001Instructions for accessing subtitles in a language other than English are included on our board meetings web page as well as in the description below. Good evening and welcome to the Russ Valley School District. Um it is 601 and I am calling our meeting to order. Um let's see here. Lost my script. We have four trustees present for our meeting today. Myself, Rachel Litwak, we have Chris Lamos Cobb, Anna Marsh, and Daniel Cassidy. and our trustee Shelley Hamilton will be um joining us shortly. We also have cabinet members present. We have superintendent Tyler Graph and CBO Chris Carson. Our meeting is being live streamed via YouTube and the links on our website and on the agenda. There will be a 60-second delay between the meeting and the YouTube live stream. An audio recording of the meeting
002will be made available to the public on our district website within 72 hours following the meeting. So our first item on our agenda today is closed session. Going to identify the closed session topics. We have one item here listed. Conference with labor negotiators pursuant to government code section 54957.6 all employee groups CSEA RBTA confidential classified classified management certificated management. There is no public here for public comment. So I will recess us to close session at 6:03. Three. All right, welcome back. It is 6:47 and we are um reconvening in open session. Our report out from close session um we do not have anything to report out. No decisions were voted on. Our next item is procedural items. We have uh the pledge of allegiance and democratic election. So if you would like to stand and
003say the pledge with us, please do. >> I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Next item is to adopt the agenda and time allocations. Do I have any changes, requests, questions? Seeing none, I will entertain a motion. >> I will make a motion to adopt the agenda and time allocations as >> second motion. A second. Chris >> I. >> Shel. >> I. >> Hannah. >> I. >> Daniel. >> Hi. >> Rachel. I. All right. So, we have an agenda. Our next item is communication. We have public comment regarding items that are not on the open session agenda. We have open session comments. All right, seeing nobody here, I'll move on to
004correspondence and communication to the board. Um, we have one item there, email exchange. Hopefully, everyone had a chance to catch up and read all that. Um, and our next item is announcements by labor unions, CSEA, RVTA. You have any representatives here who'd like to speak? >> Sorry, we can't hear you. >> Sorry, the fan. Oh, so uh announcements by labor unions, CSEA, and RBTA. I don't know if they're here and would like to say anything. >> Okay, they're good. So, you're going to pass on that. Um, our next item is E, employee recognition. um welcome in recognition of district staff, new staff, newly tenured certificated staff, and employee milestones. So, I will turn it over to you. >> Great. So, this is one of my favorite board meetings of the year because we get to
005recognize uh three distinct groups. Um one is our new employees and some of them are here. Uh the other is our newly tenured folks, which is a really exciting uh step in the direction for some of our employees. And then we're going to talk about our milestones. Folks that have been here from five all the way up to, believe it or not, 35 years of service. >> Exactly. Pretty pretty special. So, um, logistically what we'll do is we'll uh announce all the the uh new employees. Then we're going to have all the new employees come up here. We're going to snap a photo. Then we're going to announce all the newly ten tenured folks. Have you all come up and get a photo and then all we'll bring all the milestones together. Um so and
006and before we start announcing I think um the new employees will feel this. I think the tenure folks have felt this and the folks that have been here anywhere between 5 and 35 years certainly felt this. But this district is a special special place to work. It really is. Um, I've been here for just over a year and the people of this district, starting with the board, um, to our custodians to our teachers and everybody in between are truly amazing people. Um, and you know, the culture and climate of a workplace matters a lot. It really does. And when you've got a boss who cares about you or a colleague who is, you know, caring and supportive, it makes the hard work of teaching kids just that much easier. So, um, I hope that Everybody
007feels that from our newly hired folks to our 35-y year vets. Um that they all feel the love and care that I feel in this district. Um so we'll start with uh the Brookside folks and learn a little bit more about their new employees. >> Hi. Um I don't think anyone from Brookside is here. We do have back to school night tomorrow, so I think people might be conserving their energy. Um, but we're really excited to welcome Jessica Camino as a new onetoone aid, Maddie Dow as a new kindergarten teacher, Chrissa Gavin as a new TK aid, Carly Tect is our new third through fifth grade SDC teacher, and Susanna Makho is our new health assistant [Applause] valley. We do have some people here. So maybe just give a wave. Um Cadence, our TK Sydney
008Dean, TK Wait, wait for it. our library special [Applause] teacher and Courtney Young teacher. >> Good evening. Thank you. Um like we have back to school night tomorrow. So, I know we're going to be very busy planning for that and I frankly haven't really surveyed the audience well enough to know who's here. But I would like to recognize that we've got Chelsea Kunda, fourth grade teacher joining us at Manor, Dana Gooberman, TK aid, uh, Colleen McGawan, also kindergarten teacher. Um, good evening everyone at W Thomas. We're super excited to welcome our new teachers. We have Chloe Duncan who's not here this evening in kindergarten and Abby who's our new TK teacher over here [Applause] which I'm going to give my buddy everyone at White Hill. I don't see any of the new teachers here tonight
009but that's fine. We have John Allen seventh and eighth grade Spanish teacher. Michaela Dobson, a new seventh and eighth grade math teacher and intervention teacher. Hannah Hyorn, sixth grade core history and English teacher. Ron Newaff, a new RSP teacher, and Karolina Ortega, a seventh grade English teacher. [Applause] And we have a few districtwide folks. Um, our new director of student services, Lori O' Conor. [Applause] We also have Stella Perky, a K5 counselor. Is Stella here today? And then, uh, Jose Perez Perez, a new custodian. [Applause] So, why don't we have anyone who's in the room who's a new teacher to come on up here and we'll grab a quick new employee, come on up here and we'll take a take a quick photo. >> Come on. What you doing? Nice to meet you. >> Tyler,
010why don't you get in too? >> Let's all go around the front of the table. [Laughter] I'm stand >> and I have to say uh I've actually been into the classrooms of I think four or five of our new teachers and I'm impressed. I think we've got some really great new folks on our team and I'm excited to see where they're they're able to go this year. So, um to the new teachers, new uh classified folks and new administrators, welcome to the team. >> Um now we're going to talk about some newly tenured folks. So, this is folks that have been here the first day of their third year is this this year. So that means there's a little bit more job security. We've kind of given them a big green green light and a
011big thumbs up about the quality of their work and we want to keep them around for as long as possible. So um I'm going to start with one of our administrators who's newly tenured, Amanda Wagner. [Music] [Applause] And with that, I'll hand it over to you to announce. >> And I'm excited to announce that Milani Peterson, one of our TA teachers, is also newly tenured. And I am excited to announce that Anna Barnett, our third grade teacher, is well as Amelia Lamar who is not here this announce Heather Selby Y >> I'm really excited truly because Ellie denies as a part-time replace took her five years to get to here. Um so she's so excited that she's not here this evening. So Ellie Deni, our intervention teacher and who is here is Sam Marshall, our
012fourth grade teacher. [Applause] Oh, one more. Do I have one more? >> Oh, Amanda Han. Amanda Han, our music teacher, is also being tened this evening. [Applause] >> All right, I think we have three tenured folks in the room, so come on up and we'll get another photo with you and the board. I'm sorry. Here we go. >> Hi, come on in. >> All right. One, two, three. >> Well done. And uh the next group of folks we have uh are milestone folks. So people that have been really committed to the district. And I feel like um you know I mentioned the uh culture and climate of the district. That's part of what keeps folks around for a long time. Um, and it also highlights the dedication of the people that have been with us
013for five, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 35 years. It's pretty impressive when folks stick around that long. So, I'm going to start with folks that have been here for five years. Uh, first is our CBO, Chris Carson. Five years. [Applause] We also have PE teacher Mike Parnau, fifth grade teacher Rachel Rosen, and our much beloved band and music teacher, Malik Charles Wade, the first. [Applause] And I have the pleasure of reading off the tenure service. And first we have Pam Cooney who is our fiscal services accountant here at the district office. Next we have Aaron Hess, sixth grade English history core at White Hill. Sarah H, RSP teacher at Brookside. Christa Hood, first grade teacher at Wade Thomas. [Applause] Angie Castner, intervention EL teacher at Hidden Valley. Tracy Robinson, elementary PE teacher at Brookside. Joanie
014Samson, second grade teacher at Hidden Valley. Mark Solario, 1:18 at White Hill. And finally, the tenure service, Jenny Wright, fiscal services accountant at the district. [Applause] >> All right. And I have the opportunity to introduce our 15 years of service. Um, Lee Hassan, PE specialist at multiple sites. [Applause] Benjamin Rodriguez, custodian of Wake Thomas. and Christina Workman, third grade teacher in [Applause] >> All right, we're moving on to 20 years. >> That is not an insignificant amount of time uh in life, let alone to be in one workplace. So, congratulations to these folks. Let's hear it for Mitch Brown. [Applause] We also have Casey Crawford, one of our grounds maintenance guys, [Applause] >> Daniel Diaz, >> and uh my right arm, Terresa Machado, the executive. [Applause] We also have building manager for Manor, Victor Montoya,
015>> and another one of our beloved music teachers, Pete Sanuchi. [Applause] >> And we have two people with 25 years of Siri of service. uh Katherine Hston, first grade teacher, Brookside [Applause] >> and uh TK teacher for Manor, Gretchen Matis, [Applause] >> and uh number one on the seniority list, uh the assistant superintendent of Ed services and uh my biggest thought partner in the district, uh the person who keeps our equity work going. Let's give a big round of applause for [Applause] Here's [Applause] the 35 more. [Laughter] >> Uh, if I'm if we've called your name, come on up. Let's get a big photo of all the folks that have been here. >> Wow. [Applause] >> congratulations. Congratulations. [Applause] >> So, um, first of all, I'm excited you all came to hear, uh, our attendance
016update a little bit later in public session, but >> if you're going to leave, uh, we're going to spend about 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Feel free to mingle. We have some treats, um, some waters up here. And congratulations to all the folks that are new to our district, newly tenured, and the folks that have been here for quite some time. So, uh, let's enjoy All right, and we are back. Thank you for that brief break recognition ceremony. It was lovely. I don't know if we have anyone who'd like to make public comment on that last agenda item, but if you would like to, you feel welcome to make a public comment. Seeing that, I will move on to our next item. F presentation and/or action items. Um the first one here is board discussion for
017the purpose of giving direction to the superintendent regarding partial tax renewal. >> Wonderful. Okay. We're going to present. Great. And do I have the clicker power here? I do. Great. >> So, oh, and before we get started, just to like refresh everyone's memory, we're going to have the presentation. feel free to ask questions along the way or at the end of it and then we'll go out for public comment and then we'll have a discussion at the board. Okay, >> great. >> And so there's uh no vote tonight. This is really just kind of information and getting feedback from the board and we're not making any decisions around the parcel tax. I'm just kind of the gist of what I'm trying to do today is share what I'd like to do in terms of engaging
018the community before we bring real discussion to the board about taking action on uh a ballot measure. So last year we kind of had to spend a lot of time with the budget advisory committee. Then by the time we got to January we came straight to the board for action and we were off to the races. And I think one of the things that that did is that it didn't give us a lot of time to talk to the community about it before we brought it to the board. So this time around our our goal is to make sure we're open and transparent with the community early early on, well before we bring anything to the board. Um so that's kind of what I'm bringing you today. I'm happy to take any feedback you have
019towards the end here. Um so I just want to start with like why a parcel tax matters for our schools. There's two uh really big pieces here. One is that the current parcel tax as it's structured provides $4.7 million of and I've underlined this essential funding. This isn't a nice to have. This isn't like a cherry on top. This is core to the operations of our dis district. Without $4.7 million, we have to make sweeping changes to what we do here in the district. $4.7 million. Our total budget's only $30 million. So, you can see it's a huge proportion of what we use uh to run our district each and every day. Um and part of the reason this is so critical for us is that we are the low we have the lowest per
020pupil funding in the county. And I actually have a newly updated um graph there. We had a different graph last year, but you can still see that we're at the bottom. And uh the highlighted in green are kind of our four comparison districts. Larksburg, Kent Field, and Miller Creek along with us. Um those are kind of the districts that are similar number of students, uh similarly funded. Um and you can see there's a huge discrepancy in districts across the uh across the county. What you see in that far right hand column is actually the state average. And you'll see different numbers in there, but for us as an elementary district, the state average is $14,494 per student. We're at $11,774. If we just had the state average, so not asking for a big big number,
021just the state average ADA um or per pupil funding, that's an extra $4.8 million. with our current ADA, we wouldn't be asking the community for parcel tax increase at all if we just had the average. So, this really highlights the core of the issue is that we have a county low uh per pupil funding. So, I think it's just this is the crux of the issue is the the revenue is extremely low. We're basically at the state minimum of what they will give us. Um here's a multi-year projection. This is uh was accurate about two weeks ago or a week and a half ago. Uh Chris Carson will come back to the board with new numbers at the next board meeting on the 17th as he closes the books. But I think there's a couple
022things here I want to highlight. One is when you look at the red line um for 2324 actually 2223 you see 30,500,000. Then the next year you see 30,300,000. The next year you see 30,100,000. And then you see this year and we're at 29,700,000. So over the last four years we've seen less money in the district with increasing costs, right? Um salaries are going up. Uh PG is going up. So it's really difficult to maintain our programs while having decreasing revenue. So I think that's something to note. Then down here in the yellow, you'll see last year we we deficit spent by uh $600,000. Um this year we're projecting and Chris will have updated numbers for us uh on the 17th about 2.7. We're going to see that number be right about what that is.
