March 5, 2025 - RVSD Board of Trustees Regular Board Meeting

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 Ross Valley School District Board of Trustees regular meeting today is March 5th 2025 and I calling our meeting to order at 6 o'clock uh we have four trustees present in person at the Ross Valley School District office at 100 sha Drive in San andamo uh myself Rachel lwac Daniel Cassidy Chris L cob and Shelley Hamilton uh Ryan O'Neal is not in attendance tonight we also have our cabinet members here superintendent Tyler graph Eric Sable and Chris Carson and our meeting is being live streamed via YouTube and the link is on our website and on our agenda there will be a 60-second delay

002between 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 um and so with that I will get our meeting going here uh the first item is to identify closed session topics um we have conference with legal council anticipated litigation significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code 54956.9 subdivision D2 or 3 special education program dispute one case student SSID number 6374 and with that I will look for a public comment and we have no public here to comment so I will recess this to close session at 6:02 all right welcome back it is 6:29 and I am reconvening um the board into Open Session um I'm going to report out from closed session we

003had a 3 to one vote um on the conference with legal council anticipated litigation um it was three to one vote in favor of this uh recommendation from staff on special education program dispute one case student SSID 274 731 6374 um moving on with our agenda we have procedural items which means we get to stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance if you would like um please stand and join me if you're so kind I the United States of America stands indivis so the next thing we need to do is to adopt the agenda in time allocations um did anybody here have any recommended Chang es questions if not I will entertain a motion to or I will make a motion to the adop the agenda and time allegations fantastic do I have somebody

004here second second great Chris hi Shell hi Dan hi Rachel I great we have an agenda for tonight's meeting we're going to move to the next item here which is student presentation and we have Brookside school here today and I will let you go ahead and take it away amazing thank you um thanks everyone for being here to honor Brookside school I'm so excited that we have our students here and thank you Mrs pory and Mrs Pucket for bringing your students and yourselves here tonight um if anyone doesn't know me I'm Amanda wadner I'm the very lucky human who gets to be the principal of Brookside school and work with these awesome students every single day um and I'm going to talk just for a few minutes I promise and then hand it on over

005to who we really here to see and to celebrate today um but I do want to share with you a little bit about some of the work that we are doing behind the scenes that the staff is engaging in to support student outcomes and student learning at Brookside and then we'll talk a little bit more about the what's happening kind of in the mix at school around our Equity work and our sense of belonging um both of these things work to support the academic as well as the social emotional pieces of our Equity work of course aligned with our sipa and our District Al Capal um our learning teams are a really exciting thing that we've been engaging with at Brookside this year and this is work that's happening across our entire school district and

006I'm really proud of our teachers for engaging so deeply in this work in other staff members as well in our learning teams we are doing frequent professional development around high impact teaching strategies the focus of the work is all around teacher Clarity this year and utilizing student data to design instruction for students um and this sometimes looks like looking at student work and sometimes it looks like creating uh strategic grouping sometimes it looks like creating lesson plans together in partnership with our grade level Partners or even our colleagues across the school district so it's been really exciting work to engage in um we do it because it's good for our students and it directly connects to the equity work that we are doing we know that when teachers are super clear on what they're asking

007for our students to demonstrate what they want their students to learn um it helps reduce any sort of implicit biases that we as the adults as the humans in the mix bring to the table and so when we're really clear on what we're asking of students we can be really intentional and we can help to um to reduce our own implicit biases and ensure that every student has Equitable access to their education and what they are there to show us us that they've learned we also know that when teachers are really crystal clear on what they're asking of their students their students are crystal clear on what they are showing what they're demonstrating and they can show their learning and it helps remove any sort of hidden barriers any language barriers or cultural nuances that

008might impede the students ability to show exactly what they know and so it really helps that teacher student relationship be really clear and helps to improve student outcomes for all of our students at side we're really thinking of all of our bipo students our multilingual Learners our students with special needs and everyone else when we're doing this work um we are also really excited because this year at Brookside we have designated Wednesday afternoons as Community time and in our Wednesdays we have 50 minutes between the end of lunch and the end of the school day and initially we wanted to create this community time to ensure that all of our students including our students in our special day classes had incl iion opportunities for buddies and we realize really quickly that everybody benefits from having

009this designated Community time so you might find us in a Wednesday wrap-up assembly some of our folks here help lead our Wednesday wrap-ups and actually the assemblies are student creative Miss fory runs our assembly crew and they meet on our um lunchtime clubs and they actually develop these assemblies and we celebrate our heritage months we celebrate each other we celebrate birthdays we celebrate what other students have created our fifth graders presented ofendas um in the picture you can see some kindergarteners are singing a song with um Mrs hay Hurst and Miss Smith so we do a lot of community and cultural celebration in the assemblies and it's when it's Wednesday afternoons is when we do our buddy time and with that I'm going to stop talking and I'm going to hand it over to people

010you are really here to see tonight to tell you about how we use our buddy time to support our Equity work and build Community across our campus good evening resped board members of we have bookside students from Miss Puck's first and second grade class and Miss for's fourth grade class our classes are buing classes which means we are two separate classes that come together every Wednesday after lunch to engage me share experience between our body classes do a lot of different activities together on Wednesday afternoons when the weather is nice we sit outside under the trees and enjoy reading books together other times we learn about each other and get to know you games or activities these activities celebrate our similarities in our differences this evening we are honored to present our project that celebrates

011Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Black History Month through the powerful lenses of Art and poetry our purpose is to share the most important the importance of equality Justice and Peace by channeling these messages through creative expression before before beginning our art pieces we read a meaningful story called my daddy Dr Martin Luther King Jr written by Dr King's son that both classes had separately learned about points of view perspective and the import importance of reading first CH of account throughout history so after reading the book we had meaningful discussions about how the perspective of his son writing the book was equal to him and one he wanted to share with the reader after reading we focused on the Poetry with PRS like I hope I war and I believe we wrote poems I so

012equality Love and Hope for future many students who the hopes and dreams Dr King has inspiration to write their own hopes and dreams of better future students used his inspiration to write poems about hopes of their families protection for animals in the environment equality and inclusion and love and belonging once the poems were in we focused on the background art for the background we were to create visual pieces that were colorful and bright since our poems would go on them our teachers took pictures of each student looking up to represent our hopes dreams and Des desires for others or the future we pieced it all together to create a beautiful works of art that express our hopes and dreams for our lives and others similar to Dr Martin Luther King's hopes and dreams for all

013children and people we would now like to share some of our poems with you Ben I hope the world was peaceful I dream for a good if the world was treated good I want everyone to feel welcome I want everyone to be kind I wish for a good future I want everybody to be happy I hope there was best for I hope people get to go to school I hope for kindness I hope nobody isry David I I wish that the world was good I I wish the world was kind I wish that every everybody can be kind I wish for everything to be far wa what I hope for equality for everyone to be treated fairly in the world I am hopeful for our world to treat people equally when I look in the

014sky I wish upon a star that I will have lived in a Land of equality I feel in my heart blossoms L I am loved and wanted I feel peace I feel welcome I feel like I can be brave and United Teddy I wish the future is good I hope the world grows I want the world to have peace I want to live in including world I want to see peace I love the world I want to belong I've always wanted to be together I've always loved theem I wish the world is an equal place I want peace I hope the wars I hope for love I wish for everybody to have friends I wish for kindness hello I hope the future a world world peace I do a world with no War I believe

015that we can all be happy hope um my dream is that people would not use so much plastic I wish there was no climate change my wishes for not war but peace and for happiness not anchor and for kindness not hate and inclusion not exclusion Julian I hope there is a world with peace I wish the world wasn't Ed I hope there is a bright future I wish there were no more Wars Carolyn I hope I hope for world peace I dream of inclusion for everyone I wish for everyone to have a bright future I hope of a better future I want everyone to be happy I dream of a better world I wish every bu was included we also expanded our learning in our own individual class in Miss for's fourth grade class read

016a book called my brother M that shares funny and interesting stories about Dr King he is a young and passionate mystery sport from the perspective of Dr King's big sister we also extended our learning into February's Black History Month to either African-Americans who had an impact during the Civil Rights Movement or who continuing to inspire and influence today allowing we reading and learning about many inspiration black Americans the fourth grade created an artp involv in individual squares coming together to form a United class mural the mural hangs in our classroom and is a very powerful reminder of how we are working together to continue draw for King's vision of a world where people are judged by the content of the character not the color of their skin in in in in to African Aman people

017we we own about each and the in the in the in the they made we col the the color and made fact about each we we then share the projects to our two to our family as we close we want to say that our buddy projects are is not just about remembering Dr King's dream but about working toward it in our daily lives through ART poetry and action we can continue to honor the past while creating a future where equality and justice truly exist for all we have has you to and to see how art can be [Applause] [Music] powerful can't stop smiling that was amazing that was so needed it was oh my goodness um so usually what we do is we ask questions of you guys are you okay I'm answering a couple

018questions we promise it'll be easy okay anybody want to ask some questions I I don't I don't have a question because it was just perfect this was one of the best presentations I've seen from sitting up here but one of the things I hope you do really is you're you're going to grow up and you're going to go to middle school then you're going to go to high school and onward I would love for each of you to take that piece of paper and hang it up in your room and no matter what the world happens around you you have it and you see it every day and it reminds you of the hope and the joy and the mission but I hope you hold on to because life is going to try and take

019you away from that so if you put it on your wall I would love to see you do that and think about it I see all of you every day um and I'm so I'm so I I'm like so proud so proud thank [Applause] you I'm also I think putting them up on your walls is a wonderful idea and also because I really enjoy ened and I hope you enjoyed how you brought this all together through beautiful pieces of Art and poetry and reading and working together in different age groups and thinking about yourself and your hopes and aspirations personally and using your writing skills to write them down it's just I think that brings bringing all of that together as an expression of yourself is um really powerful much more powerful than if you

020did that separately with different pieces but the ability to bring that all together I think makes it so much more powerful of an expression of what that meaning is through the colors and the words and working together so um definitely think having that with you for is a wonderful idea thank you so much for sharing it with us too [Applause] so who has learned something from their buddy this year who wants to share something they've learned Lucy what have you learned from your buddy this year I've learned how important it is to like be with each other and like be able to understand each other's feelings and stuff cool which who's your buddy right next to you we don't most of our buddies aren't here because not all felt comfortable sharing but we volunteered ourselves

021okay cool who else has learned something from their buddy this year I pretty much know all your names so I can just do have one buddy said the only one Julian and Ben decided to V but we obviously won't you onot but even if your buddy's not here what's something you've learned from either working with an older buddy or working with a little buddy yeah yeah emry I really want to D my hair herbody does have some really cool hair coming together and like just like having fun and like reading and doing art projects is very important so like working with the the first grader singer is just fun and important yeah Lea that um no matter like the age groups from fourth to first and second like we you can learn like different things

022from each age grp totally yeah that they really like sports you um the importance um of um like say um like the importance of knowing what your like your little buddy is thinking and like sharing your thoughts so cool yeah Teddy one more um I think that's cool you got the older ones are learning from the little ones and the younger ones are learning from the older ones I think it's a it's an awesome program I'll just step in and say being a um the fourth grade teacher I think it's really cool to see the kids grow in the Buddy program because they start off as little buddies and then they get to be the big buddies and so it's really cool to see that transition um just fun fact this is Barbara Miss she

023and I oh my gosh who knows how long 15th year being buddies being buddies Bud teachers together teacher buddies teacher buddies teacher buddies usually Mrs Pucket kind of does it because she knows more of the kids um seeing that they've gone through so she knows she knows I give her my class list and she of times match that did you remember doesn't matter who you well I can tell you one last thing the TK kids love the fifth grade buddies they look like Monsters okay but like for the first graders don't these fourth graders look like old people right the SK your skin looks fat yeah yeah I mean but I think it's so cool for the first and second graders typs of people to look up to like on campus it just makes it

024such a better Community it's nice nice job and good job for you guys feeling comfortable speaking in front of group that's awesome and now not don't only speaking in front of the group but so we have this tradition or we like to take a picture of with all of you if you don't mind but then we also like to invite you to sit up in our chairs you want to sit in the president spot day Teddy H out Teddy right here oh so sometimes record don't know what's on them we should keep these in front of us on our all the time to guide our decision Mak so when you guys keep this with you and you end up in a chair like thistime when you're an adult bring that with you and put it

025in front of you when you're having to make decisions future board m theor all right first second and fourth graders I also have a swirl gift card for so come on and [Music] I'm a I know e e e all right we that was a beautiful beautiful presentation from the Brookside Bears I'm so pleased that they came in tonight um moving on with our agenda um we have communication um public comment regarding items not on the Open Session agenda items um and I have one com a c here from Elaine Garcia youd like to come forward and a seat up here and hi good even everybody um I hate talking sorry you have three minutes and we'll give you a warning at two and a half minutes sure um first I would like to give

026a big thank you to the board and our superintendent for endlessly working so hard for the Ross Valley Schools we are excited for the district's future truly speak speak on behalf of families with IEPs and 504 plans we request that the board considers adding a requirement that the new candidate for the position of director of student services has a background and and special ed in Most states to be a director of student services one has to have a special a director credential we hope this can be added to the job posting and as a requirement needless to say we hope that it is filled by good communicator knowledgeable special ed law and believes in inclusion practices and works in partnership with families let's try to keep our families in the district and hopefully bring some

027back thank you and go measure e good thank you no more public comment um not on topic items okay great um our next item is correspondence and communication to the board um we have one item there so hopefully everyone got to take a look at that um here and our next item is announ by labor unions so CA rvta evening good evening we'd like to express our gratitude tonight thank you for listening to rbta members speak over last two years and really hear our message that Ed educators are in need of a livable wage thank you to the board for your commitment and dedication moving forward with measure e to support our students and Educators thank you for being transparent and solution oriented thank you to our families for all the love and support as

