide deck that you love? All right, let's do the other one. We'll go pretty quickly through this one. So for 2425, here is the finale. So again, we have our LCFF components. Again, most of this is our state fund. That's that blue line that I was showing you on the other one is our LCFF components. That's our basic uh income. Then here you'll see we get 11 million from the federal government. Again, that's not at all in jeopardy. They're not trying to cut a lot of the CTE programs. They're not trying to cut the nutrition programs. They're not trying to cut a variety of things, but it could be two to three million if some of the cuts go into into effect at that particular I showed you the the
122salaries in a better chart so you could kind of compare where we were from one year to the next, but you can see the amounts that were spent there. And then again the ending balances. And here we're down from 46 million spending some of those onetime funds. We're at 36 million. And again 20 of that 36 million is onetime funds that has expiration dates here coming up in the next couple years. At which point we would be back down into the 16 to$18 million range which is typically what our ending balance was for the 10 years prior to ending balance component. That's the one that was on the on the stack chart. So you could see again that restricted money right there. We had 26 million of it last year. We're down to 20 million
123of it left. It's restricted and you'll see it down again next year and then last year. And then again student activities we just take it from the student body office show it in our books and then give it back to them. So just do that. Um you have adult education which comes to us from the consortium. CDC is the program child development program offered at this campus. You'll see the uh get my thumbs in the way the nice balance for our nutrition services and then what we just talked about for buses. Deferred maintenance again that will cover the completion of the business park out there, the railroad property and then have some other monies available for other projects. And then you have the capital facilities fund which is 11 million which is developer fees. We'll
124be able to use that to address some of the needs sites put together here in late fall. Uh 34 million. 20 of that is the actually about 22 of that is still the stadiums. There's a little bit of the pool money that just went out here recently. So that'll come out of that 34.7 and that takes a large chunk of that money there. And then again the 19 million we got for this summer for the bond is not so that and then we mentioned the set fund 17 is our economic uncertainties our 10% and then oped that last one has the two cars and the raises not the bonuses will come from that particular so none of it has to come from and then we don't get to touch this this is money With that,
125the superintendent recommends the board of trustees accept and approve the report of unedited actuals for the fiscal year 2425. >> Do I have a motion to move? Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Any questions, Dr. Wymer? I I just wanted to you you know you've done this for a lot of years and you present it to us and um but you do an exceptional job of making it understandable I think not only for us but for staff and the community. Thank you for a job very well done and for spending all of those one-time monies so we didn't lose them because I know not everybody in the state was as successful. Thank you Dr. you know to what she said you make it easy for me to understand and um it looks like
126you're very passionate about it so we'll see if your next your successor is the same >> what one question though what does OPIP mean >> um postmployment benefits >> well I saw that here post appointment but where does the O come from >> I will look it up for It's not me. >> It'll come to me and just >> Thank you. >> I hope I hope it's not just other. >> It is other. Okay. It's other. >> It's other. Usually you don't get an O for other, but okay. >> Okay. Back to you. >> Oh, I thought we did. No. Sorry. Oops. Oh, please. motion passes 1402 arts and music in schools. Dr. W. So each year under the um Prop 28, we have to have the sites put together a plan on how they
127would like to spend their funds. We don't like to talk about funding sources in isolation. So this proposal and plan shows you how base money and Prop 28 money all works together so you're not seeing it out of context. So what is arts and music school funding? Uh Prop 28 was passed in November 22 added funds um to Prop 98 which is our school funding LCFF to be used to support arts instruction in schools. And there's a definition for you, the key being for instruction. And then it leaves a whole lot of pieces there that it talks about what could possibly be included. And the one they always throw in there that always throws people for loop is computer coding. So you're going to see that we do have our computing coding classes in here
128as well. And that's why it is part of their definition of what is covered in this particular plan. Uh in elementary schools, it is much harder for them to decide what is arts education because if you have a third grade teacher who teaches everything throughout the day, how to tell when they're doing arts education, how do you not? All those different types of things. For a high school, it's very easy. We have courses that meet arts requirement. And so the ones that are included in the whole planning process for this are anything that meets the UC requirement for F, visual performing arts. So arts, visual performing arts for UC and courses that are based around computer design. So all of those are included in the plan and it shows how those break down. So for