023Um so we're not going to see a bunch of money fall out of the budget this year. Chris really tightened the screws on the budget. It's going to be pretty darn close to exactly that number. Um, so that's year one of the fiscal cliff and you can see in 2526 another big deficit spending year. Um, so really last year and this year are the heart of the crisis. >> Do you have a question there, Rachel? >> Yeah. So you said this year we're going to have the deficit spending of 2.7, but is it 2.3 for this year 2526? >> Uh, thanks for clarifying Chris. Chris and I are getting me messed up messed up with this because he's closing the books. The 2.7 was for last year. You're going to see the finalized number on
024the 17th for last year. Okay. >> That's why I'm kind of interchanging last year and this year. >> Okay. >> And and then what we're projecting for this year is 2.3. You're correct. >> Thank you for clarifying. >> Great. So all this to say like this is the issue, right? It's a revenue issue. We're seeing decreasing revenue over the last four years and increasing spending into our reserves. We're spending on our reserves pretty quickly and we'll talk more about that on the 17th. Um so that's just kind of the why we need a partial tax and why we need a partial tax increase. Uh this is kind of just after the partial tax didn't pass measure E. Um we hit the ground listening right away. Uh we sent out a survey to the community. We
025posted on social media. We had a couple hundred responses. Um, we actually had it posted in the IG as well. We had 164 responses there. Um, and I read through every single comment that was put on there and we found, you know, some good things to take away and some real patterns emerged and I'll talk about that here in a couple slides. Uh, the campaign also got together and did some reflection. What worked, what didn't work, what would we do differently next time. Um, and there were some good good thoughts there as well. Uh then we did some data analysis with our with team civics to actually look at who turned out um in the vote, who didn't turn out. Um we had a 38% uh sorry we had a 30 38% um turnout rate
026to the uh election, which is pretty pretty low. We were hoping for somewhere closer to 40 to 45 in that special election. Um, and we saw certain areas of the community voted um more than others. Uh, and then we we did outperform our polling which was exciting. Our polling was showed that there wasn't quite as much support, but I think the efforts of the campaign were were really good. Uh, Fairfax had the lowest voter turnout. Uh, it's most difficult to knock doors there. In my experience, I knocked doors in both Sandell and Fairfax and it's just harder to connect with the Fairfax voter for geographic reasons and fencing and all kinds of things in in the neighborhoods. Um, unincorporated parts of the town had the highest voter turnout and the highest no votes. Um, so
027the unincorporated parts were kind of the the place where we needed to do the most work. Um, and turnout for targeted voters. So those voters that the campaign reached out to had uh had very high yes votes um compared to and very high turnout compared to the average um person and I guess the a big need is just to engage the non-parents. I parents voted at a higher rate than community members who weren't current parents. So it's more of a challenge because we have every parent's email. We don't have every you know citizen's email. So the data analysis actually turned out some information information for us. And then we've actually uh proactively gone out and met with a couple key constituents as well. Coalition sensible taxpayers being one, a member of the chamber of commerce
028who was a key uh player in in the discussion as well and the chamber had um some opinions on the par tax as well. So just kind of last year at the end of the year we did a lot of reflecting on what worked and what didn't work and what would you would do different. Do we know about overall parent involvement if their kids go to Archie or out of you know private schools for those parents? >> I don't have the data on that. I have the RVSD parent data verse the average you know community member. >> Um so we learned some lessons and here are some of the pluses on the lessons we learned. Uh first and foremost there was supermajority support just not 66.7%. Um we had almost 63% of the community said
029yes we need to increase the paral tax we need to pay our teachers uh you know more competitive wages compared to surrounding districts. Um and there was a really wide range of endorsements when you looked at the measure E website you had you know all kinds of endorsements from every corner of the community. So overall there was a lot of support for this. Um I think in the reflections most people really understood the need. Those first two slides that I just shared with the county low revenue and you know all the challenges with our budget people know it's it's not mismanagement. It's not um you know too much fat in the district. It's literally revenue issue and most people understood that. Uh the campaigning efforts made a difference. the people that had face-to-face conversations with
030someone from the campaign voted yes way more frequently. So, I think that's something for us to reflect on and um something to be proud of for those folks that were on the campaign. Um and then maintaining the senior opt out was like a very clear uh yes on on that. So um in the coalition sensible taxpayers the their uh sensible tax criteria would would argue uh to maintain the senior opt as well. So then we had some uh lessons learned that were kind of the more on the delta side. Uh I think the first one that that really stood out was federal uncertainty. Um ballots hit people's uh mailbox basically right when the conversation around tariffs started happening. uh the stock market kind of crashed right around that same same time. So there was a
031lot of uncertainty right when that ballot hit hit the mailboxes of our community members pretty loud and clear. We heard a special elections at a no-go for for us. Um we felt like it was urgent. We needed to go out and do it right now because this pay issue and you know the fiscal health of our district is a critical issue that is urgent. Um, so we felt like we needed to go do that and most folks want us to be on a statewide election. Um, there was a couple things around like we had there was active opposition. Um, there's some mistrust in the community and then some misinformation. I think it's kind of reaching out to those non-parents. Uh, it was tough to get the right information to them. And there's a little there's
032a smaller part of the community that has some thoughts about some of the decisions we've made as a district in the past, you know, five to seven years. And there's some there's still some scar tissue there. And I think we've got to continue to work um with every member of the community and be transparent and open with folks um so we can kind of uh move past some of that past mistrust. And then just some confusion. It was a renewal, but it was also an increase. It was also a methodology change. So, if you haven't been paying really close attention to your tax records, this could have felt all kinds of different ways to you. Um the the simple thing was that it's, you know, on average about a $240 increase for folks. Um, and
033some people felt like it was the whole new methodology was on top of the pass tax and some people thought their garage was going to get counted in the square footage, but it really wasn't. So, there was just a lot of confusion. I think that's going to happen when you try to renew something, when you try to increase it and you try to change the methodology at the same time. So, those are some of the lessons that we learned on the Delta side. So, here's kind of my the gist of the presentation tonight. Um, the PDF ruined that, I'm sorry. Um, we have two town halls and we actually just sent out a flyer to every community member. You should have received that in your mailbox um for September 10th and September 25th. It's the
034exact same town hall. So, if you can't make the 10th, come to the 25th. If you can't make the 25th, come to the 10th. It'll essentially be the same presentation. Anyone's welcome to come. Right now I have nine people that have responded yet that they're coming. My hope is that there's 10 times that many people and we pack the room and have a really honest open conversation. Um the essence of the intention is to collaborate with community to be really transparent around our budget. I actually have some of the slides built out for that and it aligns closely with the budget presentation I did last year. And then we're going to gather some feedback. You know, with the understanding that this almost passed as it is, what would be the tweaks that we'd want to
035make to make sure it does pass so that our schools can stay really high quality. Um, so we'll talk a little bit about a budget overview. There's a lot of frequently as asked questions around why aren't we cutting administrators? Why don't we combine districts? And I'm going to answer some of those questions. And then we're gonna actually have some table talk where everyone talks together about, you know, what give me more feedback. What would you do differently? And I'm going to capture as much of that feedback. And then hopefully at the end allow for some just open-ended Q&A. Then my hope is that in those meetings, a couple leaders kind of start to to emerge from the group. I already have some names in mind, but I'd like to get a working group of no
036more than 20 people to meet on October 9th and 16th to sit down with me to work on, hey, this almost passed. What do we need to do to make it pass? What are the key questions that we need to work on? And this is kind of what I want feedback from the board on. Um, and this working group will be some folks that are like really pro- measure E that might have been on the committee that really, you know, endorsed or voted yes and then some folks that might have voted no and had some misgivings about the the approach or the messaging and we want them on the this working group as well. Two of the key questions that I'm thinking of and I'd love to have input on the board on this is
037should we move forward with a per square foot or per parcel? That was one of the pieces in the survey feedback that I got last year that was not clear. The senior opt out was clear. Everyone almost everyone wanted the per square foot or per parcel or some combination of that was there's some debate there. And then how much of an increase do we need? I would assert that we need a minimum of $3 million. And we went out and asked for the minimum. Um this was not, you know, one of those huge asks and then we come way off that ask on the second round. We were transparent with the community. We kind of needed $3 million and that's what we built the methodology around. Um so that could be one of the questions
038that we talk about. Um let's see here. So the timeline is September, these two town halls on the 10th and the 25th right here at the district office 5:30 to 7 o'clock. October is when I'm going to get that working group of 15 to 20 people together. We'll meet here in this room um and really kind of get into the details of things and debate the key questions that the board um uh asks us to answer. And then in December or January, that's where we'll bring, you know, kind of what we found in the working group to the board. They're not making a recommendation to the board. I'm just going to share the data that we discussed and the board will discuss how they want to answer those questions. And what we'll do in December
039or January is kind of make the decision of going out for a June 2026 or November 2026 uh ballot measure. And then in February, once the board votes on that, that's where a campaign committee would get started in the community and they would kind of run with it and we would kind of step back at that point. Just want to remind folks that this is the exact slide that I shared last year about what would happen if the ballot measure did not pass. The ballot measure didn't pass. Everything highlighted in yellow has happened. We made $500,000 of cuts. We actually considered deeper cuts and we cut counseling services through some budget maneuvering. Uh we cut librarians and kindergarten aids as well. So that went another $200,000 deeper into the um budget. We did cut the
040fifth grade instrumental music. Sorry, that was supposed to be highlighted, not turned yellow because you can't read it. But essentially, yes, did fully fund music and art. So that was kind of a cut through the support of the community and and yes, the YES foundation. So that was helpful as well. And then salary increases will stagnate. Um we're actually going to go back to the union to negotiate in October and the district doesn't have much to give. So, you know, there's no number on the table right now, but um essentially what we said is going to happen happened. Now, if a partial tax had passed or does pass in the future, these are kind of some of the considerations that we would have, it's really about maintaining our excellent student programs, our excellent schools. People