028well as the work being put into measure e and thank you to management for continuing to prioritize inclusivity with our District's Equity work we appreciate the district office for creating a safe place for Learning and belonging for all and thank you to everyone for believing in the future of public education thank you and our next item is presentation and or action items so um the first item there is adoption of resolution 11 oh did you want to bring it back to any comments from that since announcements do we normally do comments on announcements I we do we did yeah know okay on sorry just wasn't sure if it yeah no but you can hold it to one no no I don't I don't have I just was not sure we were following the protocol that's

029all um thank you for checking yeah just checking yeah yeah um so the next item was under presentation Andor action items and it's adoption of resolution 11242 recognizing March 2025 as women's History Month yeah so I just wanted to bring this resolution to the board uh to Mark March as women's History Month uh women have played a really important role in my life I was raised by a single mom and my grandmother and six aunts spent a ton of time teaching me how to camp and fish and read and write and do all kinds of things so uh women have played a really critical role in in my upbringing and we have a majority of women on our board um actually the majority of uh our administrators in the district are women and the majority

030of our teachers staff are women so it's really important uh in a place like Ross Valley and in a place like education to Mark March as an important uh moment to think about the you know the things that women have poured into our lives uh whoever we are so um just want to bring this resolution forward to the board do any questions up here I'll bring it up for a public comment if any would like to say thing thank you thank you all right um do a public comment um do we have any discussion up here on the board on this topic we wouldn't all be here if it weren't for women so that's a a fact science you know uh it just makes sense it just makes sense it's a no-brainer well I appreciate

031this being brought forward this is the first time I've seen this come forward so I appreciate that this is something that we're taking the time to acknowledge this month um I will entertain a motion on this resolution I will make a motion to adopt the resolution 112 2425 recognizing March 2025 and March going forward as women's History Month all right Chris so Chris hi sh hi Daniel hi Rachel I thank you thank you okay so our next item is recommended acceptance of demographic analysis and enrollment projections performed by King Consulting and I am going to invite Rob uh Murray up to the days here and he's going to give the presentation and Mr Murray okay wonderful Mr Murray did the actual um enrollment projections 14 Consulting and what he's presenting tonight are just the summary

032findings and what you're accepting is just that we've received the report and uh a copy of the uh enrollment was attached to the agenda item as well right thank you very much Mr Carson and good evening to board staff and public who are watching uh my name is Rob Murray I'm the director of demographics at King Consulting and we've worked in various ways with Ross Valley School District over the years with various funding and previous demographic work but it's the first time we've uh prepared a study in a little bit and I think the first time I've come to present it to the board uh in quite a while so very excited to be here so we I'll first off be that person and just spoil the ending of the book right off the bat

033uh but what we're really looking at big picture with Ross Valley is that you have been in a prolonged period of decreasing enrollments and how however we're looking at a period of increasing enrollments while not getting back necessarily to your historical high levels but with the current year actually being the low point and that's often the tricky part of my job when you have this period of decreasing enrollments is pegging when do we think the bottom is going to hit when might things turn around and I'm happy to report that it looks like you are just about at that point and I'll show you exactly why we think that is and just that third bullet there the cohort replacement I'll show you an example of that but essentially in in thee AK K8 District you

034can view it as a sequence where every year you have new kindergarteners and we're going to set TK aside for a minute but we will talk about that but you have new kindergarteners who come into the district and they're replacing your previous year's cohort of eighth graders who have moved on to high school and when you have a big difference in the size of those two groups that's really going to be the initial thing that's going to dictate whether you're basically trending down or trending up other things can offset that or augment that but in your case it really really is that most straightforward factor of just look at who's coming in and who you already have that will be moving out over the next few years so we'll show you exactly what that looks

035like with the other part being the expansion of transitional kindergarten effectively at the by next year into a full grade level not a compulsory one but every four-year-old who lives in your District who wants to come for TK is eligible and so you will also have an expansion of those four those youngest four-year-old students and that's what really what's going to help with the short-term growth and then that cohort replacement is going to kick in as we get a few more years out so first some uh historical enrollment Trends you've probably seen something like this you had uh you know earlier in the decade things were trending down and then you like almost everyone else in the state had the big drop between 2019 and 2020 uh we're still trying to figure out what happened

036then no we know exactly uh what that was about and you you tend to have uh this pattern of just this abrupt onetime Exodus of some younger families and then in your case the resumption of what turned into without some of these external factors that had been causing some of your previously declining enrollment uh a little bit more stability but you see again overall so trending down the last two years being some of your lowest years in recent record and here's where we start talking about you've been on the I say bad but I mean the side of cohort replacement that leads to decreasing enrollments where even you throw out the 2020 year because a lot of those kids who didn't show up for kindergarten that year you did still get some of those back

037as first graders that next year but in general going from having around 200 new kindergarteners coming in to having somewhere in the 160s to 170s more years than not recently and so that's really what's been happening especially with these two most recent years where you've had particularly low enrollments this really has been the main thing but you look at those lighter blue ones at the top you see starting in 2022 the transitional kindergarten growing up so it's important to know that doesn't augment the kindergarten age grade cohort but it does get more of those kids that used to you would have had to wait another year before you saw them and now you have them at the same time too so if you go back to that of course 2425 is only 11 students shy

038of 15 16 the height which is actually a very positive trend and that to what you're saying of that the group coming up will continue to I guess my question is do you think that that number will stay the 16 166 hold that thought and I I'll show you something that speaks directly to that point yeah yes and that's that is good to not as far as your bottom line total and that's more in these recent years where the dark blue line the actual 5-year-old kindergarteners coming in have B last if you weren't already having the now you know compared to when you had 30 to 40-ish TK now having close to 90 without those additional TK students you really would have seen your total going down more but as I said we're about to

039flip the switch on what's happening with the cohort replacement based on what we're seeing with births and I'll show you again a little bit of detail on that but do you go into detail that fairly precipitous kindergarten not K TK and kindergarten from 2223 to 2324 um yeah and and part of that it's it's almost more if you let pull it back to 2122 it's more that 2223 was just a little bit of a positive anomaly for you but uh you know kind of spoiling the next couple slides a little bit but what we really look at for how we Peg what we know about your previous kindergarten and what that means going forward is we look at your local births which I'll go ahead and pull up here and we compare that yes I

040have that yes just wanted to make sure I had that next slide in but we compare that to how many kindergarteners you get 5 years later and how many TK students you get four years later and we want to see how consistent is that ratio I.E how good of a predictor is it if we know how many births there were for that to tell us anything about how many kindergarteners you're going to get and here's what's interesting and this is a little different for your District now when we say local birds first I'll say what that means and that is California Department of Public Health anyone who wants to can register with their data portal and do what I do for fun and watch these numbers all the time but uh you can track births

041by occurrence or by residence and what that means is regardless of where the birth occurred if you have people going to San Rao going to San Francisco wherever they're going to have babies delivered as long as the person giving birth is a resident of the zip codes that are most closely associated with rvsd that we're tracking them as births to Residents and so so that really really helps us do what we're doing and again I'm trusting that the folks who put that data together at the Department of Public Health uh you know have their ways of making sure they sort all that out but given how consistently uh stable those relationships are I think it does a really good job and what you see here is I mean you can see it's not a great

042mystery why enrollments at the school district independent of things like the pandemic have still been TR in down because you just have fewer kids being born in your community and based on what we're seeing with uh you know not none but certainly I would say minimal new residential development uh you know there's just not you know basically the foundation of who you're going to have in the future is who's being born here and what's really interesting though that red box represents the years where the births are in the books and actually I'll even tell you 2024 came in at 161 so still kind of stepping down a little bit it's still above where it's been between 2017 and 2020 and that red box represents the years of births where we know the birth totals but

043those kids haven't shown up for kindergarten yet so for the next few years we know who was born here who's going to make up the backbone of those future cohorts and 2021 was a banner year excuse me and even though births are gradually stepping down a little bit since then they've still been higher than what you had for a few years is running going up through the kids that you're still uh you know have been getting for kindergarten the last couple of years and that for one more year you'll probably still get for kindergarten and then here's the other part of that I mentioned we look at that ratio and how reliable it is and this is a pattern that we see a lot of places we're just looking at the blue line on top

044which is the kindergarten for now so looking at births from 5 years before and prior to 2020 you tended to have you know call it a you know 1.1 to 1.2 is but meaning that on on the whole you did have uh you know some of that I would have to go back and look to check how well your ZIP codes line up with your District in your case I think it is pretty good or what that really means is you do tend to have more young families moving in I think this is a very desirable area for people with young kids to want to get into so you do attend to see a little bit of an increase from who was born to who winds up en rolling we throw the 2020 ratio out

045we know what that was about and then since then you notice the ratio has been you trending out but lower and what that really is is that same phenomenon that caused all those kids to move out in 2020 it wasn't just the kids who were already in school it was your kids under 5 years old who had been living here prior to the pandemic so suddenly before we had this very reliable ratio and now a lot of those kids who were born in 2017 2018 2019 had had also moved at the same time you had that big onetime loss of students and so your ratio has dropped but you see it trending up and I think after next year so about by 2026 when we're definitely dealing entirely with kids born post the you know

046the real meat of the co pandemic then we're going to see that ratio bounce back up at least back above a 1.1 approaching at 1.2 again probably I.E back to what we would consider normal business for you so that's one positive thing so am I reading this correctly anything above a one if it's a ratio of births to kindergarten anything higher than a one that amount over the one is in migration and if it's a one it's a one: one ratio birth to kindergarteners and anything below is an out migration correct and that's all on net because in reality you have people constantly moving in and out but yeah but on net you tend to attract more families you know who didn't have whose kids weren't born here but who were looking to land here

047by the time they reach school age and then the transitional kindergarten on the bottom you see there been a little bit of fluctuation but that has been shooting up uh we definitely you know you had kind of maybe a little bit of a very rapid increase in year two of the roll out a little bit of a slight flattening in year three but overall we tend to see this going more or less proportionately to as that program is expanded and more and more uh are increasingly younger four-year-olds are eligible to enroll and as I said next year 252 six those last three months of the youngest birth dates are fully open to the program and so we expect that to continue trending up as well and so I will mention there's a lot of information

048that's in the full report that I'm not hitting here because we did want to Value everyone's time and only we go into it if if you want to ask me about it knock yourselves out I'm happy to talk about it but here's actually what we see and I'll show you the numbers and explain what this is but again you're seeing this dropping below 1,700 uh again I still see you below 1700 next year but going back up and really I think you will be trending up for this projection period of seven years that we do which generally gets you the you roughly five years of births that help us reliably syat Garden in a couple of crystal ball years where we assume uh that birth Trent will kind of keep trending the way that they've

049been and I'll show you here's the full numbers I would say the one caveat to keep in mind is that TK at the top row you see going up next year and then continuing to go up a little bit more and this is my personal hunch now you see from 87 to 134 that seems like a huge leap but remember that big birth year in 2021 that's where you're going to start getting some TK next year on top of it being the first year that all of them are eligible so that's why it's shooting up so much but then even after that since it's not compulsory and there's still a Delta between what we're independent projecting for kindergarten and then what we think is coming for TK the year before there's opportunity to keep getting

050more of those kids in TK and I think as the word gets out that you know people know that their neighbor or their friend had a good experience in the TK program maybe they weren't sure but then they'll go you know more and more people I think will keep trickling into that program is my hunch that that's sometimes demographics is science sometimes it's punches that's I I still built in a little bit of you know just like a quarter per a year just little extra growth and TK just to show that but that's one thing if that winds up not panning out you know knock 20 kids off by the time you're in 2030 of the TK total if we think that once you get to what you have next year that's going to be

051your Baseline otherwise I'll show you what that cohort replacement looks like and this really really hits you the big like I said the short-term growth is really you get this TK in and that helps keep your floor from getting much lower but your current fourth grade C you notice 148 kids kid you look above it 1803 graders below it 184 fifth graders you just have some you get these bubbles we call them this small cohort and you just follow it down into the right over the years you tend to get a bump between fifth and sixth grades you have your cohorts enter middle school but otherwise you don't you tend to see again it's a net day you actually have kids moving in and out but basically once you get your cohort they aside from

052the fifth to sixth grade transition they don't change size radically and so as that cohort moves on once they get to uh 28 29 those are your eighth graders and then they move out of the district and we think that those call it 160 kids are going to be replaced by call it 190 kids the next year and that kind of built in 30 student bump on top of knowing that you pick up some students in sixth grade that you have maybe a few more TK students is what leads to at the bottom there about a 50 student increase from one year to the next and that's why I say you're you're kind of getting back into the flip side of you had that cohort replacement with some of these very very small corts coming

053in but at the other end of that when those very very small cohorts leave if births have been going up and for you they have that primes you to know that you have the opposite effect ready to occur and then you see the same thing will happen your current second grade cohort it is another small one and so right at the end of the projection period you're going to have the same thing thing with about another 30 student uh cohort replacement bump that just is you know that doesn't take any great mathematical Insight once you see how the patterns work you can identify the smaller cohorts and as long as you're pretty confident in your births then you have a pretty good idea who's going to be there in a few years to take their

054place and so that's the gist of what we have prepared for you for projections but just I hope what share I hope comes across as good news that uh you I from what I'm seeing have probably hit the lowest total you're going to have for a little bit and it's increasing enrollments for the next several years the risk manager and me praise for no natural disasters or yes yeah obviously all you know all of the enrollment projections that I did for people in 2019 did not come out looking very good so yes there's things happen but yes with with what we know now let's keep it clean I'll it thank you thank you Rob was this your the moderate projections because I know you have low moderate and high projections yes so yeah so we're

055only showing the moderate here and so what basically that means is we show the moderate projection for long-term planning but we have a low and a high in the whole study and that's because you do have as we showed you some variance in what your say birth to kindergarten ratio could be which if you actually look at how those existing corts change in size from year to year there's sort of a it's been as little as this or as much as this and so the low and high projections are great for the next one to two years to see plausibly if everything lines up on the low end or the high end this is I I grew up though I don't sound like it on the Gulf Coast of Texas and so those hurricane forecasts

