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. All right. Good evening and welcome to the Ros Valley School District Board of Trustees regular meeting. Today is June 4th, 2025. I am calling our meeting to order at 5:36 p.m. We have three trustees present in person at the Ross Valley School District office at 100 Shaw Drive in Sano. Myself, Rachel Litwick, um Shelley Hamilton and Daniel Cassidy. Chris Landles Cobb is on her way. Um, so she'll be writing shortly. Um, we also have cabinet members present. We have uh, Superintendent Tyler Graph, Eric Sable, and Chris Carson. The meeting is being livereamed via YouTube, and the link is live on our website and the agenda. There will be a 60-cond
002delay between the meeting and the YouTube live stream. An audio recording of the meeting will be made available to the public on our district website within 72 hours following the meeting. And with that, I will um, There's no public here for Yeah. And there is no comment here for public comment. So I'm moving on to item B, closed session. I'm going to identify the closed session topics. We have conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code 54956.9 subdivision D2 or three special education program dispute three cases student SSID's number 6728978430 number 9416491356 and number 8956310387 and without any public here for public comment I will move to close session at 5:37 p.m. All right, welcome back. It is 6:10 and I am re uh returning us from our recess
003to closed session. I'm going to report out on closed session. Um at 5:46, Trustee Land's Cob returned to our closed session. So, I just had to report that. Um I also wanted to report that we approved the three cases S student SSID 6728978483 0 number 941-6491356 and 8956310387. Um the first case 672 with those three numbers at the start was approved by two or three out of the three trustees who are here. Um, trustee Lando Cobbs Cobb was not here at that time. Um, case number 89563 uh with the the number starting there uh was voted on by three out of three trustees. Landsc was not present. And then for the last one 94164 um four out of four trustees voted on that. Uh and with that I'll move us to procedural items. Welcome everybody.
004Um moving on with our agenda we have procedural items. The first one is pledge of allegiance and a democratic reflection. I don't have one. I don't know if any of my fellow trustees did. If not, I will just move us along. All right. If you would like to join me for the pledge of allegiance, you may. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. So with that, our next item is adopting agenda and time allocations. Did we have any changes to the agenda or allocations from my fellow board members? If not, I will entertain a motion on this item. Motion to adopt the Well, I give everybody a chance. Anybody to
005adopt the agenda as stated? Great. Do I have a second? Yes, I'll second that. Fantastic. Shelley, I Chris I. Dana. Hi, Rachel. I All right. We have an agenda. Our next item is the recognition of retirees. Uh recognition ceremony and reception for retiring district employees. So, I will let Tyler and Julie take this one. Okay. I'll pass to Joy. All right. [Music] I feel like so honored to be the one that is sharing our recognition of our extraordinary um teacher Mary Accord. Um Mary, these words came from some of your colleagues. This was a collaborative effort. Um so Mary has always been a strong, smart, and determined educator. Her commitment to helping every student succeed has been clear from day one. She's been a steady presence in the classroom guide guiding students to do their
006best and always expecting great things from them. When we think of fourth grade at Manor, we think of Mary. She's brought history to life in ways that made it stick. Whether it was the gold dust or bust play or opera all aquart, she's found creative ways to make learning engaging and memorable. Mary can truly sing her way through California history. Mary gave her students an experience they'll never forget, the overnight gold rush trip. It was more than a field trip. It was a chance to connect with California history in a hands-on way, and she made that happen. Raise your hand if you had a kid that went on that trip with Mary. [Music] Beyond her classroom, Mary has been a supportive colleague and a team player. She's the kind of person you can count on
007to do the right thing, always with her students best interest in mind. Mary's connection to this community runs deep. She and her husband raise their kids right here in Fairfax with both Rachel and Matthew attending Manor in White Hill. And now she's looking forward to a new role singing lullabies to her first grandchild, Rachel's daughter. And we know she'll bring the same warmth and dedication to that role as she did in her classroom. Mary, thank you for your years of service, for your creativity, for your integrity. You've made a lasting impact here and we all wish you the best in the next chapter. [Applause] One of our traditions in Ros Valley is to create a word of prayer which I Mary has I'm sure you all know this but she's been in Ros for 26
008years and you said recently like all in that classroom all in that classroom like wow all of us who've been teachers or are teachers know what it means to have a classroom home and it's like having a spend a lot of time there. Um, these are some of the words that colleagues across the district have used to describe you. Creative, student centered, environmentalist, um, inspiring, committed, honest, harmonious, talented, dedicated, oporadic. There's a little momento for you. So proud of you and so appreciative of all that you've given us valley incredible. [Applause] Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Awesome. And we have another retiree who also is a manor person. I think she unfortunately wasn't. No, but Dez will say some words. But yeah, um go forward. So I wanted to introduce Dez
009Mckis. Dez is the director of maintenance and operations. Many of you know him. And Dez is the supervisor of Andreas Steto who is the um the the custodian here at the district office as well as at Manor and has also worked at White Hill during her career. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dez. Good evening everyone. Um, unfortunately, Fiona underwent dental surgery yesterday and is still suffering the effects of that. So, is unable to attend this ceremony um to honor her service to the Ros Valley School District. So, our thoughts go out at the moment. Andrea came to the Ross Valley School District. Yes. So, sorry. Can you start over so we can film it to give to Andrea? Yeah, please. next it'll be on your Instagram. Okay. Unfortunately, Andrea had dental surgery
010yesterday um and is still suffering the effects of that. So, she's unable to attend the ceremony to honor her service to the Ross Valley School District. Um, Andrea came to the Ross Valley School District in October 2015 where she began working 9 hours per week as a night custodian at White Hook, three three-hour shifts. Within 12 months, she had worked her way up to a full-time night custodial position at the same school. She had a brief period at Hidden Valley during co but she was transferred to a new position looking after the district officer manner where she has remained for the last 5 years now no one sets out to become a custodian it's uh often a lonely sometimes monotonous and thankless vocation but Andrea has persisted and has now served our school district for
011close to 10 years. For that, we are truly grateful. She has struggled with ill fortune over the last couple of years with the passing of her daughter and her husband. So, we do appreciate her battling through such adversity and still trying to put her best foot forward in the interests of our students and our school district. Andrea, I hope that your retirement brings you a chance to reflect on your time here and also to rest those weary and achy bones that sneak up on everyone, especially those involved in active daily labor. I trust that she has fond memories of her time here at the Ross Valley School District and wish her nothing but the best of health and prosperity for the next chapter in her life. Good luck. Andrea and Ross Valley is so appreciative
012and grateful for your nearly 10 years of service to our district. All the best. [Applause] similar to what uh it's called what? My accent might sound different. And so for Andrea's 10 years of service, words used to describe Andrea: considerate, sweet, big-hearted, devoted, gentle and generous, personable, respectful, gracious. So, I mean, of course, compassionate. Um, I wish Andrea was here because I'd love to give her a hug for what she's been through. Okay. I think we all feel the same way. So, um, we'll pass this on to her. We've got some flowers to um, send to her. I'll reach out to her tonight, Julia. Okay. And, um, if we can get that um, video to her, that'd be terrific. For sure. Okay. Yeah. Um, and just personally, Mary, 26 years in this place. [Applause] We
013have some lovely refreshments um for folks to enjoy. Turn. All right. Welcome back. This lovely reception. Um, and thank you to all of our retirees. We really appreciate your service. Um, our next item is e communication. Um, we are taking public comment reg items that are not on the public session agenda. So, if you have anything that is not already on our agenda and you would like to speak, please raise your hand or come up. All right. Seeing none, I will move on. Appreciate your service. Our next item e communication. Okay. Uh next item is correspondence and communication to the board. So there are a couple items there attached. Um hopefully everybody was able to read through that. Our next item is announcements by labor unions. So CSEA and RBT if you would like to
014come up you may feel free to do so and give an update. This is about something that's on the agenda though. They can wait till that item comes up. Yeah, we're here for RVTA. Yeah, this help last day tonight. Just Christina Workman, Hidden Valley teacher and RVTA co- vice president. Uh Cindy Credo teacher Hidden Valley. and we're here on behalf of all of our RBTA members with an end of the year reflection that we'd like to share. So, as we reflect on the school year, we appreciate the positive relationship that we've built with the board in the district, an open, transparent, and collaborative relationship that continues to focus on our students. And we're grateful again for our parent community that took the risk on with measure E this year. We end this school year still
015feeling the huge disappointment of measure E not passing and therefore no prospects of starting the next school year with a negotiated contract. We end this school year with continuing concerns about losing educators to higher paying districts and wondering if the district will be able to fill open positions with competent staff. Looking ahead to the 2526 school year, we are facing known budget cuts that will directly impact our students and yet again an unsettled contract for RBTA. Additionally, we have a potential ELA adoption that will require many more hours beyond what we already do. Not all staff are in agreement with the timing of this adoption. We will begin the school year with two professional development days um focus on the new curriculum, which equates to one less day to prepare our classrooms for our new
016students. So, even before the new school school year starts, many teachers are feeling very overwhelmed. We're grateful and hopeful for continued collaboration among staff, district administration, board members, and our Ross Valley community. We remain focused on what matters most, our students. And moving on with our board, our agenda, uh, next item is F, presentation andor action items. The first item we have there is the recommended adoption of resolution 202425 recognizing June 2025 as LGBTQIA plus pride month. Yeah. So really excited to bring this resolution to the board um for consideration tonight. And I think this these resolutions that we've done this year are a good um signal to the community about our commitment to inclusive education and making sure that our schools are places where kids and families and staff feel really welcomed. And I
017think the LGBTQIA+ pride month resolution is a perfect example of exactly that because when you look through our community, you see students um that identify as, you know, LGBTQIA plus, you see staff members, um you see parents and children, and you see board members that identify this way. I think it's important that we uh name this explicitly especially given the context of uh the federal government and you know changes that we're seeing. Um and to me this isn't political at all. This is about inclusion and belonging. Something that we we are very clearly uh in favor of and we've been working really hard um for many years to make this an inclusive place. And um this is one that I'm really proud of and I know many of our staff members are are very proud
018to bring to you tonight. Do we have any questions for Tyler? Sorry. Um I will open it up to public comments. I have um three people who um wanted to speak on this. So if you wanted to come up and take seats um please do. I've got Kim Hicks, Lindy, Linda Lydia, sorry, excuse me, Lydia Damio, Cindy, and Christina. Good evening. Um, my name is Lydia Durasami. I am a parent, mother of two children in the district. One that's attending Hidden Valley and the other one that's at White uh Whitetail this year, first year. And um just as a parent in the district, I just want to emphasize how important and valuable seeing something like this um in our district, what it means to our family. Um it's very empowering for us to see that
019um it's being recognized and that the teachers are empower empowered and they have this to back them up in regards to whatever they might want to bring into the classroom and into the community and um sharing these perspectives and ideas that they have something there to help them do that and feel that. Um, so I just want to say thank you so much for bringing this uh for this month and it's such a a wonderful celebration and brings a lot of joy to our family. Thank you. One thing I forgot to mention is we have three minutes for your comments. So just you'll get like a warning at two and a half minutes. I don't think I'll use that much time. Is this thing on? Okay. Um, hi everybody. My name is Kim Hicks. Um,
020I am the proud mother of a trans daughter um that goes to White Hill and I'm thrilled to see that you all want to hopefully pass this resolution. I hope you do. Um, it's been hard. It's been a hard year. Um, you know, this is an unusual time for these kids that are kind of just like coming into themselves and now they can see things happening on the internet. They hear things said about them and even going to the doctor is stressful right now because they are told things like maybe maybe not things are going to work out for you. So it feels really good to be able to go to school. That's a very safe place. She feels really good there. And um it felt really good even coming here tonight and being able
021to say you know what like you know I'm going to this to this schoolboard meeting. They're going to pass this resolution. Um it feels good. It feels good that we live in this community and it feels good that I can say that to her. So yeah, just here in support of it all and hope that Cindy Credo TK teacher in Valley co-president of RBTA and I'm just speaking as a teacher right now and a community member because you know we'd like to begin by thanking the board for recognizing June's Pride Month. In this past school year, the district has recognized many various marginalized groups each month. We are here to ask for more authentic accountability and action. Every day, our classrooms are committed to creating learning environments where everyone feels safe, supported, and celebrated for
022who they are. We're seeking action and accountability from the district and the board to step beyond the mission statement and the obligatory months. Equity and inclusion needs to be visible all year from the district office to the classroom to the playgrounds. We would like to have collaboration with the board and cabinet on what this looks like moving forward. In order to keep be ever evolving and not become stagnant, we need to listen to the voices of our community, our students, and their families so they can feel honored, respected, and protected. We are asking the board and district to consider mindfully engaging in commerce with companies and organizations that align to our DEI ethos. We want our district to be more than performative. For example, we should raise our pride flag from an actual flag pole,
023not just an office window or banister every single day. Students and families should seen feel seen and welcome from the first day of school and all year long. If that cannot be done, at the very least, we should proudly fly pride flags on our flag pole every June. We believe it's important that our district is a leader in guiding the future and leading by example. that our district continues to create a safe and affirming space for all members of our community every day. Thank you. Do we have anybody else who'd like to comment on this item? All right. Um, so that I will bring it back to the board for discussion. Do you have any? I I will say my our my youngest son walked into our bedroom and said to my wife, "There's a
024parade that happens in San Francisco every year." And there's these colors on the flag that represent different things of the gay community. We're red, I think. Why aren't you taking me there? and when can I make rainbow cookies to pass out that day? And I will say that he was able to talk about Stonewall. We went to the library and picked up a book. He wanted to know about what it was like when I was little and knowing that I was gay at a very young age. And we're take I'm going to the San Francisco Priary for the first time because my nine-year-old was inspired by his teacher in third grade who's really openly teaching the history of LGBTQIA plus individuals. And that's the happy story. The other side is that I am pretty sure
025that every parent of a trans child is not saying you're going to the Olympics. They're saying I want you to live and I want you to be happy. Okay? And if we have any part of that in our power, I just want to say please let those nine year olds come home and continue to say those things, especially shamefully to the parents that don't even talk about their own identities to them, but also to really help those children that are coming up and having, I think, just a mountain to move every day. I hope that mountains relieve when they come on our campuses. That's all I'm going to say. That's that's my two cents. Yeah. Yeah. Again, another no-brainer. I mean, these are great. This is this is great. And I appreciate um public comment
026and hearing proactive suggestions for us to think about and consider. I really, that's one of the things that I value about getting to have public comment is when we hear um hear what people appreciate and then hear we really like what you're considering and hear some ideas of how you might put it into practice. Um that's super helpful up here. Um and I know I take that into into consideration. So I really appreciate that a lot. You know, one of the things that we weld into this resolution is that we will be hanging the the pride flag from the from the flag pole every June. Um, and it's in, you know, the resolution. I think that was a something we thought long and hard about and felt like we needed to make sure we memorialized
027that for folks. Yep. I appreciate that as well. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Right. Um, yeah, I'm glad this is here and sorry it's taken so long to be here. Um, and with that, I'll entertain a motion on this item if someone to make one. I'll make a motion to approve the resolution for approving support for Ross Valley School District LGBT QIA plus community month to be recognized in June and that the uh resolution be passed. A second. I'll second. All right. Chris. Hi. Shel. Hi. Daniel. Hi. Rachel. I resolution. All right. The next item is recommended adoption of EL education as the K35 English language arts instructional program. very excited about this. It's been a long journey. Um and we really wanted to just start with a huge thank you. Um this is our
028pilot team, our ELA pilot team. And these folks started we we gathered last year and engaged in a lot of them. Molina's going to tell you more about it, but just it's been hard work. They have done some extremely heavy lifting and they've done it with grace and with thoughtfulness and with humor and with curiosity. I'm very very proud of them and very appreciative. And I also want to really specifically shout out Molina who has done most of the leading of this work and she's been incredible in all of her organization and facilitation and really helping this this difficult process really to move forward. Thank you. Um I'm Molina Olenberger, the district TOSA and elementary coach. Um so yeah, just to backtrack a little bit to what got us to this place. Um like Julia
029said, this work has been a long time coming. It started in the spring of 2023 when we gathered a working group to establish our core beliefs in English language arts. um and we developed a clear set of guiding principles which then was woven throughout the rest of um the steps that we took. So I think it's important to call that out because that really guided every step following. After that in the spring of 2024 that's when we gathered our pilot team and we began our curriculum review and selection which is was another in-depth process that we used our guiding principles for. Uh we ended up selecting two programs to pilot uh this past school year. In the fall of 20 this past fall, we our pilot team um implemented benchmark advanced um they participated in
030training sessions, classroom observations uh and completed a very thorough and comprehensive evaluation. Uh I'll talk about our evaluation tool that we created using our guiding principles next. And then following that in the spring, this just just this past spring, hot off the presses, um our team piloted EL education and went through the same steps only uh with you know training and classroom observations only this time we partnered with Larksburg and Madera who also piloted uh EL education. So we were able to do that in tandem with them. Um and then we also completed a thorough evaluation of the program. These are the um the the letter animal cards that go along with e education. Just so you know, what is the U? The U. Oh, I'm blanking right now, but that is a really good
031good question. There's a whole story behind each animal in the e education program. And fun fact, the shape also corresponds with the shape of the letter. So, I can go back and find the story behind the U. I get back to you. Um, I do know that the T is a turn. Oh, yeah. You have the clicker, right? Thank you. I kind of liked how last time I was able to. [Laughter] Um, so we, like I said, we developed our program lens based on our guiding principles for ELA. Uh and we identified seven main areas. Foundational skills, text centered reading, text centered writing, demonstration of learning, language structure and supports, representation and design. And we use that to create our lens with which we evaluated each program. Um, I have linked in this slide deck
032our comprehensive ELA program summary, but I'll go ahead and go to the next slide that has the overview of our summary based on um our evaluation by our pilot team. So, just to give you a little context, the uh pilot team rated each program in each area um on a scale of one, three, or five. And so what you're seeing are the averages of every grade level team's rating of the program in that particular area. So um as you can see EL education came out on top over benchmark actually quite significantly. Um I just want to point out that one super strong area of EEL education was the representation. Um, I'm going to go into a little bit about EL education's mission and vision and their use of um, authentic texts that have diverse characters
033um, and mirrors and windows. Um, two areas that were um, concerning for the team were texted writing. Although it was EL education was rated higher by our team than benchmark, it was still an area that um, they just felt that needed to be bolstered a little bit. that could have to do with the fact that we were piloting beginning of the year materials in the spring. Um, and that's something that we'll keep a close eye on as we implement um, how to bolster the writing. Um, the next area is design and knowledge. And although EL ed oh, let me see design. So, basically how the program is laid out for ELE, we gave it two ratings because, and I'm going to get into this later, there's two portions of the program. there's the knowledge uh
034portion of the program and then there's the skills portion of the program. So the skills was rated um very highly by our team for its design whereas the knowledge uh design was rated a little bit lower although it was higher than benchmark. Um um I think one part that speaks to the fact that we were piloting a brand new 2025 version of the program and some components weren't quite ready yet. We really pushed the publishers to get us the newest materials quickly um before they were 100% ready so that we could uh pilot the latest and greatest. Um so yeah, can I ask you a question? Absolutely. Just trying to tick in time. So the benchmark is from the fall 24 completed thorough evaluation, right? So that's the numbers that you came and then in
035spring of 2025 is the EL correct? Yeah. So when I'm looking at these numbers um the design K through2 skills NA but I'm going through this and looking and noticing like the differential. You've got the text centered writing but then the text centered reading. there's like such a desperate like how is that if the text centered writing is so down how is the text centered reading so up right did you guys talk about that in both programs right actually um yeah it's kind of I think I've spoken to the board before about how there's no perfect program and any program is going to have an area that's weaker than others and I think just we haven't found a pro a compreh comprehensive program that includes both reading and writing where both are equally as strong.