041move to this community because of the quality of the schools and the quality of the teachers. Other things we that I would like us to focus on is expanded intervention support for students that might be below grade level in math or in reading. Um what we're seeing is that the efforts we're making in that area are helping students and our our student achievement data is is showing it. Um more support for our special education program um just to make sure all of our families are getting what they need. Bringing a Spanish-sp speakaking community liaison into the fold so our Spanish speaking families feel more connected to our schools. um obviously to attract and retain high quality diverse staff members multi-year uh settlement agreement with their unions uh making our salary schedule more competitive with comparative
042districts so not with TAM and Mil Valley but with Larksburg Madera Kentfield and Miller Creek and then minimize or eliminate our structural deficit that you saw in earlier slides and I just want to finish with this piece because it's not guaranteed that a partial tax passes at like just a straight flat renewal without an increase. Um it provides $4.7 million of that $30 million budget. It is essential funding. Not nice to have funding. It is essential. Um we still have the lowest per pupil funding and we have a relatively low parcel tax compared to our comparison districts without an increase. So this is an increase to the current parcel tax. We're probably going to need to make deeper cuts somewhere between 500,000 and a million dollars of cuts at the end of this year or
043the beginning of next year. And those are like those are not like administrator. We've we've cut all the administrators and I'll share that in the budget update that I send out in another week or so. This is student programs. This is a million dollars of student programs. So counseling, TK, intervention, you know, real significant things that support our students would likely be cut if the parcel tax just didn't have an increase. And if the parcel tax didn't pass at all and we went without a parcel tax, we would probably have to close two elementary schools and likely would fall into state receiverhip within two years. Oakland Unified was in state receiverhip for over 20 years, just got out of it and are about to fall right back into it. That's not what this community wants
044at all. And it's something we need to pay real close attention to. And I know this feels dramatic for me to say, but if we go back to this, that felt dramatic for me to say last year. and we had to do every one of them and we're still really tight on the budget. So when I talk about these things in the in the right hand side of this column or in this slide, those seem really really dramatic. And that first one with $500,000 to a million dollar cuts, that's like kind of the bare minimum that we would need to do. And then if we didn't have a parcel tax at all, that's actually what we would have to do. there would be two elementary schools that have portable buildings on the yards and would
045have to close two or schools at a minimum. So, I hate to be dramatic and the bearer of bad news and, you know, be pessimistic here, but I want the community to know exactly what will happen if we don't get an increase or if we don't have a partial tax at all. So, that's kind of the end of the presentation. Uh again a reminder to the board that the gist of what I'm asking for is um in these town halls or in this and in this working group what are the key questions you want me to try to get more data on so you all can make the decision in December January about timeline and structure of the next parcel tax any feedback or questions you all have. How are we engaging with the business
046owners in the communities who in speaking with a few were strongly opposed to this because their costs were going to significantly increase. Uh, I think I would like to see some uh someone from the Chamber of Commerce of Fairfax and Santa Selmo on that small working group to help represent the business community because I think one of the pieces we heard from the business community was that the square foot was scary because if you own a 10,000 foot warehouse, you're going from 720 bucks to, you know, $5,000. Um, so that I think was part of the feedback that we got from them. And this is not like Safeway and CVS. This is like the, you know, a community member that owns a small business in downtown. Y, it's those folks that are that were a
047little bit more concerned. From from the feedback that you got all the various surveys and conversations, do you have a general sense of whether overall it's a messaging problem or a structure problem if you had to? >> It's a really good question >> and if you don't know that's fine. I think that but I think that is core to what direction we move forward. Are we solving a messaging problem? Are we solving a structure problem? >> I think it's a little bit of a yes and. Um, and going back to this slide here, number four, the confusion >> that it's a renewal. Are you part of the TAM district? Are you part is this just an increasing extension? I don't understand. How big is my house? I lived here for 45 years. Got it. >>
048Is it a thousand square feet or is it 15? Do you include the garage? Do you not? >> Could be could be solved with either a structural change to simplify or a messaging change to help eliminate >> and that goes back to these two town halls. It goes back to the small working group and also goes to door knockocking and having one-on-one conversations. So, you know, we're going to need as much support around that as as possible. Do you think that a strong marketing support would help navigate some of the confusion as well as perhaps shifting some of the messaging on why it's important to pass this? I know that you've got a brilliant heavy lift yourself. You're out there and we know that once the goes on the ballot, we have to be very
049careful, right? So at some point there has to be that messaging that continues that's simple, direct and not convoluted. Not that your message is convoluted, but you know what I'm saying. People react in quick sound bites. >> Y >> do we think a marketing capture would help us? Um and I know that we don't want to spend money in that direction. We have gotten people that have stepped forward and said they would do that. I think once the campaign gets started having uh you know the campaign will need to f do some fundraising and do some messaging and that's the word of mouth. It's the you know sitting in the in a booth out out in front of the grocery store. It's uh you know mailers and it's interesting. mailers get both good feedback like,
050"Oh, great. Thanks for the information." Also, like, "Oh, the district's spending money on this." And they don't really understand the district's not spending money on that. It's actually the campaign that's spending money on that. And so, it's I think it can go either way, >> but the the simplicity of the message matters a ton. >> I agree with you. >> What was the your sense or the from the um the survey. What was the majority for per partial or square foot? >> There wasn't a majority on that. Let me see if I can find it really quick. It was almost like in the 30% on per square foot per parcel and like uh per square foot with a cap. So all three of those options were kind of like you could do a coin flip
051and depending on the community member they would vote differently >> from the feedback. Do you do you get a sense that community members understand and you use the term tight on our budget versus we're deficit spending. We're we're heading we're not just kind of like holding tight on the budget. We're going down. >> Mhm. >> Do you get a sense? To me, that's like a big piece of important. >> I think people think we have more money than we do. >> And I think part of that is school district budgets are wildly complex. Um, and you know, I live and breathe it every day and it's still complex for me. Um, I think there's confusion about what the TAM district has and what we have because The TAM district just asked for a billion dollar
052bond a couple years ago and they assume people assume that because you live in Fairfax and your kid went to Archie 15 or 20 years ago that it's the same district but it's it's not. Um, so I think it goes back to that confusion and the hard part is having a clear concise message while giving all the information at the same time because there's a lot of misinformation about well, you know, the district has the money or they're paying their administrators too much or they have too many administrators or fiscal mismanagement. And you know, as a new superintendent last year, I dug into all of those questions and the answer keeps coming back to county low revenue. That's the problem. >> And the solution is either to change the local control funding formula at the
053state, which I don't have much control over and I don't think our two little towns will have that much influence over, or the community steps up and helps to support its schools, so the schools stay excellent. and seeing that the state average that was a really compelling piece of data that this parcel tax would get us up to the state average whatever the number is it would get us closer to the state average. So >> it it would actually if I do the math um really quickly here I think if we were just at the state average it's actually more than the partial tax increase that we asked for. So we if we just had that average, we wouldn't be asking the community for a partial tax increase. Would be asking for a straight extension.
054But because we are so low here, we kind of need local money to help prop our schools up to maintain the excellence that that's there. >> And the reason that we're not at the state average there, is that because of our unduplicated counts of students? >> It's twofold. It's a good question. So, when we're state funded um or under LCFF, it's because we have low numbers of lowincome eel homeless or foster youth students because it's a relatively fluent community. And then when we're community funded or um basic aid prop, it was Prop 13. Um that's really hit us hard. uh we have a lot of homes that have been passed down or have a really low property tax basis um and that that has a huge impact on us. At one point I think in
055the meeting you had mentioned um >> with a special election and the low turnout there was just an assumption that like oh Fairfax and S some will always support education so it's not really important for me to go out and vote because it'll obviously pass. There was maybe just a cavalier attitude towards some people who didn't show up to vote that they just assumed that everybody supported education and it would happen. Is that was that somewhere in the feedback? What bucket of the feedback would you say that was in? >> That for me was more in like the when I ran into people around the district after the fact, they were kind of like, "Wow, that was surprising. I didn't think that was not going to pass." >> Because this community does I mean, you
056saw in the data, it's almost 63% of the community voted yes. So the community at large does back its schools 66.7 is a high high bar and with low voter turnout it's very difficult to low voter turnout and active opposition it's very difficult to um meet that meet that bar right so I did the math I actually had it written right in front of me I should just looked at my notes um if we had just the the average it's $4.6 6 million more than what we have right now. We asked for three million last year. So it's not only, you know, more than what we asked for. This would solve most of our problems. We would be able to compete salary wise with the other similar districts. We would be able to, you know,
057have more intervention, would be able to have more counseling programs. We'd be able to have a community liaison that speaks Spanish. these things that make our programs as good as they are would just get better. >> You probably can't answer this question, but it was a question that came across porches people I talked to about competition keeping up with the district Jones, right? Why do we have so many districts? what is our stance on a long-term solution to combining districts? And um I don't particularly know the answer to that and I wanted to know if if we are prepared to talk about that at some point as we start to go forward because it's it's almost like we're climbing a scree here, right? M >> and at some point um we're going to fall, right?
