001So moved. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? I'm sorry. Call for the vote. I'm an I too. Motion passes. Thank you. Um Mr. Nicholson Good evening. Welcome back to the 2025 2026 school year. Tonight we are welcoming or this year we're welcoming approximately 28 new certificated staff, teachers, and administrators. Um, of those of that 28 16 are uh alumni from our district. Um, and so that that that equates to about 50% of 57% of our group coming in this year are are homegrown. So um many of them attended the new teacher institute this week and their first official day is is tomorrow. So, they'll be having orientation tomorrow morning. Uh we're excited to have them here. They look like they're ready. >> Okay. So, first up will be new
002to our district office, 504 coordinator Stephanie Swanson. You're very welcome. All right, Atwater High School. We've got Mr. Joel Warington here. He'll be our new CTE public service teacher. >> All right, we'll see you tomorrow morning. second. So last year we had a split teacher between VUAC and Atwater and now she's fulltime at water and then we have a fulltime public service. All right, next we have Back Colony. Come on down. So we've got Melanie Valencia Mora. She'll be our new activities director. That's okay. And we also have Kelsey Camish. She Oh, she's LCAP. Gotcha. Sorry. Thank you, Melanie. All right. Next, we've got El Capitan High School. We've got Kelsey Camish. She'll be an agriculture teacher coming here from Oklahoma. Thank you. Thank you. She attended that. Okay. On to Golden Valley. We've got
003Grace Goa. She'll be doing English for us and graduated from BUI Colony. We've got Christopher Kelly. He's a new associate principal at Golden Valley and he's worked for us the last few years. Y we are also adding Ashley Sern, math teacher, Golden Valley graduate. Okay, Livingston and we've got Gianna Azdo. will be joining the A program. Joining our administrative team from Winton Unified School District is Anthony Blaine. He'll be a new associate principal. >> Yep. We've got Mr. Joel Gonzalez. Montade. He's joining the math department. Thank you, sir. Good job. Thank you. Mr. Kyle Pauling is joining the the agriculture department. Merced High School. We've got Kathy Heinrich joining the special education department. Joining the administrative team is Steven Mockley. He's coming to us from Patterson Unified. Also joining the administrative team is Dana Reyes
004coming to us from Dos Palos. This has been a while in the making. We're excited to have Rodrigo Torres joining the Yusede High School team. All right. Okay, that concludes our introductions for tonight. We're excited to get the school year rolling tomorrow with all of our new teachers. Thank you. Moving on to the general public comment period. Um 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 not 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.
005During 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 to 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. Scroll back. Do we have any comments? I got rusty over the summer. So moving on to reports and discussion. Good evening. We had a wild and interesting summer. So, we do have some updates and things to go over with you on
006a variety of topics. For the fiscal notes, um the state budget was adopted and Governor N has signed it. U as part of that we did not include in our regular budget sometime monies that we will be getting. It is not official yet has not said we're actually getting it but we have estimates from school services. So we will be expecting a $3 million discretionary block grant that we'll be getting and then $874,000 from the learning recovery that was thought we were getting two years ago. Then they cut the amount back. Now we're going to be getting that back. The learning recovery is very specific. It has to be targeted towards basically mediation type work for academics. The discretionary block is discretionary. So those are two that were not in the budget funds that we
007are expecting. So that was good news. Then we had the weird roller coaster of a summer. um the federal uncertainty what's going on. We did have that time period where there was some concern over whether we were going to get all of the categorical funings from the federal government. Those have all been released. All of the categorical stuff that we were expecting to get has been released to us a little bit later than normal years but it will be the next year to year and a half uncertainty. The president has made it very clear he would like to get rid of the department of education. He would like to not give out those categorical programs and would like to lump them all into one grant and do things totally different. That led to the delays
008this year on how he might do that. The Senate has put together their education budget right now and it does not match his Senate Republicans who are putting the budget together. pretty much match what we currently get. So, there's going to be a showdown between different groups back in Washington DC and who knows what will happen. Anytime there is a pass budget or things like that, the president cannot just cut that funds. He has to take it back to the Congress to cut them force to give it to us. We do expect to see a lot of delay tactics, a lot of those types of things, but the the amounts we're going to get in those funds. There is some stuff that did pass though that we are watching to see what kind of uncertainty
009that is going to create. Whatever the title of that bill was there was some assistance funding reductions and there was medical reimbursement. We don't know what impact that will happen. SNAP could impact how many of our students qualify for direct certific which means how we get paid for our nutrition program for the last three years in the black for the first time in 25 years. We would be happy to stay there. But if we start to see any type of lowering of how we get our reimbursement, that could be an issue that we might have to address in the next couple years. medical reimbursement. We do get about 1.9 million somewhere right around there that we get reimbured for services that we provide to our students through the Medicare programs. So that is something that
