001Okay, it is 6:08 p.m. At this time, we will reconvene the June 10th La Mesa Spring Valley School Board meeting. Please be advised that this meeting is being recorded. Um, and we will start with our pledge of allegiance with some finalists from our PTA Reflections Art Program. Come on up, you guys. Put your right hand over your heart and begin. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republics for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you so much. Good job. Excellent job. Um, okay. Next, we have the approval of minutes from our previous meeting. I move to approve the minutes from the previous meeting. I'll second. Any discussion or questions about this? All in favor say I. I. Opposed.
002Okay. Which brings us to um the next item 3E, the approval of tonight's board agenda. I'll move to approve tonight's board agenda. I'll second. Any questions or discussions regarding this agenda? All in favor say I. I I. Which brings us to item 4A, our spotlight on La Mesa Spring Valley, which is our PTA reflections arts program. All right. So, I'm going to invite uh principal Eddie from Lressa Elementary and Michelle Warz. She's our uh well, she's a kindergarten teacher at L Pressa, but first Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, okay. First K1. and then um and also the lead of the reflections program. So, we have a slideshow that's going in the background for you all which um represents the finalists and some of the students that we have here today tonight that we'd like to recognize.
003And we've just asked if um Michelle and Mr. Ricky would share a little about the program. Trustees, my name is Mr. Niki, principal at Press Elementary, and I wanted to share with you all that the National PTA has a long-standing commitment to participation for over 50 years. Reflections has helped students explore their own thoughts, feelings, and ideas, develop artistic literacy, increase confidence, and find a love for learning. The reflections programs provides opportunities for recognition and access to the arts which boosts student confidence and success in the arts and in life. Each year, hundreds of thousands of students in preK through grade 12 create original works of art in response to a student created theme. In reflections, students submit artworks in the available arts category areas and program divisions. Again, preschool to 12th grade. Our school
004has been fortunate enough to uh been doing reflections for over the uh for over 10 years. and the six categories of visual arts, music, composition, photography, literature, film production, and dance choreography. We have a couple of teachers at La Pressa that um actively participate every year. And uh the last two years, our school has hosted the reflections art show. And this year's theme was accept imperfection. Next year's theme is we belong. And I cannot wait to see how our students will interpret and create something to demonstrate we belong. We have a very special teacher here in our district who has been maybe for over 10 years has been really headlining uh spearheading this project and I'm very very proud that she's a member of our school and really she has the heart the passion and
005it is because of her that hundreds of students here in this district have been able to participate in this program. So therefore, I introduce to you all Michelle Huades, who's our kindergarten, first grade teacher at L Pressa Elementary. I love that the sound came on. That was Adrian Adrian's music. Um so just a little bit about reflections. U Mr. Ricky shared a lot a lot about it. So um this year's theme was accept imperfections. Um which everyone makes mistakes. So we all have imperfections. So, um, it was a theme I was excited to embrace and share with the kids. Next year's theme is we belong. And I can't think of any kid in our school district who couldn't share how we belong. Like, that is such a great encompassing theme. I'm super duper excited. Um,
006there are six categories: film production, dance, choreography, music, composition. Um, those three get almost no entries every year, which means there's chances I could forward to the next level, but I can't because I don't get any entries at the second level. So, um, if any of your kids, um, are interested at all in like film production, dance, uh, music, composition, we did have, um, um, Adrian, uh, compos music, so I was excited to get send that on this year. Um, but we don't get I don't I don't give as many as I can in those categories. um photography, literature, um usually it's one or two schools that do literature and that's it. Um and then we get a lot for visual arts, but I'd like to see more, especially with our theme being we belong.
007I just think there's so much our kids at our schools have to share about how they belong, how they belong in their classroom, in their school, and their community and their family and with their friends. So, I think that I just want to promote it. Um, and I am working with um, our VAPA um, one of the VAPA uh, teachers, the the head VAPA person at our school district. Um, and we put our heads together. His name is Christian. Um, so we put our heads together to figure out how can we promote this? How can we get it to more kids? And so I'm super duper excited to say that um, next year we're going to try to do one form for the whole school district. And I will just take all the forms from
008everybody instead of because um a thing one of the challenges is that um if you don't have a reflections coordinator at your school, it's it might be too intimidating. You got to go to a class, you know, go on Zoom and figure out how to do it. You got to set up your own Gmail account. You got to create the link and the Google Drive and all that stuff. So, I'm going to if I just do that and I take everybody's and then I I can just send the school's um I can just send the school's entries back to them. they can, you know, they can promote it, then they can judge it, then they can send it back to me, and then um we can forward forward the ones on. So, I'm super duper
009excited to give all the schools an opportunity to do this um because we can push it at the district level and then ask our units to um promote it and to celebrate it and um so I'm super duper excited um and next year's theme is we belong. And I hope to see every school participate. That would knock my socks off. And I just want to share I'm I'm really excited, Michelle, that you um have been talking with Christian and that talking about the um integration with FAPA next year is great because we really want to be able to see all of our we reflections is so neat and the schools that participate when you go and you're able to see all the student entries and everything. I've been moved whenever um I've had the opportunity
010to do that and it really would be something that I mean all of our schools we we should have that experience. So um something that we would love to do then is like next year have it so that when we're doing the showcasing of the artwork and everything that we have it up here in the district office and it's up for you know like a good two weeks for people to come through and tour and and see the artwork and everything. So hopefully with the integration of the the VAPA program, we'll be able to do that. The last thing we wanted to do is just invite um all of our reflections students that are here today to come up to the front just to take a picture with the board president. And we have some
011uh some goodie bags for you guys just to recognize you and say thank you. And I also just want to thank all the parents for for bringing your kids out and for being the encouragement for the incredible work that that that they did this year. It just reveals the teach. And we'll share out the slideshow for everyone. So, um, they can see the every the parents and everything can see the the artwork and we'll we'll share it with principles and make sure they get it out to everyone. Okay, that brings us to item 4B, other staff communications. Um, we have give people the okay to let them know. Oh, okay. We can do that. If those of you that are here with reflections, if you would like to go do something else with your evening,