058Uh and the only way to really fix that is a potential solution along those lines. And I just wanted to understand like what do you think is the right dialogue or durve to put in that mix of questions? I think it's a it's a great question and I think it comes up all the time as like the solution and I think if there were a communitywide approach to combining every elementary school that feeds into the TAM high school district that might solve the problem, right? Um that is not the purview of this board. You would have to collaborate with every single elementary district board and the TAM board to make that happen. that would take 2 3 4 5 years to have h happen and this is an urgent issue. So I think that the
059urgency thing is one um the other is we're one of the only districts uh south city and Fairfax and Santa Selma are the only two districts that have combined. So then if you start going like I think it's a surface level argument combined districts easier said than done it's a multi-year project that would take a monumental effort by the entire community that would be a distraction from teaching and learning and then if you start getting into the details about okay geographically who's around us is Ross gonna want to take a look where Ross is and take a look where ours is $19,000 to a kid verse $11,000 a kid. Ross probably isn't going to want to combine. So then you go down the road a little bit more and you go to Kentfield maybe. Larksburg
060maybe Santafell maybe Nasio or Loganas probably not. So like, and the fact that we are the lowest on this list makes us an unattractive date to the other districts >> because we we don't help them, we only hurt them. So it we're not going to see a district come to us say, "Hey, let's combine efforts and save on a superintendent." Like, and that's really when you start thinking about you're still going to have the same amount of teachers. you're probably going to have the same amount of schools, which means you have the same amount of custodians, which means you have the same amount of front office admin. Where you save is you have one less superintendent, and then you might save on, you know, another half a dozen district office uh classified or administrators, but
061then you probably add a couple because now your district is bigger. So, you're looking like maybe a $2 million save if you're combining just two districts. It's really not the bang for the buck that folks think it is. It's the same conversation when people say, "Well, why don't you just shut shut a school down?" You're saving on an admin assistant and a principal and maybe custodian. You're looking at $500,000. That doesn't solve the problem. It's what solves the problem is us getting to the average state per pupil funding or if the community says we want to support our schools and have a partial tax that keeps our schools running the way they are or improves them. >> Well, thank you for answering that in such a great way. I think that it's something that needs
062to be talked about in the way that you just did so that the public is aware >> of the why we don't do that and what would come of it if we did >> and that was very helpful. I really appreciate that. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> For people that are going to the town hall as far as what to expect. Uh so I see the intention here. What are the goals? >> I think the goal is one education, right? If I want folks to come to see our budget, right? So, I'm going to go over in a little bit more detail some of these numbers um and some of this and some of our teacher pay comparison. So, there's just it's going to be the first part is going to be kind of like
063the budget video that I put out last year. a precursor to that. Then the second half, the second part is going to be tabletop where community members can say, I think they should combine schools and folks can share other ideas to solve this this complex problem. Then I'm going to go over some frequently asked questions which will include some of these ones that we're just discussing and then it's going to be Q&A. So my hope is at the end of the night >> I will have some more data and more feedback from the community about what could help us get a partial tax increase passed for this district so we can maintain excellence. That's kind of my outcome. That is my outcome. >> And then I'm going to take that data from the 10th and
06425th and take it to that working group in October. The working group will kind of use that data plus their expertise to kind of answer these two kind of guiding questions that I propose uh here and any other questions you all want answered and then I will bring kind of the solutions that the team has for the board to kind of workshop. just kind of a a funnel of you know more distilled data until we get to the board level in December or January. Anyone questions any public comment on this item? So you get three minutes in a two and a half minute warning. All right. Um I was very involved with the last measure E um campaign and so I think some of the um points I'd really want to point out is that
065when it relates to the question she left messaging versus structure um I definitely think it's both. There was a lot of weird information. I think a lot of it was because there wasn't as clear information coming from us and a lot of it is of course there are always people next door that going to post some wrong things on purpose and steer stuff up but I you know I walked I probably knocked more doors than anybody in in that effort and there was so many people had absolutely no idea how this works. Aren't we being paid by lottery? Like why is this even like a thing? like the community has very little understanding close to zero understanding how the budget actually works where the money coming from where are they going and so I truly
066believe we have to do much more structured and solid messaging but it's also been true that it was very complicated worded very complicated we changed the from per parcel to square foot we Is it renewal? Is it not? So, it was we made it as hard for us as we could. And I really think we shouldn't do that again. And that's coming from somebody who like I I put my heart in it. I put like all I could in there. And it's we just made it really hard and I really think we should make it much more simple this time. Um and communication is the key here. It's really it's not just the parents. group. I think parents were very well educated, but of the rest of the community, which are more than 16,000 voters,
067had no clue. And we need those 16,000 people that are not RSVD parents to have a much better understanding. And I'm here to help you. >> Thank you. Hey, uh PJ Bever parent. Um, I guess my comments are, um, piggybacking off of Trustee Hamilton's question about what we see as the real strategy and may and and this is something that I'm sure we want to come out of the town halls focused on, but is it a matter of, you know, part the story in this presentation is sometimes we got a supermajority support And that is despite a lower thanex expected turnout and lower than expected turnout in areas that would have helped us more. And so that to me says then the strategy is focusing on getting turnout by people we would have otherwise expected
068to get turnout. And then part of the conversation here is talking to people like cost about what their issues with the parcel tax were. And to me that that says that the strategy is instead going to focus on addressing previous no voters concerns. And then there's a um you know a third strategy that's not really um you know it's it's discussed I think broadly in terms of education for voters but not as a strategy um to improve on the prior results of educating the public on why we need um this parcel tax. And I think you you it's difficult to split your focus in those ways. And the story can get muddled if you are trying to say to the single digits of business owners that are living in the district and can vote and
069taking an active role in the campaign um of why they should not be worried about this. and then telling um the story to um other members of the public who don't have kids in the school. Why it's actually more fair, more equitable that people who own larger parcels get a greater financial benefit to the property value effect on good schools. And so it just makes sense that they would pay more um per square foot. Um, so you know what I would hope that one of the things, um, Tyler, you can be looking to get out of the town halls is is there one lane that deserves more focus, um, in any of those because maybe there actually isn't that we're going to find out there aren't that many people who are going to go to
070the town halls and pay attention and want to um, oh, I just didn't realize I should turn out before, but now I will. um and as opposed to we really do need to focus on how this is structured. I also think um in terms of reaching out to to the community, something the board was focused on uh sorry is the two town halls both being 5:30 in the evening on a week night. You're we're still limiting the amount of the public that's actually available to attend these things. Thanks. >> Thank you. All right. So, I will bring it back to us for discussions and there's no other people coming. Um, do we have any thoughts, directions we want to give suggestions for town halls? kind of I kind of agree with what our public commenter
071just said about kind of finding which lane would might be most efficient for us to focus on because I think that we could definitely I think I saw you not but I do think that's important and I do think the fact that we really I mean that per square foot and the per partial thing we really need to get that sorted out um in education like I think there's going to be a lot of pieces that we're going to need to figure out to make it I think the time did you consider that doing two different like a you know a morning and an evening? >> I didn't I just thought about after work >> was the first thing I thought about. I'm happy to do I mean if if there's community interest and a
072third one I'm more than happy to do it at a later time in the evening or in the morning or the midday. Um, right now I have nine, actually eight signups because I signed up um to go. Uh, but if there is, if there's interest in more, I'm more than happy to do a different time or different engagement, do one on the weekend. Um, this is >> this is the keystone to this district's success moving forward. Maybe um I don't know if there's any PTA meetings coming up that >> what drop off or whatever, >> right? Cuz I know that like this Friday is way Thomas' PTA and it's already scheduled. It's already in the morning. I wonder if there's an opportunity there instead of having to like, you know, just to to hit a
073couple of those morning times. um maybe something that we can check those because that's I think that's a valid point. Some people evening doesn't work >> because of the kid hustle and whatnot. >> Yeah. I think the the question I have for and I marked it down as a question maybe to ask the the town hall is how do I get clear information to a non RVSD family >> either a young family who's got a kindergartener or you know a one-year-old and a two-year-old >> or a senior who's been in the community for a long time or even that parent who just sent their kid off to college and has been disconnected from RBSD for a few years and isn't in the loop. Like those are the folks that I absolutely need. >> I don't
074know how to a PTA meeting might not be the answer for them, right? >> So what is >> Fairfax Picnic is next weekend. >> I don't know if that's I mean it's not a meeting venue, but it's going to be with lots of kindergarten community members. You >> can also just have a table out there feedback on Measure E. >> I don't know. And my other my other thought on getting people one thing that resonated with uh with me in terms of a couple of the comments and the messaging was like the get out the vote strategy versus the convert the nose strategy. I think it's a get out the vote strategy. So when I think about doing the get out the vote strategy versus convert the nose, two things come to mind. One is
075how do we create the hair on fire messaging? Like I'm thinking if you have a booth that's like that's appropriate and responsible but still is you know like >> our hair is on fire people. This this is super this is important. you can't sit this one out. Like even somehow just messaging to people like you can't assume everybody supports education. You got to get out and vote. >> I think that's like last year when I shared this slide, people are like don't be dramatic. But we >> how do you I'm I'm talking about how you turn up the volume on that >> because now in these two bubbles on the right hand side of the slide like >> I'm going right to that without a partial tax we close multiple schools and likely be a
076state rece like I'm I'm I'm talking that's the hair on fire messaging like go there and then back into the other one >> cuz I and I don't think that that's overly dramatic. No, I mean if if a few simple things happen in the next 18 months, the the the slippery slide to that is right there. >> If we go into a recession and whatever, yeah, we're not that far away. So, >> but I don't think it's about that messaging. It's about getting people to believe it because that is what happened. It's like we had that messaging. People just didn't believe it. They're like we they'll find the money somewhere else. So it's we can so we have to get >> I think there's a deep distrust of government >> right now in in the
077world and there's I mean I think that the Doge campaign of you know finding waste, fraud and abuse. I think people just assume that the town runs that way and the district runs that way and our state runs that way. And the reality is I would say that we do pretty darn good job in terms of fiscal management and we run a very efficient district. We have very low revenue and very high student outcomes. That to me is an efficient highquality system. But if we get any more efficient, the quality of the system will go down. We're at that racer's edge. But again, messaging the quality of the system goes down is different from we're closing a multiple schools and going into state receiverhip like messaging um our budget is really we're running on thin
078margins and a tight budget is different from we are deficit spending and are going to be in the red and go out of business in two years. like just that kind of really >> like captivated like as a district we will go out of business in two years >> and that but don't you think that that opens up for the uneducated that opens up the assumption that it's been mismanaged and that we have to explain more and I think that's I think the biggest hurdle I think there's so much information to relay about this that it's almost like a fire hose. >> But if you get their attention, then you can explain. If they don't have if you haven't gotten their attention, you don't even have an opportunity to explain. >> I Yeah, I see
079what you're Yeah, I see what you're saying. I do. I understand. Like people need to to know what the pre the pain point is be before they can actually wake up and say this is going to affect more than me even though I don't have kids in the district, for example, right? But I guess there's so much to convey in information about you know why it matters to have this pass. >> And I just think like I look at the a turnout of 38% with the need to have 45 say let's just call it 45 40 or 45%. based on the percentage of what number we got to what we needed. That's an equivalent you could think Delta, right? So maybe it's getting the vote out rather than trying to scare the crap out of
080people so that they're reactionary because I do think that if we say we're we're we're going to we're going to be taken over it really we have to explain ourselves out of a bag of distrust which I think Tyler was hitting upon like what did you do or didn't do to get to this point? No one really understands the enrollment decline, all of that stuff, right? >> So, I'm just a little worried about that. Um, for that reason, >> um, open to it, but worried about it. >> The opposition, as we know, was a big problem. So, what's the current status with their relationship? >> I think we should assume we're going to get opposition no matter what we do. Personally, >> we met with with Coalition Sensible Taxpayer. Rachel and I met with them