010if they change the rules or how people qualify that we might get less of that. So those are the two that we are watching right now. And why I say we're not it's very uncertain and we don't know the impact on this year's budget at all. Everything that might be a positive tax cuts and all of that kind of stuff took effect right away. All the things that are cuts don't take effect in the bill until after the midterm elections which is next. So not this next. So all these cuts that we're talking about we won't see this year at all. We don't know the impact and it wouldn't start until December of next year and how long it takes to figure out what kind of impact that has. So as you see we will
011be building the budgets starting in May of this year after you'll have a budget but you'll also have a budget and if we had to make 5% cuts where would those come from 10% cuts where those come from? So we will have that ready so if those things do start to materialize we know how we'll address those conversations before it happens not the bottom piece there just kind of shows you we do get about 10.8 million which is about 5% of our money does come from a variety of different programs but again a lot of that is CTE IDA which is special education funding and title one of those are not Washingtonion 3 million to4 million enforcement impacts are unknown. Um the only issue that we saw last year from that was when we had
012protests. So if you have 10% of your population walk out on a day that could cost you anywhere between 10 to 188 that's anywhere between 20 and $250,000 those types of situations. If we had any of those types of things going on or if we see people who are afraid to come to school or we see any type of impact start to rise in this area and our numbers go down that would impact our daily facility notes and then I'll show you some pictures. We did get the bond passed. So that did go out this summer. We did get $20 million that will go into facility project. Um we do have to post the cost of issuance. So that is actually the next item on the agenda, but there's not a lot to discuss. So
013discuss context here. We do have to put that in what we had predicted was the cost of $238,000. Actually came expecting 261,000 came in at 132,000. So it was a lot less. cost of a lot of assume early to help make sure they all sold. We had good bond ratings in that timelines. So December and I'm going to say it out loud and everybody December is still the completion date for the stadiums. So we are not expecting to be able to play any games. Show you some pictures in there. December is still the expected completion. The last parts are very specific when you get into the track. That's a very unique process. Those things have very specific process based on a very busy company who has a lot of others because there's only the beginning.
014They have been told that should not be expecting September and October we are expecting the bid to come in for the business and that's the interior piece of the district office building out there all of the infrastructure it wanted to solar panels at some point. We're going to be testing out access control. So that's hard keys, video systems, video controls, gates, all of those types of systems out there. for a couple months once we move over there. October and November, sites will start to review the five-year master plan and evaluate their site needs, prioritize those site needs. December and January, all of that comes We put that back into the district, not just individual site plans. So January, February, we update the master plan all the funds together, February. You can start to see Now
015see the foundations for the track there are in the build again we can move forward two months on the date inter A couple bathrooms. Thank you. item is just on there because we have to present it to the board and we have to present it to the public and it's just easier to have it as a standalone item. I gave you the numbers in the previous Good evening. Um, we ended last year with an update on our goals. So we thought it would be wise to start off the year with a reminder of what our goals are and then also share those tonight. Our vision is every student will walk off the graduation stage and certification rates yet are highlight and students earning college credit by quite a number of students high high school did
016a really good job. So that'll come out on all of our web pages. Those numbers are just the graduating class. So you're talking about 2500 students. Yeah. 2500 students. Well, in my opinion, the vision is aspirational. I I think the important thing is is that we're growing significantly in that direction every year. Um, you know, the graduation rate isn't going to change. It's actually going to fluctuate back and forth. We're probably going to be in the 94 95 area consistently and that's kind of how it's been and we just continue to push and offer programs and um try to make sure we have CTE programs that are of interest to students that our community needs like you saw tonight >> and I think we're making continuous improvement in each of those areas. So our go
017for every pathway to have a college credit opportunity. We don't have that right now. That was only at two schools and just a pilot to try to figure it out. This year we're going to do that. It looks like we have you know students a large number of students are receiving a certific large progress with college credit. Do we know how many students um haven't done its up it's more than ourap capture the question. As we encourage our students to take dual enrollment classes, um do we have any forum for them to feedback on um that's working out. We um yeah >> so we asked college about that for the specific classes because they do an end of class that would be good to actually get feedback from the students because a lot of are