036Yeah. Um but I feel pretty confident that we can supplement um the writing portion as long as we have the reading portion super strong. Yeah. I don't think we don't quite know yet. I mean, as Molina said, we piloted midyear some beginning of year units, and one of the things when we talked to the um to our rep from the company, she was like, "Yeah, because the writing builds over the course of the year, you're going to see much more." So, so it's a little bit of a question for us. It's also um writing to go back to the science of reading the shift in writing is to go moving towards text- centered writing. So when you're instead of writing like for example when we were doing units of study students are writing a lot
037about what they already know in their life experience. And so the volume of writing might be a lot more. Whereas now with the focus on writing to explain or synthesize what you've learned from a text, your volume is going to go down, right? But the writing is more focused on learning and um text centered. Does that make sense? That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. It's just an interesting delta between the two. They're so they're so correlated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just curious. Thank you. Um, good question. So, now I'll go a little bit more into EEL education. Um, and why, you know, we're re our team recommends the program for adoption. Um, here is the vision and the mission of EEL education. Um, their vision is when students and teachers are engaged in work that is
038challenging, adventurous, and meaningful, learning and achievement flourish. Their mission is to create classrooms where teachers can fulfill their highest aspirations and students achieve more than they think possible, becoming active contributors to building a better world. Um, and I do have to say, you know, you see this this vision and this mission threaded throughout the curriculum. So, three main highlights of EL education based on the feedback from our pilot team. Number one, um they found that it had a strong instructional design with clear routines. So there's explicit learning targets for students for every lesson and consistent routines and structures. Number two is um there our team really loved the high quality and diverse texts. um they were um engaging and culturally diverse literature and they gave students exposure to multiple perspectives and also to meaningful content
039across grade levels. And then the third main um pro for EL education according to our team was uh the built-in assessment and differentiation. Um there was frequent varied assessments in the program with again clear learning targets um and also built-in supports for um ML multilingual learners and just diverse learners through their differentiation which I'll speak more to. So to speak to the structure of the program um we've got the K2 and the 35. In the K2 there's two main components. One is the knowledge building components. That's where the um the novel the not the novels but the readalouds and the picture books are um and that's for knowledge building. The second part of the program is the skills block. So that's where your phonics, your spelling, um your grammar come in and that's all taught
040in small group. And then going to the third through fifth um curriculum also is broken up into two um parts. also the module lessons which is the content building lessons or the knowledge building lessons. Uh that's where the novel studies are located. And then for third through fifth they have something called all block which is their version of their differentiated small groups. Um just a more um flexible grouping. Uh in all block um each block is um according to E 60 minutes long for a total of 120 minutes. Here's a note about curriculum publishers is they all write their curriculum as though that's the only thing you teach all day. So there's what the curriculum writers write on paper and then there's reality. So there's some we understand there's going to be some wiggle room
041there. Um so now I want to speak to the authentic texts which was a big highlight from our pilot team. um e education really um places a focus on selecting texts with diverse authors um and also diverse characters in the text. There's a focus on um text being used as mirrors and windows which I'll talk more about that that comes from Dr. Rudinson's Bishop's idea of mirrors and windows. Um they focus on authentic representation. Um just focusing on diversity and individuals with different abilities. Um and also empowering critical thinking. Um so I we just loved the choices and the thoughtfulness with which the texts were selected. So mirrors for example are um books where students can see themselves. So um with the intention of building student pride and self-esteem in various identities. And here's a
042couple of examples right under there of some texts used. Um that's a first grade text and then a second grade text for the me the most magnificent thing first grade off to class second grade. Um and then we have books that are meant to be windows. So the giving students the opportunity to learn about each other to learn about other um people and other cultures uh learn about various identities and a diverse society. And then finally, books, mentor texts and books as sliding glass doors that allow students to identify systems of injustice and understand the role of activism and social change. That is a a really strong thread throughout the program in from starting from kindergarten all the way up to fifth grade. And both waiting for the Biblio and um Esperonza Rising. Um Biblio
043is third grade and Espironza Rising is fifth grade. Um and those are really good example texts for just um invoking activism and social change. Are there are four modules in a year and a module is kind of just a basic you know an overall theme right and there's four modules in a year. These are the themes and topics for each grade level across the year. Um so as you can see even just by the topics there's a lot of diversity in topic and um I'll say um fifth grade athlete leaders of social change. Um I was I kind of looked into that one this year and that one was a really inspiring one to me personally. Um and about half are STEM and half are humanities right in terms of what the knowledge component is.
044Yeah. So they do tie into the grade levels um science and social studies um standards. Then speaking to differentiation in K2, there's skills block that I mentioned before. Um, and this is where um, a teacher is able in K2 to meet their students needs. Whether a student needs more challenge or they need a little bit more scaffolding to understand specific phonics skills. Um it consists of um whole group time where everyone's learning together on grade level content then small differentiated groups um and during that time there's instructional guidance. So um I'll say as a teacher often a book a curriculum will tell you to do small differentiated groups but then doesn't give you any lesson or any guidance as to how or what exactly to teach whereas e education has guided lessons for various instructional
045groupings um whether a student is really emerging as a reader or really um already a reader. Um, and then it also includes independent student activities for independent groups. Does a pilot group provide any type of like feedback about the type of text and books that were provided positive or negative? Um, as far as the decodable readers or No, no, actually no. The books that are noted in uh the authentic text like I said in the beginning, the that was the highlight for the pilot. That was a highlight. So there was complete positive or positive complete positive and as a matter of fact um a big difference between EL education and Benchmark is that their texts are authentic texts whereas it it's not a basil reader whereas um Benchmark um they're reading from kind of like
046a textbook. It's actually like more like pamphlets these days but it's like a textbook. Um, and so our teachers loved the fact that um, not only were they authentic texts, but you know, we had our mirrors and windows of course. Yeah. We're using we're reading real books basically. Yeah. And in the upper grades there, every student has a chapter book in their hands that they're reading as a novel study. Yeah. Um, so then going back to differentiation and third through fifth, it looks this is what it looks like. It's um called all block. Um and during this time students are grouped into three groups. Um the group working with the teacher is homogeneous meaning that they are all needing to work on the same skill. And then the other two groups uh one are heterogeneous
047groupings and the theory behind that is so that there can be um in built-in scaffolding between students who are at reading at different levels. Um so a small group may be doing accountable independent reading which was also a highlight from our pilot team was that there is time and space in e education for um student choice in reading books. So they have their novel study but then there's also time for a student to have a choice book. Um and then on top of that there's accountable follow-up work for students to do with their choice book. So they're not um they're not just reading they're also doing some follow-up work with it. And then there's task cards which um address um grammar usage and mechanics. Um and those are also differentiated. So they come in different
048levels depending on um what students need. So a lot of builtin scaffolding and differentiation in the program. Um so here is a video of EL education in action. If I hit next, will it play the video? Okay. Um, so these are some of our pilot teachers um, teaching the program. Okay, we're gonna do number one. Give me a thumb or if you think it is correct. Okay, number two. Give me a thumb if you think it's correct. If you picked number one, you have to tell me why. because we know that you were looking at some of the letters around the room. I like it. You were telling our very own weather story. The very rainy day. I wonder if we could turn and talk with our partners about what we would put in the
049middle of a rainy day story. What should Miss Wagner and Teddy do on a rainy day? What does an adjective do in a sentence? [Music] Can you think of some examples of adjectives? I overheard some of you already sharing. ideas. What about a verb? We did a lot of work with verbs already, too. What are verbs? In the book's title, Nazine's Secret School, you have three choices there. It's made up of three words. One of those is in fact an adjective. It's describing a noun. Which one? Secret. Secret. How's that help you understand anything about this book? Just hearing that title Nazarene Secret School and knowing that is trying to decide something. What does that help you with? Oh, the people who know won't tell. [Music] Okay. All right, I'm going to ask you questions
050about this story. What does the king in the song? in those words. I'm put And the other one is now Julia is going to speak a little bit to the professional development. Yeah. Thank you, Molina. Really appreciate you explain the program so beautifully. Um, okay. So, Molina talked about how there's two parts to the program, which is why there are basically two launch days. One for the knowledge modules and one for the skills book or all book depending on the grade level. And so, we're looking at having those two days in August. We typically have three teacher work days and one professional development day in August. So what we are doing is we have a prof we when we created our calendar for this year October 3rd was a um professional development day and we're
051swapping and so October 3rd will be a teacher work day and so the the number of teacher work days and the number of professional development days um will stay the same and it's one less teacher work day at the start of the year when teachers are setting up their classroom. So totally hear that that is um you know difficult to juggle. Um so that's the launch. Um in January we'll use that day as well for um supporting our work around EL education. Um a lot of the time that we'll be spending during our professional development days are really unpacking by grade level the program and really digging in and working to understand it. EL education coaches are going to be providing sitebased coaching this year. Um each site will have three days of coaching. Um
052and then we typically have four or five district grade level meetings over the course of the year and we are planning on devoting that time to this work as well. So that's a time for third grade teachers from every all of our foresights to get together and talk about how things are going and share best practices and tips and tricks and all of that kind of thing. And then of course Molina as our instructional coach provides support as well. Um we can also look into having grade level release days um if that's something that ends up being a need from our staff. But really, anytime there's an ask of teachers, what teachers need is time um to really dig in and do the planning and and the work that it entails. And we when we
053talked as a pilot team about what was needed, that was the conversation. And um just recognizing that also it can't all be PD where you're sitting and learning. It needs to be time to just dig in and and do the work of reading through it on your own and planning out your lessons and preparing materials and that sort of thing. And then in terms of program cost, so print materials on the left hand side there, the total cost for all of our K through fifth grade classes is just over 200 grand. Um, which is a lot of money. And that includes all of our teacher manuals, um, all of the student texts and workbooks for one year. So ongoing costs would be the workbooks, kind of like with our Bridges math program, we buy workbooks
054every year. Those are consumables, so you have to buy them every year. The rest of these are a onetime cost. And the funding source is the art, music, and instructional materials block grant, which is a those are onetime dollars that sunshine in June of 2026. And so we actually have really wanted to have an adoption before those dollars go away um because it's very difficult to come up with dollars for an adoption um unless you have those kinds of one-time monies. And then in terms of professional development from eel education, you can see what's included there. Um along with the um teacher launch days, we're going to have a leadership launch day and that's going to be a shared day with um the principles and leadership in Larksburg. It's looking like Nicasio Lochanus um and
055that's one room schoolhouse that I always forget. Union. Is it Union? What's the one room schoolhouse? Anyways, they're joining us as well. Um, and I think that's really important for our principles, Lagouna, that's thank you. Um, to just become very familiar with the program so that they can support their teachers as well. Um, and then the school-based coaching and some strategic planning sessions with leadership. And the dollars for professional development will be coming from our educator effectiveness grant. And it's a five-year program. Remember I was talking about it last time. How many years is this? Well, the materials are um will be good forever. It's it's as long as we want to continue using the program. So, the only ongoing cost will be the workbooks. And does that do the workbooks come out of the
056block grant going forward or is that No, because the block grant will go away. So those will come out of lottery instruction lottery instructional materials funds which we get every year and those funds can only be allocated to instructional materials. So they're the typical funds as I say the funds we use for our bridges workbooks and that kind of thing. Um yeah. Um question. What looks interesting. Granted, there's a lot of newness and I can understand teachers are trying to go through and get, you know, get a grasp of it. But it seems like this program as opposed to the other one had a lot of um differentiated materials to start out with, which hopefully will be a good starting place and and reduce the amount of time that it would maybe normally take teachers
057to create their own differentiated things um and and having to do their actual creation. So there's still a lot of learning and ramping up, but it seems like this program has a lot of that material-wise already in place, which yeah, I mean, I think again teachers will be investing time and energy into this program and I think in the long run I I really feel it will pay off. Um, but it's it is going to be important to provide that planning time. But the program's really rich. it has a lot available for teachers um for the different things that they need to do within their classroom and and as Molina said having the support for differentiation is huge. Yeah. Um the program that that's this is a brand new program. We're one of the first
058districts to pilot it. Although there's a 2017 version, so it's it's both new and not new. But in terms of this addition, it's pretty brand spanking new. the skills block portion of it for K2 came out in 2024 and that's the one that the teachers rated really strongly um our K2 teachers and I think a part of that is that it was really easy to navigate because it was good to go. The full program will be good to go this summer. come. Great. So, I have confidence that it will the the work that our teachers will be doing will be easier than the work that our our pilot teachers did. Uh and I do, you know, we wouldn't be bringing it forward if we didn't feel that it was a worthy program. It's one of
059the things that um the trainer that we've been working with always says talking about the program is that it's a thinking teachers program and it's a program that really um emphasizes critical thinking and rich discussions. It has lots of protocols that it has the kids use so that it'll, you know, have it's time for the kids to discuss something and instead of just saying, "Oh, turn to your partner." There's like six different ways that you can go and talk with partner. It's pinky partner time. It's back to back. It's you know the getting kids up out of their seats. There's no tech in this program other than the PowerPoints that teachers might be using. It's really authentic, organic program with rich texts. um that I think are really compelling for kids and teachers. I just