056where if you're anywhere in the cone you pay attention that's kind of your cone but the longer you go on the more likely it is those highs and lows balance out and you're probably going to wind up with something along this moderate project but yes for for short term your full study does have highs and lows that you know any given year we like you had that anomalous year of really high births that we you know looking ahead at the you know a couple years before that might not have predicted coming you always have these little spikes or troughs but over time this is something that I would say is your best long-term bet because that's going to average out a few anomalous years of blips that are higher or lower than what we might

057expect you know any given time and to add a little more Credence to what um Rob has been saying if you actually look at our TK enrollments for the um for next school year our numbers are in line with what you're seeing in 25 26 already good didn't we're we're 142 like at the moment we're at 142 with six additional pendings so we're actually above that number right so yeah there and sometimes even you might just take let's take the high projection just for rtk because yeah we there okay okay are there other um unexpected factors that you've seen in your years of of work to just keep on the radar and then e economic Trends certainly there's a lot of um national state policy turnning happen and which ones might have a longer term

058Horizon to account for shorter term longer term impact shorter term anything like that that we should just kind of keep on our radar well certainly one thing to look at and I didn't really get into the residential development part in this presentation just because you have uh I think it's I believe it's Fairfax that has one relatively larger project that seems to be going ahead but with State housing law now particularly around designated affordable housing there's a lot of streamlining to the planning approval process such that if a developer has something that they think pencils out particularly something that's been rezoned under one of the town or the County's housing element update then you could you know what used to be something that might give you several years of seeing that it's coming before you

059deal with it can really happen within a couple of years now so that would just be one thing definitely pay attention to what your local planning authorities and your local developers are doing uh because and certainly that's the other thing that that kind of affordable housing tends to all be if it's a you know multif family say 50 unit uh affordable apartments that gets built anywhere in your District it's all going to hit at once and you tend to have the most schoolage children uh relative to market rate housing will move in to below market rate housing so that's that's one thing to keep an eye on based on my conversations with the planning Authority and reviewing the latest housing elements and everything I didn't see anything that was imminently happening but do that would

060be the main thing to keep aware of and then I mean certainly with a lot of I I don't know that you have NE you know I know for example doing some work in San raell but been lot of immigration placement and things like that uh there's going to be probably some drastic changes to some of those patterns but those were a little hard to predict in peg in advance always anyway but otherwise I think in your community what we're really seeing is uh keep watching those births again 24 came in just a little lower than 23 while still higher than some of these other years but if you can not not to talk myself out of a job here but if you just track your local births that's going to tell you a lot

061about how you're going to Trend up or down just relatively what they had been five or six years before rob a quick question when I was looking at this the information earlier I looked at the frpm socioeconomic indicators and I was just curious because is that really a pure indication of the socioeconomic status given that free lunch is Prov to everyone and that's yeah you you are correct in that and I uh P the districts have to confirm where I'm getting a little out ahead of what I deal with all the time but that still officially signing up for the F frpm program is I believe there's still a distinction between uh the universal free lunch okay so this is this is separate but but however the uh I yeah take a little bit of

062a grade of salt only because the incentive for some families to officially have you know register for the frpm is perhaps you know less since the with the universal free lunch there's you know a lot of the most immediate benefit from that is coming whether you officially have gone through the paperwork registration for that or not in our community um because our numbers are so low generally the bulk of the people that qualify for free and reduced meals receive other services and so they're what they would call Direct certified and so they're receiving Services elsewhere and we know because of that they they qualify you back into those numbers with other data you're correct okay thank that that's helpful to know as well because yeah I I'm pulling it from the states yeah publish data

063so I've see the numbers creep up and then that that that course feeds into other aspects of federal funding and other things that I'm what I just have a a radar no I it's I think just because of its availability and that it's certified along with other state data I mean certainly in a lot of ways looking at your unduplicated count is another good source that folds frpm in with a couple of other things but yeah there's that's going to be one of the harder areas to I guess to know that there's a lot more going on Beyond any one statistic that we can pull out and show but no that's a great question the purity of the numbers there basically so okay thank you so so I think one of the reasons we wanted

064to have this studied done is because we have anecdotal information from living in our neighborhoods like hey there's a lot of little kids all of a sudden on all these houses that just turned over like on my street there were six houses with kids that were like babies or toddlers And I was like I don't think we're ready for these guys as if we're not like because they're not showing up in the hospitals as birth here because they were here after they were born and I don't know where they were born but they weren't registered to these addresses when those guys are born so I I think that's really helpful that we've got this information now and what we're seeing in the community is being shown here as well which is great no and that's

065great because that's I will Sor to interrupt because it's I'm also glad that you want that your instinct was also to see if a study corroborated that because I have been in communities where people will say well I I see there were three kids it mov that on my street it's like well your street was the outlier and there's that's not really happening everywhere and some people are really shocked when nothing that I can look at seems to show especially when they have a hunch there might be more kids coming so in your case it was I don't think I've ever literally come in at the at what I think is going to be the low point right before the pivot happens so that that was kind of exciting so so these numbers are these

066just based on the births in our District like the district number so like the toddlers that moved in from San Francisco would they be on this counted in this to the extent that again we're looking at uh it is based on the assumption that I do think your r that a your births have increased but also that that ratio is going to also jump up to pre-pandemic levels especially it helps me be more confident in that the fact that you're basically have been trending up mostly since the pandemic and so it's those two things but yes a big part of it is not just your family's already living here seeing more kids being born but I think it's it's certainly I think really that steady amount that you get of inmigration you know whether it

067be from San Francisco whether it be from other parts of Mora the Bay Area uh you know that could be a whole another project to really track where some you know exactly where some of your families come but those zero to you know three to four year old children but I think the reason the ratio has been lower lately is not because those families haven't been coming in at a relatively stable rate it really is as I was saying earlier the fact that you had those kids who were already here who were 1 two three four at the time of the pandemic who left and you didn't even see that in your enrollment numbers but and so I actually do agree with you I think with what you're saying that yes you these projections are

068accounting for a pretty consistent level kids coming in on top of your births that I think has always been there the other um demographic on the other side of the age spectrum that would also increase those ratios is the Marine county is one of the oldest po populations in the state and the peak of that aging is hits at 2030 I believe and so on either side of that Peak you have older adults moving out or into assisted living or passing passing on and so if you look at the the dates of this and you look at the 2030 whatever that other table is yeah that 2030 area it's not the and selling their houses and making those houses available so I I think in some respects that would also then up or or lend

069itself maybe to the median and high projections because the ratio is going to be that seems to be going down Rob on page 18 of your massive document right we have fewer over 70s today than we did three years ago so 2020 was the high unless 2023 is just an anomaly well and that I I was that's that I was flipping a second ago to see to just confirm I didn't put that chart in this presentation though I often do so with the census data and I'll just speak to that really quickly the 202010 and 2020 are data from the Full Count census incredibly reliable because you have the Census Bureau making every effort to account for every literally every person 2023 are as we get further and further from 2020 we're relying on what

070they call the American Community survey which are estimates based on May old samples and this you know they they get back what they get back they don't necessarily worry about tracking everyone down and then just extrapolate from what they do get back and so you will see those if you look at 22 then 23 then 24 you might see some things really bouncing up and down and with some statistical variance but it's what we have so I so the 2023 especially with the a I've noticed this with maybe not so much with the total population but with those age breakouts they they kind of drift and Veer up and down a little bit so any one data point with that okay don't give it as much weight but yes we that's you you brought it

071up before I could even speak to it there you we do have in the full report that look at the census population that lives in your community of age breakdown and then that's just where we get into I'm sure living here you have heard enough about General housing affordability but it remains that to the extent that you know people age out of housing that they've been in for decades who is it that's going to move into it and increasingly in your community however based on what we're seeing again with the OnePlus birth ratios with just the fact of how many more kids and births that you have it does appear like you are still getting young families coming into your District when the housing availability is there so that is great news for you but

072that is still one to keep an eye on because anecdotally in you some other parts of this County you have where it's just the you know the the 80 70 80 year old moves out of a single family home so that a still you know 50s something year old people whose dream was to move to Marin come in to get it but they had you know they already put their kids through school somewhere else and you just have slightly younger empty nesters coming in instead so still you know I mean you can get lost in the data if you spend all day at it but no it's it is an interesting thought and I would that's something else you can the census website is not the most user friendly but once you learn how to

073pull it up just see what they think their best guess is of the age breakdowns and then 2030 will be the the real good year to see to confirm how that actually played out cuz that was my big shock between 2019 and 20120 was those very long in the Toth ACS estimates before our most recent real census socalled and then once we got the real numbers in 2020 it was like wow some of those estimates were not even close that they've been doing the last couple years so one thing that I'd like to note here too is that as we get closer to 2030 and 2032 we're seeing increasing enrollment which if we're in an lcff year that's great however by the time we get to 2031 32 it's likely we're going to be in

074basic aade and creeping a little bit deeper and more consistently into basic aade so there's just some like interesting budgetary thoughts to have and 2034 if we pass this new parcel tax will be the time where the partial tax will be sunsetting or being asked for Renewal so there's just some like converging things that happen in the early 2030s um that we'll have to pay close attention to spoking like a super intive do you do you know the other thing I was thinking about the T the TK numbers um there's some gray area where TK is compulsory and I know that there have been some school districts who've had to do budget cuts who've dropped TK lately I mean compulsory for the district to offer it just on a Statewide basis and and some of

075this um if you are self-funded through property taxes and you're don't have additional Revenue coming in from more TKS I've heard of some districts just very recently with budget cuts have gotten rid of their TK it's happened and so I don't know if there's if you've seen TK interdistrict transfers or like just keeping aware of of those kinds of things whether we want to welcome transfers in well we we do have anou with the Ross School District so part of Ross's plan is Av anou with us to send students here um we've offered positions to Raw students in the past and depending on what site we offer some parents might say yes some parents might say no right now we're projecting to move from four TK classrooms to seven and I just did the the

076numbers and it's about 7.4 classrooms that we need right now so there's going to be a conversation we're going to have to have here pretty soon about do we have have an eighth classroom and if we don't fill that we do have anou so we can make that fiscally responsible to have a full class of 20 students if we needed where the site is is going to be a conversation for us and if I could go back very briefly a few minutes ago uh Robin mentioned that we have the large project that is um slated eventually to uh go into the fairf fire the town of fairfx one of the things that happens in school districts is any any developer that wants to do a project ultimately has to pull a permit and part of

077that process is to come to the school district to pay what's called a school developer fee and that's to help offset the cost of additional students we would know before they build the project that it's moving forward and so that's really the starting point point for the school district um at that particular point but we certainly would have to keep an eye on it because if it's if it's so large that it could negatively impact your District you might need to actually start to grow I was in a district that in four years we we grew 40% and so that was really devastating for the from development Housing Development from housing developments and so you really do have to look at your housing yields um I was also in another District that we had a

078100 unit complex um that went in and in 100 units we got one student yeah that's I would say h and that's really why I mentioned specifically with some of the uh S sp50 I think it is but the kind of the clearing the decks a little bit for affordable housing to go through a fewer uh planning roadblocks because that's really where you're going to see a lot more kids the yeah the uh I guess I see that especially in the East Bay Peninsula or I've done some studies in those some of those apartment complexes they give out yeah I mean 200 units three kids I mean I see that kind of thing all the time so it very much depends what type of housing is being built for sure Tyler how does this affect

079our white Hill planning over the next just couple of years decreasing so many students you know especially in the next three years you know 50 kids difference yeah I want to give a lot of credit to Mary CLA and John um they've done a really nice job of taking a look at their enrollment and the number of teachers they have and the number of sections they have to offer for electives or band or whatever the the piece is and then slowly reducing um the FTE at White Hill to match the enrollment so they're in the process of building their master schedule now I'll be talking with them tomorrow on Friday we can chat a little bit about that um but then we're going to have to it looks like you know a few years start

080ramping back up and hiring again so I I'll mention this in a later uh presentation tonight but this district has done a remarkable job of running an efficient lean organization we do not have bloated FTE or you know we run a lean organization here and John and Mary CLA probably have the biggest challenge with uh larger School shrinking and growing their staff um based on enrollment so they they might be able to cut to FTE this year and it wouldn't be a layoff it wouldn't be um a pink slip it would just be you know someone's retiring or or moving out and we just shift staff around to adjust to the the enrollment one other um enrollment consideration is where else students are going to school in our district and school closures I know like

081when sh was closed uh that was a you know a big cohort of students that were then all of a sudden looking for other places um so that's just another thing and I and I you know know that the charter renewal is coming up I don't know what the timeline is but that's something just to keep on our radar as far as planning goes because those are other situations like Housing Development where all of a sudden you have a big chunk that may or may not be in play um coming or going or whatever so 100% spot on with that too as far as things that could happen that would or that if they did happen would certainly change these numbers yeah and that you'd want at least a good some runway for figuring out

082what to do with it so you questions I'm trying to be mindful of the time so we're on track time wise but I just want to make sure we stay that way tonight do we have any more questions for Rob thank you so much it was my pleasure thank you for thank you great to be here have a wonderful evening thank you thanks Rob thanks did we comment on this item no it looks great because the TK teacher out there nervous all right um so I will bring it back to the board um for a motion or discussion discussion I guess probably before a motion so that would be better are we are we we just we have to we have to accept the attached thing or not accept it we have to make a

083motion when we another I would like to make a motion to accept the attached thing we have enough discussion oh wasn't that a discussion I mean we were kind of asking questions yeah I mean you know it's it's um I think it's it's moderate data that is based on very narrow bumpers to ensure that the deviation because there's a lot of deviation in there based on circumstances that can move it right we all know that so it's not like they he could do scenarios to say if this happened then this would happen we don't really need that we we've seen we've seen the dark side it's like a baseline exactly and I think it's I think it's enough information for us to feel comfortable that we're on the right path um I love that like