129high school district. We see our programs here. Uh this is the number of sections that are by the different areas. So for 23 24 you can see we had 247 sections that were in arts, entertainment, music, floral and fashion, computer coding and design. You can see the breakdown for that. 2425 it went up a little bit. You see 2526 it went up a little bit more. Um the reason I have it in green is we are actually adding some new programs this year. So culinary is actually shifting to an F that got approved by UC doorways that culinary is now part of the arts programs and so it is included in 2526 where it wasn't included in the past. So you'll see there's 22 sections for culinary and cosmetology which is being added at which
130also is an F. So so if you want to compare apples to apples you would compare the 275 to the previous years. But what's going to get reported are the numbers in green because those are the ones that are actual for that particular Uh you'll kind of see here in a second when I get to the one that shows how we're breaking down this year. You can see how they're basically >> do Viviana's interns fall in here. >> No. I don't know what class. No. Um this one tells you it's hard to say how many kids are involved because what day do you look at it? You look at the beginning of the year, you look at the end of the year. So, we picked a number and we picked grades. It's first semester one
131because we can run numbers before the end of the year. We can't run second semester grades because you're getting to the end of the year and they're not in yet. So, first semester grades gives us a good indication of how many kids are actually in these programs. So, this tells you how many grades were issued um in that particular area. And then if you divide it by the sections on the previous one, you can kind of see how many grades in a section. kind of gives you a comparison to class size. Not exactly, but it's a pretty good comparison. So, you can see in arts and entertainment, we had 3,600 issued grades for the first semester in 2324. Went up to 3,660 and 2425. And you can get an average class size, you know, by
132dividing that out to see how it compare. We staff most of our classes. And again, nobody's average. Classes are not average. Every teacher who has over the average let you know that the average is not real. Uh we staff at 34.5. So you can see these are obviously class sizes are under what we normally staff the other sections at. Music uh 1355 went up to 1406. And again you can see all of the differences there. So this one comes up a lot. So I like to just throw it out there at the beginning. Who makes up all these rules? It's not me. It's not an interest group. It's not a teacher. These rules are made up by the state audit committee who tells you how they're going to verify that you did what you're supposed
133to do every year and the California Department of Education. So, those people are the ones who put together the rules. The reports that we put together follow the rules uh that they put out and use the forms that they provide us to be able to show that we're doing what we need to be doing under proper. So, as a condition of receiving the funds, we have to certify that they're all going to be used educational programs um to expand the prior year. So in other words, we have to use more than we were using the year before. So um for those who have more than 500, which we do, 80% of the funds have to be used on personnel, which again for a high school is very easy to spend money on personnel because we
134have lots of people. Um we have to certify that funds received were used to supplement funding and I'll show you the calculation for how that happens here on the next slide. Certify that no more than 1% of the funs For administrative expenses, we use zero. And then submit an annual report to the board. You actually just approved it on the consent agend because that's last year's. This is this year's. So again, who makes the rules? State audit guide. Verify that prop 28 music and funds were used to supplement and not supplant existing funds available for the arts program as required by a code blah blah blah. The way to do that is you identify that and it gives you the whole list. Basically, what you're doing is how much did you spend last year? you
135have to spend that much again this year and then you can spend prop 28 on top. There is no supplement versus supplant on any individual expense. So it doesn't you can't say well how did you pay for it last year? Did you pay for it the same way? It doesn't matter. It's the total expenditures. Did you spend more or at least equal to what you spent the year before? And if you did then you can spend the prop. So the funding um all budgets for AMS and baseline are tied to the identified course. So we don't keep any money at the district. We don't run district arts programs. We have sites that have classes and the money goes to the classes and the sites. So no money is used for district programs and we don't
136take the 1% administrative expenses. No AMS funds were used in 2324 even though that was the first year we got funding from the state. So the 2324 money was used in 2425. The 2425 money in 2526. 2526 money will be used in 2627. So basically because of the way it was rolled out, we're always going to be one year behind, but you have three years to spend money. So if you're one year behind, you still have one year grace period. If you for some reason didn't spend it all, you'd have one more year to be able to spend the last of that month, but you have three years for every year's allocation to spend it. We're one. So this kind of gives you a little bit of a graphic on how it worked. 2324 our