060want to mention to to build on the thinking teachers idea. As I've gotten to know the teachers of this district, we have thinking teachers. We have really high quality, thoughtful teachers. This program is a high bar program. This is not one that you just like, you know, jump into and can teach without significant professional development. So, appreciate you thinking critically about that. But the fact that our teachers chose this program is emblematic of the quality of teachers in our district. Um, excellent teachers choose programs like this and really proud of the decision that our team made. Um, because it is a big program with meaty things to unpack. Um, and I think our our teachers are up to the challenge and have the skills to do the differentiation and um, engage with rich texts like
061this. So really proud of our our teachers. It seems like some of this is already being implemented by in pockets or I mean the mirrors and windows things I remember hearing about two or three years ago. The small group reader thing I know lots of teachers are already doing some it seems like there's some versions of a lot of this. So some of it's not all it's not like a whole brand new I wouldn't want whoever might be listening to this to think that we're like rolling out this brand new thing that nobody's ever done any pieces of before. There's a lot of it but it weaves it all together with a really clear purposeful I mean the program is built on research and built on best practices and our teachers are also you know
062they're masters of their craft and so they they know how to do use these different protocols. they on their own select beautiful books to use with their students. Um, I believe that all of the work that our teachers have done with units of study for reading and writing, the program that we've had for a very long time, they've learned so much about how to be a masterful reading and writing teacher that can be applied to the work that they'll be doing in this program as well. So, and then the um the professional development and the um teacher work day at the beginning of the year, that's a struggle anyway. And so, I wonder how we can get the parent clubs, if teachers are okay with that, to have parent volunteers just there that those couple
063of days just to help staple things or take staples out of walls or to help put pieces of paper into binders. I did that for the math for fifth grade math this year. I just happened to be on campus. So there might be a need for more parents just to get involved to volunteer just to hey put me to work. What do you need? I don't know if the teachers would all want that, but the teachers that I spoke to last year at Brookside were just thankful that somebody else was there. And so maybe there's a way that we get more of the parent clubs behind. Hey, five parents on whatever helping out. I think there's lots of support that you know would be welcomed and I think principal probably would be the best person
064to connect with on that in terms of organizing what that looks like. We have some cutting that we need done. Yeah. Will there be a lot of unpacking of a bunch of new materials and things like that when it comes to us? Yeah. You know, this this last year we moved forward with the next edition, the third edition of our math program if you remember. And what we did was we delivered the new curriculum. Teachers took the new curriculum out of the boxes. They put the old curriculum in the boxes. Chris and Dez organized a sweep of the district of picking everything up. Like we need to do that kind of work again as well. And you got to put the pieces of paper into the binder so they can just pull off. There's no
065binders in this program. That was But I'm referring like the math one of last year. So, it's just like it was easy to help out with and so I'll try to connect with the principles and to see if there's something we can do with parent clubs. Yeah. To get parents out there those couple of days. These um the materials are already spiral bound. So, very nice. Any more questions? If not, I will go out to public. Do we have any public comment on this item? Seeing so please identify yourself when you get up to the top. Good evening. Peterberg, Wade Thomas, parent. Uh, I could not state definitively tonight if it's the curriculum, the efforts of my son, or the fact that Julie Beret and Joel Lot, who have piloted, are just phenomenal teachers. Go
066Mustangs. Uh, but I've seen my son become a much more confident reader over the last two years. Uh he's now reading compliance documentation with me, which is a little frustrating. Might be too smart for his britches. Uh but I I support this method of of teaching. I've seen firsthand the positive outcomes it can have. Uh both with my own child and his classmates as well for one. Thank you. Thank you. Do any other public comment on this item? I'm on it. Maybe I have two kids at Manor and somehow one of my kids been in piloting this or this thing or next thing for like three semesters now in a row. Um and so I heard comments about that and um the unit they they profiled in their classroom and he was very excited about
067and I can see how engaged he was um with the materials that he was learning that he would actually be tell telling me about it. Usually it's not often the case I would say that I hear about what's actually happening in the classroom. So it I take that as a fantastic sign and I think the other thing and so it from what I know uh and also I guess I was going to say that manner unlike maybe others was used e you know we used to be e project based learning school so we have a lot of experience with e methodology and it's a really fantastic approach that is science based which I always appreciate. Anyway, I just want to say that it it seemed like it's really truly the great thing to do and
068I appreciate the teacher and it takes extra work to do all the piloting and um I think it's clearly good enough saying that we should just adopt it and and be done piloting. Thank you. Um to piggyback on that, yes, EL education also has a um character building um component which is separate from their ELA curriculum. However, some of their components, they call them habits of character, and some of those components get um woven throughout the ELA curriculum. And so, you'll see learning targets that are habits of character targets in the ELA curriculum. Um so, it's both a standalone character um curriculum and program, but then also within the ELA program, there are components of it. Any more public comments? Sorry, I need to check on that. No. Okay. All right. Um, with that, I
069will close public comment and bring it back to the board to discuss. Do you have any comments of here on this? No, just like with the math one, I really appreciate how thoughtful and well-designed the piloting was for this. Um, you know, starting with kind of guiding principles and then going deeper into the details and being, you know, ratings and rubrics and thoughtfulness and involving students and so just appreciate it. makes makes our decision um it it makes the decision making process for us easier when we can really see how you came to your decision to propose something to us. So appreciate that. Thank you. And I think um you know we think about like where does the love of reading start and it really does start at this small nucleic level. Um, I don't
070know if people guys have heard about this Colombia professor who is shocked that 90% of his classes complained because they're overwhelmed. Very few of them have read a book from front to back. And the to have a program like this to teach kids to see themselves in books and to find that love to start early. I think we're we're really going to help nurture um if not a microcosm or hope it's a macrocosm of individuals and readers that are excited about continuing to go front to back um as they continue to grow. So this to me this speaks volumes uh for the love of reading and having our teachers have that in the classroom. So I think it's fantastic a lot. Really really like it. Think the 232 page PDF on the alphabet does not
071have the U. I can see there's a bird flying. It has an umbrella. You're not going to approve that. I don't know. It's not consistent. I can do I can do some digging. 232 pages. What are you looking at? It's a bird. According to this, it's an umbrella. Well, picture Oh, this whole thing's great. I mean, you guys Yeah, this whole thing's great. And I I just want to say a heartfelt thank you to the pilot teachers. Um, I've talked with a number of them over the course of the year and spoken with union leadership about the, you know, the amount of work that it is and I really want to give them a big shout out. Absolutely. When you saw the pictures of them, those are some of our superstar teachers that have volunteered
072to do more than their already big job. Um, so big kudos to them. And I also want to thank Molina. Um, I've been part of pilots as a teacher before and been an administrator overseeing them. And facilitating a pilot is very challenging. Teachers have big opinions about the the textbooks that they want to use. Um, and facilitating, you know, those big feelings is very difficult. And one thing I really appreciate that Molina did is Molina wanted the teachers to make the decision and she wanted the teachers to pick the program that they would implement. And I think she did a remarkable job of letting the conversation breathe and be sticky and challenging, but you know, shephering it forward in a really nice way. and um she deserves a lot of credit for the outcome um
073and taking care of the teachers through the process. Thank you. Appreciate that. And with that, staff recommends that board of course educated as our K5 ELA instructional program. That's interesting. I was on Mir's campus last June I think with you Julie and I was talking to you and you were talking about this coming up before the board and you guys were try you know you were going to be trying one of these different curriculums and I just remember thinking ah and you were telling me how much work it is and to echo title like I'm very grateful to the all the teachers who piloted this. That's a big list. It's a huge list. Um and so I know this has been a really packed full school year with lots of stuff going on. So, just
074very appreciative of all our teachers and I was so happy to hear that they had chosen one. Um, so with that, I will entertain a motion on this item unless we have any further conversation up here. I'd make a motion that we um adopt EL education as the K through five English language arts instructional program. I have a second. I have a second. Is that a question or no? I will second. All right. Okay, cool. Daniel, hi. Shel, I Chris I Rachel I All right, we have adopted e education. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. No more teacher and you would like to leave, please feel free. Um, next item is staff presentation and public hearing local control and accountability plan. me. All righty. It's that time of
075year. Um, I think we're all familiar with the with what the LCAP is, our three-year district level plan. Um, and we update it annually and we are currently in year one of our LCAP. And important to remind ourselves that the LCAP addresses the needs of all of our students, including um, and most specifically what we call our unduplicated students, our multilingual learners, our foster youth, our low-income students. Um, and the LCAP also addresses the state of California's eight priority areas. Um and the LCAP is a team effort. All of these groups have input into the LCAP. Most importantly, our superintendants council, which includes classified and certificated staff, site and district admin, parent club leaders, site council reps, equity task force reps, a whole conglomeration of district folk um who provide feedback and and input into
076the LCAP and the revision of the LCAP. And then we also consult with our special education local plan area. Um, we consult with our teacher leadership group, a really important um, group of folk for this. Our district English learner advisory council, of course, our site and district admin team, our parent guardian equity task force and our students. Okay, so we have three goals and our first goal is an academic goal and that goal is really about making sure that all of our students receive high-quality instruction and and the supports and interventions that they need. And particularly we are really focused on closing that opportunity gap um between those who historically underperform or don't perform as well as some of our other students. Um, and to that end, we had four actions for goal one. Um,
077one of those, the first action is priority standards, and I'm happy to say that we did it. Our, um, elementary teachers identified priority standards for both English language arts and mathematics. Our middle school teachers have identified priority standards in all content areas. We also implemented our new um diagnostic assessment tool for reading and mathematics I Ready in grades K through 8. Um and we have been implementing a reading screener reading difficulty SC screener and now as you know have adopted it um and that's called NCLS. Our learning teams is another action. This is our groups of um staff who get together and dig into data and um make instructional plans and that's been happening at both the site and the district level. Um part of that work has been identifying learning targets for lessons, analyzing
078data and really engaging in that cycle of plan, do study, act. um where you're looking at data, planning instructions based on the data, going back, seeing how you did it, and doing it again. Um and then that third action is our ELA curriculum adoption, and we did it. Um and then EL instruction, we have had a whole district focus on teacher clarity this year, particularly the use of learning targets. Um and also really looking at explicit instruction in the classroom. um this significant research that talks about the importance of explicit instruction. That's a big part of why we are shifting our ELA program um is because we need that foundational skills work. And just a little bit of evidence, these are last year's CASP scores, but you can see that nearly all student groups showed
079growth for ELA. And for math, all of our student um student groups showed growth, which is terrific. We are starting to get scores back for this year and seeing lots of bright spots there, too. And then I Ready, as expected, students progressed over the course of the year. Um so in terms of grade level proficiency of of knowing the content standards for their grade level and showing mastery of those, we see an increase over the course of the year. The assessment was um administered three times over the course of the year. And then our reading screener is also for well for first and second grade it's administered three times and for kindergarten we don't assess at the start of the year um two times. And you can see again growth there and our Molina was
080leading our intervention team today looking taking a much deeper dive into our MClass reading results and kind of talking about planning for next. Is that roughly whatever 78% this slide and the previous one is that a good number for benchmark for yeah for this one the I ready like where it ends? Yeah, it's it's in alignment with CASP kind of where our CASP is. It's actually a little bit higher in some ways than than we might see on our CASP. But this is inclusive of all grade levels of course where CASP is third through eight. Our second goal is a wellness goal and really looking at how we're supporting the students social emotional well-being. Um and we had three actions for that goal. The first action we're really in an exploration phase. We um we
081were looking at again our ELA curriculum EL education does have integrated SEAL. There's a lot of sharing strategies um seal different strategies and programs across our sites. And then we're also exploring right now an antibbias curriculum from um Tanisha Tate. Uh she's put together a community of belonging curriculum that's a K through eight curriculum. Um and we're looking at a possibility of moving forward with that next year particularly at the middle school level and and possibly piloting in elementary as well. We want to be careful though because of the ask that's already there with the new ELA program. And then chronic absenteeism. Um we developed a playbook couple of playbook for how to decrease chronic absenteeism. And um one of the one of the actions that our principles took was to include looking at attendance
082data on a weekly basis at our care team meetings. Um and then also really looking at how they schedule days that if it's a high absence day, scheduling something fun that day so kids want to come to school. Um, and then we always looking at our sense of belonging data and digging into that and again more sharing of the ways in which we celebrate and create belonging at all of our sites. Um, both for our history and heritage months um, and also digging a little bit more into neurodeiversity and ability and um, other ways other aspects of belonging. How are we capturing that sense of belonging data? We have our panorama survey that we're using. Okay. Yeah. And then also we had healthy kids this year. So for fifth grade and seventh grade is the
083the neurodeiversity and ability information. Is that something that's um being pushed or taught in the middle school level or is it just TK through five? That's interesting. I don't I don't actually know the answer to that. I know that um in our elementary schools there were celebrations and acknowledgements at like their Wednesday welcome type things, but I'm not sure. Well, I think in the anti-based lessons that White Hill does, I think they touch on it, but I don't want to speak for John and Mary Clair because I don't know. Do you do you know Eric? Okay. Back to you on that. Um, okay. Just a little more data. You know, we've had a lot of conversations about attendance and we're doing a good job. It's going up. And then this is our healthy kids survey.