084the data guy is happy that he found like the bottom point I know I know he was all excited about that I was like okay we did that's that's that's a that's a data analytic dream point right there right I kind of was like I'm with him on that actually where did where does the flip where does the basic Aid I mean where does community funded and state funded flipping happen on these charts we're going to color code the call basically we're so 2425 were Community funded um we're state aid 2526 we it looks right now like we're back into Community funded 26 27 and we flip back out in 2728 and I don't have data going far enough out yet for 2829 but it sounds like some of our conversations we've had it it'll

085flip in and out a few more times before we start getting more consistently into basic Aid and as folks turn over their homes and more younger families move in and older families move out we'll see our our property tax basis go up slowly interest rates will behave um yeah it's interesting well I appreciate that um I I'm so happy that like we like I think there's more kids coming into our district like it's just that feeling so it was nice to see that like oh these numbers line up no and they were across the street as a tker coming in and she was like there's no room for all of them they're going to have to maybe go to different places and I'm like yep but that's good that's a good thing we used to

086have one t class for the whole District I know I know my kid was in it and now they're talking about like eight total it's amazing it really is it's great all right um there's no further discussion I'll entertaining motion on this item I will make a motion to uh accept the demographic analysis and enrollment projections performed by King Consulting great that a second I'll second uh Chris I Daniel shell I Rachel I sorry quick question I didn't get all the way like to the appendix or something of the mega document that he included does he have the data granular down to like census tracks or anything that might help with knowing exactly which school areas is that includ it's down to the school level it doesn't go down to the census track great so

087that's helpful information Pro yeah he he breaks it down by grade by by school and and all of that all right so our next item is the recommended approval of the second interim budget report go ahead and thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening um really the starting point for everything that we did was the the report that Rob gave us and so we were able to get it soon enough to be able to start to incorporate that data in um one of the things that we had in our budgets previously is is a fairly significant declining enrollment and um you'll see later on we're starting a show going the other way so what we'll be talking about this evening is just kind of our demographic data our enrollment our attendance and then

088moving on to our our budget and and our fund balances um looking at our demographics it's a little difficult when you're talking attendance now um because we and our um and our enrollment because often times you associate your your revenues directly with your PTO attendance because we've only been a revenue limit uh district and because we're now flipping in and out it becomes a little more complex and the other thing that has made it more complex in terms of our revenues directly has been the three-year averaging but what you do note here is that you start to see a uh balancing out of our both of our enrollment and our attendance we do still show our attendance is down our attendance rate we're at 94. U 3% within our budget we're hoping to get that

089up uh if if we can continue to to have children come to school and we don't have the flu go through our our community which it has recently uh it can start to to go back up we'll never down at this point we'll just say people are sick yeah when people are sick they're not coming in but that's really one of the biggest issues and so if we can get it up to kind of our historical averages up to the 96 it will start to inflate our our attendance rates which do come into our our enrollment one of the things you will note is we have some discrepancies between you know just our enrollment that we were talking about earlier versus um what you see up here some of that just has to do with

090timing our enrollment that I report is always what we call our our CED state which is our California basic education data um which is a single date in October it's the first Wednesday in October a date never changes and so once we know that it it stays the same the other thing that is a little different is our enrollment does also include some other and and attendance also includes other things other than students that are directly with us we have non-public schools for example and uh um also students that are with within the Marin County Office of Education programs so that's why they're not perfectly aligned but then once once we get from there I try and mirror as much as I can um the growth rates that we're seeing within his report so in

091terms of our funded average daily attendance versus our P2 attendance our P2 attendance traditionally has been uh what we've been paid upon but as a result of the three-year averaging um it does change more dramatically and you see that back in 2122 22 23 the differences between our P2 attendance which is the uh average daily attendance as of the end of March um so we calculate that as of that date every year and that's ultimately what we use for our funding um and you see those large discrepancies you'll see that even though it's it's going down trending down over the period what you do note is that as we move forward it's starting to flatten out and that's the biggest thing that makes it easier from a budget standpoint and from a staffing standpoint um

092and and a lot of that has to do with the numbers that he was providing in terms of our revenues and our expenses this is our total glal fund and um the local control funding formul fora dollars are this year because we're Community funded it's basically our our property tax revenues for the most part but as you move into next year they're going to be based upon our average daily attendance uh because we flip back out into a state aid and those are the dollars that we get for for having the kids come every day but it's not the only source of revenues we have and you'll you'll see that um 35.6% of our revenues come in other sources and so we have lots of other sources on here we have the parcel tax which

093is 15.8% which is uh $4.7 million that's a significant dollar amount and we have other local revenues which are comp comprised of primarily two sources of revenues which are the yes Foundation dollars as well as um uh our special ed dollars a lot of those come through there as well are the the largest sources um of revenues that we have there and you also have state and federal revenues which come mostly in the form of categorical programs not entirely but they do come in other sources questionis where would the lottery funding com down Lottery would be that's a great question sorry it ends up under State revenues okay so going back we have two portions of Lottery Revenue dollars we have a portion that comes in in the form form of uh instruction materials Lottery

094which is the smaller portion and then we get a larger amount that comes in the form of unrestricted and so we use that for um like supply for school sites did you say special education under local revenues or under State and heads scratch local believe it or not a lot of it comes under local because it's a flow through through the Sala program so oh from MCO from MCO so large portion of it actually ends up under other local revenues but it originates at the state through then it becomes localized when it comes from them to us yes yes and then the developer fees would also be a local developer this is only our general developer fees actually end up in our fund 25 so if you look at our separate fund completely not the

095general fund that would be in in that particular fund you'll see the revenues pop up there and um they do come under other local revenues within that particular fund U so that that's our revenues in a nutshell and so we have approximately $30 million in total revenues um in terms of expenses within our budget again this is total general fund so this also includes our categorical restricted side so uh I I don't want to lose sight of that but we are a people business we're we are about people we educate our future and our children and we are our teachers and staff primarily and as a result you see salaries and benefits are 74.3% of our total general fund budget uh and then you have other categories so you have other outgo uh and you

096have services and other and books and supplies so much smaller amounts there uh service is and other includes um lots of different uh things within uh special education as well as just our um utilities are in there large utilities um both electric gas um those types of things also fall under services and other so again this is our total general fund of 32.8 million when you look at our general fund uh as a whole um one thing that's important to note is and you really see it in that Top Line the lcf revenues we have started to to um basically have no growth between 23 2425 and 2526 in terms of our single largest source of revenues and that's because what has happened is we did see that large decline in our enrollment that uh

097we were were talking about earlier and because of the um lcff 3year averaging impacting us and finally doing away with that and then us flipping in and out of community funding stats as a result of all of that you end up with more or less flat revenues during that period for your single largest source and so that becomes um challenging for the district as a whole but one thing you'll note is that um as we look at 2324 we did actually have a $653,000 loss and prior to that we we did not and as we move forward worst case scenario is we're budgeting um for some significant losses again um but we do see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel as you start to to look out in 26 27

098in terms of your lcff revenues when looking at our fund balances um this is looking back at our historical fund balances as well as moving forward um when you look at 2122 that was a 26.6% fund balance uh and as you look at 2223 even though the total dollar amount went up our percentage went down and that's because our fund balance is calculated based upon our total general fund expenditures so if your expenditures are going up so too does the a need for your reserve to go up um which also highlights the fact that because just on the natural or expenses will continue to go up we do need to start to look at um reversing out those the deficit spending that's really a critical thing to look at as we move forward uh Chris

099can I mention something I know in the third year out State mandate is 3% our board directive is 10% um I Heard a superintendent meeting today that California school boards Association actually recommends 177% in the third year out that was new information I hadn't heard yet and I just thought it's important for for us to kind of recognize that even though our board sets a 10% goal California school boards Association would almost double that and make it 17% what's the rationale for such a wide disparity it actually comes from Chief business officials and when you when you hear a 177% it just sounds large it's so large yeah but the real reality of it is we're looking as a CBO at our salaries and benefits and we're trying to be able to afford two months

100worth of salary and that generally gets you up to the 17% and you can see I think it's a good question Chris because if you look at 2324 at a 23% 23.1% reserve you can go down to 7% % in the blank of an eye right um so 177% kind of gives you a little bit of Runway to weather some uncertainty um so you know there's there's some numbers for us to all consider but um you know seven is getting awfully low I think keeping keeping that statistic number of months of operating expenses I mean I know when I was running a a a nonprofit organization the board was setting policies that we had a six-month operating expense Reserve policy from the board and I think it's just a it's just really pragmatic and helpful

101and tangible to think of it in terms of number of let's like your run rate if you're working in a business so it's like for the community to understand what does this byas I think having that even even on our slides and our presentations more so than ratios because you know looking at a 23% is different than saying that's four months of operating expenses or four months of salary for people so I think continuing to have that front and center for people I think is just much more tangible for the general public to grasp that when we're getting down to 7.7% we're looking at what less than a month operating less than a month's not operating expenses but less than a month's salaries which is all of a sudden your risk Bells go we we

102we I mean we know why we're there we do and I think that the Optics of having 26% in reserves when teachers are sitting in front of us asking for more money 7% makes sense because that's how we've gotten there right oh I'm not saying we H I mean I I totally agree that we had to go there but I also think that we also need to make it really clear the risks that we are assuming when we went there absolutely and and by that we're we're I should say the we is all of us including all of the employees yeah we don't want to go upside down all of us don't want to go upside down and into receivership by the state because we were too risky and something happened unexpected so I just

103think making sure everybody understands our role is to take risk on behalf of the entire District all of the employees all the students and families but we as a community are assuming that risk is it a scree climb to to think that this that we could get back up quicker with without anything but just good hiking boots I me obviously we do need to have some things there's belt tightening that needs to happen Cuts you you do see I mean it's in the news almost every day there are districts throughout the Bay Area alone that are are making dramatic Cuts closing schools Etc a lot of them are facing the similar type situation that we are in except they may not have had the 26% yeah this gives us that longer Runway I also want

104to note that some of the news that you see today with districts making drastic Cuts right now is because they haden't made Cuts over the last three to four years and Marcy and Chris have been exceptionally prudent in making timely Cuts along with the board over the last four years so there is some belt tightening that that we can do not a ton without cutting student programs um but we have been doing Cuts over the last four years so we're not doing some big drastic thing here um and I think I just think that's an important thing for the context to to be set for us I also really appreciate how you all have when we had onetime Co dollars it was really known as onetime Co dollars and we were not projecting ongoing operating

105expenses and I know other districts have gotten into a difficult place because they used one time dollars to create ongoing and now and it's just now hitting them that like all those dollars are gone but they have these they created these ongoing expenses that they're now having to cut you guys did a great job at really acknowledging these are onetime dollars and using them just for those kinds of things so we're in a good position because of that thank you those programs did end literally this year like September so that is actually one of the biggest issues you're seeing and not even just those districts that you're seeing all over in other districts as well but I I I do have to throw another curve ball do you want to go ahead first and then

106I'm um so we're in the 24 25 year and if we did it what's the 2728 year I mean do you have that idea or we don't we're not talking about that now like does that Trend start going up uh it's still it's still tight and that is what you will see in at the beginning of June oh that's the teaser to come back in June yes the Cliffhanger the Cliffhanger the Cliffhanger the reason I say that is because in June we actually have our estimated actuals and our adopted budget for next year and at that point I will be dropping 2425 off in terms of our multi-year projections and I will be adding 2728 I can't wait but I do have to to throw a curveball out there wait there's more one of the

107things that as the CBO I would be remiss if I didn't point this out one of the things that is happening and will be happening as we move forward deeper into Community funded status you're going to see Wild potentially wild changes in your revenues to the point that um many districts that are flipping in and out end up with larger um reserves to help smooth that out so that is a another thing to think of the reason I say that is because the difference between the revenues that we could potentially lose whe when we're in community funded status and when we're in state aid is about $3 million roughly between the inl property taxes and the um uh the the other property taxes can't think of the term right now but that we would lose

108and so it's just something to think about it's not something that I would make a direct recommendation at this particular point but it's it's something that we need to always have in the back of our mind which is one of the reasons that Community funded districts often have larger reserves um but that that is just something to think about Chris do these numbers have uh increases for teacher salaries or CCA salaries baked into them no they do not the only thing they have are what are called step and column costs and so step and column costs people when they're on a salary schedule they get an automatic pay increase and let me go back you get an automatic pay increase based upon your years of service potentially if you're maxed out you would stay at

109the same same spot but you would move on the salary schedule and get an automatic pay increase and so those are built into our numbers but not additional pay increases so that's a very critical point you know I guess I get I get the numbers not but but there's there's the lay inside of me that says we've we've we've got the Ada we're doing well in attendance can always room for improvement we can head back to the 97% for a long time I sat here hearing if we can increase our daily attendance if we can do these things we'll be in a great place we've done those things and yet we're still dodging the curve balls and I'm trying to reconcile my ability to look at these numbers and they come make complete sense to

110me to hearing if you do these things this is what we need to improve and that's not stimulating the numbers so that's not NE I yeah that's not always That's Not Unusual you see that often in the multi-year projections which is part of the reason that that the state requires us to look at them in the future the one thing that school Services always says in their presentations is the one thing that's a guarantee is that your numbers in your multi-year projections will be exactly wrong and they say that because they're only as good as the information you have at that moment and so things will change within what we're looking at uh for example um within my numbers I've now built in the additional dollars for lcff revenues uh for the additional uh transitional

111kindergarten right um bump I mean the other part of it when you get in if you think back to the presentation of our budget that you think that were at the bottom of the U yeah when you pendulum swing back and forth on that bottom what Chris was just saying your income and ex your income calculations swing from per student actually goes like this yeah because you got a per student basis money on a per student basis and then it swings over to money on a total property tax basis and you swing back to and part of what happens too correct me if I'm wrong when you swing out of a per student basis you've got new expenses of prop property taxes that have to get paid out which is part of what pushes you