012we can pause right here and give you a chance to enjoy the celebrate. You're welcome. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much you guys. Go. Thanks for bringing. Yeah, that it's supposed to be for you to see anyway. No, it just wasn't planned for it. Yeah. Okay. So, item 4B, other staff communications and information. We have a statement on behalf of Lamesa Spring Valley School District for June 2025 um regarding belongings belonging reflection and celebration. My computer's a little glitchy. As the school year draws to a close and we enter the month of June, we reflect on our shared commitment to fostering a culture of belonging, one where every child is valued, every voice is heard, and every individual feels safe and supported. Our purpose is to nurture and inspire every child to learn,
013achieve, and find their unique voice. That purpose comes to life in school communities where differences are embraced, kindness is practiced, and students are are affirmed for who they are. This month brings opportunities to honor both our history and our diversity. June, which is nationally recognized as Pride Month, is a time to acknowledge and celebrate the diverse identities within our communities and affirm the dignity of all individuals. Junth, now observed as both a district and national holiday on June 19th, marks the end of slavery in the United States and invites us to reflect on the ongoing journey towards justice and equity. At Lame Mesa Spring Valley, we remain steadfast in our belief that every child thrives when they feel seen, supported, and celebrated. As we welcome summer, we do this with gratitude for our community and
014a renewed commitment to building inclusive schools where all can truly belong. On behalf of our governing board, superintendent, and our executive leadership team, we wish you a joyful summer, a meaningful Junth, and a happy pride month. All right. And also included under staff communications is a letter from a mother recognizing her daughter's teacher um Miss Ggoimos, kindergarten teacher at Murray Manor Elementary, and that's in the board's folder here. Um also included is our CBOC annual report um for the measure v citizens bond oversight committee and the preschool self-evaluation. And do we have Tina? Yes. Okay, great. Jay is here. He's the chair of the CBOC and he's going to come up and present a little information related to the annual report. Um, as you all know, the CBOC is like our independent party who just
015helps monitor making sure that the expenses in the bond program are what they um what the voters voted on and the annual report gets done by the CBOC. Jay is the chair of that. So, just wanted to thank them for Jay for his serving as the chair, but for the ad hoc committee that also helped draft the report and just for the CBOC in general um for the work that they do and their service to the district. So, Jay, thank you. Um it really is my honor to serve um and I want to shout out um our ad hoc committee that reviewed the annual report, which is the first time we've actually been able to put together an ad hoc community uh committee to review it. Um, and Amanda, Don, Natalia, and Rob Weaver are
016in the audience, and they have my thanks. Uh, they did a fantastic job of, of making sure it was cleaner and tighter uh, uh, in its published form. But again, uh, as you alluded to, also thanking all the members of the CBOC. Um, you you're talking to a person who is P comes from PTA and, you know, the volunteers of the world. Uh, they they step up and, um, help out. And we wouldn't have a CBOC if there were not a number of people in our community who were willing to give a little bit of their time to make sure that this bond program um does what the taxpayers wanted it to do. And not every bond program does. I was just reading about San Francisco is in some trouble because their bond program is
017viewed as not necessarily being effective. So I am happy to report that in contrast uh for repeated years the lame messa springy uh measured v report uh shows that uh the work is being done uh the work is being done effectively. It is serving the district. It is serving uh the schools and that is a benefit to our community um at large. Schools are an anchor in our communities and so if you build up your schools then you're going to strengthen your community. Um, I always laugh a little bit because I did this for a Gmont district as well and they built a lot of amazing buildings. I mean, they built theaters and multi-purpose rooms and science rooms and gymnasiums and all sorts of cool stuff and it was super awesome and sexy and we're
018not as sexy as they are. But try running a school without a functioning school without a functioning sewer system. Try running a school when your electrical systems die. Try having school in August when your central plant goes down. So the work is essential. Um it is being done. I also I'm happy to report that we received uh positive from the taxpayers association uh for our our work. That's always a nice uh uh get. Uh the audit report was completely clean, which is hugely important because that's where you build your trust with your community that you're doing what you're supposed to. You're not hiding pots of money. And all I can say is the work is proceeding a pace ahead of schedule, saving the taxpayers dollars in the long term, which is awesome. and providing a
019little bit of extra money for some additional projects uh that can be done because there's always something that needs to be fixed uh around the district. Um that concludes my report. It's very informal. I hope you enjoy uh reading the report. Um like I said, kudos. I made it nice and tight and clean, easy read. Uh and if you have any questions, um I'm happy to entertain them. Do you guys have any questions? I don't have questions, but just comments because our work is, you know, so great. Um, it was, you know, awesome being able to see a couple of the CBOC folks at the ribbon cutting for Lame Sadale Elementary. Um, what, a month and a half ago now. Um, and that I know has been a huge improvement to that site and, you
020know, with the flow and the new, you know, new office and and all of that, new parking lot. Um, and I was just at Parkway and seeing the progress on, you know, at least from the exterior of the um of the new administration building there is also really exciting. So, it isn't Yes, it isn't new theaters and whatnot, but hopefully down the road we can do all of those things as well. But, um, these these interior, you know, not so sexy things needs to get done first. So, I think the admin building at both of those sites is pretty darn sexy. Those are really cool there. That modular building at Gale is awesome in so many ways. And from many of our students perspectives, those playgrounds are the process. Yeah. Yeah. I just want and
021I want to thank you for what you shared in terms of the sexy work and the critical work because I feel like you get us like you need to be going to all of the ABC committee meetings and with the same spiel because that's a message that we've really tried to get across and we're just really proud of um how our maintenance department has partnered with our operations department really to like brighten up the look and feel of the sites even when there isn't like major modernization happening, but there's AC's being replaced or there's sewer systems being dug up and all of that, but you know, still we go to the front of our our schools and see all the new fencing and the new even addresses in some cases for some of our schools.