137baseline because we didn't spend any Prop 28 money that year. So, you took the amount of money you were doing on ongoing funding for the programs that were identified on that last, you know, where we talked about sections and grades and then you were able to take away any one-time funding. So, any COVID money that you were using or money that was going to go away, you didn't have to count that. You counted ongoing resources. Then you're going to come here. We have to spend for this year we have to spend 7,645,83 to match last year's baseline and then we can spend the 1,844,450 prop 28 money for this. So how do you make that work? Because that's a logistical nightmare. Um so what we do is in the fall sites are going to say
138how do you want to spend the 20% of your prop 28 money? How do you want to spend the 80% of your prop 28 money for staffing? Then we're going to add in all the rest of the expenses that we know we're going to spend. And then if that doesn't get us to that amount in December, we look at it and if we think we're going to be short, then we release more money to the sites to bring us up to that baseline so that we know we meet what we use the year because if we don't, then we have to roll that Prop 28 money over to the next year and you can't use it. So what that looked like, let me go here and then I'll go backwards. So what that looked like
139last year was this column right here. We only gave them the Prop 28 money. So Atwater got 71,000. And this was uh not not personnel, just supply. So they got $71,000. Uh got 58. Well, halfway through the year, we realized we need to give them a lot more money to get our baseline up to where it needs to be. So we're doing that in the fall this year rather than waiting till later in the year. So this is what they're actually getting. So last year's plan had that amount of money in it. This year's plan has this amount of money in it. But it's no prop 28 and the baseline contribution. So we know we have to get money out there because we don't use it all in salaries. We're giving it to them now
140so they can plan and they're not rushing expenses at the end of the year. we'll be close to that baseline and then we'll have a little bit of money we need to give out in the fall and the winter basically whatever we're a little bit below we will go back and give that so what does that look like here's their site plan so this is the question that you had Tiffany here you can kind of see um this is the blue part here is the prop 28 funding so this is the allocation they get for non-personnel this is how much they get for personnel this is how many of their sections they're paying out of the prop 28 money. Then over here, this I'm sorry, this is the total allocation. This is their supplies. This
141is personnel. This is supplies. Then this is the base funding. This is not prop 28 money. They're getting this amount of money for supplies. They're paying for this many sections out of our regular funding for a total. These two supply ones together gives you the number that they're going to be spending. And then you can see the total number of sections. So you can compare what's being paid for out of Prop 28, what's being paid for out of the base, and then you get the total. And then for each site, they give us an allocation. This is how they want to spend it out. The personnel um is not listed on here. It's listed just by the sections that are listed there because it's in the master schedule. The way in which they tell us
142this is how many sections of this I want, how many sections of this I want. schedule. So these numbers are what is in their master schedule and what's actually on their courses right now on their campuses right now. But then again, you can tell for each program. So Atwater has this amount. They're putting this much into music. They're putting this much into art. They're putting this much. They don't have fashion. They don't have engineering design. They're putting this much into information technology. And this much into each site, you can see how they met. They met with their and that's part of the proposition is it comes from the site. It doesn't come from the district on how they want to split this up. Principal meets with the different programs on their campus, determines their needs,
143splits that funding up. Again, this is not all Prop 28 money. It's Prop 28 money and baseline money that we know we have to give them to make sure we meet what we spent the previous year. Like I said, the calculations for this is Say it again. They have lots of flexibility. If you go back here, the master schedule is done by student signups and flexibility in the principles in the site. They tell us where the sections are going to be. We give them a general overview of sections, but they get to move them around wherever they need to to meet their needs on their campus as far as Prop 28 sections are going to be. And again, they do these allocations themselves based on strength and size of their program. So, everybody doesn't get
144the same because you might have a huge art program at one place and a huge theater at one place and another dance program that's at another place. Everybody's different and so they get to make decisions on how that's going to get allocated. Some unintended consequences of Prop 28 um has an elementary school focus which sometimes gets confusing for people uh when talking about high schools. So a lot of times when you hear people saying this is what I thought was going to happen or whatever, they're usually talking about elementary schools. The complicated pieces here are it makes one time expense more complicated because if let's say somebody were to get invited to go to the Rose Parade and perform that could be a $50,000 trip. If you increase your funding in one year $50,000, you