112back to swing over to the per student basis and then your revenues go up on that yeah but you're and so and that are so it's I mean that's the that's the catch22 that you're in because you're basically subject to these two different Revenue generating Frameworks and one of them says get as many students as you can and the other one is diametrically opposed to that saying don't get students and then the next year get students and but kids don't come and go into it's crazy making but having that simplistically wonderfully put to the public to understand that we said what we had to do we're executing on that and yet so I'm just trying to to help us pave the way to be able to Simply you know articulate why it looks like that

113when we've done everything we were told we should be yes we have these these these teachers are working hard communicating 100% attendance I just want to make sure that one of the things that also has impacted our local control funding formula revenues as we're flipping in and out of community funded status our property tax revenue percentages if you look and I don't have the the exact number directly in front of me right at this moment but I'm showing lower property tax revenues built in as we move forward including in the current year and the reason for that is Prop 19 and the negative impacts on uh the property taxes in our community and Prop 19 uh had to do with um if you live in an area that uh for example in LA county that

114just saw the fires and you then come here you sell your property there come here you get the step down and property value so you can keep your property tax value from LA County potentially when you move into Marine County that could have a negative and does and has had a negative impact upon uh Ross Valley as well as every other community funded District in our County and so for us it it dropped us about from my memory about 1.25% in those numbers and moving forward um and that came directly from the county and we they did those those calculations for us so those are the types of things that have impacts on us the other thing that has potentially negative and positive impacts upon our our projections as we move forward is that as

115we get closer to the next year the information for our economy might change whether we have um we're in a recession or we're coming out of it and so you're starting to see the colas change and vacillate as well and so that will have an impact upon those calculations so again in other words if you're at the bottom of that U the volatility that you experience is way more dramatic than if you're at the high end of either side of that U if you are clearly in one funding funding framework versus another the predictability and the volatility is much less the closer you are to the bottom of that you the more volatility you get from property tax volatility then Cola volatility then enrollment volatility and all of the volatility just sinks through the bottom

116of the U there's a lot there's a lot of noise in the projections which is yeah exactly what Chris was alluding to this is perfect the second he prints it and then it's wrong this second he prints it yeah it's interesting too because if you've got that volatility where we're located now you're going to want a higher Reserve to help weather that so you're not having to deal with it and impacting the casid exactly what happens if we cash flow wise because of volatility and expected where do we what do we do what do you we have something in our County called a u a tan a tax anticipation note and our County we're blessed to be in Marin County the county in Marin allows districts if you sign this every year and the resolution

117will come to you probably either in May or June authorizing for the following year uh to go negative in our cash and so because there is so much money within the county coffers and what they do is rather than charge us or give us interest income during that period they're counting negative interest against us so they can pay anybody that in essence has the dollars that we borrow from and so it's like a self-funded loan it's a self-funded loan okay in essence through the county and it's one of the blessings that we have for being in Marin County so and then the other thing I I do want to point out um in 23 24 we were at 23.1% and you see that that drop in our uh our unrestricted Reserve this literally just came

118out and for an Elementary District at the end of 2324 they were at 25.5 4% as the average across the state for elementary districts in that Reserve so we are now slightly below the elementary um District uh Reserve standard not standard Reserve levels the average for California for last year though yes okay so that that's just important to note that that Although our numbers did seem to be high we're in line with what the average district is it's not significantly different but I just wanted to point that out and so as we move forward kind of going back to um Daniel's question our next budget that we'll be providing is the estimated actuals which will be closing out um our 2425 budget period uh it won't be closing the books just yet but it'll be

119closing out the budget and then um as part of that we also have our adopted budget as you'll see estimated actuals and adopted kind of on both ends because at that period we're reporting both of those the the adopted budget for the the coming year and the estimated actuals for what we're closing out um and so that's what we'll be providing to the the district and the the governing board and the public at our first meeting in June and so with that can we hit you with the questions as we were going this is highly complex and I I do understand your questions it can be really challenging um yeah it's one of those things in terms of the multi-year projections where you see that vacillation and see it drop so much and it's really

120a factor of everything that's that the budget is built on all of those revenue streams and the other thing that does happen in terms of our our expenses is um you know we're always looking at moving everybody up one year uh in terms of our salary expenses but if we have a higher cost uh staff member that happens to retire it does also help drop our costs ever so slightly as well potentially so you have those types of of changes within your expens as well um and so it's just every budget period we're looking at all of that level of data in that detail then like San Francisco Unified they're offering like packages for people to leave early to retire to like help that number go down so there are ways that they people interesting

121okay to your point Tyler earlier in terms of running lean and mean and and really being thoughtful I mean I think that also goes to all the the number of variables and the due diligence done by our business services office of looking at all of these and really being able to make like yes there are lots of variables and volatility but the projections have taken into so many different elements that has really helped our district be able to plan effectively and operate effectively so I know that you have there's way this is complicated and there's even more under the hood that you work with so thank you any more questions good there's no public he for comment I'll bring it back to us for discussion and vote any discussion vote to accept uh approve it

122approve yeah don't if we have any discussions ask lots of questions no we did a good job along the way yeah I mean it's frustrating just the way that the this the whole system is kind of missing some pieces to make things a little bit more fair I guess having two different Financial models for school districts where some schools get stuck in this you're neither fish nor foul kind of place and you're flipping back and forth is just kind of a crazy way to have a state education funding system yeah it's all right uh there's no further comments from us all right I'll entertain a motion on it so I'll recommend we approve the second inter turn budget report second great um Daniel hi Chris hi Shell I Rachel I Chris thank you thank I

123know it's a lot of work it's a huge document and you have to do it all the time all year so thank you um our next item is rvsd home to school transport reimbursement plan for 20242 and this is me again this is uh kind of a perun type of thing now as we move forward it's just required in order for us to um get our additional funding for transportation and we do have to provide information in terms of the types of programs that are available for our transportation for students um that are out there and so we do talk about all of that and so this evening is just that we're providing the report to and in the past we did have to actually accept the plan there's really nothing to accept any longer

124other than just so make sure that the board gets to see hey look doing all this stuff yeah do we have any questions or CHR us well I appreciate your due diligence making sure kids are getting to school so thank you for that um no public here for public comment you have any further discussion up here no all right so I will move us along our next item is the lunar tour update great that's me all right so um this is kind of the uh cherry on the top of the learning tour I know I've come to the board a handful of times this year to talk about the learning tour and give updates about the process and um what I'm hearing and this is kind of my analysis of where the school district is

125um so excited to bring this to you today see if this works great um so in essence this district is in a fantastic place um that's not to say there aren't some issues and I'll highlight a couple of the issues that that we need to attack um we are addressing as as we speak but really my vision for the district is that we focus on rigorous academics teacher attention the wonderful art and music programming that we have having a balanced budget um you know supportive professional development there's a lot of really good things going on a lot most of this is about maintaining what we're already doing and doing some polishing of some things that that might need some work so uh you know we've got some Rising test scores that were almost at preand

126mic levels are right there we've got increasing enrollment and we have a fantastic uh strategic plan so really just sticking to that plan is is really important um so the agenda for tonight is I'm going to cover six different buckets uh based on my learning tour these are kind of where the the findings shook out I'm in the structure of each of these six I'll do kind of what I heard from the community or what I learned um from cabinet and teachers and administrators uh what we should keep doing and there's a lot of stuff about what we should keep doing and then some actions we're taking some of the stuff we're already moving on and some will move on in the coming uh coming months so the first uh bucket is curriculum instruction and

127I want to highlight this is probably one of the strengths of our district uh we we really do have a great program um in terms of curriculum instruction we've got rigor rigorous academics uh really the community over over and over when I spoke to folks said they love the teachers the admin and the staff that's really the core of the school district anyway so having great people is uh the number one thing we can focus on um what we should keep doing is retaining our excellent staff we've done a pretty good job with that I think there's some talk about you know folks leaving and you know waiting to see what happens with the parcel tax but right now we're doing a good job retaining the great teachers we have um we need to continue

128deepening our implementation of multi- Systems Support and supports and is in essence what this is is teachers and administrators looking at data seeing which students might need more support and connecting them with that support it's different tiers certain kids need very little extra support beyond the great classroom teaching and others need lots of support um so we've got that in practice right now and we just need to keep honing and refining that um and then we're a few adoptions as well for some high quality instructional materials and we'll have to do that uh moving forward as well um one thing we have in place already is a strong uh professional development plan and then I think we need to make sure we're doing that for our par professionals and you know different staff having different

129types of professional development and we're already working on that um and then the the site and District learning teams you actually heard from our Brookside Bears a little bit about their learning teams and what they're doing and all of our sites are doing that we just need to continue to to focus on that over time so really with curriculum instruction things are going really well let's just keep the momentum going and kind of refine the great stuff that we have um special education is one of the one one of the areas that I heard a lot about and we had a town hall we got lots of feedback from the community on that and I think one of the things that I heard is that parents kind of need some clarity and support around how

130this process works it's exceptionally complex and it's actually designed to be tailored to an individual student so it's not it wouldn't be the same for my student as it was for your student um so making sure parents have the understanding of how the system works what's a reasonable ask what's not a reasonable ask what services we have in our district um what services we don't have um that's kind of one of the big things I heard and then Staffing challenges and Eric and I have talked a lot about Staffing at our schools and we have to use agencies quite a bit and when you use an agency teacher or an agency Aid it actually costs more than hiring inhouse so we want to hire folks in house um but if our salary schedules are really

131low it's hard to recruit and retain so this kind of folds into um the need to pay our teachers um a living wage uh what we should keep doing hiring and retaining great great specialed Educators Eric is a huge champion of our special education uh Team he's always touting how how great we have what great teachers we have and I agree with that we have some fantastic um teachers in our district uh and then kind of actions we're taking and I'll send a message out to the community on Monday that'll capture some of this uh we're going to have a review of our special education programs which is going to look at um Staffing uh programmatic needs professional development um systems and structures to support our students that'll happen in the fall of next year

132uh we're going to develop a vision for what inclusive education looks like in our district each district can have it a little bit different um but we're going to actually have a uh special ed advisory committe that works directly on developing that that vision for inclusive education um and then we need to identify systems or structures that might need to be adjusted and that one's going to be a little bit trickier one that might take some time but overall this would probably in my estimation one of the areas that was kind of uh the community and staff pushed me towards like hey pay attention to this area um because this is an area that we need some more attention on and um that's not an indictment of of staff at all it's really it's a

133complex web of supports and um we're small school district so how do we make sure our web of supports fits um our students okay the next one is our Equity work and I would say this is another strength of our our district and there's certainly some areas that we can improve here but uh you know a couple of things that I heard during the listening tour around Equity work was um there were there were times where parents felt unheard and whether that was in our Dei Community uh committee at the district level or you know different Folks at the site level and making sure we're being good listeners I think that's something that's really important as leaders in this community is to listen to uh the folks that we serve and another thing that I

134continue to hear and this is not just a a Ross Valley School District issue but it's an issue across the the country really is a lack of clarity about what diversity equity and inclusion looks like and when you say Dei you if you asked 100 people what Dei is 100 people would give you 100 different answers um and I have a couple examples I want to highlight here diversity in our district looks exactly like that Brookside uh presentation you saw to tonight um it's celebrating differences it's cultural celebrations assemblies diversifying our curriculum making sure our students are represented in the books that they read so that's not really a you know a wild idea to think about um Equity means regardless of your race um your your gender uh your socioeconomic status that you're achieving

135at high levels and then we're making the we're creating the conditions that you all are able to achieve academically and socially and then inclusion just makes is is meaning that we're creating schools that have a deep sense of belonging for families and for students and for staff so none of this is like really wild stuff it's just about creating schools that are inviting to every student and family uh regardless of who they are um and I think the other thing that we talked about with what we should keep doing I think Julie's doing an excellent job with this already is kind of a bias towards action I think my experience in Marin sometimes when you start talking about Equity work it's a circular conversation that there's lots of ideas with little implementation um this year

136we are biasing towards action um we are developing some signage at our schools we actually have a racial Equity mission statement plaque that we just delivered to Oliver schools really excited about that we're working on um a behavior expectation or a um kind of a a chart for responding to racialized instance on on campus we're working on that with our principles at our next principal meeting and we have an onboarding slide deck to talk about what racial Equity work looks like in our in our district so that bias towards action I think is really important uh also I think a culture piece that we need to focus on is being more proactive uh right now I think we're kind of in the balance between reactive when we hear something from the community we react to

137it and proactive where we're kind of planning for things that we see um coming down the road and then I think a a big part of Dei work in my mind is making sure students know what language to use or not use when talking to other students so you know using specific racialized languages is a no-o on our campus um that's what Dei work looks like because that's what inclusion looks like when you feel included you're not calling being called names based on your real religion or your skin color um so I think that's something that we need to continue to hone in on the next one's culture and climate this one was kind of an interesting one for me culture and climate is like something if you grab it kind of seeps through your

138fingers anyways it's not easily tangible um but I definitely think that the community in general wants to help every parent that I've talked to whether it's at a at a garden work day or at a back to school night or you know just interacting on campus everybody wants to help and has ideas for how to help the school district and I think that's a really special place to be to have a community that wants to dig in and and support there's also a call for transparency and authenticity making sure that if questions are asked that you know answers are given and they feel authentic um we need to continue to hire great teachers administrators and classified staff because they set the tone for the culture and climate of the district I think it's really important

139uh things we're working on and things I'm working on are visibility and accessibility I think I'm learning as a new superintendent how how much volume to give visibility and accessibility um right now I've got it turned that up to 10 out of 10 and um I think there's you know I I have to do work too and I have to create reports and do all the other stuff that I have to do in my day job um so I want to be accessible and visible and you know I have to balance that uh sometimes as well so I'm just trying to find the the balance point there um being proactive about engaging our community on Monday we'll we'll send out a survey to families to give some input um to some things we also did