022And yeah, I just really appreciate the CVOC and everything that you guys have done. more than anything just your advocacy and um really awareness I guess of um what the real challenges have been. Um yeah, and it's it's neat. We'll get there. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, we're just a bunch of infrastructure nerds. So, you know, I did want to shout out one last thing. I almost forgot. One of the the other nice things about this program is the CBOC has asked with all of the reports that we get four times a year um what are we looking at as far as dollars being spent locally hiring local firms bu buying local materials and it's very very high. It's it's from the standpoint of the firms that are doing the work, the construction companies, it's like
02395% plus 98% is really really high. And that's great because a lot of these people, they live locally, too. And so they're seeing a a system that's like, hey, this school district is hiring our local workers. They're paying their wages and, you know, uh then and I'm sending my kids to school and I can tangibly see this. So that's it's nice. It builds the community up. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so that moves us on to what do we 4C? Report of action taken in close session. In close session, the board voted unanimously to approve office of administrative hearings case number 202530035. And the board also v voted unanimously to approve the appointment of Jacob Launder, principal on special assignment. Um the funding for the position uh is to come from a restricted grant and
024that's it. Okay. And that takes us to 4 D public comment. Um I do have some comment cards and we'll look to see if we have somebody online too that has a hand raised. First I have Robert Weaver. Good evening everybody. Um, I just wanted to take an opportunity to um thank the board, the district, all of the administrators, the the teachers, the staff, all of our temporary employees, everybody that works in this school district, and all of the hard work that you have put into this year, this school year, and how you have all done an amazing job of supporting our students. And I did just want to take this opportunity to say how proud I am to say that I am a part of the La Mesa Spring Valley School District. So, thank
025you everyone for um for all of the great work that you do. Thanks. Thanks, Rob. Thank you. Um next, Joe Lico. Hello everybody. How you doing tonight? Um I'll make mine brief here. I just want to introduce myself. Uh my name is Joe Liddiko. I'm the newly elected president of the Lame Mesa Spring Valley Teachers Association. I'm very excited for the association to work with the school board and the district to collaborate to make our district even better than it already is. It's a pleasure to meet all of you tonight and I look forward to speaking with each of you in the near future. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're doing more clapping. Um, Brad Solenberger. Members of the board, thank you for your time. I'm Brad Solenberger. I have two students at Rolando
026Elementary School. Uh, one just graduated third grade and one just graduated for or is about to next week on Tuesday. I'd like to spend these three minutes giving uh comment on the application of the 2021 Menstrual Equity for All Act that mandated feminine hygiene product dispensers in all girls bathrooms, one gender neutral bathroom and one boy's bathroom for all grades from 6 through 12, as well as the expansive amendment beginning in July of 2024, which increased this mandate to include third through fifth grades, which by necessity of the elementary school grade clusters TK and above effectively. I was only made aware of this uh through a friend's first grade student uh recently, which is regrettable as the perfect time to talk about this would have been over a year ago, but the next best time
027is now. As referenced in the menstrual equity for all handbook, the supporting research is a survey study commissioned by advocacy groups uh thin x or thinks and period in all caps and conducted by SKDK research group. The survey itself was administered to 1,0 students who menrate between the ages of 13 to 19. In other words, neither boys or even girls of the age of Rondo elementary school students of which our children attend. The survey study itself correctly is solely focused on the economic impact of inaccessibility to feminine hygiene products and its impact on a successful learning environment. It is explicit in terms of concern for poverty and makes no reference to any other issue of equity. In fact, the survey itself contains questions referencing the biology of the human female body. Does not at all
028reference transgender, interex, or gender non-conforming interests. We support the social determinance of education and provision of fi of feminine hygiene products for economically disadvantaged middle-aged uh school girls. But the advancement of this to support social signaling of positions on trans and gender non-conforming issues to kindergarten boys goes beyond the re research given in support as well as our own sense of decency for what is appropriate for young boys. Further in the handbook a stated end of the law is minimize negative attention for gender diverse students. If that is the case I can think of no application more counterintuitive to that end than putting pad and tampon dispensers in an elementary school boy's bathroom. Poverty and its impact on quality education and absenteeism is not new. For decades, this law was not put in place when
029we had a more sensible understanding of which biological gender and age group is using tampons. It was only of enough pressing concern when they could also be placed in the boys' bathrooms as well. The conclusion can only be from Sacramento that they're not there for the benefit of girls, but rather for the confusion of boys. In addition to the unnecessary confusion of boys in the range of impressionable ages between TK through fifth grade, it risks the physical safety of boys who are now encouraged to use the digestive system as a reproductive organ without any medical or hygiene benefit. We are asking the La Mesa Spring Valley School Board to rethink and work creatively to implement this law in a way that overcomes the issues of poverty on education without needlessly uh introducing confusions that are
030impossible for a gender certain biologically male boy to understand. We're asking that La Mesa Spring Valley and Rolando Elementary recognize the incredible over oversight of California legislators to not require notification of parents and to respond to these kind of directives with a higher sense of responsibility and intentional communication with the parents of the children you teach. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Is it Fran Meredith? Uh, good evening board members. Thank you for your time. My name is Fran Meredith and I am a parent at Rolando Elementary. I'm here tonight to speak about the decision made about tampon dispensers in the boys' bathroom on our elementary campus and uh why that needs to change. These boys are ages of 5 to 10 years old. And at this stage of their life, our sons are
031learning to tie their shoes, read, and to share with others. The idea that we are introducing menstrual products to them at this age is not only inappropriate, but it's unnecessary and it's confusing. Um, I understand the law, education code 35292.6 has expanded to include grades 3 to 12. I understand that uh the school is trying to follow that, but just because something is legally allowed, it doesn't mean that it's educationally or developmentally appropriate appropriate. The average girl starts menrating about 12 years old. Well, after elementary school, really, um, we all want girls to have access to what they need. It's really important. Um, that's not the question. But placing the products in the boys' bathroom of a K through five is just not about access. Um, it's about exposure to ideas and topics that our
032young boys are not ready to process. This can and should be simply solved by keeping menstrual products out out of the boys's bathroom and the girls bathroom and with the into the nurse's office when they need it um legitimately. What doesn't make sense is putting tampon boxes in front of 8 to nineyear-olds who are aren't even really aware of what these products are until they're shown. And as a father, I have to say this is a violation of parental trust. No parent was consulted. No one was asked what we thought if it was right for our kids. We just walked into the bath. I walked into the bathroom the other day and I just saw it and it was pretty disturbing. Um I respect women's rights. I teach my son to do the same. I
033have a daughter as well. I teach him to respect her as well. Um but I just ask that the district also to respect the rights of fathers, parents, and young boys who deserve to be raised without being forced into social issues too early. We're not asking for anything radical. We're just asking for common sense. Please protect our boys innocence. communicate with parents and remove the menstrual dispenser from the boys's bathrooms. Please do the right thing and I thank you for your time and efforts. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have That's all the comment cards I have. Kathy, do you have any additional comment cards? Do we have any hands raised online? Yes, we do. Sorry, my microphone just died, so I grabbed another one. Uh we have Jordan with uh his or her um
034hand raised. I'm going to allow them to talk now. Thank you. Uh Jordan, can you please unmute your mic and you may address the board for three minutes. Yes. Thank you so much uh for this opportunity. Apologize I could not be there in person this evening but appreciate the opportunity to comment. My name is Jordan Vez and I'm a parent at the Murdoch Elementary School and my children are currently in first and TK. Uh I recently learned that uh they there is a decision that is affecting all uh elementary schools around La Mesa Spring Valley around uh the class size for K uh basically K kindergarten. Um as a parent whose student is going into kinder neck garden next year, I am very concerned about the class size decisions that are being made across the
035district. um with up to potentially 32 students in each in each kindergarten class. I know that California um does allow for this, but the California PTA and the California's Teacher Association do both recommend smaller class sizes for TK through third. And I understand we are facing difficult budget decisions, but this cut risks long-term harm to our students and pushes teachers really to the breaking point. So, as a parent, I really urge you all to preserve kindergarten staffing and maintain class sizes uh into next year because 28 to 32 in my opinion is way too big for our kindergarten classes when they need to be focusing on smaller classes, attention to the students to really gr get that foundational uh learning they need to be successful throughout their their time at La Mesa Spring Valley Schools.