084This is just one aspect on it of it on school connectedness. And you can see the increases there from 2023. It's nice to see especially that big leaf for our um Latinx kids. And then our third goal is about um our community partners and how we engage them. And so part of that was really wanting in that first action to engage with our community around attendance. And the way that looked was um our principles and some of our teachers conducting empathy interviews where they're really um calling parents or having parents come in and just talking about what's going on, you know, how how can we help get your kid to school um and just reaching out, showing encouragement, direct reach out to students, encouraging them to come to school as well. Um and then lots
085of communications both at the site level and the district level around attendance was a part of our work this year. Um we did accomplish a lot in our equity work this year particularly with our parent guardian equity task force. We've created now the task force has created an onboarding document for task force members. Um, every year we have new members and it can be a little wonky just trying to figure out what helping to onboard folk to to what the group is about. Um, and then we created a slide deck to onboard new staff, both certificated and classified in terms of our district equity work. You know, we have years and years of this work now that teachers have participated in and staff have participated in. And when we bring new people in, we want
086to make sure that they understand how central that work is for us. Um, and then always the sight to sight sharing of the work. And then, uh, we have plaques at all of our sites showing our racial equity mission statement in the office. And then we are creating, this is something we just have the template now, but we'll be launching next year, some large scale um, belonging posters for each of the sites that are tailored to the sites. Um, so that was kind of fun to get that done. Um, action 3.3, engagement of families of multilingual learners. We had, we've talked about this amazing reclassification ceremony that we had in the fall with over 150 people there and food and activities and um support for families. We, the amazing Jorge has supported us a lot
087with um uh making sure that our Spanish speaking families um have support for technology, for not navigating district systems, making sure they can access parent square, um all of those kinds of things, anything that they need to sign up for. Um and then we are refining our systems for requesting um interpretation and translation services. um try to streamline that, make it easy, make sure that anytime a family needs um support with translation or interpretation, we can get that for them. Under 3.2, are we getting the adequate support from the county to continue the equity work without any pressures to remove some of these programs from our Yeah. processes from from the county, from the state, you know, it's really clear that the support is there. Um, there may be some shifts sometimes in language. You
088know, I I'm finding myself starting to talk about belonging more than I am DEI. Um, but um, you know, that hasn't shifted for us in Ross Valley and I don't think it's shifted in the county or or the state level either. and all of the policies that are in place, you know, are still there as protections. And we're we're making that clear. And actually, it's kind of an interesting thing with our ELA program. One of the programs that we were considering piloting, Molina reached out to them and they said that um they were having to change all of their book titles. And then another program um was also making a lot of shifts around what's coming out nationally. Our program the only shifts they've made is to shift a little bit of the searching that
089you know keywords and things that might come up in searching but the core texts are staying and it's a really beautiful set of diverse texts. Okay. So that's one of our reasons for really wanting that program right because they mean it. They're nonprofit. Um yeah. So thank you. Do you see any correlation in the data that you're getting back on attendance through either the empathy interviews or whatever and the um social emotional learning and sense of belonging feedback from those dual uh surveys and things like that? Is there any cross referencing of those to see I'm not sure. I think what we have learned and it's not a surprise is that, you know, when we really reach out to families and work with them and we take the time to make those phone calls and
090learn whatever we can um and really express how much we value them and want their child in school, um we're able to increase in those families. So, that's for folk who are just having a difficult time getting their kids to school. There's there's another set of attendance issues we have that's very different around family trips in Tahoe and those kinds of things. Those are different conversations, but conversations that our principles are for sure having. I was just wondering also the use of things like empathy interviews and qualitative feedback versus just the surveys that we do with the chicks and healthy kids that those whether we see a similar type of shift in belonging and connection to school with using those kinds of things. I don't know with with our empathy interviews and focal student work
091if we've been able to quantify it in that way yet, but that's a really good question. Yeah. All right. So, what's next? Um, in terms of those three areas, really pretty straightforward. We are going to implement our new ELA program for K5 and our new math program for 68. Um, all of this work that our elementary teachers have been doing on prioritizing standards is going to help us to shift our report cards. So, this summer we have a team of fabulous teachers that are going to be working on the math portion of the report card and um, characteristics of a learner. Is that what it's called? Characteristics of a learner. Um, and some of the general pieces. we're going to hold off on ELA um because we're just getting a new program under our belts
092and that sort of thing. Um but really making sure that our report card, you know, the priority standards kind of tell us we're going to make sure every kid is getting these like these are the big boulders and that's what should show up on the report card. The, you know, like when I was teaching seventh grade math, angle relationships, I love angle relationships, but it's not bolder. It's something that it's nice to know. Um, and then growing our learning teams, all of this work, you know, we we now have data in a way that we never had before and it's really important to be using that data to inform instruction. So that continues, but our learning teams are also teams that are digging into new curriculum. Um, so having our fifth grade teachers together in
093a room saying, "Okay, here's what's working for me. Here's what's not working for me. What have you tried?" um that sort of thing, trading tips and practices. In wellness, we're we're going to really try moving forward with the development of an SEAL program, whether that means adopting a specific program or that means adopting parts of programs or building parts of programs or identifying um various areas. um continue a district-wide sharing of practices that create a sense of belonging and the pilot I think I mentioned of mentioned of the culture of belonging curriculum that comes from Tanisha tape and then community engagement we are on our final year of panorama education and there's strong interest in trying out a different survey tool we're looking at likely youth truth um which is one that many of our
094of marine county district is. Um, so that's that's on the horizon. And then we have launched a special education advisory committee and that's going to be really important work for the coming year. I think the one thing I want to say is that you know sometimes personally I get buried in the minutia of the dayto day and it's you know okay I got to solve this problem or respond to this thing and the last you know handful of weeks of the school year has been a little cloudy because of you know the car accident the parcel tax and it's just you know made things feel a little bit different um than the majority of the year but when you Look at this. The overwhelming amount of work that's been done by our teachers, by our
095administrators, by our parents is pretty remarkable. That is a lot of accomplishment in a year that was full of a lot of big things. Um so it just kind of I'm sitting here kind of listening and reflecting and feeling really proud of what we've done together. And um this is a good reminder even though these last few weeks have been a little bit more challenging to just say like wow the people of this district are really amazing and accomplished a lot this year. Very clear and so appreciated. That's all I have questions. You know, when we first started down this journey, um especially being one of the earlier members of the California task force, the issues that we were dealing with day-to-day walls our kids were hitting. I just want to make sure that we
096all are, it's not perfect, but we are seeing progress, right? We are seeing our kids notably mentioning how much they feel more of a sense of a community, part of a community. Um, and that that that took a lot to move that forward. And I think that this is um really demonstrating that. It's taken a while, but I feel confident that they can only get better. Like, listen, acknowledge that it was not pretty for a while. Yeah. Yeah. And appreciate the emphasis, too, on keeping that history alive and keeping that where did we come from and how we gotten here part of it. Um, so it can both, like you said, celebrate that there has been momentum and yet we, you know, and we'll keep going kind of thing. It's not like when you were
097done, but it definitely keeps connection to where the effort started to learn why. Yeah. And we're not in we're at a place now, I think, in history that we're not trying to catch up and emulate what's happening in the greater world. I think we have to protect what we've put together so far to protect us from what's happening in the greater world, which is a very different pivot, you know, but I think we've built a strong foundation to do that. Um and I hope that we look at it that way as well. Protect what we've built um because it can easily be dismantled um on so many levels as we know. So this is a whatever we can do I think on our side to keep that going is what we can do right. Okay.
098For this one, usually we have public comment, but I think we have actually a hearing to we have to do this time. So, I'm going to move um let's see. I have to open a public hearing on our local control and accountability plan. Um per education code EC sections 42127 and 52062, two separate governing board public meetings held at least one day apart are now required for the school district budget. Sorry about that. Wrong. Wrong script. Let's see. No. Okay. Sorry. It's the same. All right. Um are now required for the school district budget hearing and budget adoption. In addition, the LCAP public hearing must occur at the same meeting as the budget public hearing. And the LCAP adoption must occur at the same meeting at the budget adoption. The LCAP item must precede the
099budget item at each meeting. The public hearings require 72 hours public notice. and both the 202526 budget and the 202526 LCAP must be adopted on or before July 1st, 2025. Um, so I now call the public hearing open at 8:05. Do I have anybody who would like to come up with a comment? All right, seeing no comment, um, I am I now call the public hearing closed. Um, so we're moving to discussion or action on this one. I don't think there's any action on this, but up for discussion for the board here now. I mean, I think it's great work. I mean, you guys, we've all done a lot this year, a lot. So, it's awesome to see. Yep. appreciate it being a living working planning process, not just a check the box for state
100compliance regardless of the reading that we just had to do with opening hearings and that kind of stuff, but it definitely feels like it's a active tool that that we use and it comes across in the way that's presented to thoughtfully and I've seen it at the superintendent council meetings and that you know other places. definitely feels like a guiding document, guiding work. One thing that I've said to Julie a few times here is that having worked in other districts, the simplicity and clarity of our LCAP is something to be really proud of and I think a lot of that is due in part to the cabinet team and Julia for really being the brains behind writing this. Um, and what it does is it helps keep our teachers focused on a few things to
101do them really well as opposed to, you know, juggling 15 different initiatives. And I think, um, we should be proud of the simplicity and clarity of this LCAP. And, um, I think it helps us stay focused on the most important things. So, we're just here. We're just having a hearing tonight and then the next time we do the adoption. All right. Thank you. And this gives both the public and the board opportunity to give us feedback on on what you'd like to see in LCAP. If you have any changes, then we have time to go back, make adjustments, and bring it for a vote at the next meeting. Great. Just impressed by the work that we've done this year. So, thank you to you and your team. Much appreciated teachers working on this. So with
102that I will move us on to our next item which is staff presentation and public hearing preliminary 202526 district budget reserves and multi-year projection for 2026 27 and 2728 I'm going to move over I will try and speak as loud as possible. I know I have a tendency to to not speak real loud. So, tonight we're going to talk about the 2526 uh adopted budget. It it is also known as the estimated actuals for the current fiscal year just in case you see that in other places. And so we'll talk about different things including the demographic data, our revenues and expenses, fund balances, and also our res. In terms of the demographics, the first thing that's important for us to note is looking at what our enrollment and our attendance is and has been and
103looking at it what in terms of our attendance rates. And so what is important to note is that we see this big drop in our attendance rate uh in 2223 which really has to do with COVID. uh in 21-22 we were held harmless and so that 96.2 is really where our attendance was prior to COVID and then you see the gradual uh improve improvement of our attendance rate and so moving forward um we did have a 95.1% attendance rate for 2425 and with built into my projections for our multi-year we show 95.2% 2%. So just a slight tick up. It's still under that uh those averages um in the past. And the other thing that's also important to note is you see both an increase in our attendance and our enrollment based upon that demographic
104study that we had done. Um and it's really as a result of the um increase in our TK students. And so you're going to start to see a bubble of children coming up that are a little bit larger than the ones that are exiting. So we'll start to see a tick up in our enrollment overall. And I just want to go back to that slide. When we did the budget advisory committee in the beginning of the year, really the core issue was countywide low revenue, the lowest revenue in the county. That's really the core of the budget issue. When you all these conversations that we have, that's the core of the issue. And there's three ways to inc increase our revenue. One, increase our attendance rate. Check. We've done that and we'll continue to push
105hard to get that to prepandemic levels. Two is increase enrollment. Check. We're on the path and it looks like things should be moving forward. We're going to continue to do good marketing to increase that. Plus, we've got co baby boom and you know, just people moving into the community. Third is the parcel tax. So, two out of the three were moving in the right direction to increase revenue because that's really the core of the budget issue. And this graph right here articulates two of those three um revenue uh increases. I know that it's it's a molecular look through, but that 1% to get us back to the preandemic, do we know what the characteristics of that absenteeism is within that small percentage? Is it driven perhaps by um socioeconomic disparities? I mean, what what do
106we know how we could perhaps trigger an uptick there? That's flat, right? Um I'm showing it flat as we go forward. It could in fact go up, but really the biggest thing to focus on is between 2223 and 2425, you see almost a 1% per year jump. Yeah. So if we continue that in that 25 26 year it could go up to 96. And I think the thing that made a difference was from the district level we communicated it quite a bit from the site level principles communicated it and I think really a big the biggest impact was teachers communicating to uh parents to say hey we need your kids here in school so they can learn and then secondarily it helps us with revenue as well. So I think it's really communication um issue
107and behavior change, right? Families got used to during the pandemic, you know, taking along the weekend and you know, being a little bit more lax about sickness and um we just need to get back to that behavior that we had pre- pandemic, which is taking some time. Yeah. But I think the return to work policies as well, if both parents are back at work, sorry kid, you got to go to school today. Kind of sneeze on Tom, right? Sneeze on Yeah, sneeze on your neighbors. So, there's something to that, too, right? But nationally, we've seen just the numbers are still down, but that may go up a little bit more. I don't think we'll ever get to pre- pandemic levels now because it's people are more aware of, hey, if you're sick, maybe you shouldn't
108go to school, which is a good thing. I was going to say my kids were home more when they got, you know, if you got CO, you stayed home longer because you made sure you weren't going to give it to someone else. Yep. And I'm gonna get into the weeds. I wasn't going to, but if you look at the criteria and standards, one of the one of the criteria is looking at our attendance rate and they look at our three-year history of our attendance rate. And then what they want to do is come in right at the middle and then they give you a half a percent from that. Well, if I'm at 93.1, 94.2, and 95.1, my average is actually 94.2 2 and my.5 is 94.7. I'm actually above that criteria. So, it is
109a little aggressive, but I think it's warranted based upon this. But what wouldn't be warranted is showing the continued growth beyond that in the out years. That doesn't mean that I can't change it if I start to see the enrollment in attendance rates moving forward. um for example in our P1 attendant but you have to have strong justification for deviating from the standard procedure for doing correct assumption estimations correct to be able to do that. Yeah. Okay. This is taking a look at what our funded ADA is versus our P2 ADA because there is a difference when you're in declining enrollment. you uh you have that uh the smoothing uh where you have either your uh funded ADA is based upon your prior year attendance, your current year attendance or the prior three years worth
110of attendance. And during COVID, we also had um in 21-22 was the uh you were held harmless for one year and then they started the three-year smoothing and you saw it actually come down. And so as you look 22 23 23 24 25 now we're back at where we really should be in terms of our our attendance and our funding. And that really does create that fiscal cliff that I wanted to talk about in a few minutes. But I just wanted to kind of lay that groundwork so people understand that we were actually getting paid for students that we didn't have at one point. So, as you start to get into our revenues and expenses, the first thing I wanted to do is kind of talk about the u budget advisory committee and the work
111that the the people on that committee did. The first thing is we met three times. We met in I'm sorry, three times last school year. Uh and then we met two additional times this year and the charge in the current year was can we come up with cuts. first 500,000. Um, and then also if we have to make additional cuts, what would those look like? And so in terms of the cuts on the previous slide, it was that those were the items that were kind of high on their list. And then as we started looking at it, we said, okay, these top two items can get you to the 510,000. Those were the highest priorities, those items on there. And then are there additional cuts that we could make that could get us an additional
112$200,000 in cuts? And so the highlighted items, so you see the top four and the third one, which is guiding coalition. Um we currently have one of the the two guiding coalition additional FTEES unfilled. And so that one is on the list. That's why it's 0.2 or point4. And then you also see library specialists and kindergarten aids down at the bottom. And so it's a combination of them to get us to that $200,000. And I want to point out that all of these cuts are built into our budget and our multi-year projections. And so if you did approve the uh the adopted budget in the next uh budget meeting, I'm sorry, the next board meeting, you would be accepting these cuts as well. And I think one thing I want to mention about the cuts
113is that $700,000 is kind of a um conservative depth of cut. We probably should cut deeper than that, which would mean taking a look at intervention teaching, taking a look at uh you know the electives at White Hill. That would help solve our structural deficit. And you'll see later we're still running structural deficits. So, I just want to be clear that $700,000 hurts. These are real cuts that have real impacts that nobody on the budget advisory committee me or on the budget advisory committee wanted to make. And we probably should go even deeper than the 700,000. Um, but I think based on where we're at, we can weather this fiscal cliff, which is really two years. You'll see in another slide with this 700,000. So, it's kind of the the deepest cut we need to
114make without going too deep and too much pain. And the 700 just clarified 700 is not on top of the 500. That's 700. It's 500 and 200. Got it. Yep. Just And I'm going to go back one slide as well. If you look on here, counseling programs, we did move two counselors salaries into one-time funds. And so it what it what it did is it shifted it out of the general fund unrestricted. So, it has relief on the budget and we still have the positions, but we do have to start looking for another source of funding for them. Uh, but currently that they're going to be funded according to this budget under one time sources for two years because it's a next year that disappears. Okay. Okay. So that gives us time to potentially go
115out, get a new parcel tax, and take the counselors off the one-time funds and bring them back into the general fund. So it's it kind of holds them harmless, but it kind of puts them on thin it puts those positions on thin ice, which is our community wants the counseling to stay. I want the counseling to stay. The board wants the counseling to stay, but this is kind of a budget maneuver we needed to make in order to weather this fiscal cliff. And Chris, is it clear? So, YES did not fully fund the art music program this year. Is that 171,000? They have not for a number of years. A number of years, right? And it's not by choice. They've also But that's something that we as a community we can we could do more