140that with the funding for Deer Park to get input on that so just being proactive I think our community really appreciates it really appreciates it when you say hey what do you think and then take action towards that um frequent shorter Communications I think some is is something folks um appreciate I'm actually going to start using a tldr too long didn't read or too lazy didn't read on some of my uh newsletters so if you don't want to read the one page that I they send out you can read the like couple of sentences to get it and just awesome like trying trying to meet people where they are um and then you know collaborative relationships with our Union Partners I feel absolutely blessed to be able to work with CA and rvta we have

141a great working relationship going right now and I want to continue that um so I think culture and climate was one that was interesting and it wasn't either good or bad but I think we're seeing some shifts with it and I'm really proud of that and it everyone on staff has been really digging in on that and and you the board has too school facilities I would say is kind of one of the other areas that was kind of uh more on the Delta side more on the negative side uh I think we need some support for some of our I mean there's a picture of the Brookside uh building right there on the top of the slide deck and that's like a highlight it's a beautiful part of our buildings uh but if you're

142on Brookside campus you might also hit your head on uh one of the low roofs or you can see kids jumping up on a fence to get on the roof so there's all kinds of facilities needs that we that we have and Brookside I'm picking on Brookside here but every one of our five campuses needs love um some of them are safety needs for weight Thomas we need to start putting more fencing around weight Thomas I think there's about five or six different entry points at the way Thomas C uh way Thomas campus that's hard to you know make sure you know who's coming and going when it's like that um I want to give a ton of credit to Chris and Dez and the whole M team they're really good and they set a

143culture in the department to fix things for the long term um it's easy to go in and fix something make it quick and move on to the next thing and then it breaks again in two years but they're really doing a good job of fixing things for the long term and that's going to save us some money as well which I think is really great uh we we are we have a good plan for staying on top of regular field maintenance and Chris and I are actually going to talk to the town of San Selmo coming up um to see if there's other Solutions we can look to to make sure our Fields look really good for our community um and yeah that that's just something I think we need to keep doing uh we

144need to start generating income from our facilities use agreements Chris and I talked about this with Teresa today um right now most people that are using our Fields aren't paying much if anything and we need to start charging them so we can use that funding to actually maintain our fields you can't have high quality fields for free so if you want high quality Fields we're gonna have to charge a little bit to make sure we're keeping them high quality and right now we're in this space where we're not charging but we can't really maintain because we don't have that much funding for it either um Tyler are the other schools struggling with keeping dogs off the campus I know Brookside is a big dog park in the afternoon so other schools are dealing with that

145as well all five of our campuses and I think this is an interesting thing I I go up to Bend Oregon often um and when I'm around town in Bend I look at the schools you cannot step step foot on a campus anytime ever so there are you know 2 acre grass lots that are empty on a Saturday and Sunday and there's not a single dog on any of them on the flip side in San Francisco when I'm walking around town in San Francisco they actually proactively open the doors to campus so it's like a Park area for the folks that live around not not every school in San Francisco Unified does that but the one that I ran did um which basically provided a park for the folks that lived around there so this

146is kind of an I don't know the answer here and it would probably be pretty contentious but the use of our our Fields as parks and dog parks is contributing to the quality our Fields there's no doubt right great and then I I just want to mention that you know some of this stuff is easy to maintain um stuff that we can use routine restricted maintenance funding on others is other stuff is much more significant replacing roofs starts to get really spendy um something like replacing the sewer system under Wade Thomas which is an exciting and it's very expensive and it needs to get done um so there's there's some stuff that we may down the road need to consider a bond um obviously not anytime soon but there's a conversation that needs to happen

147at some point if we want facilities that match the quality of the education we're going to have to do something about them yeah um and then this would be another area that I think was a maybe the the the biggest area of concern when I walked in the door and I think we've got a good plan moving forward we've got a couple of plans moving forward uh but the resounding thing that I heard from the mountain tops of of Marin was Ross Valley School District needs to pay its teachers and staff better there's no doubt about that I heard that in the board meetings over the last two years um and when I dug in with the budget advisory committee and with Chris and a number of other folks it became really clear to me

148that it's a revenue problem not spending problem um and I think this is something I want to really put a pin in is that we are a lean efficient school district and if you think about it from a business perspective lean and efficient is good we should give ourselves credit for that pat on the back yay we're doing good however when you run an organization that starts to get too lean the quality of your product starts to go down we are on that pre is right now and I think I want folks to to understand that that if we get leaner the product goes down and I think you know we should give oursel a lot of credit for being lean but it can't go too much farther without us having it it impacts students

149um and that's kind of where we're at right now um so I would encourage us to continue to run a tight budget I think Chris has done a great job and I give a ton of kudos to Marcy because Marcy was very fiscally prudent um and deserves a ton of credit for putting our district in this position um and then we need to continue to raise awareness and have transparency around the budget I would give ourselves some kudos for that I know I've pushed Chris really hard with this one and Chris has helped me learn about the budget and together we've kind of done a lot of Road Show action this year which I think has been good um actions we're taken May 6th we have a a ballot measure um on on the ballot

150for folks in the Ross Valley to to vote for a partial tax or against a partial tax it's their option um but that would allow us to start um that's kind of our plan a for addressing some of these issues our plan B is to start making or continue making cuts and make deeper cuts to student programs and pause raises for for staff that's kind of plan B um and then we need to find the balance between efficiency and Effectiveness I think that if I kind of had a dream scenario where we're not quite running such an efficient business and we're focusing more on the quality of our product and maybe spending some more money to get the quality product there's a few things we've kind of tossed around we have a lean mean uh

151maintenance and operations team we need more folks on that team not a ton of folks but if we have one more person on that team it'd really make a difference in the look of our our buildings the quality of our Fields um I would also think about hiring a community liaison someone who speaks Spanish and can engage with our spanishs speaking families proactively I think that would help the quality of our product um I'd have more intervention teachers so one thing that we've seen especially at Manor with high quality intervention teachers you're seeing an increase in test scores for our lowincome and Latino and E multilingual learner students I'd like to apply more of that to more of our schools to help any of our struggling students uh Julie and I were talking earlier this

152week we have I think 12 hours of Library service at each of our schools um 12 hours is not a lot uh given the number of hours kids are on campus so having more access to the library would be great uh more support for special ed Staffing um and there's other things as well so these are kind of the the efficiency verse quality product conversations that that I'm having over the last few uh few months so I think that's kind of what I've what I've seen and you know there's some big highlights uh I was talking to Chris earlier um Chris L's Cobb earlier this week about our district and if you kind of use the analogy of purchasing a house um this district is a move in ready school like it's move in ready

153you go in you might want to repaint a couple the walls and like fix up some of the the backyard or you know some of the Landscaping but that's really it that's where we're at this is not a gut renovation where you're redoing the the plumbing and the electrical and fixing the foundation that is not this District so I'm I'm super proud to be here I feel like I've learned a ton from the staff and community over the last few months um and I think the district has a really bright future um there's really good people here we've got a great board we've got great administrators fantastic teachers um and as long as we can you know pay folks and uh improve the product I think we've got a really bright future and I will

154add that when you use that analogy I did say that we do have a big rat problem here that can do some damage you may not notice right away and it sneaks up on you and your electrical goes out so so optimistic and not wrong but uh yeah it's I think the scaffolding on everything we're doing is great and I always wanted to go back to the equity work that we're doing I think like at some point you have to say we've done all this work and and I feel like it's like a marriage you work work work work and then you coast and you're like look what we're doing and then you have to work work work and I feel like right now we've done all this work and to see these kids in

155front of us it's like now it's kind of like look it's it's just this natural progression and and almost symbiotic thing that's happening organically right and um we' built really good scaffolding with that and you know I just wanted to point that out Julia you you've just been an amazing you know leader and partner in all of this and really appreciate it it's been one heck of a journey and I'm really glad that that something like even tonight we're just just looking this wouldn't have seen that five or six years ago right yeah it's good I have a I have a question at a quandry if you go back to the finance slide Finance one more Finance oh sorry facilities the other athl um back to our or hearkening back to our budgetary conversation um

156and Chris you had said like long range look out onto the Horizon we we will be moving to a deep Community funded status and permanently stay there so if I'm thinking long-term sustainability thing I'm that saying it it isn't a if correct me if I'm wrong it is basically inevitable that we will end up in a community funded doesn't matter how many kids you have here's your bucket of money Financial framework there are some bullet points on this that are counter to that premise that cost us money both in generating enrollment and that cost us money to support the learning of in and I hate I I mean for me public education should be and always should be we are a community everyone comes we want to be welcoming we want to encourage our entire

157Community to participate in our public education system and yet we are operating in a structure that has countervailing Financial incentives when you're Community funded and I'm just I don't know what to do with that so I'm I'm this is a question I am glad that they're gray not boled but I you know I I just wondering from my colleagues kind of what were what your thoughts on this if the long range is you know in six years and further I I I mean to your earlier Point Chris of saying wait I thought we were we were all about like marketing marketing get more people here and now we're like no no no that's not going to do us financially benefit us in the long term I think for me I think you so before we

158discuss can we go out to public comment and then come back or you have more questions so we'll do questions first and then we'll go up no that's kind of a broad it's not like a clarification yeah exactly okay so if we're done asking Tyler questions on his presentation there's no public here comment we can talk now so back for discussion to the board sorry just formality no thank you um you know and I think in response to that one of the things I think there's two sides here one I deeply appreciate Chris's very conservative don't get comfortable approach because that I trust as a board member will keep us from falling down that rabbit hole that I've seen other districts go down they get they get comfortable and they think well you know down

159the road it's going to be okay that messaging pushes that pause go forward pause go forward and since I've been on the board I have seen sky is falling no it's not sky is falling no it's not and it is it is jarring but now I have enough time myself to see that that conservative Outlook is something we we we can't be comfortable we can't we can't um and so you know yeah we have to do the things that we have to do if we're told you know okay now you got to sit up straight in order for us to I'll sit up straight I don't I I think even Community funded meaning non per student basis funding I don't think we're going to be we're never going to be rolling in do I mean

160that's that's why even when time we are well but no but I don't I don't know that I mean short some hugely unexpected even when we're in a community funded framework Financial incentive framework meaning you're not incentivized to have more students you're actually counter incen you're actually incentivized to have less students yeah because you have more money because you have more money per student even in that framework we're not rolling I I don't think we're comfortable in that the irony is that when you're in that framework you also have less um levers to pull to generate more Revenue so a year we have a we have a revenue problem not a spending problem when you're in the community funded you we can can't I mean we can do partial taxes and bonds but we can't

161affect the property tax revenue if we're in the per student funded framework we can affect our revenues by marketing marketing marketing so I'm just cautioning us to just do something well the only thing we can do short to partiel tax and bonds is get more students but that's the incentive structure under one framework But ultimately we're going to a different framework and it's crazy making it's crazy making but it's also something I don't know so so for me personally way I'm looking at this long term it will we will be in a community funded status in the long term and I'm thinking when you mentioned the demographics of 2030 when the population tips and from not being so heavily weighted towards the senior population there will be more causing turnover which will bring in more

162kids which will raise our property taxes and so it will bring I think more stability but I think in the interim like we need to make sure that our reserves are there so we can weather the back and forth of it and so we'll have a better long-term outlook for things but it's so far out it's hard to predict now so I'm trying to like just focus on like okay well this is where we are now and we know what's going to happen next year because we're flipping back so it it behooves us to go and advertise now so for like now I'm looking at the next three years because those are the ones we know for sure we'll flip in we'll flip out and we'll flip back in so we need to like focus

163on what we can do in those years because we're not sure what's going going to happen in those out years we may have a ton more kids come in and the lcf calculation may be like your property taxes actually keep you in state funding because you have so many more kids and so those things we don't know and so I'm trying not to like Focus too far out because we will get there and stay in one model eventually well we know we're going to stay in the community funded model the non per student based funding model so all of those and I get I hear what you're saying and that is what I wrestle with is because all of these interim years when you're flipping you are generating Revenue by marketing for increased enrollment and

164Ada but you're then hurting yourself long term because those students are going to stay in your District when you no longer have that Financial incentive on a per student basis and can I offer yeah my perspective is because I agree long term if you're deep in basic Aid there is not an incentive to have as many students as possible where we're at today is we're at in a place where the finance conversation and the culture and climate have a clear intersection in my mind and I think there there through my learning tour some of the things that I heard was the quality of Education going down um enrollments going down kind of like a negative feel around the district so part of the marketing is to actually tell the story of what is actually happening

165where our test scor are moving in the right direction enrollments moving in the right direction we have quality people here doing really good work and that may actually drive some increased enrollment birth rate is going to be the number one driver but that may drive some increased enrollment um but it's really a culture and climate feel it all Dual Purpose at the moment we may have a different to Rachel's point we may have a different conversation in 2030 where we're deeper into basic Aid and we might pull back on the marketing a little bit that's a that that's a helpful um and so I might even when we look at the actions we're taking that second to last bullet point maybe maybe switching the word marketing for like Communications I mean if if if really

166what we're saying is that these kinds of communications to for people to really understand what and feel good about our schools culture and climate wise is really the purpose like that's it's a dual purpose yes but really focusing on that purpose feels good to me knowing that marketing for more students yes we might attract more families because everybody feels great and knows what the reality is but that's that's a helpful well and marketing isn't just trying to get more kids it's letting people in our community know who do pay taxes who don't have kids who are curious like what what is my tax menu going towards it's like hey look at these cool programs with these great things that they're doing these School jars so I think it's not just about attracting kids I think

167there's a lot of people in our community who want to know what's going on and just don't have kids here so they don't get the bulletins and right so I think that's been helpful yeah that's helpful yeah on all right and I see both the attendance too there isn't it's focused on attendance still on which is I I hear you Chris of the frustration of so many years of like en rolling enrolling enrollment and now we're in this like wait is uh it to be like yeah just go okay I'll do it do it so we ready to move on thank you for that conversation I appreciate hearing it's interesting to get the fresh perspective from you as a new superintendent I mean it's not really new anymore but still just having someone come in