036Thank you very much. Thank you. We do have an additional um parent who's going to uh speak via Zoom. Uh let me unmute. Uh Shauna, can you please unmute your mic and address the board for three minutes? Yes. Thank you so much. Um first of all, just thank you to the board for all that you do, all that you do for our district. Um I really appreciated the beautiful belonging statement that was read earlier. Um, so my name is Shaina Wright and I am also a parent at Murdoch Elementary. I have um a child in TK and a child in second grade. Um, and I share the same concerns that Jordan raised. Um, we learned at our May PTA meeting that our kindergarten classes are going to be reduced um, increasing the class size again
037up to 32 students. And we understand that this is not just happening at our school, but this is happening across the district. Um, I know that the district is facing difficult budget choices. Um, and this cut really does risk long-term harm to students and it also pushes our already overburdened teachers to a breaking point. Um, so I really urge you to preserve kindergarten staffing and maintain class sizes. Um, we know, you know, some of the risk of larger class sizes, especially in the lower grades, um, include lower academic achievement, particularly in literacy and math, fewer individualized supports during those critical learning years, um, including increased behavioral and emotional regulation challenges, greater teacher stress and burnout, leading to greater turnover for our amazing teachers. um and potentially also a higher risk of chronic absenteeism and disengagement.
038Um I understand these are incredibly difficult times and recognize that the board is being asked to make really hard decisions with limited resources and at the same time I'm deeply concerned about the proposal or that's already happened to reduce um teaching positions specifically in our kinder grades as well. Um, so I just thank you for listening and um, if possible urge to reconsider um, cuts to teaching staff, especially in the lower grades. Thank you. If we have one additional hand raised, uh, just one moment, Jackie will be addressing the board in just a second. Jackie, if you'd unmute your mic and please address the board for three minutes. Hi. Yes, thank you. My name is Jackie Vastuba. I am also a parent of a TKER over at Murdoch and yes, the information was shared with
039me as well and I am equally concerned as Jordan and Shaina and I just I wanted to um address I did a little bit of research and of course not I don't know nearly as much as I should in this department but I just want to say that research consistently shows that increasing class sizes beyond 25 students is not supported by evidence when it comes to academic achievement, safety, behavior, or attendance. Um, these effects are more pronounced for socioeconomically disadvantaged students who make up 43% of Murdoch's population. And I'd like to emphasize that kindergarten is not just another grade. It's a foundational year that helps young children develop a love for learning and form the essential connection with their teacher. That bond can shape the trajectory of the child's entire academic career. Um, I acknowledge
040and I recognize that bullet ch budget challenges are real. Decreased enrollment, lower attendance, and reduced state funding have all impacted the district's finances. I also understand that the the district has recently added administrative positions possibly in response to the district's ongoing struggle to meet growth targets for students with IEPs, and that might prove to be a wise investment, but time will tell. Um, which brings me to a very personal point. My incoming kindergartenner has an IEP. And given that the district has not met its goals for IEP students and it's now increasing class sizes in the f very first year of schooling, I'm really concerned about how that will affect both the support and outcomes of my child and others like her. According to the school accountability report card, kindergarten class sizes at Murdoch have
041not exceeded 25 since 2021 to 2022. And kindergarten consistently has the highest enrollment at the school. It's unclear to me why would we we would increase class sizes now knowing both the academic data and the demographic realities. So tonight I'm asking is the district willing to allocate extra provisions to reduce the studenttoteer ratio in kindergarten? And if that's not possible, what specific safety instructional support will be put in place to help ensure these young learners, especially those with additional needs, so they don't fall through the cracks? And finally, I want to highlight that the 2023 SPSA indicates a decline in performance in both English and math for all students. So this should be a red flag, not just a statistic. So please don't let larger class sizes in kindergarten widen those gaps further. Thank you
042for your time. Thank you. We're good. Okay, we'll move on. The next is um a public hearing for extended school services. the AA aces waiver. Do we have any cards for public hearing? Okay. The next is another public hearing regarding the LCAP and another public hearing for the 2526 proposed budget. Okay, which is going to lead us to item 5A, which is our local control accountability plan. uh all 108 pages of it. This is the draft actually. It's going to be more pages than this um when you get the final next time we're together. Um so it is my joy and pleasure to bring you the annual update of the local control and accountability plan. Um, and I uh just want to give some context and then I'll go through some slides that we've seen
043before to give a little more context. Um, but this is the first year um ending the first year of our new three-year plan. So, it is an annual update of our LCAP. So, what is the LCAP? We go through this every year, but just as a reminder, it's the three-year plan that describes the goals, actions, services, and expenditures to support positive student outcomes that address state and local priorities. So, it's an opportunity for the local education agencies, the district, um, to share the story of how, what, and why the programs and services are selected to meet the local needs. Our LCAP must include all of the things listed there. And then we also must have a federal addendum that talks about how we uh spend our federal funding. And then we also have um local
044indicators. That's a separate piece that gets approved at the same time. I'm going to reserve some comments for later. Um the guiding principles of the LCAP are local control, transparency, and that it be student focused. So when um the local control funding formula and the local control accountability plan were passed into law, the idea was that decision-making is most effectively accomplished at the local level. So we talk about that historically that um funding used to come to school districts in lots of little restricted pots of funds. Uh this amount has to be spent for this purpose, for these students only, this amount for these students only, for this purpose. And we had lots of different buckets. And um when this was changed, it was given to us with the intent of saying school districts themselves
045should be able to prioritize what the needs of their students are and how that money should be spent. So instead of giving um priorities for all little many things that became different interest groups and different priorities that were important, the the state said we're going to give you a pot and you decide with the input of your stakeholders what are the priorities for your school district. But it you must have a transparent process and you must be focused on the needs of your students, which is a wonderful idea in theory. Um there are eight priorities that have to be addressed in your LCAP in three big areas of focus. The first is basic services and the conditions of learning. So that has to address how are you operating a school and how are you making
046sure that all students have access to um basic standards? How are we ensuring that we're implementing course access across our school district at a high school level? That's incredibly important to ensure all students have access to um college and career readiness in a KA district. We're ensuring that students have access to standards aligned instruction. The second area is student outcomes. So there are state dictated areas that we have to assess and look at including state assessments and then local assessments that we are required to um provide um in both achievement and then other areas. And then student engagement overall, which is student engagement, including attendance, how are we monitoring student attendance, chronic absenteeism, school climate data? That includes things like suspension rates, and parent involvement. And how are we monitoring and measuring parent involvement across
047our system? But there are some challenges. Here's where I get to editorialize just a little bit. Um, at the state level, we have this idea and the promise of increased and improved and expanded services for students. And the idea in the LCFF is we're going to give you a pot of money and you should be able to prioritize, bless you, how to um how to spend that money in a way that meets the needs of your students. But as we know, the state actually does not give us enough money to spend the priorities in the way that we think are important. So when we talk about things like ensuring that we can do all the things that we want to do, we have to start with all of the things that we need to do.