116each year with Yes. It's tough. I get it. But would that also help the fifth grade instrumental music program or is that separate? Is that out of Yes. That's not included in Yes. um it would help to offset some of those additional costs. So it is included in there currently. Okay. So when families came to me right after the paral tax didn't pass and said hey what can I do to help the the the issue the easiest thing donate to yes to offset the general fund obligation that we put towards um the arts and music. So that's the best way is actually surpassing its goals or fundraising. So that's has helped a lot. Yep. And they've done a really good job this year. Yes, they really have. And they've also felt the same drop in
117enrollment with their parents. So it's it's been challenging for them and and with co uh finances were difficult for a lot of people. So could you go back to the other slide where the things were crossed out and just say a few words about that? um some of the positions um you can't make the cuts currently. Uh for example, if we were to to cut FTEES, we potentially would have to lay positions off and we're past those deadlines. So, it's really not an option for some things, but um we are looking at positions as they come up and if there's things that a position is open and we can cut it, we do do that. The other thing that we've already done and is built into the budget is the tech platforms. We've already done
118that. So, we're just making sure that people know that those really shouldn't be included in that 500. The White Hilt positions, it's kind of interesting because John Clair as we're seeing enrollment in middle school go down because there's kind of a a dip in the number of students that are in that cohort. So John and Mary Cla are right sizing the White Hill staff and essentially through attrition we've cut to FTE, but we're not taking credit for the $250,000 of cuts there because it got automatically offset by the increase in TK staffing of four. So we're basically right sizing our TK by expanding it and right sizing middle school by contracting it. And as those TKers kind of metriculate up, we'll have to expand middle school when they get there because that cohort will be
119bigger. But that's we didn't want to take credit for that 250,000 because it's not true because we've reduced it in white at White Hill but had to increase it at TK. Okay. And so revenues what's really important to note is that your two largest sources of revenues are your parcel tax and your local control funding formula. And the other thing I want to point out is that under the other local revenues, um, you have your yes donations built into that as well. So that's part of that 2.5 million. looking at our revenues and I wanted to break apart our unrestricted revenues, the two largest sources of unrestricted revenues. In essence, even though the the parcel tax ends up on the categorical side because we have to spend it a certain way, we could we have
120flexibility on it. Um these are the dollars that become available for uh salaries and benefits. And so what I really want to stress is that if you look at the local control funding formula, which is the bottom blue numbers, and look at between 2022 23 and 2526, that's flat. Mhm. And so what has happened is our revenues have leveled off because of that three-year smoothing and the the state giving us credit um for higher attendance than what we really should have been paid under normal circumstances, but with time it levels out. And so that's really critical. The other thing I want to point out is if you look all the way to the right, you see $5 million at the top for uh parcel tax. This is our our multi-year projection for parcel tax right
121now. Next year, when I'm sitting before the board, if we don't have a parcel tax that has been approved, that $5 million will disappear in the following fiscal year. So the lack of of our parcel tax not having passed really is an existential threat to the health and the health of the the district overall. And then would we have to would that would impact our reserve percentage as well. Correct. Significantly. Well, I think it when Chris says existential threat, the state would have to loan us money basically and take us over. Yeah. And and I think we went through six meetings of absolute arm wrestling to get $700,000 of cuts. There are not $5 million worth of cuts. There just aren't. And this all goes back to the core issue of the budget that I
122talked about earlier. It's the lowest revenue in Marin County. It's a problem with the LCFF calculator and our low property tax basis because of low turnover in our community. That's the core issue. That's it. It's not combining districts. It's not the salaries of administrators. It's not, you know, wild spending. It's not mismanagement. It is only low, low revenue. Many of those issues we cannot solve without state level change. The only thing we have control over is the size of the partial tax. And with zero parcel tax, it's exactly what Rachel says. It's a loan from the state and state takeover. And I'm I'm not being dramatic because what you heard me say in September about cuts is exactly the same cuts that we're proposing in this budget. And people might have thought I was being
123a little dramatic then, but we're executing exactly on what I said. And the same thing will be true next year because depending on the timing, Chris may have to take this off because if we if the board decides to go out even for June election, I'm not sure that Chris's budget presentation will be after the election results are finalized. It'll probably be before, which means we'll have a negative budget in that for next year. It's a it's a real real issue. And I I don't want to be overly dramatic, but I also want to be very clear about how big of a deal that is. When does when does it trigger state takeover? When you present it or when it happens. Yeah. Uh it would it would be in time. I I don't I could
124talk to the county about that. Um the first thing that would happen would be the county would certify us with either a qualified or a negative budget. And if we ended up getting to a place where we needed to take a loan, that would be kind of the the trigger. So the fact that it would be third year out is scary, but it's not right away. Okay. And it's not I mean that is the reality. And so having it be very clear on graphs and charts while you're talking about it is real. So it's not you can't obscure it when that orange stuff goes away. Because even and you are talking literally about we are we are sitting here approve if that comes you know well I mean we would be sitting approving a budget
125that would knowingly put us in receiverhip with the state if the partial tax doesn't pass period and just to say that out loud put it on paper that's just the reality of what people need to know would happen because even if you look at the $5 million Like I've said, there's not five million cuts. Even if you close two schools, you don't even come close to half of that $5 million. And this goes back to the core issue of because we don't have a large number of low-income students or a large number of English language learners, multilingual learners, our LCF calculators low, which sits us at the bottom of that inverted curve we've looked at all year. And because we our property tax basis is so low, because we have low housing turnover, we sit
126at the bottom of we basically have the lowest possible revenue any school district could have. That's the core of the issue. And we have to increase revenue by attendance, enrollment or partial tax and and the obligation and and the financial obligation to the charter is factored into where so in terms of the financial obligation to the charter currently moving forward in 2526 it will be what's known as a cash flow issue because I will have to give inlue property taxes roughly $2 million to the charter, but I will get back filled from the state because I'm local control funding formula as opposed to community fun. It'll be a wash. It'll just be a cash flow issue when when the money leaves. So, we don't have to worry about that at that point. Correct. For how
127long? It isn't until you stay in community funded status that it becomes a non-cash flow issue and a real revenue issue. Okay. All right. And I don't see that happening for a number of years. Um, and I am going to talk in a little bit later about the way our budget is in in terms of state aid, community funded, and you'll see that. Are we paying for the charter school? We will be in terms of inlue property taxes. Yeah, it's kind of the way that the law is written. we it comes out of our bank account and then the state re reimbures us. It's the way the law is written down. Yeah. The way I think about the charter school and this is has nothing to do with their program or you know any assessment
128I have of the school at all. Period. But essentially the way I think about it is that the Ross Valley School District of San and Selmo and Fairfax has four elementary schools and a fifth elementary school essentially. So you have a the school district that has five elementary schools in it in terms of enrollment, right? And obviously the the charter pulls students from other districts as well, but we already have relatively small schools to so to have five working elementary schools makes it really challenging for the charter school. Fiscally, it's very difficult for them and it's fiscally very difficult for us. So it just kind of illuminates this issue that having five elementary schools with only essentially 1100 kids in elementary school is just too many elementary schools. So it's it's a real conundrum um
129to have have that situation. It it definitely has an impact on us. So does you know Hartwood, so does St. Anselms, so does, you know, all the privates. like there's a lot of competition in the area for students and that's why increasing enrollment is really critical part of increasing uh our revenue. So moving on in terms of our expenses and this kind of goes back to what uh Tyler was talking about a few minutes ago. our single largest source of expenses really is people. And uh if you're looking at uh cutting $5 million, there really isn't five million that you could cut outside of people. And the other thing that you see up here is almost 5 million in service is another. And that's one of the things that people talk about. Okay, those are
130consultants. It isn't just consultants. It's things and one they also throw legal fees in there. It is legal fees, but it's also special education contractors for unfilled positions such as teachers, instructional aids, uh speech language pathologists, psychologist. It's our non-public school students, um the payments on those. It's our special education transportation costs. It's our property and liability insurance. It's our utilities, gas, electric, water, sewer, trash. So, it's a lot of different things and you can't really cut there. There really is nothing in that area to cut as well that will get you to that 5 million. So, I just wanted to point that out. I think some people make a critique on the consultants or the services and other assuming that it's like a contract with a consultant who's coming in to do work for
131us. But that's it's just not. We really we have very very very few contracts and most of those contracts are paid out of grant funds. Um so I appreciate Chris brought that list of what these things are like PG& is in there. We can't not have PG& So then you start looking at our fund balance. Yes. Just just that is super helpful. You might consider adding a slide with those categories as headers and then just bullet points underneath each one just as a hey here's a list of all of the general list of the things under each of these categories because even the other one of something outgo you know they're budget words and then you could put regular English for me might might be helpful and there is room on the slide to do
132it. though, in terms of our fund balance, um before we get into our fund balance, when you start looking at your fund balances, what you're really talking about are your multi-year projections and then what comes out at the end of your your um fund balances for those those fiscal years. And so this is a slide from school services that they put something like this in almost every single budget uh presentation. And the reason is that when you're looking at your multi-year projections, it really is simply calculations on those outy years. And so there's lots of things that go into those calculations. You you look at your economic assumptions like your cost of living adjustment, CPI, uh you have locally calculated data point estimates such as um your step and column costs and your uh utility
133costs etc. And then you also have decisions that have been made if you're cutting positions, you're you're cutting programs. And so those are the types of things that get built into multi-year projections. But really what it's not, and they they always stress this, is it's not it's not a prediction doesn't say that we will get to this. It's not that crystal ball. And so I just want to point that out. And so when you look at projections at multi-year projections, they do change. They change constantly. And honestly, I have a new data point that if I was to to um have additional time, I would be making a change to my local control funding formula based upon that data I received today. And it has to do with our property taxes. So, it's not a
134material change, but it would be something that changes. And so looking at it, different things that affect your multi-year um and h and between every single period are looking at things like your stepping column costs, your increasing in and utility costs, your property and liability insurance, special education costs, uh your colas. Um, and we also have some changes that have happened uh between our multi-year projections in terms of transitional kindergarten add-on dollars within those LCFF funds and our P2 average daily attendance. And so, going back to the transitional kindergarten add-on, I've included the additional dollars assuming that it's full implementation of the um TK program. the BAS, which is the um it's the the county superintendence groups, they put out uh what are known as um oh, I'm blanking out on the term. They it's
135uh what they want you to put in build into your budget, and they suggested uh that everybody not include the TK program uh add-on dollars. And that's because there's no guarantee that they'll they'll do it. The problem with that is that in order to get funded for the TK program, you have to bring down your class size to 20 to1 adult to student ratios, which means that you're hiring more teachers, you're hiring more uh instructional aids, and if you fail in any one class, you lose all of your TK revenues. So, it's an all ornone. What's a measurement of failure? 100% 20 21 kids in a classroom with one teacher and one aid is failure. Yes, that would be considered a failure. And so we've built them in. So I just want to make sure
136everybody knows that that's there and that is a risk in our budget. That that's something that's I'll talk about in a minute. So when looking at our general fund, one thing that I added at the bottom of this slide is you see 23 24 we were state aid. In the current year we're community funded. Then within our multi-year projections, I'm showing us flip um back into community funded status in 2627 and then back out in 2728. So as you start to look at those revenues at the top, the LCFF revenues, you really see in 26 27 that large increase in your uh LCFF revenues. That's because of that flipping into community funded status, but then it's flat again in 2728. So this is one of those things as you're flipping in and out, your revenues
137are going to change a lot. And so that's just something to to remember. Um the other thing that I want to point out earlier we talked about the LCFF revenues between 2223 and 2526 being flat. If you look at the top in terms of the revenues the other thing I want to point out look at certificated classified and benefits. So your salaries and benefits you see large increases across the board all the way through. And so we did give salary adjustments but at the same time we weren't seeing the revenue increases. So I just want to point that out. That is that is something that's there. Um that's a cliff notes flat revenue increasing costs. Well the supplies for 202425 at 1,378 then dropping back down to 689 as a projection. What what is it?
138The all the new um uh AV equipment that we had to install and what is the $250? That's not unusual. What you see are things like carryover dollars under lottery instruction materials. And so I might have $400,000 sitting there and we show that we're going to spend it down and then the next year rather than having your carryover dollars, it's back down to your new revenues. So you see some fluctuation like that. That's that's not unusual. You also have other things like exactly what you shared. Uh we do have uh some of the projector costs that are built into those budgets and they're projected to be spent out. So that's not unusual in those categories. The other thing you'll see are the services. What I've done is um I've I've included the positions that are
139currently open uh in special education and kind of move those uh services out and back up into the the categories above. And you you really see it under the classified salary positions. Uh and so likely what will happen at first interim it'll kind of be all adjusted back around but really we need to show those open positions. So the other thing that's really critical to note is those net changes in fund balances. You do see 2122 22 23 you see the large gains. That was because we were uh receiving additional dollars beyond what we were uh what our attendance showed we should be getting as a result of COVID. Then 23 24 loss an even larger loss in 2425 and 2526 that is your fiscal cliff and then you start to see the right sizing
140back with the increase in your LCFF revenues and just this this deficit spending that started last school year and is running all the way through the budgets 2728. We need to we need to stop doing that because we're going to need to actually rebuild our reserves. You'll see in the multi-year projection there's a point where the reason we had were able to weather this storm is because we had a 25% reserve. If we ran at the state minimum or even at 10% which is the board's recommendation that starts to get really lean if there's another fiscal cliff we could be you know a negative or qualified budget really quickly. you can see how fast we can spend down those those reserves. And so here when looking at these reserves, what you see is we're at
141um 23.1% is our actual reserve in 2324. Then you see our estimate at 16.1 and then you see it drop all the way down to 6.3. And so that is our um our estimate at this particular point. I do think that our where we're going to close is probably closer to the 17.1% range. Uh we should have dollars that drop to the bottom, but that's really where we're at. So, and kind of going back to Tyler's point, go ahead, Tyler. Even with $700,000 cuts, we're spending too much. And that's to my point earlier that we probably could should have gone deeper than 700,000, but I didn't want to go so deep that we had to cancel intervention programs for students or elective programs, but we're we've got to solve this problem with increased revenue. Is
142there a risk of not doing it and then perhaps having community members we didn't you know the the small additional percentage that we didn't get to pass the parcel tax this time of people who may have not been paying attention or who may have not been thinking like it's that big of a deal or whatever all the reasons were having a similar perception. I think there's two ways you can like just saying we're going to assume it's not we we have to create a budget that assumes it doesn't well I guess we can't create a b you can't create a budget that assumes it doesn't pass because of that $5 million you can't cut and we do have the parcel tax with in this for the remainder of this three-year uh multi-year projection. So we
143can project it out, but next year we will not be making an assumption that anything passes. Even if it's just a direct continuation of the current partial tax amount in structure, it's gone. And to your earlier point, I think there's two ways you can go when a partial tax doesn't pass. One way you can like really inflict, you know, some budgetary challenges by cutting deep and saying to the community like here's the consequence. The other side of the coin is okay, let's be fiscally responsible, make cuts, not hurt students, but kind of take a risk, kick the can down the road a little bit. We've taken that second option. We have not said we're gonna cut to show the community how how much we're upset because we're not upset. 62.5% of people voted yes. The
144majority people are behind an increased parcel tax. So, what we wanted to do was put students first, make the requisite cuts to slow down the deficit spending to give us enough time to go back out, increase revenues in a in a way that is uh still fiscally responsible to our community members, and then go from there. So, I think, you know, there are probably districts out there that will say like, "Oh, didn't pass. We're going to show you the consequence." And that's not the approach we want to take. And I guess I wasn't thinking of it that way as much as I was initially. I I'm my my thinking is revised from your earlier statements, but initially more in terms of like we'll make the cuts and then we'll re reup when the parcel tax
145comes in was what I was originally thinking. However, not as like a, you know, I'm mad and I want to show you, but just kind of like, hey, let's be super realistic here and if we get the parcel tax, great. We'll redo all that. But my thinking is was changed based on our just earlier statements of saying five million. We cannot cut enough to make you can't take that approach. I mean if it was 900,000 maybe you could take that approach but with the 5 million loss of revenue there there is no amount of cuts that we could make and then backfill another. You can't make that wild swing of 5 million cut and then add 5 million. So you just I think it would probably to be most fiscally responsible we probably should have
146cut instead of 700 maybe 1.4 4 1.5 would have been like the most fiscally responsible and we would have, you know, almost eliminated the deficit spending. That probably would have been the best. But we're kind of saying we're going to cut deep but not so deep that and I think that's kind of But you would only have eliminated the deficit spending for the next two or three years while we still have our parcel tax cut. That's right. When that ended, we would still fall off that $5 million cliff. So it's kind of like I can understand the thinking behind why inflict three years of pain when you have a chasm after that that is unfillable without a parcel tax. So I can understand why that approach why you would think about take that approach too.