168and look at everything from a holistic perspective it's been really helpful so thank you it's been Joy yeah all right our next item is update rbs's racial Equity work for the 2024 25 school year I kind of feel like you already got earlier this evening right um that really was a beautiful example of that just organic and authentic integration of the work um and how it is all connected and that it's it is academics and its culture and its climate and its belonging and inclusion um so that was really beautiful and I didn't even plan that um this is actually a part of our Equity work the development of our district land acknowledgement um which we did with a group um that included a teacher principal um and a parent who's also um a native

169person um and really in this conversation we had a battle land acknowledgement of um the importance of it not just being performative and something that you say but really that you are um that it's a real acknowledge M and it's a commitment and I think our classrooms do a really nice job of like this piece where it talks about honoring with gratitude the land itself and all of its ancestors present people in future Generations um I think when many of us were kids and we talked about Native people we thought about them as a thing from the past which is obviously um not the way that we need to be thinking um so that was a really nice piece of work and our and our schools um work on creating their own land acknowledgements students

170do it often in their third gr grade classroom all right I pulled this from the national Equity project who I think does a beautiful job of talking about what educational Equity is and um that's kind of the gist of this evening's presentation is to really anchor us and reaffirm firm why we do this Equity work or diversity equity and inclusion work um and kind of the depth of it that goes far beyond someone calling it being work call what there's there's a lot that goes on so educational Equity means each child receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential and in schools that looks like ensuring equally High outcomes for all participants in our educational system removing the predictability of success or failure that currently correlates with any social or

171cultural Factor interrupting inequitable practices examining biases and creating inclusive Multicultural School environments for adults and children and discovering in cultivating the unique gifts talents and interests that every human possesses I think that's pretty beautiful pretty good and then when we talk about um this work in Ross Valley and think about our district and you know with a recognition that this part of Marin County has a lot of white folk um but within our schools we have a lot of diversity 483 of our 1,680 students identify um as B talk in at least one of their um racial identifications um so that's about one in four um which do lot kids and we have 229 Latina students um 94 multilingual students 36 members of our staff are bipo um or latine um so there's a lot

172of diversity here along with the other diversity that exists in our district we have diversity of gender and um sexual orientation lgbtq um disability ability you know we we have space for everyone I like this a lot because it you know the appearance of whiteness in Moren County on its face is very um there's it's presumptive right yeah but I started to see being on the campuses like half more than half these kids are biracial yeah you know and that is um you know something that gets clumped into whiteness very quickly either by the way the kid looks or the one of the parents who may have a right a more of a presence on campus so I I really like that this sort of brings the truth to the surface of who we really

173are with our kids especially yeah and then we've had oh sorry the multilingual is that longterm is that is that that's all of our multilingual students that would reclassified or not yes be the ever e yes okay no actually I think that's current e so it's just e it's not long reclassified because I think it'd be nice to also see the full even if if it's really multilingual meaning I'm fluent in multiple languages even both English and something else then it would be a higher number because it would include students who are reclassified if we're looking at it as an asset like from just a demographic who are the students in our schools absolutely yeah I mean these are the students who um know multiple languages but are continuing to learn English they're not yet

174English language proficient right um and just a slide on why we prioritize racial Equity um we are we we have a recognition um that we have an opportunity Gap with our bip students and that it's really important for us to make sure that our students have the resources and support that they need to succeed academically um it's a legal and ethical responsibility we have a legal duty to provide inclusive non-discriminatory education that upholds civil rights protections um we know that when racial Equity is prioritized we have improved student outcomes and that includes graduation rates and better academic performance and stronger social emotional well-beings for all of our kids um and it creates stronger Community for everyone um diversity strengthens us and there's lots and lots of research that backs up all of these statements and

175then just reminding ourselves of our data um that this is looking at the different levels of proficiency for Casp here this is for English language arts and where we want our kids are in the green and the blue green is that you've met the standard and blue is that you've exceeded it and so for all of those you know overall our students in third through 8th grade we have a high number there um that have met and exceeded but it's not the case for all of our student groups and so when you see more on that yellow red side those are those structures that we are um obligated to put into place to make sure that our students are making gains that are similar to or moving towards the gains of the general population um

176and it's interesting there that our our students who identify with two or more races are actually our highest performing students and it's similar for math but again you have that discrepancy and we tend to see a little bit of a larger discrepancy um with math than we do with Ela and the where you say Hispanic Latino not SED those are that's a racial category that's not in the so that's not also duplicated in the socioeconomic bar exactly and sometimes when people talk about populations they say well but that's really about their socioeconomic status so in this case it's not got it thank you do we know how this compares to other districts across Marine County it's similar okay yeah with the exception that we made a lot of gains this year on economically disadvantaged and

177so um that one's a little bit higher than most of Moren um there's all kinds of variations of this graphic and thank you Tyler shared this one with me um which I hadn't seen before but it it really just kind of talks about the why for Equity I got to pull it up here so I can actually read it CU my eyesight's not that good um so inequality there right you know you got one there's an apple falling straight into their hands and the other kids like hey what about me um and then you know you give them a ladder there right below that the equity with a question um but you still can't reach the tree so that didn't work um and then when we talk about Equity that's really about giving the supports

178that students need in order to be successful and then Justice there changes the system rather than the kid um so straightening up that tree um but Equity is really about providing the resources based on the need and recognizing that not everybody has the same needs um and then all of this is embedded in our lcap goals and that's obviously very intentional our first goal is really um an academic goal and um it talks about all of the structures and supports that we have in place with um eliminating and reducing the predictability of learning outcomes based on student identities um as the Forefront um or as that North Star and then our second goal again recognizes um the the really close and deep relationship between social and emotional well-being and academic success um and that we

179really need to support students social and emotional well-being in order for them to be successful and then goal three is about um the climate and learning experience of our students and their families and so making all of our sites in our full District a welcoming place where everyone feels a sense of belonging um this is a picture of the plaque that's going up at all of our sites that's our racial Equity mission statement which we have all read many many times and which shows up in all of those previous slides that I just shared you know when we talk about um wanting our students to feel a sense of belonging respected celebrated for their individual differences um this shows up all over the place this is it's our no start yeah and it's fine I

180I was thinking about it because um Chris knows you know we met we were in the room March I want to say March 12th or something like that it was right before the shut everyone was hugging and kissing each other and I was like why are people touching me apparently we were okay at the time but that was it get away from um so I don't know I I I need to look up the actual date and we to celebrate it it's coming up this it was done it wasn't done in that room that night that was s of not this no but we did this this went back and forth had many iterations it did and we finally did it but it was early on in the work of it was I think it

181was around June July it was actually right maybe it was right yeah it was it was five years ago almost five years yeah I could probably find the publish date for that as well so I'm proud of it and it's making me really happy to walk on to a campus and see it it it's everen I think that's terrific it's Evergreen it's perfect yeah yeah and then just some of our actions um again we created our parent Guardian Equity task force in the spring of 2020 and it's still going strong um and it is a group that has um really been a catalyst for so many actions um hasn't been easy but it's been really powerful um and then the development of our racial Equity action plan which is updated annually um our students are

182engaged in this work um through the slam program at White Hill and that's a a program for bipo students and white allies there's actually a lot more white allies in that group than there are bipo students um but that's been really a powerful group as well um we've been working really hard on making sure that from kindergarten through 8th grade um we teach history through multiple perspectives um and really looking at diverse representation in our curriculum as you know right now we're piloting Elementary Ela programs and um when our teachers came together to create a lens to help us determine the best program for our district their deal breaker was that it needed to be culturally responsive and culturally aware um that our youngest kids are are going to have materials in front of them

183that remind them of all the kinds of people that we have and that are a part of our community um we we have a racial um Equity board policy now um that is in play and uh we've done some really terrific parent education most recently with Dr Lori Watson um we've worked really hard in our district on implementing culturally responsive teaching practices which um much of that work is based on the work of seretta Hammond but a lot of it is geared towards ensuring that you have this really strong relationship with students that supports them from becoming dependent Learners to Independent Learners um and it's really that work is about academic success but it's rooted in relationship um and then we have tons of um site work that's going on uh all of our sites

184have Dei groups um there's all kinds of different celebrations and assemblies and Wednesday meetings and I I just saw that white Hill is um gearing up to do another full school lesson on um identity-based bullying um that's coming up I think next week maybe um so lots of just really really good work jul that multiple perspective one of the presentations the students gave last year was just fantastic right like looking at history and looking at stories from I think it was even a picture that one of the teachers did maybe for Manor like what were oh I know what you're talking about is that a trend across California across the us to look at multiple perspectives when you're looking at things for sure well lots of lots of places yeah um I mean it's interesting

185it's kind of where curricula gets pitched to right but the coastal yeah pitches is very very much going to place of multiple perspectives yeah that was just that was just such a a cool thing to learn last year years ago yeah and that came from some of our work with the UC Berkeley history social science um program that we're partnering with this year um and the teacher that did that presentation as a part of that project and just final slide as a reminder to us all public education is the Cornerstone Stone of a thriving democracy a caring and Equitable education sorry is ecosystem is possible and belonging is essential for healthy Learning and Development thank you thank you do I have any questions for Juliet no there's no public here for a comment we have

186any discussion here from the board thank you yeah I think this gets back to Tyler Point earlier like having a clear definition of what we're doing why we're doing it just to have that for families to really this is what's going on so things like this is really helpful so to clear not you know there's you hear all sorts like you said 100 people will give you a 100 different definitions of Dei I think ours is just very much like we're teaching our kids to be kind and accepting me that's what it boils down to I think is you know so appreciate your work I mean I know this was under you know update on the equity but it also feels good that it is so inclusive of lcap and just pervasive um that you

187know it it is this is what we do it's not a piece of what it is what I mean it is it it's woven throughout so much I I see another video in making all right so I'm G to move us along um our next item is receive for first reading initial revised updated board policy BP and administrative regulation AR in series 000000 philosophy goals objectives and comprehensive plans I think this one is er yeah any quick comments desired the it's it's this one's pretty simple our school accountability report cards are just kind of like the quick hitter summary of our staffing our facilities um we approve those you know by February 1st every year and so this is uh just basically saying that we have to include a little bit more information and we

188Outsource with a third party agency that um or vendor that basically builds it uh online and we just go in and fill out the required parts so um it's pretty straightforward and Chris Julie and I and the principles all collaborate on that every year to make sure that it's all filled out with all the proper information and then there's some sections that the CDE provides in terms of teacher credentialing and stuff that um that we we don't have to worry about great so this is a first reading so we get to see all the changes and edits that have come from the last version and then it comes back to us at our next meeting and we approve it okay it'll be on consent in the next meeting and if you have any feedback or

189adjustments you'd like you've got between now and the next meeting to give it to us and we can adjust that and uh bring it on consent and I almost have a heart attack I 105 minutes when I first MO through the agenda and I went no no I'm going to read through every s yes oh my God gosh all right do we have any questions for Eric here I don't no okay um we have no public comment comment um any discussion on the board here all right um we just have discussion information so I'll move on to our next item um which is received for first reading of revised updated board policy BP and administrative regulations AR and ser is 5,000 students look like this is here yeah this one is uh uh around bullying

190um uh VP and AR suspension expulsion due process um and again just update summer recommendations um uh that I think are pretty much best practice things we're doing already like Surgeon General guidance expand the responsibilities of Staff as role models for students I mean so and then other things that are more of the you know required components again like in the case of compulsion or making sure the the student has their due process um and uh it's a reminder that districts can't use disruption as a grounds to suspend on its own um or things like Poe attendance you can't like uh Double Di in the punishment well and say we're going to suspend you because your attendance is poor things like that so it's really great um uh you know I think just in terms

191of you know getting just making sure we're all up to speed um we of course uh recently um had an expulsion procedure and um so just having the the policy map um that for us is is why it's there and obviously as things change at a federal level or a state level these come to us as updates sure and I mean you know that the can't has spend a student based on K alone I mean that that change happened M sevenish six7 years ago so used to be able to say you've been so disruptive we're going to send you home based on 4 900k and now we can't do that so um this guides us and makes sure that um when we're implementing any kind of discipline or restorative practice or expulsion procedure we're doing

192so in a way that's uh abiding the law so yeah any more questions all right no public here for comment any questions or discussion on the board I guess you're just seeing it in practice you're you know confident that we have the right procedures in place soer right um our next one is receive for first reading and recommend adoption revised board bylaw BB in series 9,000 board bylaws yeah so this one the main update here is that is around public comments for board members representing the board typically if one of you was to make a comment for the board it would be the board president um however you all can speak for the board um and the the clarity here is about distinguishing when you're talking from your own personal perspective and when you're representing

193the board both in public and particularly online this came out of some litigation down in Southern California where people were post board members were posting online their own personal beliefs and it was unclear whether to the reader whether it was a representation of the board's belief or the individual board members belief so this is just uh asking calling the board to be clear particularly when posting online whether you're representing yourself or the board at large have any questions do we all have disclaimers at the bottom of our email I know I added that a number of years ago it's obnoxiously lengthy but it's a it is a uh disclaimer to this effect and then there's also a confidentiality notice but I don't know if we'll have for your trust for my trustee email it just

194says unless otherwise noted the opinion expressed here and are solely my own and do not represent the views or opinions of District staff board trustees or other organizations it was a lawyer I think I I think I got it steing Deer Park right no this was this was I don't remember was shouldn't we all have that I found it helpful I'm just sharing right can you send me a blank email so I can copy your sign really what this is is if you're going to post something on Instagram or Facebook next door or next door make sure that you're being clear whether you're representing yourself or or the board well and in some of the some of the professional development that I've done they're like very specific on your social media profiles have it in

195your profile that you are this is not sponsored by the board this is your personal opinion your views doesn't like basically the same as GL but sure because does not do you have to have it on every post or just on your profile on your profile and sometimes if somebody asks them they're very upfront about it when I'm on my social media pages so so you're saying I can't speak on behalf of all of you guys unless otherwise unless gives you permission we all agree like okay Daniel's talking never a good idea okay so yeah send that so all of us you probably have it if I've ever sent you an email probably all right there's no public ever comment we've got our discussion here all right um we ready to move on okay um