048So when I was presenting to our parent committee, I said it's kind of like when you're deciding where you want to go on vacation and first you spend all of you pay all your bills and then you're like we would like to take a trip to Europe and then when you look at your budget you're like but we're going to drive to North County because that's what's left. Um so because of the funding model from the state we have these promises of expanded services but really we have to prioritize ensuring that we have basic services and are doing the things we're required to do and then we have to look at what are the things that we can try to do beyond that because we really haven't had increased and expanded funding being provided to
049districts. So our focus has been on how do we align those basic services to our goals? How do we prioritize those? How do we ensure they're principally directed to the needs, the highest needs of our students, the highest needs of our schools? And how do we do that in the best and most effective way? And then we've sought additional grant funding and utilize federal funding and one-time funding to ensure that we can provide increased, expanded, and equitable funding for each and every student. And as you know, we've had some challenges in that area this year in particular. Um, but we continue to look for where are additional funding sources so that we can do things that we don't believe are increased or expanded like mental health um that we believe are critical for our students
050but we're not provided funding for at the basic level. So our LCAP goals are very simple. We have three broad LCAP goals that address the three state priority areas. Um, our first goal is achieve. We will increase achievement for all of our students while decreasing performance gaps and educational inequities. Engage. We will engage our students and the learning community in order to provide the skills and supports necessary for social, emotional, and physical well-being. And equip, which is we will equip our students with the tools necessary to realize their fullest potential. These have been our three LCAP goals. We had them in the last three-year cycle and we relaunched them this year because when we um obtained input from all our stakeholders, they felt that it was simple, easy to understand and aligned well with the
051state priorities and we were able to to align the work that we did under these three broad umbrellas really well. So, I'm going to just share with you some highlights from the year and some things in each area that we've been able to um sort of accomplish and focus on this year that we're really proud of. So under goal one in achieve, we've had a continued and consistent instructional focus across all of our schools in the district and we're going on year four. Um where where we've been talking about improvement of comprehension offormational text and being able to stick with the same thing and not change that. That's the year we did that. um but continue to build on powerful instructional practices in that way has built a lot of consistency across our schools and
052for our students. Um we've had a strong um increase in emphasis in collaboration time for our teachers this year and we've been able to accomplish that at the elementary level through BAPA and our middle schools have collaboration release time either through their period structure or through um substitute release time um at different schools. that's provided in different ways and giving the teachers the time to work together and to plan together is very powerful. This year we implemented spotlight students across all of our campuses. Last year when we looked at data, one of the things we noticed is that the schools who had the greatest increases were schools who were regularly looking at students and targeting some representative students and thinking about how to make a difference for those individual students and how that growth could
053be replicated for others. So we had that process this year and really thinking about how to engage and improve academic support for individual students on every campus. We also continued our training for instructional leadership teams across all of our campuses and that's about building distributed leadership because we don't believe that the principal is the head of all decisions. The decision should be coming from a team at the school site working collaboratively to think about what are our what are our next step steps and then presenting that work together. And so we built capacity for instructional leadership teams bringing them centrally for training three times during the year. um and then having that work carry over so that they are planning with the principal and working towards how they're presenting that information to their colleagues. Um
054we've increased our use of data across all our school sites to inform instruction. So the teachers are using formative data to plan and guide what they're teaching in their classroom and that includes the use of standards mastery assessments. Why that's important is that it's really helped us understand the level of um rigor of instruction that's required of students when they take state assessments. And it's been real eye opening for all of us this year to see what students are asked to do independently on those assessments. And so as we build for student independence toward the end of the year, we've seen um some real uh changes in our ability to guide students towards how to build those skills throughout the year. And then we've had quite a focus and training on our instruction for our
055multilingual English learners this year to really target the needs of our students who are learning another language besides English in our schools and the strategies and supports that we can provide to them. Some highlights for goal two this year. We launched community schools at 13 of our schools and we've been really proud to see that support and engagement at all of those campuses. We've increased our parent education opportunities, not just through our community schools, but that's been a huge part of that effort, but also through the social workers and counselors at each of our school sites. The implementation of PEP, the parent uh engagement empowerment program. All of a sudden, I forgot what my acronym was. I should have put it up there. Parent Empowerment Program um that we've shared with you about that really
056supports our youngest learners who are having challenging times. We have um ongoing and consistent training for new paraprofessionals. So about every six weeks any paraprofessional who's been hired is brought in um new to have a day and a half of training so that they're launched and supported successfully in classrooms which has really helped with our retention of paraprofessionals in classrooms. We've had approximately 550 staff across our district attend training and trauma-informed care. And we um have launched the use of P school for positive attendance communication to our families. So, we're not just sending notices that say your kid is missing school. We're sending notices out that are saying like, "Great job. Your child has a really positive attendance rate." Um, and when I shared this information at our DPAC, one of the things that our
057parents said is they're really appreciating that communication and the validation that they're getting and being able to celebrate that with their child at home. And then in goal three, um, we continue to have success with recruitment. And in fact, I think Brianna points it out almost every board meeting when it's like, "Look at all the pair of professionals we've been able to hire. Look at the bus drivers. Look at the targeted efforts to try to fill vacancies um and staffing. Uh we have a scratch cooking initiative with our child nutrition, which we've talked a little bit about, but I will tell you almost every time we do input sessions, we hear from children and we hear from parents about cafeteria food. So, it's been great this year to be able to hear positive feedback about
058the cafeteria food. And then of course the support of essential services including facilities and safety which we talked a little about bit about with the bond but having um fencing our facilities looking better things like that are all highlights of things that have um been things we're proud to talk about this year. So what's next as we move into the new LCAP year? There are some changes and adjustments to some of the actions and services. The first is that we have two positions that are ending in this year and a new position being launched. So each of our schools um have had ELOP uh TOSA positions and IDS TOSA positions that have had two very distinct purposes and the funding for both of those positions is ending. We're relaunching a new position for next year