147And then we also have March 15th as kind of something that hangs out there as well. That that's the deadline that we would if we were going to be doing layoffs, we would have to take action as a as a board and and district by that date. So that is one of those things that's out there. So we would we do have that option next year. But right on this slide, one other thing I want to point out is although we're at 6.3% in 2728, remember that I was talking about the TK revenues for two years. So those are built in, that is a risk. So if those get pulled off between now and when the budget gets adopted, those revenues will have to be pulled out and I will likely be coming and doing
148a 45day budget revision for you. So, and that would drop that reserve. What is the likelihood of um the legislative analyst office is is saying to do it. What they're saying to do is give additional one-time dollars which would allow us to be able to put those in. What is the likelihood? I think it's slim because the governor has made this his push his pusher mandate. this is one of his uh projects that he has really pushed as a as a leader and I don't think he's willing to to pull it out because they know that there is that all or nothing rule for TK funding that either you have the staff or you don't and districts have had to go forward with the hiring. So I I don't believe it's something that they'll pull
149out. Okay, that that's a personal opinion. But we also have other risks to the budget. Um, and we'll talk about that in a minute. Looking at our fund balances, kind of going back to 2223, we were sitting right around this average. And then you do see the the drop, but this is the the average for elementary districts and the fund balances in 2324. It might seem high to have 25, but remember there's a lot of districts in the state, and it's it is a matter of having the ability to to have time to be able to react. That's really what that larger reserve allows you is the ability to to have time to react when you have surprises. So, and and that kind of goes back to Tyler's point earlier about how we're responding with
150our budget. Okay. Yeah. And when we were doing the our last round of budget projections with assumption of parcel tax passing, we were looking at then building our reserves back up into this zone if we what it did is it didn't allow you to drop the way we were and then slowly we could build them up. But how long do you think it would take us to get back if we assumed the partial tax funding or when we were assuming partial tax funding, how long was it take going to take us to get back up to our at least board policy? What I'm getting at is we have a board policy of a certain amount if that's just not relevant. Do we need to acknowledge that or can we hold it aspirationally? I mean, how
151long does it take us? So, if you look at at 2526, your unrestricted balance is 3.27 274 million. So three three and a quarter million. And so what you would need to do is be able to build up in essence one and a4 million between 2728 and 25.6. Do you see that difference there? Yeah. The 10 and the six. Yeah. So it's achievable. Okay. And it would all depend on what we settled with our union partners for. and you know so there's just a lot of uh different factors but I I do think that the board should consider depending on how things roll out in the next year 18 months setting a goal of reestablishing the 10% if we get below that and I mean on an optimistic side with all of the community aware
152of all of this it gives us an opportunity to as a community agree that this is that it's not just a board policy but that this is a an appropriate level of reserves and it's built into our planning and it's so that there's not ongoing back and forth and back and forth and back should we should we not it's like we've had conversations and we collectively have all agreed not just we up here on the dis but everybody understands why we have it so moving on risks and next steps I did want to talk about the risks to our budget both that we can kind of control a little bit as a community and district uh then also state controlled in the national. um when looking at our district and community control really it's looking
153at the enrollment growth and you know that that's something that we've included in our budget but if the numbers come in different um then that has a negative or positive impact on our budget also our attendance rates and so that's really going to be critical to push the attendance as we move forward um just as we have currently and really stress the need I know I talk about it as a a revenue issue more than anything really. If your kids aren't at school, you can't learn. So, it really is an um a need for for education, but it does help us from a revenue standpoint as well. And then also property tax growth. Um and so there's some wiggle room in there. I did receive um today an update on my property taxes. Um, the
154county gave us, the county of Marin gave us an additional estimate and the property tax amount that I have in there is 4.08%. And I have that in my three three-year projections as well. And they're now estimating it to be 4.22. So that will likely probably be something I add to my f my first interim budget in December, which is good news. It's good news. It's not material because remember as we're state aid funded in two of those years, it doesn't impact us necessarily there and it's about a $30,000 increase in that se in that uh second year of the multi-year, but it does it does help. Uh and then looking at the state, uh the TK add-on dollars is something that's a risk for us. The other thing that is kind of the elephant
155in the room is the Los Angeles wildfire impacts. When we had the wildfires up here in the Bay Area, the state allowed everybody to file their taxes later. Instead of the April 15th deadline, they pushed it into October. As a result of that, the state revenues came in substantially less than what they had projected. They're doing the same thing again with the LA wildfires, and nobody knows what those impacts are going to be. And so there are potential negative impacts out there that we don't know of. The other thing that are uh important to note in terms of the national impacts, you have the tariffs, the impacts on that in terms of what people are doing with their personal finances and and how we spend our dollars. The other thing that is impacting us are
156both the Doge cuts that that's having real impacts upon school districts. And then it looks like we might be entering a recession. All indicators are we're going into that. You're starting to see a lot more chatter. A lot of economic um indicators are showing that we're going into that. So those are real possibilities as we move forward and they do have negative impacts upon our budget, but they need to be known before we can enter them. In relation to tariffs uh for budget planning, we have a bridge made of steel that is coming into Brookside. Has there been any discussions with that amount going up for materials given the 50% tariff on steel that came out? Yesterday, the day before. Yesterday, a day before. Yeah. We haven't looked at that yet, honestly. And when the
157time comes that's going to be a project that gets bid, we'll know what that impact is. I Yeah, I know what you're asking. Yeah, I don't have an answer. I mean, wait. I mean, you know, you you guys are really good at pivoting, but if we're going to be putting a bid out on something that might have a 50% increase in cost because of the materials, we might want to think about pivoting some of those things to I don't know. I I went across that bridge today. I don't want to prolong building it out, but it is something that I definitely thought about with the tariffs. I don't know how long they'll last. I don't know if it's going to be a taco or not, but um 50% is pretty big. What I can do
158is I can reach out to our architect and and feel out what those numbers look like. Yeah. Yeah. Because that that will really hit the money we have to spend on. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. It's a great question though and something honestly I hadn't had a chance to think about but is it so many moving parts Chris but yeah with those like national unknown risk factors at some point would one of the one of the recommending groups that tells you like is this escalator and that escalator finally say okay based on the tariffs and whatever and or recession you need to do an escal ation factor for expenses higher than what we've done would that come out like in the May revise or when you don't have a crystal ball but so they they start looking
159at all of the cola factors throughout the year and the problem with the colas which is why I think in my last budget presentation I showed how the the colas had changed from June to December to March to Now, it's because those CPI factors start in and cola factors start coming in at different periods. And so, they might tell us at that point budget more based upon X and Y coming in differently, but they're not going to know all of those other factors. So, these are just kind of the X and Y's that they would base it on, but they don't know when. Okay. Yeah. There there's something like 13 or 14 factors that go into that cost of living adjustment at the state level and they come in throughout the year. And so the
160other thing that's really important to note is just what our budget timeline is. And so where we're at is currently the um again I talked talked about the adopted budget and estimated actuals being the same thing. Estimated actuals are the current year budget. adopted is for next year. They're all part of the same budget. And so those are due by July 1st. And then moving forward, the next next one would be September 15th. So then do we have any other questions? You've been helpful answering them all the way along. I think we peppered you with me. You want not a not a deliverer of great news, but it's the reality and I appreciate the thought around what we can we can massage possible. I want to thank Chris for helping to lead the budget advisory
161committee with the recommended $700,000 of cuts. None of us want to make them. They're hard. This is not what any of us want to do. Would rather be expanding programs. And just want to restate one last time that the core issue is low revenue. We have to solve that problem. That's the problem we're trying to solve. All right. Any more questions? I uh we have to hold a public hearing on this. So um the public hearing topic is preliminary 202526 district budget and multi-year projections for 2026 27 and uh per education code EC sections 42127 and 52062 separate governing board public meetings held at least one day apart are now required for the school budget school district budget hearing and budget adoption. In addition, the LCAP public hearing must occur at the same meeting as
162the budget public hearing and the LCAP adoption must occur at the same meeting at the budget adoption. The LCAP item must precede the budget item at each meeting. The public hearings require 72 hours public notice and both the 202026 budget and the 202526 LCAP must be adopted on or before July 1st, 2025. I now call the public hearing open. Anybody would like to come up and speak, please do so. Hi, thank you. Uh PJ Feer, a parent of a mayor student. Um more detailed numbers. Just wanted to provide a little bit of additional commentary based on the somewhat based on the presentation. Um, you know, obviously I agree that the core issue is a lack of revenue and anything that the board is considering are really tweaks on the margins. And like um, Trusty Hamilton
163said, like either way, if there's a $5 million cliff that none of this matters. It's not going to make any difference. you just sort of um can't prepare for that in in any way. Um so, you know, I I appreciate um Chris is optimistic um given what the requirements are. Um ADA numbers keeping it above the five% or.5% adjustment that is otherwise advised. And I think that there's reason to, you know, be even more optimistic, not necessarily, you know, writing it in the budget just because state law changes have given a lot more opportunities to not have absences counted against students who are out of class, made it a lot easier to get independent study credit um and and other ways to reduce those absence numbers. Um, one revenue source that I've been thinking about
164recently that's not being considered is um people who are denying the district and the state uh property tax revenue. Um, you know, in in Fairfax, council member uh Frank Edgar, longtime council member, has mentioned a number of times in the past few years 300 to 400 sort of under the table rental units. And I think people don't really understand that that's taking money out of the pocket of people in the district. Just having a rental unit would change your assessed value for taxes. So your base tax rate would go higher. Taxes on the extra housing unit. You know, all that's money for the district that it's not getting despite the fact that these people in housing units really do um exist in the community. um there's never really much of an appetite for uh tax
165uh compliance uh which I guess is text technically would be but um I'd appreciate that and just something I I want to reiterate and consider because the numbers look bad for two years and we do see an improvement. Um, in reality, the numbers still won't be as bad as we expect. You know, I know Chris mentioned a couple of changes he's expecting. And just based the estimated actuals we had last year. So, the numbers that are the basis for this budget here um in last year's time, we're a million dollar off like the fund. We're starting $600,000 or six six million 6.7 million uh you know same adjustment as last year. You still 30 seconds. You still have like 20 seconds left. Oh, okay. Um thank you. Quickly, um I personally don't think a deeper
166cut would be more responsible and I think even these cuts are dangerous. You know, in every other context, including private schools, we see increased spending considered an investment that's that has a positive impact. And I've heard parents already saying, "Do these cuts mean I should go to private school or at what point would they?" And and public school absolutist, so I yelled at them for saying that, but but it's something we consider. Do you have any other comments? Great. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. That was uh very sobering of a presentation. Are you available for children's parties? I think we have a a very large community here, a very educated people who I broke cob, too. Oops. Uh I understand you don't want to make large cuts and you know hurt the kids, hurt the
167district and I agree with that. I think communication of the reality early and repeatedly to our parents in this community would go a long way towards the next effort which kind of seems like the district's do or die moment. We need to get that next parcel tax to pass or it's done. There's no more district. kind of what it sounds like. U so I would I would urge the board in the next effort to just communicate honestly, openly. It's a little bit of a you know dire don't look up kind of story there, but uh I think people here are smart and they they will understand and they will mobilize, you know, to get our other, you know, 60 some odd percent of people to go vote. Uh I was also curious whether or not
168we've looked at uh the CSS fund from the com uh what is it the county office of education if there's any you know purchasing extra time Chris I think that is another important thing that you brought up is what we need to do is buy time wherever we can you know cuts are a great way to you know extend this out a little bit. um alternative revenue streams for a school district are a little bit few and far between. You know, we're doing great jobs with the attendance. We're, you know, getting in what we can. Uh but I'm wondering what other opportunities exist out there that we could be looking at, we could use or utilize. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public hearing? Okay. Seeing no more public comments, I
169am I now call the public hearing closed. All right. And then it comes back to the board for discussion. Do we have any discussion on this further? I I just want to make sure that and Tyler, you've mentioned this a couple of times. If if this parcel tax failed, if we got 40% or 50% of the vote, I would be in a very different place right now. I do firmly believe that we we took the risk to go out for a special election. Turnout is important and I think the turnout was not as high as we hoped. I think the support is there. I think that the strategy that going forward we're going to try it again, but I think the communication and these things that we're talking about are very important to keep in
170the forefront of our minds, right? That this isn't it'll be nice to have it'll be nice to pay our teachers more. It'll be nice to do this is this is we're on the edge of the cliff that we've been talking about for years. Um, and so I think the cut that we we're making is deep enough. It's painful enough without being dystopian or punitive. I don't think we should punish the children. I agree with you and I don't think we should send a punitive message to the community. I think the community pretty much supports this. The numbers are there, but I think that the work has to be done again. Um, so you know, let's keep let's keep talking about this. Let's keep this on the tip of our tongues. Let's keep talking about why
171this is important. Um, and I think we'll we'll massage the message as we go back out for this. But, you know, like I said, I would I I would I wouldn't be feeling great if if the percentage that was so close, it was close. U, I have no doubt that the community wants to see this. I think that's where I could use help from the board as we move forward because I am both wildly optimistic about this school district to hear community members wondering whether they should go somewhere else. I would say no, no, no. The future is bright here. Trust me, the future is bright. And having to articulate the dire consequences of adding that next third year in. So there's a there's a thread or needle to be thread there between the what
172I consider great optimism for the district and this real real big challenge that is dystopian. And so to the extent you all can give me feedback on my messaging and our work at the district. I'm wide open to hearing when I'm a little too dystopian or maybe a little overly optimistic. Like let me know. Yeah. And I and I do think that the the general message and needs to I don't want to be on the defense, but there's there's been no fiscal mismanagement here. There has been no uh lack of conservative approach to our our reserves to the point where we've lessened it to be negligent. You know, we are just not funded well. Yeah, I mean I think that I I agree. I think that is the that is the point that that takes
173it out of are you a good wellp performing district. Exactly. Yes. Yes. The only issue is a $5 million parcel tax is what revenue what makes makes the revenue work. And we've had a partial tax passed by this community for decades. And we believe that it will again and at the same time positioning it as and if it doesn't, it is an existential threat. It's not a budget cutting action. It's not a exercise in where can we find the fund. That's just not going to do it. you know. Um, so I think that stark reality of partial tax or bust kind of in a way it's not in my mind it's not just partial tax and this will be for the board to decide. It's not just partial tax renewal. It's an increase. Yes. It's
174not just $5 million in that out year. It's $8 million in that out year. We asked for three. That's what we needed. That was kind of our lowest needed number. We didn't go out and ask for 10, right? We asked for three more, right? That's what we need. But for me, that was the light bulb and and you talking about like, how do we talk about it? Is this is not because I had been talking with people like, oh, what happens if we don't get a partial tax? And the initial reaction is, well, we're going to have to make some really deep cuts. That's not the narrative is the parcel tax doesn't pass. there's no way, like you said, to cut $5 million and still function. So, it's a different it's a different response um