018doing asynchronous learning and um you know I I think there's probably based on feedback for improvement so I think it would be good to get that information from students yeah all of our CCAP classes would be as we offer our students and then they take classes some of those might be in person and then of course our dual labs by our teachers instruction is also one of our superintendent goals and it's dealing with and improving that to have more time at higher levels of D. Um last year we started with a deeper learning theme this year. Um so the professional develop work on this we're going to have the one hour training again at the start meetings at every site then they'll be quarterly professional development um opportunities we found last year we did a
019half pull out to kind of get everybody calibrated and on board that was a lot of impums but sites have the opportunity to decide how they want their teachers to do So they could do preps, they could do a day, they could do them during a staff meeting. We wanted to provide that flexibility to our staff and then also that forms about what administrators and shout out to our instructional coaches and our induction mentors. They are great. Um some summer offerings that we have related to instruction. Um we've had the new teacher institute going on for the last three days. Um they had 26 on any given day. We had 28 teachers, right? And so we did invite some teachers with us to come back to the institute. So that number also included them. Um
020today started the summer institute participants today. So that was awesome. And then we as you know we have new math and new science curriculum. So we started the voluntary trainings for that so the teachers can learn to use theurriculum. for our social studies goals. Some of the highlights coming up are of course the health class we'll be implementing district in the spring semester. We're going to have our health teachers get together in the fall to come up with common assessments for the health part of the class. And then our world history, US history and government teachers are going to get together to review the assessments from last year and re Our data analysis was a new goal that we started in January. Um, and just before our last board meeting, we had a solution consultant
021come in to work with administrators and learn about data analysis and what goals data protocols. We also did a big data review at our startup last week with administrators where we looked at our data from our tests but also certifices on their And then we continue our grow your own goal. We have the opportunity high school district. We have the internship opportunities. Um the principal held their meetings at the end of the year and we have the number of graduates hired each year. um Johnson hosted a summer book study on the bookstream and it was for administrators members participated in that over the summer. I just included the graduates hired for you there. I'm sure for our internship opportunities this summer, these were for students. Um we did have 78 students in June participate in
022the work internship and those this year where they had to live in the city of Merced schools and we still were able to get 78 students doing that. Um in addition this summer we had 30 students do a teach education summer internship and while we aren't always our internship opportunities aren't always about teaching many jobs instit put out the information and the students who were interested contacted the AP. Um we had some students um in the spring through the we will um education grant that they were in our careers and education courses and so any of those students had an opportunity to go out to a middle school or elementary school and some even went to preschools and they actually got paid for those extra hours. So it kind of varies, but the summer internships
023were just announced available for class to have also got some finalized numbers on our FA when I showed this to you before it final numbers. You can see in those first colored bars we did grow over 16% and then our number of students who submitted applications the California goal is 100% very aspirational but the right direction and then our customer service impact and HR is working college to get out and train our classified staff right now customer This year it was not the summer was only available. You had the student had to live in the city of Merced and they had to work at one of our Merced campuses that's funded through Merced County worket. So they they've been really great with us and when they have extra money in a grant they offer it
024to us to do this. Last summer it was open to our whole district county. This summer the money they had was only so students were able to participate in that certific Well, they don't get cific. They don't have they didn't have a a teacher class for that. >> All at Golden Valley, they do cap. I don't know if you're familiar with that program, but their um education pathways where um they teach students how to So all their students actually go out as part of their class on yeah communications and so on that's for you're already enrolled you're already in school here's how you address your problem right so what about And I've been kind of on the website quite a bit in the last couple weeks trying to figure out registration for students, who do
025you talk to, where do you get forms, how do you fill things out? And um there's a page with lots and lots lots of links, but in terms of for instance scheduling counselors, is there anything we can do to digitize and make easier that whole process? It feels like There's just long long lines at schools for people to get in to see counselors and everything. I'm really wishing that we could improve registration, improve round, make things obvious, but then I think the majority of the population, a lot of our students have their Chromebooks and be able to do things electronically. Is there any way to I just feels like we're very much in the dark ages with ground up and registration. So I know that our most of our counselors do have online scheduling so