081uh early in the summer. Um it was a good discussion, but it's a not a fully transparent conversation all the time. Sometimes it's a little bit of a data collection conversation. Um, and they and I think that the big takeaway that I had at the end of that conversation is that they were I think based on our efforts going to rework their uh uh sensible tax criteria. I think some of the feedback that they got from folks on uh on the Chamber of Commerce were like, "Hey, listen. you're pushing for this per square foot thing, but this per square foot thing has a huge impact on small business. So there's some these two political constituents are kind of pressing up against each other. So there's a new sensible tax criteria and essentially the component that's
082new is there's a recommendation that if you do an addition to a parcel tax that the addition is per per square foot but the base stays per parcel. So a combination of per parcel. The challenge with that one is it's even more confusing. >> Total sense completely more confusing. >> So I think you So then there's a real and that's why I want coalition sensible taxpayers on that working group >> to say listen we need simplicity and message >> what is going to work in within your criteria to get us there. >> Well complexity perhaps keeps it from actually passing. So are have they confirmed people representatives of cost >> confirmed what >> to attend the >> No, but I will definitely be reaching out uh specifically to Mimi. Um I've already I was actually
083emailing this morning with um someone who was in opposition and he's very interested in being on the on the committee. So I was speaking with some union folks that will be on the committee as well. So if I've got 20 people, I'd like to have 10 people that were big time for it and I'd like to have 10 of the loudest voices in opposition in the same room to to hash it out. >> Given the timing, are we now in a nonover overlapping renew and extend blah blah confusion thing and just saying this one ends, this one begins, this is a new, this is a new parcel tax because the other one ends on such and such a date and this one starts on such and we can just go that way. We need the
084revenue sooner than that >> because if we did that, we'd have to wait till June of 2028 to get the new funding from a new increased parcel tax, >> which means >> could you get a pass now but not start until later? You could, but you still wouldn't get the revenue. >> Would have to start making some cuts. >> So all your cuts and all your raises. >> You'd have to get the revenue. You would have to replace it. >> Yeah. And I I think this is I I hear the feedback loud and clear from the community about this special election. And as superintendent, I will do everything again never to go out on a on a special election again. But this was urgent. >> Before I was hired, there were two years of like
085picketing and we need to pay our teachers more. It was, >> you know, hot in the Ross Valley and I wanted to try to address that because it was such an urgent issue and other districts are giving raises and we're sitting here giving zero or 1% or >> it's it's a very urgent issue. So, I felt like we couldn't sit on our hands. We had to go out and give it a shot. And we did. And, you know, 63%'s not bad. It's just not the high bar that needs to pass. Do you think given that small amount of added voter approval that we need, I mean the differential between the 30 some odd turnout and a regular election in a June or November is is large enough that would net us that alone possibly. I
086mean, I don't want to I mean, I wouldn't want to totally depend on it, but I'm just kind of wondering if >> knowing that we are going to get what is the average turnout? Do we know what the average turnout is on a regular election? >> I think it's a little bit over 40. It's not It's not super high. >> Okay. So, 2% more. >> Um >> I mean, I think it's like closer to 45. It's >> Yeah, >> but this this Yeah. Go ahead. >> Yeah. I mean, I think I think we're going in the right direction how to think about this. Um, and and I and Simple City is great. Four four lanes, you know, I think the most important lane aside from just getting out the vote is, you know, to hear
087from public comment, aren't we paid by the lottery? That's a really good canary in the coal mine to tell us that people don't understand how our schools are funded, >> especially us, >> and the importance of why this a parcel tax and keeping an active parcel tax in place is so important. >> Um, >> but it's a standard. >> It's a standard. Yeah. >> Absolutely. And and what someone and I've blown down to this that someone I think it might have been Masimo said we pay more to have our garbage picked up than we do for our schools with the parcel tax. And yet people aren't up in arms complaining about how expensive it is to have our garbage collected. Right. No. And I think that if we really bring that home of look at
088what else you're paying for, this is the future of a lot of things, including your property values, the community, and the value of our schools. >> Oh, yeah. That marketing definitely >> that that to me says it all. People, I don't want to pay more. What do you pay to pick up your garbage? What do you pay for a night out at a nice restaurant? >> It's been interesting as I'm building out this budget slide deck. I've >> been uh revisiting what other parcel taxes are across the county. >> Um this year ours is $720, which isn't nothing. >> Um you know, there's people on fixed income and $720 is not easy. >> Um that is over the course of the year. That's not per month. That's over the course of the whole year. There
089are quite a few districts that are 1,100, 1,200, 1,700, $1,900. So, we're not even we're not asking for the moon. We're asking for kind of the bare minimum to stay competitive with the bottom cortile of the county. And I think that's like we're it's a reasonable and respectful ask. Um, and it's, you know, anytime you ask people to increase the taxes, folks are gonna have thoughts. I do think that capping somewhere and respecting the pain threshold that businesses are experiencing with tariffs and stagflation, which is probably going to be more of a reality than anything, which is horrific for the economy and for businesses to ensure that we also want to um keep keep our local businesses thriving and maybe find somewhere in that formula to whatever it is to um shout out to them
090to show that they'll be capped or something like that. I don't know if that's a possibility, but I think a cap would also just it's it would I think it's also a simple messaging for people who um think the sky is falling that they're going to be charged two bazillion more dollars than they are now if there's a cap there. It just it's I think it's a good >> a good a good bring the temperature down on freak out kind of message. >> It also shows that that we're thinking beyond we're thinking beyond ourselves. You're thinking about the community. This is about if we're going to say that this can affect you and our community, let's think about the community as a whole, right? >> And we may have to crunch some numbers to just
091show >> what we might be losing with a cap, but we might be gaining a passage of a >> of a measure, right? You can also just adjust adjust your p per per >> the per square foot might go up per square foot up >> because you're going to cap x number of >> I think this is an important piece. I think as a educator of 20 years my you know expertise is in schools and teaching and learning. So when I think about what makes a community valuable to a prospective homeowner, first thing I think about is schools, right? Mhm. >> And in the conversations I had last last year, it kind of helped me expand the way I was thinking because I think you're spot on, Chris, like why would someone move to San
092Selmo or Fairfax? It's >> the downtowns, >> it's the businesses, it's the recreation, and it's the schools. Mhm. >> So, this overlap between a chamber of commerce and a school district >> is really important because you come, you're not going to move to a place that has good schools, but there's nowhere to go out to dinner or, you know, buy something that you you want. But we we're lucky here in Fairfax and Soma to have great downtowns and phenomenal schools and that's why people want to live here. >> Well, the connection too between schools and property tax values because >> Yeah. and seeing empty storefronts for gosh, I mean, when we moved here, if you go past the movie theater, all those empty storefronts that sit there for a long time are the or the
093places that are closing. I think we can really acknowledge that we want to not harm those small businesses that want to thrive here and keep our community the way it is. Right. >> And made a good point. Not all of them live in our community, too, but they're they're working here. Yeah. >> Right. So that I was I was thinking, oh, but no, that not everybody lives here too, right? So that's interesting from a business owner. >> Is there a way for us to get in touch with the business owners that have businesses who may not live here? Because if they wouldn't have gotten our letter inviting them to town hall, >> is there a way? >> I can reach out to both of the Chamber of Commerce. Okay. >> And uh remind them specifically
094um to come. >> Okay. I just want to make sure that we're reaching this business because I know there were some who live in Nevada or San or something and may not have gotten our thing about a town hall and I would like them to be here because it does impact them. >> There were right a lot of concern about rents going up. >> Yeah. >> Another thing I wanted to mention or have thought out at the town halls which I'm sure you don't really want me to bring up but the citizens initiative >> idea. I know that cost is against it, but at this point, like I know that there are other school districts that are considering doing that because it's a 50% plus one versus 66.7. >> Um, and so I know how
095high a bar it is to get that off the ground because you need signatures, you need to have like that needs to be fully done by a separate group, not the district at all. You can't put something on the ballot. It has to come from a separate group. Yeah. >> I know people have asked why aren't we doing that and I'm like it's a big lift like you have to get all those signatures from Fairfax and from Sanoma and I don't know if you can do it when there's two different towns involved. >> So that might be another >> we actually have three municipalities. We have Fairfax and we have unincorporated. So I think I think there's something around doing that that makes it a nogo because you have so many different municipalities. >> So
096that may be something we need to look at seeing if we're like even eligible for that before. But if we are eligible, I would like to have a town hall where people can discuss that option and see if there's interest in >> knowing that having that information is yes and FAQ of why or what it would do. >> Yeah. And I think it may be true that we can't do it with different municipalities. I think it just I think it makes it much more difficult. And then I've also I had a couple conversations with some other trustees in other communities as well and they had a sense of >> if there were a group of citizens that wanted to do it, they would also need to be ready to fight the lawsuit and it would
097be them that would have to fight the lawsuit, not us because we're not the ones doing it and >> that there would be counterveailing >> entities that might file legal >> something or another. That's >> It sounds enticing. >> I know. And I just don't want to totally ignore it cuz I know people are going to People are already asking me. I don't want to I want them to have answers. So, it's not Disney's >> have that. >> All right. Thank you. >> Um the idea of people just completely needing to start from ground zero 101 at funding 101 um and prep. I know there's lots of other stuff we need to do, but it seems like maybe there's still some I don't know how we do that kind of just basic education. >> I'm
098gonna I'm going to use the same slides that I had last year that start with the little buckets that have the basic aid and the LCFF and go over that. I'm going to have that inverted curve. We just actually updated those numbers today. >> I was saying it's even more basic. that answers like we're noted by the lottery and >> I don't I don't know but I was wondering if it >> if wondering if we even need to have a preamble to all of that that's even more basic here's how the state funds public you know >> I don't know just if there aren't really people who >> I think I mean I think the average citizen that might be 70 years old who hasn't had kids in school systems in a long time. >>
099I mean, >> yeah, >> school funding is complex and you do think it's the lottery that does it. The lottery is like a >> tiny smidge of our our budget. It's really >> property taxes and parcel taxes and some state funds and some federal funds and it's, you know, >> the whole the whole marijuana legalization was supposed to put our school systems over the top. We >> Oh, AI is going to solve it. I mean that's what happened. >> This brings up a good point. So, okay. So, the all of the marketing or the flyer went out. So, nine people or eight people have RSVP. Okay. So, >> is that for one or for both? Total. >> Uh, total. That's not great. >> There's seven or there's six at one and two at another. >>
100I got mine. Did you guys see yours? I got mine. Yes, yesterday, right? What is today? Friday. >> I got mine yesterday. >> They should be in your mailboxes now. >> Okay. >> I got an email about our newsletter that came out um as well. >> How else can we help get community there? I think we may need to spend a little bit of energy on that. And then I think this is the core the core issue is >> we've posted on Next Door, we've posted on Instagram, we've sent a paper flyer to every single home in Fairfax and Sano. >> We've talked about it at three board meetings in a row now. >> And and there's still going to be >> Yeah. >> a ton of people that have no idea it's happening. >>
101We need a tick tock craze. That's what we we need to turn this into a tick tock craze. Is there any way you can get specific information on people who didn't vote and just like, "Hey, you didn't vote. It didn't pass. Come to a meeting and figure out how to make it work. We're going to assume that you >> I don't know." >> Yeah. I think that's why at first I was not going to send a flyer out to every single home in the community because I felt like we have we've mentioned it three times now. I've put it in parent square. We've put it on Instagram. We put like it's it's out there in the community. But the thing that I was absolutely astounded by when I was knocking doors last year, not on
102the clock, was the number of people that are between 70 and 90 years old in this community. >> They're not on Instagram, they're not on Next Door. >> Like they get the paper flyer, >> they might not know what it is or it's stuck in something else and they just throw it out. So, how do I get to those folks? because it's a huge part of our when when I looked at the data from team civics, the overwhelming majority of people that voted in the election were people that were 50 and above. >> So that tells me that it's mostly, you know, parents that have kids in high school or potentially long gone. >> Did you reach out to the Sleepy Hollow Homeowners Association? >> I can. >> Would that be a good path? >>
103They reposted it on their Instagram. So, I wonder if they'd send Instagram necessarily. >> Yeah. I wonder if they'd send out to all the members. >> Yeah, that would be an email. >> That would be great. >> Yeah, maybe. >> And the other thought I had is like the Fairfax and Santa seniors group that they have that I think Shelley went to for measure E that the senior group in Fairfax. >> They >> that one might be tough because they are pretty anti politics. >> They This is a town hall. We're getting information. Yeah. >> We're not pushing it and we're asking for their help. >> Yeah. >> I mean, they're if it was really just an education funding 101. >> Well, it's a town hall. Like, we're going to ask them for their thoughts.