175of what happens if partial tax doesn't pass. And I got to say the public Yeah. members of the public who are considering private school, but they can't pay more taxes. It's just it's just beyond me, you know? Well, it's like, okay, so you you you're willing to drop $50 to $60,000 a year on a private school, but you're not going to deal with a potential $800 increase per year on your taxes. But it might not have been those families that were No, I'm just, you know, I'm just You hear these things out there and you're like, I think any any community member that's out there worried about the future of the district because of this dystopian conversation we're having. Join us. Like, work with us. Yeah. We We need to mobilize. We need get on
176the optim optimistic side of the fence. Yeah. Let's lock arms and let's get this thing done. Yeah. Well, I do want to shout out to people that have stepped forward and carried this incredible team and I don't think this team is going to go anywhere. So, the more the marrier you say. So, let's go out and do it again. Okay. And Rachel's article in the J was great. Wonderful. Thank you for writing that. But how do how do we end how do we go out and say, "Look, we've had to make $700,000 in cuts to the community, right? The parents are seeing this, but is that something that we want to communicate out to everybody saying, "Hey, this is the or is that the dire straits?" Right? How do we balance that of great schools,
177everything's going in the right direction, and we've had to make some cuts for this next year? great other MIJ oped to write. Hello, Daniel. If you if you look at these two these two presentations back to back or LCAP, yeah, right and all the amazing work that's being done in this district. So, if I'm the parent and I'm thinking about what's the quality of the teaching and learning between the the content, the teacher and the student, 10 out of 10. It's excellent. And then this conversation around the budget is really challenging. So the the quality of the district is there. It has not changed at all. Right. We just need to solve this revenue issue and we will. And I mean maybe to Peter's point, how much is Chris worth at children's parties? That could
178be the generation. That could be the the thing. $5 million question. The $5 million question. I mean, the $5 million opportunity with a clown with a clown nose on though. Yes. Yeah. I got you combo. All right then. And with that, and on that note, do we have any further discussion? All right. No, Madam President. All right. So, the next item is recommended approval of bid award 242503 for the hidden valley roofing project to the lowest responsible bidder, State Roofing Systems, Inc. in the amount of $162,432. So, this is just the approval of the bid. We had gone up to bid uh for the Hidden Valley multi-purpose room uh roof and uh all of these biders were on the mandatory job walk and of there were actually more bidder or potential biders but these were
179the ones that we actually received and we have uh state roofing systems was the lowest of the four bids and is 162,432 and we recommend to the governing board trustees that you do approve this bid so that we can do this work during the summer. Any questions? Sarah, no. This was guarantee warranty on this work. It does end up with warranty and everything. So, and this was a formal bid. So, it went through that full process. Yep. Any more questions? No, it's good. We did all the site walkthroughs. We know this is native. Yeah. Do we have any public comment on this topic? I review the public comment. Any discussion appears? No. I'll entertain a motion. So, I recommend that we approve the the bid uh for the Hidden Valley roofing project. The most responsible
180bidder, State Roofing Systems. Second. Fantastic. Daniel. Hi, Chris. Hi, Shelley. I Rachel, I thank you, Chris. Uh, next item is recommended approval of declaration of need for fully qualified educators for the 202526 school year. Go ahead. Yes, we actually brought this to the board last meeting, but apparently we used a form that CTC does not like and they would like us to use a different form and that's what's attached here. But this is the declaration that allows us um in the event that we cannot find someone fully credentialed that we can use some of those credential bridges that we've talked about in the past. And so um recommending that you approve the the declaration of need that is on the correct form. So the CTC will accepted. Can you stick this into those things that
181need to not be done? I was going to I was just going to say so we're revising forms for performative Yeah, it's ridiculous. Thank you for bringing this again, Julie. I'm sorry you had to retype it like so obnoxious. Yeah. Um do we have any public comment on this item? No. All right. Any discussion up here aside from the annoyance of having to redo this? I'll make a motion that we approve the new form. I will second that. Great. Shelley, hi. Chris, I Daniel. Hi, Rachel. I thank you, Julia. Uh, next item is receive for first reading revised updated board policy VP and administrative regulation AR in series 5000 students. Just briefly, um, these are, uh, updated recommendations from CSBA with, um, revised guidance, um, and new laws that are reflected. Um, so definitely some
182really good material including um some uh things around uh alcohol and drug safety um uh and awareness um including a requirement that district informs uh the the parent community early in the school year about the dangers of opioids, other synthetic drugs, etc. dangers of uh social media platforms, advertising, um said products, uh and also um um important updates to how we manage student records and also response to immigration enforcement. Right. Any questions for this observ There's a lot of typos I noticed when I read some of this. I don't know. It's a cut and paste formatting thing, but might want to go back like I think on one. It's like there's words separate together. Just somewhere. Yeah, maybe just do some formatting. I'm not going to, you know, it's not a showstopper, but just wanted
183to point it out. It's one of my ticks. Words that smash together. Yeah. Fig figured this is the first reading and then we they bring it back. So, usually it's cleaned up when I see it next time. So, okay. But yeah, thank No word stuck. No words. No words stuck. District two, I think, was a word I saw. So, is this is this for all three? The this So, these are um there's however many there are. There's six different ones that are recommended updates to current policies on the books. So, this is each one each one is a separate agenda item. We have to do this time. Okay. Uh any any more question? No. Any public comment on this? No. All right. Any discussion? No. All right. I'll entertain a motion on this. Makes sense.
184No need to vote now. Oh, it's Oh, that's right. We'll take the feedback on the formatting. We'll bring this back in consent for vote uh next meeting. Lovely. All right. Yes, that's right. First reading. So, we don't have to vote. Okay. Okay, next item is receive for first reading revised updated board policy BP and administrative regulation AR in series 6000 instruction. Uh this uh me again um and really good stuff here including um some a change in language uh from students with disabilities to students with exceptional needs. Um and and this year, last couple years, we've seen some uh just language shifts um uh including in how things are officially documented in special ed plans. And then um also uh new practice that we've already gotten started on this year where rather than wait till
18516 years of age, um we're starting to develop uh transition goals starting at the end of 8th grade. Um and those are the goals that help uh guide high school students into um you know what's coming after high school. Um so these reflect those uh different changes and uh new laws. Any questions? Eric, has there been any national move to change the wording from special ed? um kids really get bullied a lot for that. I um we've talked about this in in a number of different spaces in terms of how you know language helps us you know uh define something right um but also to uh it can create false markets or categories. special education, general education, um, uh, you know, can can be problematic. Um, since all we're doing is working with students and
186each student, um, no matter what kind of plan supports them, requires different kinds of supports, has different kinds of needs, different strengths, different areas of challenge. So, um, but on a national level, I'm not aware yet, um, of of any specific change movement for that terminology around special education. Um, question. I had a similar question, but it's not on any of these revised things with the shift in the language from English language learners to multilingual learners. And I know that we've used it and I've appreciated seeing it in a lot of our presentations, but I'm and I don't I don't know specifically which board board policy and or administrative regulation it would fall under, but it's a similar type of question. I do believe I've seen that language shift at least at the state level
187in presentations. It seems like it's ripe for a policy shift to but I don't know whether we have to wait for it to come down. I mean most of the time we make these kinds of things when it's triggered by CSBA but we're not procluded are we from making a change preemptively before then. So that might be another thing to look at. Um and it might be another thing but special education I think though might be a little bit more difficult with funding and stuff. And I don't know. That's why it's like that's why it's nationally because you can like have you can change your own vernacular but then it becomes an outlier for financial and grants and grants. Well, it slowly but surely small can lead to big. Just in this past year the
188the eligibility category of emotional disturbance of the 13 ways that child can qualify for special aid is um changed to emotional disability. Um so um so the the history of language changes even just in special education I think you know has has been um really indicative of like how you know we're um looking to use language as something that's uplifting instead of um you know uh porative. Okay. Do we have any public comment on this topic? No. Do we have any further discussion? Great. Anyone want to make a motion? No motion needed. Oh, right. No. Yes. Okay. Awesome. Okay. Next one. Receive for first reading revised board bylaw BB in series 9,000 board bylaws. So, two really quick ones. One that kind of uh shares a little bit more about the oath of office for
189when we do have a new board member. Just straight CSBA language. So, it's pretty straightforward. And then there's also legal protections for board members. and Chris and I talked about our insurance um covers this. So, both pretty straightforward. Great. Any questions here? Any public comments? All right. Any discussion? Great. If there's any feedback on number seven, eight or nine between now and next board meeting, send it our way. We'll make adjustments and then it'll be on consent agenda next meeting. Fantastic. Thank you. Next item is recommended approval of the amendments to the superintendent's contract for the 202526 school year. I'm actually going to do this one. So I I want to talk about the contract real fast and just make sure that um that the public understands that this is really there's nothing material being
190added to this. It's just an extension of two additional years to Dr. Graph's contract. And so by approval of this item, it would allow that extension for two additional years and and not increase his salary um beyond what was already approved by the governing board with his preliminary contract. And so I don't know if there was anything else to add, Dr. I I just I think the move to a salary schedule is even more transparent than the 3% that was already in the contract. So, I appreciate the consideration to be more transparent with the public. Um, and I just want to say how much I've enjoyed working here. Um, I appreciated our conversation around my evaluation at the last meeting. I've thought a lot about the feedback and will continue to think about it. Um,
191and I'm excited to have an extension for four more years. I really enjoy working here. I love the people here, um, the parent community, the kids, the staff, the board. It's just a really, really special place to work. I feel honored to be tasked with this job. Um, and I'm looking forward to four more years. Thank you. So, if we approve this, we lock you in. That's a question or a comment. An observation. So Chris, just to clarify, we have in his contract from when we hired him initially that he has a 3% built-in thing. And so basically what we did, we just put this into like a table so people could see easily. So it's not like we're having to hunt people having to calculate is it the 30 so it should be this
192amount. It's like here just look at it. Okay. This is exactly what was already approved. Okay. And it was built in. So technically in my conversation with other superintendents, what we could have brought today is just a change in the term and that's it because automatically there would have been a 3% increase anyways because that was the but so but because we changed it from the language of 3% to a salary schedule that's an amendment to the contract. We need to be transparent with the community. So we bring this forward. So there could have been a world in which we just brought the term and that was it and there still would have been the increase. I appreciate the clarity. And it's also moving to the a confirmed fouryear because it was three plus one
193I think previously. So it's it's a four-year contract starting July 1st. And then the other part of this is because it's now a salary schedule, we'll post it with the other uh certificated administrator salary schedule. So it'll be part of that and it's a common framework with the other ones as well. It not every district does it but for us there are other local districts that do this and it just is more transparency for the public but again it is not as as Rachel pointed out it's not an increase in his salary right there questions. Do you have any public comment on this item? I just we appreciate you very much and I'm really glad to hear the business or hopefully at least for you but thank you for all the work. We're very happy
194to have you here to put all right any discussion up here the transparency and lock them in. I I was going to say I probably worked with you most on as anybody else on this board. Um I was so happy that one of the amendments that you wanted is to have done this longer. So thank you for that and thank you for all your hard work. Um and just the fact that like you didn't like b putting this up here and putting this on a salary schedule and knowing that there could be people who had feelings about it one way or another. And so I really appreciate that you were like it might be really awkward for me to have this out in public so easily found. but also the fact that you value transparency
195so much that you really want this out here. So, um I just wanted to thank you for all your hard work. Uh and with that, uh did anybody like to make a motion? I will make a motion. Now, first I will make a motion to approve the proposed salary schedule for Wait, no, it's amendments. Contract amendment to the super contract amendment to the superintendent contract lock and move. I'll second it. Great. Uh Shel I Daniel I Chris I. Rachel I. Okay. And moving on we have consent actions. Um if anybody has anything that they wanted to pull out or ask questions about, we can do that now. If not, I'll entertain a motion to consent or not motion one way or another. Daniel, I don't have any any comments. I will I will make you
196make I will recommend that we approve um all of the consent actions noted section D one and two. Second Chris I. Shelon I Daniel. Hi Rachel. I Okay, so consent has been moved. Uh board business committee updates, reports from and announcements by trustees. I went to Brookside's annual third grade wax museum today. If anyone in this room has never experienced it, it is a definite thing that one must do. These children stood up on their platforms. Some of them were posed like this and you'd touch them and they'd say, "Hi, I'm Freda Ko." And they would proceed to tell you uh over five or six flashcards who they were, what they overcame, challenges, and why they chose to do that person. And I have to just commend Brookside that this is my second wax museum.
197And I just I walk away in tears. So kudos to them. Awesome. Shelley T. Uh the Golden Bell um award u recipients was a week or two weeks ago. Um exceptional. Uh it was it was a great event. The MSA, the students, the high school students u sang for about 25 minutes to start the ceremony. Um yeah, it was great. It was really well done. So uh congrats to our Ross Valley award winners. It's awesome. Uh, let's see. I got to attend the Hidden Valley Celebration Lunch for the California Distinguished Award that they won, which is really just a really nice celebration. The district staff came in and helped cover like the the yard where everybody else like the kids were and so they, you know, made sure that there was coverage so the teachers
198could all at one time sit and enjoy um, you know, their celebration and kind of just, you know, be proud of with the work they've done. Is this Brookside or Hidden? Hidden Valley. Hidden Valley. Yeah, Brook says it's like three weeks ago. Um, I attended the parent guardian equity task force meeting which was kind of a nice wrap up for the end of the year seeing all the work that they've done. I really loved the posters that are going to be coming up soon and it was just it was nice to see them um and the people that have been working on that were just so lovely and so dedicated and it was a nice end of the year meeting and I got to attend the White Hill Middle School advanced ensembles concert which was
199uh their chorus their orchestra symphonic and jazz band so it's the the sixth seventh and eighth grades and that was actually it was seventh and eighth grades um which was just really on. It's so great to see what they can do when they've had, you know, music through that their whole education and the fact that, you know, Yes. provides that for them has just been fantastic. And then I, um, briefly stopped in on the eighth grade dance because, you know, I had to go do pickup and then it was like dragging kids out with me. I'm like, "Okay, we got to go. There's teachers here who need to go." Um, but it was just fun that they did a really cute job decorating at the parent club and the kids were really into it. They
200had a mama mia theme which I was like how are they gonna do it but the like everybody was like colorcoordinated. It was it was amazing. I couldn't believe how the kids had done it but it was a lot of fun. So that was awesome. And with that we can move on to our next item of board business which is the resignation of trustee O'Neal and discussion and discussion to fill the trustee vacancy. Mhm. So this one turn over to you. Yeah. So I essentially there's kind of two things. There's one vote and then some direction. Um so you have a choice here to either appoint um by going through an appointment process where we have applications um we do interviews and you decide who the next uh board member is. You've done that before.
201um with current board members with mixed results um or we can go out for a special election. There would be fiscal impacts of a special election. Um we just went through special election. So the board gets to decide tonight uh whether you'd like to go for another special election or do an appointment. Additionally, it'd be nice to have two people help in a committee to make sure we have the right uh timelines, the right uh interview questions, the application questions just to review some of the work that we've done in the past. Um, and I'd love to get a little bit of direction on timeline because if the board did decide to go forward with appointment, we could make it happen as fast as the next board meeting, have interviews on the 25th. But I'd
202leave that all up to you. But it makes zero sense to go out to a special election. That's questions. Oh, sorry. Hold that thought. Do you have any questions towards either? Are there deadline considerations for either of those two scenarios that we need to If you do the appointment process, it's 60 days um from the time of resignation. So, we could do it um at the next board meeting. We could also do it at the currently scheduled July board meeting or we could do a special board meeting as well. So, we've got options in there, but it's within 60 days, which is what we had to do when Marie That's right. Okay. Did we I think we did a special election for special board meeting. Special board meeting. I think we did a special meeting.