059which is the early literacy and intervention TOSA. The elementary schools will each have one of those uh positions and then there'll be one to support the middle school. That position will work on um attendance recovery as well as helping implement the reading difficulty risk screener which Julie shared about at our last board meeting. Uh we are piloting a math curriculum for K5 next year. So elementary math curriculum pilot will be a focus. So we will be talking a lot. We've already started the conversations about the math framework and how the math framework overlaps with the work we've already been doing about comprehension offormational text and how we build on that work to move into our instructional focus. Um, we are ending the link program. So last year I gave you a convoluted conversation about goal
060four and a link program and the ending of trust. So, I'm going to try to sum it up as carefully as I can. When we closed our trust program, we opened a program on SVA's campus called Link that was targeted for students who um had attendance challenges and school aversion behaviors. We felt like there may be a need or a niche for that program. We also were going to be we we had funding that we had received for trust equity multifi multiplier funding that we had been allocated but could not spend until it was put into our LCAP and we weren't sure if they were going to let us keep it because we closed the school. They did not let us keep it. That's okay. We sent it back and so therefore goal four will
061go away in the LCAP. We no longer need it. The link program has not turned out to serve the students that we thought it we would need it for. So we opened it as a transition. We wanted to ensure that our students from trust had a soft place to land and we wanted to watch to see um what would be the need and what we've discovered is that we can meet those needs in other ways but it really isn't um worth the resources that we are putting into that program and the number of students there. So we'll be we are ending that program. We've worked with the families that are there. Almost all of them are promoting on to high school anyway. Um so that program is ending this year. Short answer. Um short explanation
062for one bullet. The um our three-year uh partnership with ENCST is ending this year. Our principles have had ongoing coaching and support with ENCS. That will end this year. Um we will do a presentation on ENCS in August. Um just to talk about the partnership and the culmination of the partnership diversion which is all our alternative to suspension program has been a district centralized program and that program is shifting from districtled to siteled at our middle schools where we'll be building capacity at each of our middle schools for ownership for alternative to suspension programs. and we're shifting from Blackboard to Parent Square, a different communication tool which will allow for better hometoschool communication. So those are some broad things but those reflect the major changes that are coming in the LCAP in the actions and
063services. So that's the big summary. Can I answer any questions for you tonight? Um I don't have any LCAP specific questions nec like I mean it's things that you just talked about but not like about how we're putting I guess. Yeah. Um, I do want to note that it's, you know, I'm one of the board reps on the DPAC and, um, the the parents are always have so much great input on that and, um, you know, when we have the little sessions where they're pro be able to provide, um, you know, specific input, there's so many great conversations happening about different things happening on our campuses, which is awesome to hear. And then also this year the addition of the SVA kids that are part of um you know are included in those conversations. They've
064had such great um feedback as well and it's been really awesome hearing from them. Um so the questions that I do have um you talked about community schools and I'm super excited about that. Um, but I was wondering are our community schools going to be our our um resource centers um or resources in general for those going to be available during the summer or is that going to just be is that going to kind of take a pause over the summer? So, a few of them like our parent community liaison are 12-month employees. Our school office assistants that staff them are not. So we have some services that will be offered there during the summer and some of our like central employees are they won't be broadly open. So um you may have seen on
065Instagram for example we have some computer classes that are going to run during the summer. So we have some services that we will offer during the summer but it won't be just broadly open like it is during the school year. Cool. Um and then wanted to also just comment about the um scratch cooking. That's been fun to see. you know, I've been able to make it out to some of the class or um we went out to Parkway. Um and hearing from the kids on that, seeing how that's being implemented, that was something also I think I mentioned last month or whatever that I was able to brag about that with other schoolboard members across the state um of how, you know, I'm really proud about the work that we're doing in our um kitchens.
066And then um I had a question about the math curriculum. Um we're going to be you said that we're going to be piloting a new curriculum um looking at the framework for that. Are we anticipating that we'll be piloting a few different um or you know multiple um curriculums and then choosing one from that or are we anticipating it'll just be one that we're piloting? So we typically pilot two, sometimes three, it depends. We actually have a committee of teachers that have volunteered to be part of this. Um Lydia, Dr. Burgos, our um one of our directors, actually wrote and applied and received a grant from the Gates Foundation that's allowing um this committee, unlike any we've ever had before, to have some pretty extensive professional development and then time to um be released and
067learn together and then review the curriculum and pilot and get to come and then do some training um out once they've done this. So, we're really excited about that process because we have this grant that's allowing that um professional development. But yes, they actually have been listening last last week and I think this week to different publishers presenting on the different um options so that they can then make a decision about which ones they want to pilot next year. Cool. Um and the last question, I don't know how to ask this, but with the collaboration release time that you talked about for the elementary school teachers, um how you said that that's kind of around VAPA time and um how does that work? because I know that last year when we had talked about FAP
068and maybe this will be in the AMS presentation but um there it still wasn't 100% sure how release time was going to look for that. What did it ended up end up looking like? So it's between and I'm going to make sure I say this right like 50 and 90 minutes per grade level and it kind of depends on the grade level and the school and how many teachers are at that school and it's about every 3 weeks. Um, and so it it varies based on the schedule. I will Christian is quite a logistics wiz and then every time we wind up going back and saying, "Hey, enrollment's up. We're adding his teacher. We're just put he has to go back and adjust the schedule some more." Um, but that about it's about that much
069time every 3 weeks that's coming to the school sites um to provide the collaboration release. And so they're the students are being taken out of the classroom to the auditorium or you know where wherever it is. Usually it's the for most schools the art teachers are coming into the classroom and the teachers are going to another location just because most schools don't have another place but it depends on the school site. Okay. Okay. Cool. Um, I just want to take a moment real quick to compliment and thank Allison Long because we had a a shift this year and the person who helped us with kind of checking off all the compliance pieces of the LCAP left us in the middle of the year and she learned it all and figured it all out so we
070could get this done in time and I just want to publicly acknowledge and thank her for that work. That's awesome. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And that takes us to our next report which is the 2526 adopted budget and she got kudos from the county office of education. Um so that's another big piece. Okay, I forgot I had the clicker. 2526. Um I'm going to take a couple of steps. I'm gonna say backwards, but ultimately I'm just going to take a little bit of step back and talk a little bit more about the process only because Sarah, you're new and you haven't been through the budget adoption cycle yet. So, I just want to make sure that you understand some of these um components. So, um we are in budget adoption mode. So,