104>> Well, we I wonder if we could ask them to send it on their like list or >> Well, they don't if it has anything to do with something that you're voting on, they just want to stay forward. >> Even if there's no voting yet. I mean, if you have any other people, >> that's the that's core of the issues. How do we >> Yeah. >> And what we found last year, >> walking and knocking >> was what worked? >> And I don't really have the time to knock everyone's door for the town hall attendance, but >> um >> maybe can I make a bunch of copies of my flyer and just go post them at the businesses? Maybe I'll do that. >> Yeah, we just need to get as many people to come and
105get that information as possible that are not part of our BSD, you know, families because those people are going to get all the information. We've learned that. >> Okay. I think just the the two big questions that I'm going to try to answer in the next four meetings with the town halls and the working group are kind of this question around per parcel per square foot with a cap, you know, what recommendation do you have there and a little bit around the increase and then kind of getting folks uh input on messaging, but also like what's the lane? Who do we need to talk to, who should we reach out to? That'll be like another component of the um the working group. >> Remind me to this next ballot we're looking to go on is
106the general election >> in inress in December or January. you all will make a decision to either go out for the June I think it's a June 2nd election or a November of 2026 election >> so neither is a special election because we're >> they're both statewide elections absolutely >> so there'll be other things on the ballot >> okay >> and that's part of the feedback that we got >> well that was the big push on the >> no the no move when is the statewide redistricting special >> it's it's this November Oh, >> so we already missed the deadline for that one. >> For that one. >> That'll be an interesting election. >> Okay. Thank you for the input and feedback. I appreciate it. >> Thank you for your work. >> Yes. >> Thank
107you for your service. >> All right. With that, I'll move us on to our next item, which is enrollment update. This one will be really quick. Um, so what we've been doing is we've actually been taking attendance and enrollment numbers um from day one all the way to day 10 here and uh scroll all the way down there to the bottom. Day 10. This was I believe Tuesday. Yeah, it was Tuesday. And right now our enrollment is at 1720 which is great. And our enroll or our attendance was actually at 1653 which is kind of in the high 90s 96% 97%. But you can see just the day before that which was the day >> I think that was the that might have been the Friday. Yeah, >> the Friday you can see that, >>
108you know, a lot of people took off for a four day vacation instead of a three-day vacation. So, >> 10day low, >> you know, you see 16006 there. Remember, that's $75 per student per day. So, when we miss that many students, you know, it ends up being a good chunk of change the district doesn't get um when it's funded by the state. So, overall, we're doing pretty good. We've most of our days have been about 97% 96% which is kind of our target goal. The last three years we've gone from 93 to 94 to 95%. So we're on the upswing in terms of our attendance rates. I'd love for us to get to 96% this year and we are seeing an uptick in enrollment. Um a lot of that has to do with TK because
109we expanded TK. Um but overall we're at 1720. Um, and I think last year we were at 16 83 or 84, right in that zone. Um, so overall we're doing we're doing pretty good. And I sent out a parent square a couple weeks ago. Our teachers have done a really wonderful job messaging at back to school night about attendance so far. Um, and so have our principles. So we're trying to keep the messaging out that, you know, attendance is important first and foremost for academic achievement and social emotional development. It's really critical for those. There's lots of research out there that shows being at school helps you develop social skills and helps you with better high school graduation rates. Um, and in our case, it also helps us with our funding. So, it's it's a
110win-win when your kids are here at school. Obviously, if they're, you know, they've got a high fever or they're throwing up, they should stay at home. But, uh, you know, my mom sent me to school. She had to go to work. Sorry, little Nyquil. >> Um, any any percentages of chronic absenteeism in those numbers there? >> I can get that data for you. Um, >> interesting. >> Based on last year's numbers. So, at the next time I do an enrollment update, I'll let you know where our chronic absentee is ism rates are for the public. Chronic absenteeism is 10% of the total school year. So, it's you've missed 18 days or more of the entire school year. So, >> you miss 18 days, it's, you know, over 3 weeks of school. You you add that
111up over >> 12 13 years of schooling, you're missing >> almost half a year. Um, so you're it's going to be harder to graduate high school. >> Yeah. >> Do is there a policy about if you've missed so many days that then principal or something like actually called and checks in? There is, right? And how many days is it? >> I think we do it at three and then again at like 10. Um we have uh I can bring that too if you all >> Oh, I'm just curious where I I could read it on my own. I just >> last year we updated all of the there was a time there where we were trying to be really sensitive to families, especially during the pandemic where we weren't really sending out the attendance letters
112if your kid had missed three or four or five days. Last year we updated them to be a little bit softer message and we started doing what's called SARB S A R um which is basically a meeting between the parent and the district to say hey how can we support you what do you need to get your kid to school um Lor's actually been working on that uh making that even better this year. So the the processes are in place if your kid is out of school a lot. We've got supports, we've got communication. Um, and usually what you find is the kids that are missing 18, 20, 30, 40, 50 days of school, there's really complex issues going at home. >> It's it's a tough support. >> Okay. And right now we are forming
113um there's an attendance sort of playbook that we're putting together and we're forming a student attendance review board team to have those meetings with families as well as drive the policy and initiatives um with made up of principles some staff members and if anybody's interested >> let me know I was gonna say that um last year you had a a graphic where you showed the attendance and how it like dipped on certain days and it was very clearly connected to this phenomenon here like here's the day before you know >> Russian like brush >> holiday and here's the day before and I and I thought that was very um it's almost like show don't tell you can almost put that in front of somebody and say you know here here's where we're noticing a significant
114amount and like even if you had little bubbles on those that said the day before Labor Day, you know, enjoy your 4 day weekend. It cost us this much or whatever. I think um that was I think >> Yeah, we we definitely encourage families. The good news is school is out a lot, right? You've got ski week and mid- winter break and Thanksgiving and summer and, you know, three-day weekends here and there. So, there's lots of opportunity for families to take good chunks of vacation within that calendar. We understand sometimes things happen and you got to do what you got to do, but to the extent you can stay within those boundaries, it really helps your student out and helps us out. >> But people, you know, come Veterans Day, we'll see our attendance go
115down the day before and the day after. >> Y got to make that skiing. >> Okay, that's all I have. Thank you. >> Do you have any public comment on this? I do wonder if we should try u make the independent study more known to people. You know sometimes people do have to forever reason but I think that part that you can apply for studies >> but is it a lot of work for our teachers to do in addition >> Daniel >> sorry community here sorry >> sorry yeah she's making her public comment sorry to interrupt >> please. Uh yeah, it's just like if I know it's not ideal, but if it helps with the money, perhaps people need to know about it. I think very few people know about that. If they already going
116to leave anyway, then at least we can get the money. >> I was with the manor teachers this afternoon having ice cream with them, which was really nice, and they were sorry. >> How come he doesn't get the same? I mean, that was like any further public comments? No. Okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay. No, no, go ahead. >> Um I just think uh when we're showing this information, I think this, you know, does not hurt to use every opportunity to show the funding disparities given our our um our prior topic. And you know, this is something that uh Trustee Cassidy mentioned before when talking about um our per pupil funding and our enrollment. And you can see if you have the per funding and the per pupil funding difference in the enrollment difference, you can
117show act like how many hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars difference it actually makes in our budget. And here, you know, I think not just comparing to California is helpful, but um you know, we're like maybe uh 60% of the national average for elementary school per pupil funding and we're in like the top 2% in terms of uh household income and wealth. Uh so you'd think that maybe we should be in the top 2% per people pupil funding. Um, but to the extent that there's I mean people have trouble seeing oh it's $11,000 per pupil spending versus this and when you have the chance to say hey at this enrollment here's how much funding if we keep this up it's x millions of dollars and if we drop down even just a
118little bit uh it's that much less in our partial tax is trying to get $3 million. I think using all the different avenues to hammer home the issue. >> Uh >> now we can discuss. >> Can I say something? >> Sorry. Go ahead. >> Um both of my children's teachers at open or back to school, they both talked about um >> independent study. What time is it? Yes, about independent study and did say it is a lot of work for them. We're happy to do it with 10 days notice. That's a district policy is what they had said. 10 days notice otherwise we will not do it. It is a lot of work for us and so it I don't that was great for all the parents to hear that because and then right it's
119three or more days right so I don't know if all the teachers did that but both of mine did which was which was good. I will say I I have utilized the independent study. We took our kids out of school part of homeschooling for us and they were working two hours a day, three hours a day on their work. >> Yeah, I think it's supposed to be four. >> And they and Yeah. And people that we were traveling with were like, "What are your kids doing? Aren't you on vacation?" And it was a lot of work. we had to complete the assignments and from my understanding it's a lot of work for the teachers and some of the kids don't actually do the work >> right >> and so it puts the teachers in a
120very precarious situation because the parents aren't dedicating the time to make sure their kids are completing it. So what happens is they're counted but the teachers don't have the product to demonstrate that the not counting them absent is is met. So it puts them in a tough situation. >> There is there is um I've streamlined it previously so I'm going to work on that. >> Oh great takes the teacher out of the loop. And um also the new law says that we can do 1 to 15 days in one school year. >> Oh, fantastic. >> So yeah. So So >> Oh, you could do one day. >> Surprised. >> I think we made our decision though as a as a district to do that. >> There is the lift for teachers is is really pretty
121high and it really is like, >> you know, it rests on the teacher shoulder to shoulders to put all of this together. And heck, they're learning a new curriculum right now. Like having the spending an hour is not an hour and a half. >> Yeah. For sure. >> It's one of those things where too like last year my child was out and we pulled it up for something that we had to travel for. I just donated $75 for every day she was out to Yes. because I was like it comes back to the district. >> Hey. >> So that was what that's what I've been telling people like if you have to do this, >> donate to Yes. $75 per day your kid is out per child. >> I mean it's >> I had a
122cabinet member colleague of mine in another district who >> would go out on a oneweek vacation with their children and they knew that it was an impact to the the school district. So they just cut a check to the school district for the amount. So it was a watch. What's the data on the independent study fulfilling the actual learning? >> Like is that that someone must have >> it's not a replacement right for what happens in the class. I mean the way that I we deliver instruction is is not a lot set up worksheets and right >> you know press play on Khan Academy you know although those are fine tools. So, no, it's, you know, and it and it depends to some degree on the kid. If it's a kid who's, >> you know,