145have to increase every year going forward $50,000 or you have to cut 50,000 from your other programs that year to send that or you tell them they all have to raise it through booster clubs and don't do it through the district, which is usually what happens on trips. But it's a very consequence that you know if you spend more than what you did last year, you don't get to go back to last year's amount. That's your new baseline and you have to spend that amount every single year. So you have to make sure you're not going too high unless you're willing to do that forever. So that that was the way in which the rules got. And for districts who are in declining enrollment, this is going to be ugly. So, as you're losing millions
146of dollars a year in declining enrollment, you can't cut your arts programs, you have to cut everything else. And so, if you have a discrepancy in class sizes in your arts versus everybody else, and you're in declining enrollment, that's just going to get even bigger and bigger and bigger because if you don't spend what you spent last year, you can't spend the Prop 28 money and they'd have to give it back. So, for I'm guessing LA and Oakland and a few places are going to be screaming about this one here very quickly. And we'll if they actually make any modifications or changes to that because that could become a problem for a lot of those districts. We're only going down 50 and we expect to level off and go up a little bit. Somebody who's
147really losing this become could put them and that is all I have for that. So the superintendent recommends the board approve the 2526 arts, music and school site plans. >> Do I have a motion to approve? >> So moved. Do I have a second? Any questions for Dr. Wymer? Call for the vote. motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Um, moving on to 1403 bid award. Dr. >> So, I'm going to do a couple slides here and then Melissa can answer any questions. >> So, it's it's always better to see a visual on this. So, I I made sure I got some slides for you today. So, the green outline we own. So, this is our business part. We pretty much have the entire piece now. There are no pieces left that we need to purchase in
148this area. You can see what it looks like right now, which is a whole lot of dirt. This is what you're looking at on the bid today. So, the red areas are not within this plan. So, this area right here is not part of the bid tonight. These exist. So, the parking lots and everything in this exists already. This building exists already and this building exists already. So, what's in the bid is all of the parking structures and everything that's in here. She'll talk about the bus wash here if you have a question on that real quickly. And then all of this here, some open space here for Mr. Peterson to be creative. Coming back over into this area here, which is the parking for the district office. And then the district office is a
149shell of outside walls only. All these offices and different types of uh rooms have to be constructed. So the conditioning, all the walls, all of that has to go in for that particular building. So, this blue building right here has nothing inside it right now. You walk in, you can see this wall to this wall and a concrete slab. That's pretty much where we're at. And it's going to end up looking like that. So, it's got about 30 offices. It's got a boardroom, large meeting room. It's got two smaller conference room. No, no boardroom, just a large meeting room. Um, and then we've got some large uh conference rooms and and other types of things. And then you have all the things you need, some restrooms, support rooms, all the other kinds of stuff. So,
150we will be going from that to all of that hardcape and the interior of that. You want to add or these uh These renderings were not part of the We didn't get those, right? >> Oh, the printed ones. Yeah. >> So, on August 28th, 2025, Merced High School District bid the new district office and site work project in Atwater, um, California. After evaluating 11 biders, which is a very competitive bid, um, Harris Builders of Hillar, California was determined as a low, responsive, and responsible bidder. This phase includes interior and exterior development. Um, includes also drainage, utilities, parking lot, lighting, interior instruction, updated electrical and mechanical systems. So, it's pretty significant amount of work. Um, and this aligns with Merced Union High School of providing modern and functional facilities and also taking into consideration that um
151our current district office is on a very short lease and we are we are getting very close to having to relocate. So um right um the base bid was $6,29,000. Um we had two additive alternates and we'd like to include that in in tonight's acceptance of this um agenda item and that would total and excuse me there is a correction on this a total of 6,710,500 any questions I have a couple um Dr. Rhymer, in your budget presentation, you mentioned there was 4.9 million for the business park. So, or maybe I misunderstood. This is 6.7. So, I just want to make sure we have the money. >> Yes, >> you said fund 21 was it? I might have made that up. >> But yes, there there is there is more than enough funds available in
152the fund that we have reserved for this to cover the cost. Um Melissa, what is the timeline? >> Timeline is um obviously we are trying to move very quickly. We hope to have this completed by May of next year. So as long as there's no hope. Okay. So >> it's actually in the different maintenance one. The one above what you're looking at. >> Say that again. >> It was actually in the one above what you're looking at which has 20 Yeah, it's about 24 million. >> Thank you. Um, so Melissa like are all the designs done the architectural drawings everything has been submitted with the is that city or county? >> Um, it has been submitted. Um, we are not under any obligation to go to the city or the county. We purchased these buildings