026that they can you can schedule to see a counselor through the counseling page on each um school site. Um I agree there's not the registration um process um but we do find fewer errors are made in registration as far as people going to the right school, being able to help people. So, we haven't gotten to that process yet. We did do data confirmation is now all those used to be paper. Um, and then we also have our students registering for classes. They do that online. We're using AR's academic plan now. Um, so we're getting that that's great to hear. I don't know. I spent some time in my office today and it was I don't know the process felt really. I thought like couldn't AI help with this? You know, like you're a junior and
027you need these classes and you and then it puts your schedule together, you know? I don't know. It just And I have student I don't know. I just I really feel like there's an opportunity to make the round less frustrating foramilies, for guardians, for students, for counselors, for all the staff. I mean, everybody wants their schedule and I get it, right? Thank you. We're very excited for this year. I love the communication. All right, moving on to the employee associations comment period. Do we have any representatives from the district teachers association? Anyone from CSCA? We move on to item 12, consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Do I have a second? Second >> district would like to thank the following for their donations. Mary Fitch, Andrea Nevs, Livestock, April
028Hernandez, and that's it for this month. Thank you for your donations. Thank you. Um to the vote. We have questions. Is that okay? >> I know um Mrs. Johnson, we asked or discussed this a little bit, but I saw the $100,000 for online speech therapy. Do you have any ideas on ways that we might be able to attract speech therapists into our district? I know you said online's not ideal. >> No, I don't. We currently signing bonus attached to it for two years service and zero applicants in the last five years. I'm open to any ideas. Is it at all part of the teaching pathway? Like I don't know. Do they cover that? Could speech be something they talk about? Grow your own. I don't know. I know that over the years there have been
029many students that I've talked to about speech and language pathology is the path to go in and I know that we are I mean I have heard of several students who are involved in that. The thing is I don't know that they always want to come back here to do that. Are there any valley schools that have really strong programs that we could recruit out of >> does they're very well known for it and we re when few years ago when I worked in HR we did reach out to them but kind of the same thing nobody was interested signing bonus what are other schools almost every Thank you. Questions or discussion call for the vote passes unanimously. Moving on to item 13, the action agenda. Do I have a motion to approve? >> Do
030I have a second? >> Second. >> Call for the vote. Motion passes. 1302. Do I have a motion to approve? >> Second. >> I have a question. Um, are these folks working towards their credentials? and then the admin credential is working. So is it I mean it's part of the employment that they'll finish these credentials even on the renewal the one you said that was renewed. Is there progress towards that or is that So some of It's a two year. Any other questions? Moving on to pass >> as part of the Golden State pathway grant and high school identif Responsive respons Call for the motion. >> So move. >> I have a second. Second. Any questions or discussion? Call for the vote. Motion passes. Item number 14. >> Thank you, President. We have our kickoff
031event on Monday. Doors open at 8 a.m. It will start promptly at 8:30. They're changing things up a bit this year. So that will be exciting. You'll see Mrs. on the stage with cabinet answering a few questions. Then we have a very dynamic speaker. looking forward to exciting. >> Thank you, Superintendent. Moving on to item 15, communications board member communications. >> I know. Yes. >> Thank you. Trust me. >> Um, yes, thank you. I I was not here in June and I appreciate everyone's understanding with that. Um, one of the things that we had talked a little bit briefly about um prior to my absence was um additional security for campuses and I was able to to some of the um someone help me with the um students were presenting depth of knowledge. They they
032showcasing for um they had they they made great presentations and you know one of the recurring topics was bathrooms closed, vaping in bathrooms etc. So, I asked students how they felt about that and um there were no student said they would feel uncomfortable with additional security or walking through um monitors or things like that. They feel like it would really slow down vaping on campus and it would make life better for them. So, I know Superintendent Peterson, you were exploring that and I think it's a good thing to continue to to research at least for this point. Um, like Julio said, um, good luck to all of our new teachers, administrators, and students, and, um, thank you to cabinet and staff who worked hard over the summer to have us ready for the kick off
033this school year. Good things are coming this way, right? going to reiterate the welcome back to everyone. It was great to see a good large percentage of our alumni coming back to work within our district. That's always a positive. Dr. Wymer, I'm sure that this summer was rather challenging at times. Not sure where we were going to be budget-wise. Thank you for those updates. And one of the highlights of this summer was the podcast that we had graduating seniors do. I thought that was uh well planned. So that Cheryl and Vivian and that crew back there, that was a great job. Thank you so much for making that happen. >> Well, I'm looking forward to uh Mrs. Jasinga's debut on uh on Monday. So, um, I'll see you there and, uh, hope everyone has a
034fabulous start to the new year. Thank you. >> Thank you, Trusty Pico. As I keep saying, I'll be channeling my in rested and looking forward to the new year. I'd like to wish everyone a fantastic new year.