071what you see in your board packet is our proposed um budget for 2526. We are in the middle of two years because we're prepping for 25 26 and then we're trying to get to 24 25 closeout. So when somebody comes over and starts talking fiscal year we talking about this year or next year. So it's a confusing space for us to be in. But this is the time where we are looking at adopted budget. You um I had talked before about how the governor in January releases his budget. Then he provides a revision. After that revision, we take that information and we start looking at some of those assumptions that are coming down from the state and then um we incorporate in them into our budget and then into our multi-year projections. So that's what
072we're um sharing with you here this evening. Um and similar to last year this time we had shared with you that you know it's like the the perfect storm for lack of a better term. We're declining enrollment. Our attendance rates have decreased. We've got special ed costs that are increasing. Um we have onetime dollars that are going away this year. Obviously, we've um heard about our mental health grants that are going away. So, all of these components that we're working with and trying to manage within our budget and our multi-year projections. So, I'll share with you kind of where we are since that point in time and what our multi-year projections are looking like now. Um so, just sharing a couple of broad strokes in terms of the governor's May revision. We've talked a little
073bit about it, so I'm not going to go into every single detail on the slide. Um, but ultimately, we are in the process of trying to adopt a budget by which the state hasn't even adopted theirs yet. And that's typical of school districts. Um, because a lot of times the governor doesn't adopt his budget until after we have ours done and we can't wait until that's done and have it all by the statutory timeline. So, just some of the big themes and and you all know this cuz we've talked about it the last couple of board meetings is the May revision was okay. It w it wasn't as bad as what I think we were thinking it was going to be. The um cost of living adjustment um dropped a little bit. Nothing really to,
074you know, b um but still a little bit of a decline. And I think at the end of the day, I think the biggest thing is there's so many unknowns that we don't know and how that might impact even what we're going to be sharing with you today because there could potentially be some further impacts as we're looking at um federal programs and things of that nature. And then that obviously trickles down to us um because we get some federal funding as well. Um there are some um risks. I've talked about that already um just at the state level. So, those are the things that we're just going to continue to monitor what might happen with um federal programs specifically. Uh with there are some potential one-time dollars that are coming. Those one-time dollars are
075not included in our budget because he hasn't adopted his budget yet. So, once they adopt their budget at the state level, then we'll make the adjustments to our budget and then we'll see those um revisions reflected in our first interim report um when we bring that back in December. So Deian talked about LCAP the So you know now what that is is an there's going to be a quiz. Um then we have the LCFF which is the local control funding formula. And that's basically the big formula that um certain factors get put into that tells us what we get as an allocation. And then it's those dollars then that we're trying to align within the LCAP to make sure that we're meeting all those marks that we say we're going to um and identify how
076we're going to be able to best support those things within that LCAP process. So that's the difference between the LCAP and LCFF. The LCFF is our funding formula and then the LCAP is our plan on how we are going to spend those funds. Um so just so that you understand what that alignment might look like um between the two um we've shared we have there's basically like three components maybe I might call them on what the local control funding formula looks like. There's a base grant so you get every school district gets the same amount of money per student and then you get these add-ons depending on what your student population looks like. So, if you have um 20 if you have a student population that um has what they call them unduplicated uh pupil
077counts and it's basically students that are of higher need that would generate additional dollars to help support those um so those kiddos. And so we're looking at our English language learners, our foster youth um students, um our students that have um that are low income. we generate additional dollars for those um students and then depending on what that percentage um of population you have you will get additional add-ons on top of that. So for our district, because our population is about 64%. We get supplemental, we get the base grant is what they call it, and that's that base dollar amount. Then we get additional money on top of that, a supplemental grant, and then we get additional money on top of that, um the concentration grant because our student population is higher than the 55%
078threshold for those additional dollars. Um so, so we also get some additional funding on top of that for um TK. So there's there's different grade spans that we get additional money for, but in a nutshell, that's pretty much um what how the funding formula works. And then beyond LCFF, we get additional dollars for state and federal programs, etc. Some of the things that we um have talked about and that we've seen and why these are some of the concerns and issues that we have um going into our just future budget cycles is really around declining enrollment. It's not it's not um something that we are only dealing with. There's only a handful of school districts throughout the state that actually have um increased enrollment. Um we are not one of them. Um you can see
079here that our enrollment has steadily declined since the 2021 um school year. And that plays into the funding that we're getting. We're not funded on enrollment. We're funding on if the student shows up. And so our um other piece here, and we've talked about this over the course of the last couple of budget cycles, is we've really um had a focus on trying to increase our attendance rates um with various like incentive programs, if you will, for um for student attendance. And that is where we're going to get um additional revenue is by increasing our attendance rates and trying to get them back to prepandemic levels. Um which we're getting there. We're making progress. Um and we'll continue to do that and you've heard Dian talk about that a little bit as it relates to
080some of the things that we're looking at within um LCAP and beyond. Um so our some of our planning factors here really just to kind of point out um recall that uh when we talk about COLA that cost of living adjustment we're not getting 2.3% more revenue. It's 2.3% more per student if they show up then we get full funding. If they don't show up then, you know, we get a pr-rated amount basically um for that. So, so that cost of living adjustment um going into the 2526 school year, like I said, dropped by a little, not by a lot. Um but then we have our stirs rates. Those are staying steady. our PERS rates continue to increase although slight ticks but you can see just under 2526 um the increased amount for PERS alone
081is about $150,000 so that all of that starts to add up in terms of what is eating away at the additional revenue that you might be getting in and while I mention additional revenue um in it in some cases it may not be additional revenue depending on how much you're declining and what your attendance rates are Uh in addition to that, one of the things that I wanted to point out, we typically have budgeted health and welfare benefit increases about at about 5%. We are hearing that's going to be in the double digits and so we've increased that projection to about 7 and a half% um based on what we're hearing. Um we hear it might be as low as nine and it could be as as high as 12. So So we've adjusted that
082a little bit so that we can see if we can get to kind of a more realistic number. Um and again they're assumptions and so we'll have to we'll see what that um pans out. We don't typically get our um new like health and welfare benefit rates until August. So when we do get that information that'll be another thing that we adjust at first interim in December. But right now just a 7 and a half% increase would mean an increase of a little over $600,000 to our expenditure budget. Um and then some of the other things that we incorporate into our u multi-year projections are the cost of step and column which is just the natural movement on the salary schedule for employees. Um and then you can see here um our enrollment we're we're
083saying flat. We pro at some point we're going to flatten out. we hopefully we're going to drop a little bit um less each time, but um those are the projections that we're using right now and then conservatively just kind of keeping it at that almost 94 percentage rate in terms of attendance and we are working towards that. So the hope is is that we'll be able to increase that as well. So those are just some of the planning factors that are going into our multi-year projection and just as a reminder we are required to do a three-year projection. So we have to do the current plus subsequent sub subsequent two fiscal years. So that's why you're seeing um these factors here today. Um we this was a slide that I shared last time. I I