196next item is consent actions so unless somebody would like to pull one of these out or discuss any of them individually um I do want to say thank you to who is donating Us musical instruments um Stephanie burner so thank you Stephanie I wanted to note that because I the support for our music programs is always very welcome to me and I will also say that Gold Rush is the highlight of four great and to approve that is just not another question they just love it all right so anyone else comment on this there's no one here for comment in the public um I'll entertain a motion on the consent actions I will make a motion to approve by one motion to approve all the consent actions one through four um great the agenda do

197I have a second I second great Chris hi Daniel hi Shell hi Rachel hi um board business we have committee updates and reports and announcements by trustees next weekend the third fourth and fifth graders at Brookside are going to be putting on Shrek the Musical if you have not gotten your tickets yet I highly recommend that you go and buy tickets it is selling out um and the kids are just ready and it's adorable and if you haven't seen a yes production it is a treat Beyond a treat um really exemplifies how we all come together and make this magic happen so that's my two sets are you talking about the play White Hills coming up they're doing leally blonde in two or three weeks that's going to be awesome too not that everybody's listening

198to us live stream but if anybody's listening go to that and white yeah that's gonna be a good one definitely I don't think the ticket for legally blunder out yet they not March 16th on they are pru aren they oh yeah on the guest website y um do you want to do the update of our ledge there oh yeah sh and I um took the party bus to Sacramento last Wednesday departed at 6:30 a.m. uh met with Senator Mike Maguire um Damon Connelly um whole bunch of other policy um Advocates it was really another impressive year very uh insightful um probably about 25 people from maren County were there prob more than that yeah I think on the bus yeah more couple of students um mcoe reps and then trustees uh CBO from from larksburg

199Cora I think was there um it's it's it's it's a great day and we're back by 6: p.m. so 500 p.m so if anybody wants to go next year it's it's it's important it's good to get FaceTime and here from Mike here from Damon what's going on uh anything super insightful will come out of it um I think fighting questions around um kind of what's coming down the pike for nationally and Statewide and the recommendation was don't back down on your values and beliefs um so that was that was a specific question it was like don't back down and the states this is what they said last week what they said last week yeah and they're all they're all on pin like at some a director will come out at 9:00 a.m. they don't know

200what to do and comes you know they have another conversation 3 hours later and it's slightly different so they're confused um at the state level about what's coming from the federal level um so you know for those that work in this I I can't imagine you guys working in it but um there's a lot of confusion people don't really know what's true what's not what's really happening so um it's just yeah I asked if they had like could you share a fact sheet with us on what would happen if we no longer had a education department nationally and they're like well we're not quite sure and we don't want to get out ahead of ourselves because it hasn't happened yet but we know we should we don't get caught off guard but we're not quite

201sure so there wasn't any I was hoping somebody like here I think this back to your District they're all swimming in it just like everybody swim like nobody knows Ken from the legislative analyst office spoke gave his presentation about the dire stats of funding they're expecting like a $30 billion shortfall next year and they just kind of keep pushing things back um he said at some point we're going to have to pay for all this but not this year so they're pretty much neutral for this year but um things are coming down the road that we're going to have to pay for the debt that we're is incurring and those are the types of things that impact our budget and our year projections totally going back to the question yeah but they tend to like

202project a bazillion dollar deficit and then at the end of the day figure out how to not have a bazillion dollar deficit or push it or push it off push it off with some shifting of funds around but I asked them that because that conference we went to a year and a half ago Chris it was last December 2023 in the city he spoke I was like hey you know then um you said we were have a $60 billion deficit we only have 30 billion now like what what where does yeah where does that he's like yeah but we still are in a deficit and things are going to have to ultimately work its way out yeah sounds familiar on a bigger scale absolutely the other the other part of like yeah hold your ground

203and don't be naive to think that there aren't consequences coming I gave a couple of examples of um not education examples but other examples of state agencies that have already had funding taken away from them because of their Dei and the examples given as the Dei rationale for not getting funding was like not it was you know we're making sure that people with disabilities have funding or something like that and then so so they were so it was a mix it was a message of like stay true to what you believe and also realize that the price that you do you may have some hard things they talked about the Denver public schools with the transgender bathroom but they're arguing against for Title Nine because they've removed a girls bathroom yeah and so they're arguing

204behalf Title 9 that this is not equitable so it's it's it's um yeah all right so an interesting trip up to Sacramento it was thank you for doing that yes it's great it really it's a really good met some new people um it's a really good trip yeah um should I anything else so Chris and I actually did go to the parent Garden Equity task force meeting um which is really interesting there's like three main focal groups where they're trying to do three different things was like for onboarding and how do you frame everything for a new incoming volunteer a teacher anyone who's working with kids um and then there's like a group that's working on Communications just so like in alignment with between the schools so they're all working on the same projects um

205and then there's one where um there wasn't as many people in the Law Group yeah it was it was lightly attended yeah um but I think that the communication part were the plaques we introduced those that was a accomplishment um it's interesting to see the progress over the five years yeah yeah and to see who's in the room now interesting I went to the Fairfax Library art show that yes was having for the month so I went to their recognition ceremony at the end and like all the kids who had um artwork hang up there's like 60 kids um they all got got certificates acknowledging them all three of the art teachers were there and signed all their certificates and they got like little cute um little mini um art pads for painting and a

206set of watercolors for every kid it was really it was really sweet and the kids were so excited because they were like running around taking pictures in front of their artwork hanging on the wall and it was something they had never done the the foundation that I know of and it was like a perfect way to wrap that up um so it was really neat to see that um and then on Sunday I attended the Marin teen girls conference um which is run by the Marin women's commission and it was packed I was like we need to have it's for girls 13 to 19 in Marin County anywhere so there was like kids from all kinds of schools they bus in kids from West Marin so kids all girls had an access to be there

207um and it was just fascinating they had um a panel of um professional women and various male dominated Industries and they the girls plan the entire event the their their um Team Commissioners planned the whole event picked the panelists picked the questions that they were asking them um there were there are all kinds of tables around the entire um the entire um facility where girls could stop and talk to people I was there as asking elected so you know people come up to me and ask me questions about being an elected official but um it was it was really interesting I think it was something maybe we we might be more inclined to maybe tell our kids about it next time like next year because it was really it was really fascinating um so those

208are my things and let's see moving on with our agenda we have the approval of regular meeting minutes for February um do we have any changes to those I wrote them over and I make motion to approve unless anyone else and there's not here public comment so and there's no public comment yep I we'll entertain a second if anyone else had the changes all right I'll second it shell hi Rachel hi Chris hi Daniel hi okay and superintendent and cabinet reports go for it great I four quick ones I went to the Sleepy Hollow homeowners association meeting last Thursday uh pretty good turnout it was a lively discussion and I left uh feeling like we did uh a good job sharing the information that we have around the parcel tax so I appreciate the Sleepy

209Hollow homeowners association for hosting us and um look forward to Fielding any questions that came out of it also we had CCA negotiations I think it was last week um and we are essentially settled all but for the money uh we'll come back to the money conversation um after the parcel tax vote and that will kind of guide where that conversation goes but uh we did have a really good conversation and settled most of the language topics that came up uh last Friday I think Miss Wagner set a trap for me she had me uh she had me uh sub at Brookside which was wonderful except for it was the day that all the teachers were wearing uh Brookside bear onesies so I had to wear a Brookside bear onesie the whole day um which

210was fun got to do uh the morning announcements as Mr bear um I got to open car doors I played knockout with some students I had two slices of the lunch Master Pizza along with some of our students so I felt like a full-on Brookside bear on uh on Thursday it was great and then tomorrow I'm going down to uh Monteray to celebrate white Hill and their uh Schools to Watch recognition so really excited to celebrate the white Hill team and kind of put them on a pedestal for all the amazing work they're doing so they're kind of four highlights for my my last few weeks um HR lot hiring season has commenced it's actually going really well we um held K interviews last week we're interviewing for Spanish for some special education positions um

211counseling TK um so it's good to get going early it really is important um and it's been great to have a team with Tyler and principles and Lori Ross all putting all the ducks in a rast that we can do that um but it's it's it's been fun it's been going really well um we're gearing up for these TK classrooms to go from 4 to S is no small thing um a t TK in Most states is called PK as preschool and it's much more like preschool then it is like kindergarten which means that the furniture and the stuff that you put inside it inside a classroom and outside the classroom because you have to have an outside classroom as well anyways it's a lot and so there's lots of planning um that we're getting

212ready to do there um but it's kind of fun too picking out a kitchen it's like you can't remodel your home kitchen but you can buy a TK kit um Julie what are we doing about just toilets like how are we we don't have money for that but it's such a critical piece for these four-year-olds coming in yeah so we have one site Manor School that has two classrooms side by side and each classroom has a toilet perfect Brookside has one classroom with a toilet and Hidden Valley and Wade Thomas do not have classrooms with toilets and so principles are working on making sure that they're situating the classrooms as close as poss possible to the bathroom and and figuring all that stuff out um but my understanding is that the cost is such that

213it would take a bond to get toilets um which is yeah it is it is tricky it's one of those things where you know what monies come for TK and then all the stuff that goes we do have a TK grant that we're using for supplies and materials that's been generous we've still got funds in there to help us with these purchases but the St tricky the state Bond was passed and I don't remember whether it included the whole issue of TK facilities or not I don't remember I don't think it was a separate item but you also need to have um availability within your right your your dollars to match so that still one it would require a bond for us to get matching dollars and then too that would assume that we haven't

214used up all of our eligibility yeah and I think we did use up our eligibility in our last Bond it's usually a 20year window and then the other piece would just be on our curriculum adoption processes um with English language arts for K5 we had two training days that with where we partnered with larksburg cour of Madera and love as well um and so that that was really cool really great trainers um and our teachers have now launched that curriculum so it's the second curriculum that we're launching this year um I just checked in with the math department lead oh and I do want to just say Molina olenberger our instructional coach is leading that whole process and is amazing um the support that she's providing and keeping everything organized and going is just incredible

215um and then our math lead Department Lead Jamie Evans she and I met and it's really looking like our um math department is going to want to move forward with recommending to the board to adopt um Amplified Desmos so that'll be coming most likely later this year and similar for our Spanish program that we piloted this year Cas chevret chevet okay that's it not sure where the accent goes um which is a strong program and and we'll be great to have a new program in place as new world language teachers come in that's it for me uh Monday night was um uh the much anticipated um puberty education parent Zoom um and we had nurse Megan O'Hare and Steve Gardner who's a um a health educator that we've contracted with for years to come and

216just kind of give parents an orientation to just really like how to engage in talking with um these uh youngsters about puberty um and then you know some of the curricular pillars um and and uh pieces that um nurse Megan uh teaches them over the course of uh her four lessons um as she sets up shop at each Elementary campus for 4 days u in a row um and it was the largest one since I've been here 40 families attended super great uh just really wonderful um to you know um including some some District staff uh that were there too so um the Brookside staff um uh some of the certificated staff some classified staff uh underw a two-day uh four plus hour training on Crisis Prevention strategies and techniques um everything from um how

217to uh have good body language and verbal communication with students that are in some heightened State um or some distress all the way to um practicing holds to um help ensure their safety um and so I commend them for um including principal Wagner um and myself uh was a part of it um uh to to do that um that was done uh by um a woman that's an OT for mcoe who's also CPI certified she's really awesome and serves many of our district students that have been in MC classroom so she's a a colleague by extension and then um uh Reed Union School District is doing a PD day on March 17th um their inclusion specialist the former poine is uh running some workshops on udl um univ Design for Learning it's kind of this

218sort of uh learning framework to make learning accessible for all um and also behavioral supports in the classroom so we're building a little cohort of special ed Jed and administrators to go over there and hang out with our friends from Reed um and just you know continue building on all we've been working on and some of it that was evident in Tyler's learning tour slide deck so uh and then other than that it's it's all about gearing up for transition IEPs uh for the spring as we're planning for our kiddos finishing on uh March 14th we have our RFP um deadline for our food service program so uh that is out and we did send it out to 11 or 12 different vendors we have received back a number that said Unfortunately they can't um

219respawn for various reasons but um wanted to point out that we do have that out and um you we're just working hard to to set up everything for the summer um working hard on all of our uh facilities programs U looking at fencing looking at um Place structures looking at roofs looking at just lots of different things asold so that's what we're working on in our area whether it's in the facilities department or the business department on the food front that was definitely something that was brought up in Sacramento the challenges districts are having getting quality affordable food services so just you know that was that was a point of conversation and I think MC was doing a kind of a countywide analysis of where's everybody getting their food from as a way of as

220part of the county school boards Association of like if we can do a countywide strengthened numbers kind of deal of saying are we all having this problem okay let's use that for legislative advocacy so I don't know if you've been involved in that but I I think there is a uh something that's going through the county andarin as well as the Marine County Office of they're doing a program looking at that specifically I think it's most acute here in Marine County just because of the low um free reduced numbers that we have so as a result as low for inod use numbers a lot of districts w't didn't have robust meal programs and since you don't have a robust meal program there's no need for a robust kitchen so we don't have the facilities throughout

221the the county and that has become most acute I believe here in thank you cabinet superintendent um moving on we have meeting review future board topics and board direction do we have anything that we would like to direct or future topics we'd like to see on an agenda quick question we we have two meetings this month in March do we have one at the end because we only have one a month it's on the 126 just because it's like first week last week as opposed to the second week kind of feel okay yeah Special no all right so uh meeting de brief any comments on the meeting tonight fantastic meeting I love having the kids here yeah that's my favorite part of are all schools doing the Buddy program I guess except for white who's

222next up it is it's a fantastic way to start we've yeah we've got white Hill coming at our next meeting on the 26th do you know what their topic is cu the last time it was history I don't know what the topic is yet interesting okay science I know we've done both history and science now um okay so uh we don't need to continue past 10:30 yet uh and at 9:43 I will adjourn our meeting for