203Sorry. Yes. No, sorry. I'm in board meeting. Special board meeting. I think we did do a special for the interview. And I think it would just depend on I mean, can you wait and see what your response is and how many people you want to interview to know? Like I don't I don't know how you can schedule the timing at a regular board meeting if you don't I mean you you could theoretically set we're only going to interview the top three candidates and empower a subcommittee to choose who those are or somehow having to figure that out to make this decision of do you put it on a regular meeting or do a special meeting. It has to do with how much time you want to allocate for how many people you're going to be
204interviewing, which then gets to the process that we go through. So, sorry to be a chicken in the egg type. I feel like we didn't think about it this hard last time. I don't think we had a lot of people coming out of the woodwork. I think we just chose to do a special meeting. I think special bat. I think so, too. Um, but I mean if we could do that on the board how much we start questions first questions we can't discuss right questions. You have any questions for Tyler about this? I guess we're kind of asking about time and stuff. Yeah. So, in terms of timeline, if the board made a decision tonight to move forward with an appointment, Teresa and I could tee up the process for a small committee, two members
205to review and give feedback on. We could probably send something out to the comm community on Friday or Monday about the application process. We could give that to the 18th for people to submit applications which would be a week and a half and the application is you know it's 10 questions that you write answers to. So you don't need like letters of recommendation and a resume and you know to do a big performance task. And then we could hold on the 25th we basically need to vote on the LCAP and the budget which should be pretty quick because we just had a public hearing tonight. and then you could interview the candidates or we could extend the amount of time we elicit applications and do a special uh in early July or wait for our
206scheduled July board meeting and just do the next meeting. Yeah, it's a short meeting anyway. But this will be addition just to add questions. Oh, the next meeting that's on the calendar is like you said a condensed meeting which is the voting for the LCAP and the budget that we've already seen and we've been able to digest. So that is essentially what we would call it's a question an in-n-out meeting. Correct. So technically, would you think that we could have reasonable time to interview a pool of candidates like we did for the mistake we made over here with Daniel Cassidy and choose another trustee. Yep. So you could depending on how many people depending on how many people apply um you'd probably want to give about 15 to 20 minutes per applicant for you all
207to interview and then there'd be some deliber deliberation that would happen in public and then you would there'd be a rank order um document and I've looked at some other school districts and how they've done it and you would rank order and make your decision right there. So deliberation could take another 40 minutes. So if there's three applicants, you're looking at an hour and then another 40 minutes, 45 minutes for deliberation and making a decision. So So there's no swear in that trustee that time. You could swear you No, it wasn't official for another month after I can go back and look at my board meeting. Yeah, I came to the next board meeting, but it was hey, good job. You got it. official. Yeah. They just made a decision. We took a vote and
208made a decision. So that's the type of direction that we could if you wanted to take that direction, we could have that happen at the next meeting. That makes this timeline and using the meeting on the 25th makes total sense. Great. I also think there's a lot of community engagement involvement because we just went through the parcel tax and there's a high level of awareness uh generally in the community and I can I would offer to help out too since I just went through it or the questions and so but we're not supposed to be asking question asking questions. Sorry we're not good at following rules. Yeah and I'm tired so I'm not enforcing them as much as I should. Sorry. Uh, do you have any public comment on this item? Sure. Um, like I
209have it's for the recording and so it records. Yeah. So they can record it. Um, we just heard everything about our budget. So from that perspective, I feel like it would be foolish to spend $183,000 on a special election of this kind. But I kind of sense that we're all on the same page on here. So let's just do it. Not expensive round please. We have any other public comment? Okay. Now you have to discuss. Go ahead. Now we can talk. No. And I won't stop you. I I just want to say special gratitude. Thank you to Trustee Unwill for his years of service and being in the trenches and always being a direct and sound voice with experience um for this district. and uh he's he's been missed and he will be missed and
210I thank him very much for his service, his guidance and his friendship on this board. Yeah, I would add I think I think one of the strengths that we've had as a board is having um a variety of perspectives and viewpoints and experiences and professional skills and um Trusty O'Neal definitely, you know, brought brought an additional often and and I also appreciate that whenever I talk to people about being on the board that we don't always agree, but we respect each other's areas of expertise and knowledge and perspectives and so um yeah appreciate that. Definitely agree with all of that. I think that he brought a very different perspective than what I come with and so it was really helpful for me to hear what he had to say. A lot of times he would
211he would explain something to me from his perspective and it would it actually make me shift how I was seeing something. Um and I think it was really important to have that diversity of thought. Um, and I really respect him and I really appreciate all the work he's done for, you know, the district over the years because he's he's been here a long time a lot of years. Y and I know his commitment to the district is longstanding and he's only a phone call away when we need his perspective. Um, so I think it's Yeah, he'll be missed and he'll be a phone call away. So process-wise process wise we need a vote on we decided no election. Yeah I said we need a formal vote on which direction somebody needs to make like a
212motion that we that we take action nomination um it doesn't say there needs action. Yeah. So, we need to vote to make a motion to follow an appointment process. Do we need to set the date and everything? I mean, is that the direction part of the date or should we include all of that detail in a motion? So, the motion would be we do a bylaw 9223 section one, right? Yep. to we want to approve the process to be 9233 section one to fill the vacancy but that applies to both the way you do a special election and to do an appointment. So you need we basically need to file like re recommen recommended action at the time. Yeah. Staff recommends the board discuss or take action to fill the vacancy through a provisional appointment.
213Got it. So, we would be approving the staff recommendation to fill the position through personal, right? Okay. Want to make that motion, Carson? Why don't you make that motion? Since it just came out of your just said it. Just said it again. I make I make a motion for us to approve the staff recommendation uh to fill the current trustee vacancy um by trustee O'Neal's resignation through provisional appointment. Why is it provisional? Well, the it would be provisional. Um, and then the person would be sworn in and have 30 days for the public if they felt like we didn't follow process to file a petition with the requisite number of signatures to say we disagree and then would have to go back out and do something again. Thank you for that. So, we did swear
214you in. You were just provisional for the 30. Yeah, I was pro. It wasn't official. Yeah. So, we can't swear in the same day. So, sorry to interrupt your motion. Restate the motion. I move that the board approve the staff's recommendation to fill the vacancy to replace Trusty O'Neal with the option of a provisional appointment. Do I have a second? I will second that. Shelly. Yeah. I Daniel. Hi, Rachel. I All right. So, you have the direction you need. Yep. But now we need to give the direction part of the thing of what date and all that kind of thing. I've got a good idea for direction. I think we should um post this opening this Friday or Monday the 9th. Have it close on the 18th and review the candidates at the next board
215meeting on the 25th. You mean interview the candidates because we'll have the documentation on the 18th. Now, how are we going to What if it's what if it's a very large committee and we have to narrow it down? The subcommittee has to do will there be a subcommittee? Do we have to have a subcommittee now to do this? Yeah, I'm I'll I'll do whatever help I need. I can be on a subcommittee. You said yes. Okay, great. Yeah. So, I can just work with Tyler and Teresa to manage that. And if we have more than five can reasonably candidates say if we had more than five we need to do a special meeting. My recommendation. Okay. If we have more than five we would do a special meeting. To choose the top to I wonder
216if everybody should have the right to interview. I think everybody should have the right to interview because that's what we do with you. Yeah. Okay. With your groups out your group. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's the right thing. Okay. Okay. Otherwise, we would have to empower the subcommittee with decision making. It's not maybe not as visible and Yeah. Okay. All right. So, if it's more than So, if it's more than what would you just say if it's more than five? Five. Five or more. I'd say five or I'd say five or more because it's 20 minutes per five or more. Yeah. So, less Yeah. Then then we'll have to move it to a special meeting. Well, we may still want to have it as a special meeting before our regular meeting because that way
217we could do that. We could do it earlier and then Oh, sure. special meeting before the 20. No, like on the same day of the meeting that we already have scheduled. Just be a special meeting. Yeah, we can do that. When we see the applicant poll, we should know more by the 18th. But it would be an option and it would be I don't know. I just want to make sure there's enough time. I don't want to build it into an agenda that we may not have. Okay, sounds good. Okay. So, I'll just work with Tyler and Teresa and you have a direction. Do you want two trustes on that? If if someone I mean you all have taken a lot on. If you want Daniel to do it alone, that's fine. If one person
218wants to jump on, happy to have more. You can call me if you need. How's that? Great. All right. If you guys need another voice, I don't I don't see why. I mean, yeah, with our with our We're going to interview everybody. feel comfortable with you doing that. I think the only thing where Daniel will have potentially some thoughts are the application questions. Um we took a look at them earlier today. The last ones there were some redundant ones and I looked at another districts that they were a little more tailored to their mission and vision. So we've made some provisional changes obviously having Daniel approve those. We can also send those to everybody. Okay. Um, and then the questions for the actual interview. Well, each of those according last time it was like word
219for word. Each trustee read each question word for word with the same ination. It was a very fun experience to then respond but yet you couldn't have any conversation. So that was the procedural. Yeah, that's that's so so there's really no interpretation of the questions. It's just question number one answer and we each took questions so that we could say exactly the same way every time. So we'll have four interview questions. Oh, we did more than that. We had Yeah, we had like at least two. Yeah, I feel like we feel like but why don't I work with you and Teresa tomorrow, see what you guys have and then we can put this up to Hey, here's the eight that we're recommending. Great. for the short answer and the questions that we're gonna ask. I'm
220gonna throw a weird idea out here because it is it won't be that way because we only have a dance off. No, but are we because of what you just said of like we have to ask the same questions and it's like push the button, ask the question. Is there anything that precludes us from just giving each candidate the list of questions and having them just go through it just so we're expeditiously my original thought was could they make a recording of their answers which is what you can do when you when you're hiring right now in regular hiring process a lot of times you but but I but I backed off on that quickly in my thinking but I was thinking is there okay we'll go AI is there anything though could they just
221have here's the list of eight questions and they each candidate reads a question. My answer to the question, it was good to not know the questions before I came in. I I had I had to respond with the you know short answer questions about my thought that was insightful. Okay. And then getting the list of questions here. Okay. While you guys were asking me asking that on the fly kind of Okay. Yeah. And if anyone wants to go back and listen to the recording, they'll know the question. So I think changing them up a bit is don't let it don't tell you. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Okay. I don't know that we can all see the same document with the questions and make changes on it. That being a brown up there. We we could
222see them and send one direction. So we can do that. So it's just feedback and we have no idea what the final is. Then would you just send that back to me or back to Tyler? Tyler. Okay. Yeah. Just kind of make sure we're watching that. That way we can't see each other's back. That's right. Yeah. All right. Okay. Great. And moving on. Approval of regular meeting minutes for May 21st, 2025. You want to ask for a motion? Uh, yes. I will ask I will I ask for a motion to approve the regular meeting minutes for May 21st, 2025. Great. You're making a motion. Making a motion to approve meeting minutes. Second. I'll second it. Read. Chris I. Daniel I Shel I. Rachel I. All right. Superintendent cabinet report updates. Parity task force really proud
223of that group. I think it ended on a positive note with a lot of action taken. Um, Golden Bell, great to see um, all the folks that uh, won and get to clap for them and see them celebrated with their families. California Distinguished School lunch at Hidden Valley. Um really a lot of thanks to Teresa and Lynn Marian for their work putting that together and all the DO staff for volunteering to go uh play kickball and you know take care of the students while the teachers enjoy lunch and uh we've just been going through a lot of parcel tax debrief. So, I've been reviewing um the survey feedback data, which I will summarize for the board here in the next week or so. Had 163 responses to that. Um we met with team civics to
224review some of the data Rachel and I did um earlier this week. We met with a chamber of uh commerce member from uh San Selmo and we'll be meeting with uh coalition sensible taxpayers next week. a lot of like debrief and you know reflection. Um and one of the things that really stuck out about our meeting with cost is that there were three special elections across the Bay Area. One in San Jose, one here and then one in uh Akalani's the high school district. All three of them were defeated. And Akalani is where team civics Charles Heath he sends his children to Akalanis. So even with team civics like deeply embedded in that district, they only outperformed us by one percentage point. They were 63.5, we were 62.5. So they really articulated that we outperformed
225what the expectation was. Um I know that doesn't make us feel better about a loss. A loss is a loss. Um but we really did outperform. and he was really saying that the economic there's more complexities than just this but the economic uh outlook across the country really had a big impact on all of these special elections. That's Matthew. Nothing further from me. Uh nothing other than just um you know thanking everyone for their tremendous work. PSY staff get together for summer uh summer fun with um at Brookside for four weeks. Uh so, you know, uh the learning continues um starting Monday after the school year is out. So, um big ups to those folks that are um stepping up to do that. And uh two weeks ago met with Lori O' Connor, the uh
226incoming director for all day um student services festival of transition and it was great. We had a ton of fun. Um just mapped people, systems, placements, did a little walking tour of our local uh nonpubliclix. um just getting her connected up so that she can come in and just be, you know, ready to ready to go. So um and just people have been super uh welcoming and I know the team is really excited to uh meet her and get get started working with her. Um so so that'll be great. Um, and Meredith of course just um being the the anchor um will um be an amazing resource for her along with of course the rest of the cabinet team and district staff. So excited for that. Eric, when is your last meeting with us? Uh
227this potentially might be it. Um I still have to talk with Tyler about um you know cleaning up. We can have you zoom in all year next year if you want. There you go. I could come in on, you know, just I could I could listen in, right? I mean, I'll be a member of the public, but um likely it's the last given. I'm just trying to figure out a little bit of time off before I start official. Good luck. Good luck and congratulations. I appreciate it. Yeah. Appreciate it very much. And thanks to all of you for your service. uh Ryan who's not here tonight, but um anybody that that steps up to be a trustee or a staff member um for one year for 30 years um you know um the the service
228to the public is uh without um you know it's it's not quantifiable in terms of what it means for um the children, the the health of the community. Um, and uh, you know, the the children that we're nurturing now are going to become our community leaders down the road. At at my new school, over the course of a couple initial visits, I've met two former students at Washington who are now parents there. So um anyway um and uh through the challenges I appreciate everybody's um focus on the children and the focus on being together through those challenges which we know isn't the case everywhere. So um I appreciate that uh appreciate that space that everyone here is creating. Thank you. Thank you. Nothing seemed. You've heard me talk too much already. Okay. Uh let's see.
229Meeting review, future board topics, and board direction. You have anything you would like to I had raised something with Tyler because I wasn't sure if I was going to be here or not, but I think um I would like to see as we evaluate Tyler in the future to do more of a 360 to get some feedback from principles. um and perhaps um could do it anonymously if they'd like. Uh but I think the more feedback you have since you're so out there in the community, having that uh given to him will I think allow for a more well-rounded um approach to evaluation help us to Is that okay? Can consider that. Yeah. Okay. And something actually Kevin and I chatted about as we were kind of reflecting on the process. He's like, "Oh, you
230should send out a survey." And it was like the night before we were going to do our do my evaluation. So, it was a little late in the game, but um I've done those surveys in the past as a principal um and as a director to send out to the folks that report to me and the folks that I serve. Yeah. Um, and I think it's all valuable feedback and what I can do is I can take that and give you the raw data or take that and summarize it and give you kind of the pluses and the deltas and the outliers and you know we can talk about how that works. It provides also I mean there's some AI generated ones which has a report that's that's written out after it takes all the
231data. Yeah. And it's interesting because like I do those all the time at my job but it says it's anonymous and then at the end it says what's your race? What's your age? What town do you work in? Are you gay straight? And I'm thinking, oh, so you're going to narrow this down. It's not really anonymous, but you know, if people don't want to say who they are, then yeah, we can definitely make that anonymous. All right. Any other future direction? No. Great. Um, we don't have to continue past 10:30. Thank goodness. And at 10:02, I will adjourn. Uh, I'm sorry. Do we have a meeting debrief? Thank you, Teresa. Appreciate that meeting to brief. Thank you for Teresa. Good meeting. Okay. Yeah. Thank you all. Long one and kept it. Thanks to the public
232for being here this late. Yes. Oh my goodness. Thank you. Okay. Uh I will adjourn at 10:02.