153directly. So we're already covered in that regard and >> I meant for permitting. >> Oh peritting. Um yes we are we are good to go and ready to move forward. >> Soon as we approve this tomorrow I'd say >> is solar part of this at all? >> No it is not. Um solar the solar initiative in California has listened over the past couple years. I've spoken to a couple of representatives from different solar companies. Um so and they said it's really no value. If it doesn't bring value to them, then they're not going to want to proceed with that. That was my next question. Is it m >> Dr. You also talk a little bit about EV and buses. Is it part of this plan? >> Yes. So the infrastructure um for EV is included
154in this. In fact, I believe also the state of California because it is a new parking lot zone and it does require that we have a >> couple charging stations. would not be enough to do a whole fleet of 25 buses, but there'll be enough to get started. And there's enough infrastructure there to expand to what we would need in the future. >> Um, and I know on residential buildings, solar is required on commercial like this, is it not? >> No. >> Um, I was also really excited to see the number of people that fantastic. pretty significant. So, um we're happy with it. >> Yeah. Okay. Good work. Thank you. >> You said that u that business park would have the infrastructure for EV charging for buses. >> So, so the idea is that we
155will have um several well we have a designated area parking area for um any EV buses in the future. Um and so um So, we're going to run the the conduits. We'll have them available and when that time comes or potentially even within this project, we'll we'll have a couple of additional um charging locations. >> Well, right now they're >> so the transformers is there to expand. The cabling is underneath. It will be leveled over with concrete and asphalt, but when you go in to apply or put a new one in, you're just going to have to dig right the studs are and just access them. You're not going to have to do new trenching and tear everything up to run new lines to the >> Got it. And then the the charging stations you
156mentioned that are required, those are for regular vehicles, right? >> Yes. >> I can use the other questions. >> Is there a completion date? It is May of 2026. >> So it will be ready before you leave. >> Oh, I'm going to make sure. Any other questions? The superintendent recommends the board award the Merced district operations and new district office to Harris build. Do I have a motion to approve? >> So moved. >> Do I have a second? Second. Call for the vote. >> Any other questions? >> Yeah. While we're waiting on the While we're waiting on the vote. So the the Harris uh builders, >> they've have they done projects? Yes, they are currently um finishing up our UHack High School stadium right now. So, they are a local contractor who has plenty of
157experience. >> Yeah, I knew about that one. But for other other districts around the area, >> uh most definitely. I think in Modesto, city of Modesto, they have several projects there. Um yeah, Newman, they have a project also. Motion passes. Thank you. So going moving on to 140. Um, >> yes. Um, education code section 60119 requires that local governing boards hold an annual public hearing and adopt a resolution certifying that each pupil in each school in the district has sufficient textbooks and/or instructional materials. The definition of sufficiency for core academic courses has been to revised to mean that each student has access to a textbook or other instructional materials or both to use in class and take home. Core academic courses are defined as reading or language arts, mathematics, science, and history, social science. The
158board shall also make determinations of the sufficiency of instructional materials for foreign language and health courses and regarding the availability of laboratory science equipment for science courses in grades 9 through 12. A review of current inventory and outstanding textbook orders shows that that students will have sufficient textbooks and instructional materials under education code section 60119 and the Williams settlement legislation on or before the end of the eth week of the after the first day of school of the 2025 2026 school year. The superintendent recommends that the board adopt resolution number 02-25 sufficiency of instructional materials and conduct a public hearing. I hear right for public comment 7:55 I hereby close public comment. Do I have a motion to approve? Do I have a second? >> Second. Any questions for the votes? motion passes. Next up
159is 1405 board approval. Mr. Nicholson, >> good evening. Tonight we bring before you uh we're seeking your approval for uh certificated assignments. So, education code 44263 allows a teacher licensed um so a credential teacher with his or her consent to teach a single subject class outside of their credential area if he or she has 18 semester hours of coursework or nine semester hours of upper division graduate course. Also, education code 44258.7 allows a teacher who holds a teaching credential in a subject other than physical education be authorized by action of the board to coach one period per day in a competitive sport for which peoples receive phys physical education credit. Um, so there are two lists there attached to this item. All certificated staff brought forth meet the requirements of either of either one of
160those egg codes. So, the superintendent recommends the approval of teachers on the attached list being assigned to teach out of their areas of certification in accordance with education code 44263 and 442587. >> Is there a motion to approve? >> So moved. >> Is there a second? Second. Do we have any questions for the vote? >> Have a question for you. There there's a teacher there that I believe he's been a a teacher in that subject for a long time. Was there a change on that? Why art teacher living? >> So was there a change in the art teacher? >> Was there a change in We give them time. We give them time to get certified in that subject, but this person's been a teacher in that subject for >> Yeah. So these So these board