123falling a little bit behind. >> Yeah. >> Really big deal if they're out. >> Yeah. I don't think our community >> I don't think in our community it would be great to just advertise to donate. I think some that might be the wrong message. And the reality is the number one thing if we didn't have funding issues the number one thing I would be talking about with tenants social emotional development academic achievement and independent study doesn't solve for those problems. It does solve for the funding piece but it doesn't solve for those. And an interesting thing that came up in the research when I was writing my uh uh parent square about this a couple weeks ago was it actually it it slows down the rhythm of the classroom. So if a teacher is teaching
124content and a kid's out for two days, that kid the teacher's got to do something different with that student in that moment to get them back up to speed with the rest of the the colleagues. So or the rest of the students. So it's just a it makes things clunky for the teacher, too. Um. >> Sure. So it for me it's about academic achievement and it's about developing the social emotional skills you need and you know if you've got to go fill out the independent study um or schedule the stuff uh during the the holidays. >> We also have special education students that miss services. >> Absolutely. >> Really set moving us along. Our next item is recommended ratification of the agreement with the Marine branch of the YMCA of San Francisco to provide extended
125learning opportunities ELOP services at Ross Valley School District sites for the 202526 school year. >> This one should be pretty quick. This is just a continuation of the ELOP program that provides um children that are unduplicated students for um after school um and also 30 days worth of interession. So the YMCA offers that to those students free of charge. >> This is at Ligh Hill as well. >> Uh it's supposed to go through sixth grade. We always advertise for sixth grade, but we have not had any takers today. Okay. Any questions, please? >> Do you need an approval or vote on this? >> Uh, yes, we do, but we need to go up for public comment. Sure. Do we have any public comments on this item? No. Okay. So, seeing none, do we have any
126discussion up here for the board? just glad that we have like a good partner to provide these services because I know it's be challenging for us to try and stop it. So, I am grateful that the YMC is like to work. >> That's great. Especially good for the younger kids. >> I love it. >> Any further discussion? Not entertain a motion. >> I'll make a motion to uh that we ratify the agreement with the Marin branch of the YMCA San Francisco. >> I will second. All right. Dino. Hi. >> Was that Was that you? >> What >> is that? You just >> Yeah. Second it. Yeah. >> Okay. Was your vote? Sorry. >> I >> Shel. >> Hi. >> And Rachel. Hi. >> All right. So, our next item is consent actions. Do we have
127anything that anybody wanted to pull out for discussion? No. Do we have any public comment on these items? Okay. Any discussion up here or >> disapproval? Declaration of surplus is the same thing that comes every year, right? I remember this last year. This time >> I think I asked that same question every year. >> Sorry. I look forward to hearing it next year. >> I will make sure I don't let you down. >> All right. I'll entertain a motion to approve consent if there's another no further discussion. I'll make a motion to uh um approve consent actions uh G1 and two. >> Have a second. >> I'll second. >> So Chris, >> hi. >> Daniel, >> hi. >> Dana, >> I >> Shelley, >> I All right. And Rachel I. So consent is approved. Our
128next item is board business committee updates and reports from and announcements by trustees. So this isn't for discussion. It's just to report out what you've been to or you are um attending not school district related >> district related. >> Yeah, district related training >> training stop. >> Uh >> I don't have any committee updates yet. I went to back to school night for way Thomas. How was it? >> It was great. It was fun to go in and see um they do it interesting. So they do like the TK through two grades and then they have like an assembly for all the parents to come to and then they do three through five so the little ones can go home early theoretically. Um but it was just it was lovely to get into all the
129classrooms they had and listen to how they were all presenting things in the different classrooms and it was very uniform. I heard every single one that I went into, at least when I caught it in their part in their presentation, all mentioning like how important it was for their kids to attend school as much as they possibly could. >> So that was a really uniform message all across the school and then it was reinforced at the assembly. >> So that was really really it was nice to see that they were putting such an emphasis on it and it wasn't from a financial perspective. It was like a complete like we want your child in our classroom because it makes it whole kind of but so it was just really nice to see them emphasizing that.
130I went I went to the Yes notebooks and whatever that notebooks and something event. It was one of the um a fundraiser that they do the >> nibbles notebooks and anyway it was fun. It was at a family's home and catered and fancy and lovely. It was very fun. Um >> yeah, those events are amazing. I think Jess is always looking for more people to host. So, >> I was at Brookside today and I almost felt like I was stepping on some of the kindergarteners and the TKs. They were so tiny. So, um adorable. It's so good. And everybody's super excited about their buddies, right? Who's going to be the big buddies? And the little buddies are excited to meet their big buddies. And second graders are big buddies this year. A lot of uh
131excitement, disappointment among the third graders because they weren't big buddies last because we have so many more TK students. >> Oh, second graders big buddies. >> Oh yeah. So a lot of the second graders are nervous about being a big buddy because it's a big responsibility >> and they're not even third graders. >> The whole thing is it's such a great I can't talk highly enough about that program. >> It's exceptional on every level. >> That's so great. Any other updates? So, any public comment on this item? >> No. All right. No discussion. All right. So, moving on. I've got approval of regular meeting minutes for August 6, 2025. Any questions, comments, changes? No. Do we have any public comment on this item? No. >> All right. Discussion. If not, I'll entertain the motion. I'll
132make a motion to approve the minute minutes from August 6th. Do >> second. >> I'll second. >> Great. Uh Anna, >> I >> Daniel, >> I was so nervous. >> Oh, yeah. You weren't there. >> I don't think I was >> Daniel and Chris. >> Oh, yeah. >> Well, this is the previous one that we had. >> So, I take back my motion. >> You take back your Okay. So, rewind. >> That's right. It was the one which was the three of them. Right. You were there. >> There was one that I wasn't. >> Which one was that? So, who was it that one? >> You weren't at the >> Daniel and Chris. Okay. >> Right. >> Okay. Gotcha. All right. So, approval of regular meeting minutes for August 6, 2025. Do I have a
133motion? >> I I'll make a motion. >> I will second it. >> So, Anna >> I. >> Rachel. I >> abstain. >> Daniel. >> Shel. I >> great >> first trap >> now that we sorted that one out. Okay, who's not at this next one? Uh Shel is not. Okay, so um next item is approval of regular meeting minutes for uh August 20th, 2025. Do I have any changes, comments, suggestions on this item? Questions? No. Okay. Public comment? None. Or any discussion? No. All right. I will entertain a motion on this one. I will give you a motion >> to approve the minutes for May of August 20th. >> I would like to second those meeting. >> Thank you. Chris >> I >> Daniel >> I >> Shelley >> posting >> Hannah >> I >>
134Rachel I All right. So those are approved as well. Our next item is superintendent cabinet report. >> Great. Um start of school has been uh engaging, fun, and busy. So, uh, Chris and I attended a big five, uh, training and discussion around school safety. So, we're going to get a group of, uh, couple teachers and administrators to, uh, go do a training on that. And it's in collaboration with fire and local police just around like the fire drills and lockdowns and all that stuff just to make sure we're really tuned up on on those trainings. and we have a slide deck that we're going to present at the uh A team here coming up around that as well. I went to my first superintendent meeting of the year today, which is nice to be with
135my colleagues and just kind of hear what's going on in their district and get some advice. Uh I'm starting to work on the budget video, the similar one that I did last year, but updated with new data. Chris and I were working on that this week. I should have that out maybe next Friday at the earliest, um if not the Monday following that. Um, if you are a Fairfax or Santa resident, you should have received the parcel tax uh flyer for the uh 10th and 25th of this month. And you should have received a newsletter or you should be receiving a newsletter. We're trying to send those out two times a year, not just to our families, but to every member. So, like if you're just a resident, you kind of see that we've got
136a new lunch program and what our academic achievement looks like and some budget talking points. So, we just want to educate the community about our schools and have them be proud of the schools that are in their community. Um, I've done uh ice cream socials with the White Hill staff and Manor staff. Um, I'm going to do this every year. I did it last year as kind of my learning tour. this year. Um, actually Julia's been with me at both of these and we just ask for feedback or any teachers can ask questions and we eat ice cream together. So, um, it's been actually really nice and we get good feedback from the teachers about what's going on from like little things to big things to questions that are circulating and it's one of our
137attempts to be transparent and uh, approachable. Um, you know, sometimes there are questions that are in a school community and there's a little bit of um misunderstanding and I'm here. Just ask me a question and happy to give you the answer. And then I've been to the Wade Thomas back to school night and I'll be going to Brookside and Manor tomorrow. So excited about those. >> How about you? >> Yeah, did on a lot of those things. Really enjoying the class visits. Um we visited Brookside classes and white I was at White Hill last week and visiting some of the new teachers but also looking um at our new ELA program in action and checking in with teachers. Um it's definitely a heavy lift. It's a big change. And so I I feel super proud
138and great proud of what the work that they're doing and grateful um for just how dedicated our teachers are and their willingness to dive into um something that's new and really great for kids. I also this week um was able to attend department meetings at White Hill. I attended both math and science. math was having a really robust conversation about class placement. Um because seventh and eighth grade has that compacted accelerated course and there's always the you know there's the group of kids that you know are ready for that quick pace and there's the kids that you know need more time and there there have always been and always will be that band of kids where you can't quite tell which way to go. And so we are always working at getting um really good
139at figuring out the best pathway for each child. >> And then science department is um at the moment doing kind of a soft pilot of a science curriculum called open sed um which is actually a fantastic curriculum. Um sixth grade is kind of taking the leap first but I I think all grade levels will probably be piloting in it this week. um RT science teachers are using the high school version as well. Um so it's just it's um it's nice to see a program that has really strong alignment with the science standards and GSS um but also is just super hands-on and investigative and exciting and engaging for kids. Um so that's kind of neat and exciting. Um, and yeah, back to school nights, which are always just a joyful event. >> All right, so
140special ed team is off and running. The first two weeks of school, our most of our service providers were just using those that time to schedule services, reach out to families, review goals of students, make sure that everything's in place. And so they did kick off services this week. our resource teachers, our occupational therapists, our speech teachers. Um, and so all those services are happening. Um, we are we're one position short of being fully staffed in special education. Um, we are really excited because um, yeah, we um, we're we're so close. So, this is good good news. So, Julia's been helping out a lot with this, too. And so we're sort of tag teaming up with all of our teams trying to get interviews in and stuff. And so we're so that looks really good.