161authorizations, so as long as you have the upper division coursework or the or the 18 units of regular college coursework or the nine upper division units and you have a single subject credential, this egg code authorizes you to teach that. So you don't you don't necessarily have to go get further authorization. >> So we just our numbers have reduced. >> Okay. >> So okay. So got it. And I guess um we we can just do it forever and they don't have to. Got it. So they're authorized. They're not a mis assignment with California credentialing or CTC. They're authorized. Thank you. >> So motion passes. Thank you. Moving on to item 15, superintendent report. >> Thank you, President Jainga. Our kickoff went fairly smooth. I do want to let you know we are evaluating that site
162and whether we want to continue doing it there versus one of our large gyms. Um been some ongoing air conditioning issues and we're just kind of pushing capacity there. the the kickoff meeting downtown at the theater. >> Uh yes. Yes. Well, >> Gotcha. Gotcha. But overall, uh we felt that went pretty well. Um I I want to without getting too deeply into this uh with our uh technology issue. I just want to thank uh you two over there in the corner. Uh Mike and Miguel, you quietly are here every single month and uh you were pretty much put on blast the uh first day of school and everyone depended on you and Cheryl and the uh site technicians to uh handle our various issues. and you did it um uh in a way where uh
163staff and students barely felt it. Uh depending on on what staff you were and and and how things were stored, they may have felt these issues more, but um I I'm not sure it could have been handled better. I have um uh as you know, we've had a few other districts in our area deal with this particular issue and uh out of all of them um it just went very smooth. So just want to thank you and recognize you for your great work. Uh I want to shout out to all of our principles and staff. This is the smoothest start I can remember uh to a school year. Yes, knock on wood. Um and our students. Uh it's just been a really good month. So, thank you uh Vivana and Sean. Um I appreciate you
164growing our exposure in communications and outreach and just general professionalism um that you brought and certainly game day on Fridays. This brought a little fun to my own personal schedule. So, um Mandy and Tiffany, excellent clear presentation tonight on CTE. I love the way Tiffany is kind of streamlining and refining things there, making it stronger every year. Dr. Wymer, outstanding job as usual. And finally, Mr. Nicholson, we had our normal uh HR surprises at the beginning of the year and your department handled them very smoothly. So, thank the board for a great meeting and forward to next month. >> Thank you. Um, moving on to item 16. >> Um, just like to thank everyone for a smooth start. Um, enjoyed the presentations as well and um, what's happening at at Merced Marcus's presentation. Um, and
165also uh thank the guys and Cheryl for uh for their response. Appreciate all you do back there and Mr. Garmin too. Trusty Coleman. >> Yeah. Um I I got to attend the first game day presentation that was a lot of fun at High School. Um did a couple of back to school night visits at Golden Valley and Buhack Colony. I finally finished my masters in government. Thank you, Sher. Uh Leslie, for helping me through that transition. Appreciate it. Uh Mike and Miguel, again, great job. All every year, every meeting, you guys are on top of things and taking care of business like we needed. Um attended a football fundraiser from Merson High School for a few minutes. Um, I thought the district kickoff was a really well done and a different um, look that I
166thought was well planned and well prepared. I think I think that that panel was was kind of something that the staff all needed to hear your views and and your cabinet's views as well. And it's always good to know that fruit nutrition I I I remember for years had been floating in that we owed them, you know, we had to pay out so much a year and to see it turn around and and be self- sustaining is it's just a compliment to you and and both of the uh directors that you've worked with as well, Dr. Warber, thank you. >> Thank you, Trusty Vald. Well, ditto with what uh they both said. And of course to um Cheryl and Miguel and Miguel. You guys sound like a Mexican band if you say Mike's name in
167Spanish. But anyways, great job to everybody. And of course for our host school today and the principal and their staff and the PBL U presentation. Thank you all. >> Great meeting tonight. Um I just so many positive things. Growth in arts, growth in CTE, um expansion of our public image and communications and it's just it's really fantastic to see. The presentations were informative and um thoughtful, well done. So, thank you. Excited to see um our new district office get going. That'll be really great. And yes, to our unsung tech heroes who don't get a lot of attention, we we always notice you. We appreciate you and thank you for dealing with our glitches under so much pressure. Um you two over there, Cheryl. So um thank you very much. Um thank you Principal Knots for
168hosting us this evening. Enjoy hearing from the students. Uh great presentations. Um, lots of great detail, lots to look forward to in our district. Um, very excited about um, all the good information coming out and the positive information coming out of our school district. Cheryl, thank you to you, Mike. Um, for holding down the board on the IT front and I had a chance to attend school night at Golden Valley was well attended. lot of good information and looking forward to the next few months. With that um if no one has anything else to add, I adjourn this meeting at 8:07. However, the board will be reconvening into close session soon after.