141Um and then for myself, I've been out and about in and in the schools looking at all of our sped programs, meeting with principles, doing walkthroughs, um looking at some of our kiddos and um just sort of getting a lay of the land now that the kids are back and just to see all the services and programs that we offer. And um and then um our special advisory committee, the first meeting is on September the 23rd at 5:30. So all of that information just went out to our stud team or to the committee. And then we're also recruiting a couple new members because some people dropped off. So and thank you for the two of you who are remember who, but you for joining that committee. And then finally, last uh board meeting, you all
142approved language line and it is getting rave reviews. Um within the first like couple hours of me putting the folder out to all of our staff, an office assistant reached out and was so excited because she was able to reach out to a family who was Spanish speaking and um >> Heather, >> no, not not Oh, I think she did use it, too. Oh, she did use it, too. Yes. And there's just so many that are coming in that um are talking about that. So um it was actually Laura at um at Manor um and and it's super easy to use and people are using it already and just so excited about. So thank you so much for your support approving that and so that we can build better connections with our families. >> Wonderful.
143>> Yeah. Thank you. The Marin County Office of Education is getting a new financial system and that means that we get a new financial system and the human resources department and the business services department has been already starting that process. We've been having meetings with the county office of ed and the the company that is the software company and we're starting that implementation. We even had a meeting today that was half a day. So there's a lot of work and it all of our other duties are still there. So it just means additional things. So just wanted everybody to know that. >> I just want to shout Chris out and soul team. When you use a financial system, it's like you speak a language and if you speak that language for 5, 10, 15 years
144and then you change a system, it's like learning a whole new language and it's really, really difficult. So, I appreciate, you know, Chris's leadership and the positivity of the team. And it wasn't necessarily uh, you know, an RVSD decision. This was a county decision. And, uh, you know, it's a tough lift, but they're they're doing a good job with it. >> All right. Do we have any public comment on this item? >> Translation service. I wonder if there's a way we can help teachers with like translating slides and other things. I was in school today, happened to be like 5:30, and the teachers are still there translating their slides for back to school night. They're like, "Wait, we have this new tool." And she's like, "Well, this I wonder if there's other ways we can
145support that teachers with that. there there are extensions in in Google Slides and Sean is actually looking into it right now but um like because the free version lets you do like seven slides and then it quits on you and so we're trying to figure that piece out. We also introduced our principles to um you know if you use PowerPoint you can do live closed captions and then live translation of those. So, at some of our back to school nights, that's what our principles are using to picture um that you can see Spanish language of every word that said >> it was awesome. >> Yeah, right. We need to put this on another agenda item to discuss it, I think, further. So, >> sorry. I'm going to limit that one. Sorry. No, no, no. Um,
146okay. Uh, so moving on. Meeting review, future board topics, and board direction. There we go. I don't know if this is appropriate or not, but um is there any way to or maybe a need to have a meeting with John Carol, have him come in and meet some of our new trustees and also just sort of in a meet and greet conversation about the great Oz that oversees oversees us. Um, we've had it in the past. Once I think with John, but I wasn't quite sure if that's something that we do. He came because >> Okay. >> Because they were he was the county was trying to negotiate or help them out. >> That's right. >> So that's why he was here. >> But do we ever meet with him and >> Yeah. I don't
147know. No, I mean he came when he swore us in collective cool but no I haven't he doesn't usually come and like shake hands and >> I don't know >> I said I don't know if it's something that maybe it's something that we don't do but we do >> but if you go to the county school boards association thing could do it there >> I could do it we could do it there yeah I don't know I can talk to John >> it's not a you know it's not a make or break it's just like I was like oh I see him on his Hike, you know, >> Marine County School Association breakfast. It's open to anyone. >> Yes, he I got the invitation. Unfortunately, my work is >> Yeah. >> taken up a lot
148of my life. >> Wait, I didn't get an invitation. >> Yeah. Well, you forward me that invitation. >> Why? >> Yeah. I don't know that I've really left out. All right. Um, I have something I didn't mention before. >> Can I I'm going to do it now. Um, >> is this future future board topics direction? >> No, >> you shouldn't have asked. You should You should have just >> It's about last meeting. Something I forgot to mention. >> Oh, well, I'll tell you next time. >> Sorry. >> It's It's not a big deal. >> All right. any other future board topics or board direction that we would like to give staff. >> Oh, I would like an update on the wasp situation. I just thought of that. >> Wasps. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Is
149there something specific you're looking for? >> Oh, just if it's getting better really. Um, and what action is happening as far as long-term, you know, mitigation. Yeah, I can include that in my next >> update. >> Uh update, superintendent update. >> Great. >> Yeah, because I remember there was public here. It was a big problem the last meeting. So, >> my sixth grader said that her pizza attracted quite a few yellow jackets, but not her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. >> Yes. No meat is the kid my kids rule. No meat on her lunch. >> Speaking of lunches, wait. Yeah, we got a we got but wait there was one other thing. Um >> is this board topic future board topic regression? >> I did that just >> to tweak my notes. >> Shel has
150one. I was wondering along the lines of Chris you asking if John Carroll County sup Superintendent uh was coming might come or does come to kind of do like a hey here's the state of the countywide but also wondering um things like do the superintendent talk about having common tools for like education funding 101. We can't be the only ones having this. like are there other things that you see or that you that we can't be the only district having this conversation around like benchmarking with teachers? I mean, you've done a lot of benchmarking work, but are there other common resources that you see um in these conversations or is that something that we could put that request out to the county office of education of saying, "Hey, we have this. Are there other districts
151that would like a video?" the E2 committee >> like that would go to the E2 committee. Um I know sometimes it's like does it go to E2? Does it go to superintendent monthly gathering? >> There are some things but they're mostly they're pretty small. Like for instance there's the Mimmude verse Taylor uh ruling at the Supreme Court which is the opt out of LGBTQ plus uh teaching in schools. there's a a form that the whole county is going to use and an approach that all of our superintendents are going to use. So, they're like little things like that. Um, but nothing on budget. I people are having budget issues, but they're very different budget issues than what we're having. >> I think Miller Creek is probably the only other district that's like really close to
152where we're at. >> Okay. So, as far as like board topics or direction, I I heard that there are other potential um parcel taxes going out among the county in the next that would be good to know. >> Yeah. Can we maybe get feelers out to figure out which ones those are? I know it's right from the sources I've talked to, it's not like official. It's kind of like where we are where we're like talking about it, >> but like maybe get a temperature check on where there might be local ones like nearby. >> I know some already. Yeah, I know of two, but I just want to know >> kind of cross reference what's going on with that. >> Absolutely. >> I think Logan is going out for one right now >> on a
153special. >> Yeah. Also, if it's Yeah. the specifics of it. What is the, you know, >> Yeah. Tam's not going out. Do we know anything? Can't talk about that. Future board topics. >> Future board topics. >> To know >> exactly. All right. Needing to brief. >> You did great. >> But Rachel, you need to do a better job of keeping us on track. I mean, it's just it's the start of the year and I >> All right. I think >> I I mean, Rachel, I I want I want to thank you for trying to keep us on track. >> Oh, man. >> Um, you do >> you do a really good job of keeping us organized. And I think one thing that I appreciate about this board and the the community that comes to participate
154is it feels informal because we all know each other. We all care about each other. We all just want to make this place a better place. And it feels really kind of informal. And a board meeting is a really formal place. And you're doing a pretty remarkable job trying to keep us organized and uh you know following the Brown Act. So, thank you. Appreciate it. >> Agreed. And it and it is difficult because you don't want to just follow the Brown Act when you have a big crowd because then it's like you're just doing it. >> Yeah. So it's but it does feel a little formal when there's a small crowd. >> That's hard thing to balance. >> Well, it's hard to because I don't want to cut people off because I don't I don't
155know what anyone's going to say until they're talking and then I'm like, "Okay, is this on topic? Is it off topic? Are we like it's hard to kind of judge in the moment. So sometimes I might go longer than others because I don't know if it's going to loop back around, right? >> So I try. But I think if if we all kind of keep in mind that there's presentation, public comment or presentation, questions from the board, public comment, and then discussion, if we just like keep that framework in mind, it might make your job a little easier. >> Did I do better this week? Then >> should we make a sign that we like flip through presentation? >> Hold it up. >> All right. I tried to say it at the very beginning, but
156I'll say it again next time, too. All right. Good. We don't need a motion to Can you uh Oh, wait. Do we have any public comment on any Sorry. Public comment on the See, you've already messed up. Public comment on the meeting to brief. No, no public comment. Okay. And a motion to continue the meeting past 10:30. We do not need um because it is uh only 9:26. And so uh 9:26, I'm going to adjourn our meeting.