084changed it up a little bit because I think the bigger piece that I really want to show is while we are declining in enrollment um generally overall our special ed enrollment is increasing and our costs are increasing. So the increased special ed expenditures just over the prior year is $3.5 million just for special ed alone. Um 3.6 um so and that's a significant cost again not relevant to La Mesa Spring Valley but that it's happening across the board um across the state. Um, so it's not something that is just isolated for us. But, but that's just one of the things that I just wanted to share is like our general education population is decreasing, our special education population is increasing, and the services are costing us um, more on an annual basis. I just wanted
085to show that the federal education law idea uh calls for the federal government to match special ed funding of 40%. And on average um in a given year, I don't think it's ever been above, it's under seven right now. It's under under 7%. Um and so as we start to lose some of those federal programs that support special ed, that percentage is just going to decrease. I I do want to say though that we've been grateful for the fact that this at the state level they didn't even used to provide um a cost of living adjustment to the special ed funding and they have over the course of the last several years. So that has helped programs across the state but yeah right now um it's it's about less than 7% that they are funding
086and the notion was is that they would fund 40% and that's not the case. Um that's something that gets advocated for every year at the state and federal level. Um no one has wanted to touch it for whatever reason, but it it it is our reality. Um I've talked about this already a lot, just some of the budget pressures and things that we're continuing to monitor. Um we have increased insurance premiums. I that's something that we have seen um moving up a little bit each year. Um, one of the things that, um, is, uh, really impacting us as well, in addition to those increased insurance premiums and and and that's things like for our property and liability insurance, basically the insurance that we have in a district that you might have at a house, but
087obviously at a much larger scale. Um but one of the things that has um really significantly in increased over the course of the last few years is um uh the budget and our expenditures related to AB218 um which is um outstanding claims for potential um sexual abuse types of claims. Our in our um amount premiums that we had to budget for this year was a little shy of a million dollars. um that has that has almost doubled what we had to pay for last year. Um and they're saying that we that should cover us for two years, but they don't know that for sure. Um so that might be something that we'll continue to increase and it's just one of those things that we'll we'll just have to continue um to monitor, but it is
088something that that hit us hard with this year. They did forewarn us and said this is what we think you should budget for and it came in a little higher than what they had told us to budget for but but that is included within our budget and our multi-year projection. So those are just some of the things that you know we wanted to share in terms of what we are seeing um and how we are um projecting our budgets going out. Yes. Can you share more about AB28 just because I want to make sure that people understand the context of that. That's not something that's La Mesa Spring Valley specific. It's something that's statewide and just what happened when that law was passed and how does that impact um uh uh liability claims and that
089sort of thing with insurance? Yeah. So ultimately um the law really is that um there um is no statute of limitations for when somebody can report a potential um sexual abuse type of claim against a school district. Um and previously the statute of limitations was I want to say it was like three or three years maybe um and then it went to there is none. Um so we have and and I'll share um just some of the things and this is another piece that we've been advocating for. There are claims out there in school districts by which the potential um perpetrator has deceased, yet there's still a claim against the district. And in some cases, school districts are having to go out and get a loan to pay for these settlement agreements because they can't
090pay for it without going bankrupt. And so, so what happens now is because these the because of the change in the law, there's this huge potential prior liability that could pop up at any given point in time. And so because of that, insurance premiums have continued to increase. So, on top of the fact that we're seeing insurance premium increases, that mil that little bit less than a million dollars that I'm referring to was an add-on on top of what we have to do for our insurance premium increases. Um, one time, but well, I shouldn't say one time because it is ongoing, but it could fluctuate. So, um, like I said, last year was a little less than half of that almost million dollars, but ultimately that's what, um, this AB218 is. So there's there's been
091a lot of um conversations at the state level around what that looks like um and how it's impacting school districts. So that's ultimately what the what what we're monitoring and what what our reality is right now. And some of the actual cases, just to be clear about the, you know, someone makes a claim that has since deceased. Um there have been claims related to um uh this you know that have come about as a result of this law or not as a result but after the passage of this law um that had to do with allegations um going back to the 50s and 60s. Um and so then districts uh have no choice but to defend those cases and that's where the impact is. And in some cases, as you can imagine, there's no record
092of whether or not the district had insurance at that point in time or not. Um, and so like in our particular case, we have insurance through the JPA at the county office. Um, but then when you have like high claims like that, you have like an additional layer of insurance. And so a lot of these claims are going into that additional layer. So it's trying to identify if you have the additional layer and then some of those providers are saying nope show me the proof that you had that as an additional layer back in that time. So there's a lot of that because the burden lies on us to be able to share that um information. Uh so so one of the things that they're saying is make sure you have great documentation on um
093keeping record and files of that so that if something like that does come up um we're able to show proof. that where do you find you know that something that old with many changes in time and at one point maybe we were all paper and now we've gone electronic and where did those trans so it's it's a it's a lot but it is something that u more and more school districts are dealing with um you know as a as a condition now of just business go going forward and so it is um really increasing our budget on the expenditure side because of Uh, okay. So, I know that this is really small and um there is a um you have it within your file. One of the things that I really just kind of want
094to point out here is the Sachs documents really show a um view for budget adoption want you to compare and and that's what they have up here is estimated actuals to adopted budget. And the estimated actuals is how you think you're going to end the year um in comparison to how you're going to budget for the following year. Um and I I purposely didn't, you know, make this bigger or whatnot because I think it's kind of an odd comparison, but it's what the it's what the state has us do because really at the end of the day, it's really hard to compare um where you are in the current year versus where you're going to go because there's a lot of things in the current year budget that isn't necessarily in the adopted budget. So
095you might have one-time funds or one-time expenses that are within the current year that don't get budgeted in the second year. So it's a really hard comparison in that regard. But what what is important between the two is that the estimated actuals provides a projection of how you think you're going to end the year, which is your ending fund balance that then becomes your beginning fund balance for the next year. So that really is kind of the important piece um in my mind. And so I I don't spend a lot of time on that comparison because it's really hard to compare that in terms of apples to apples. Um but what we really want to ensure is that that estimated actuals really provides how we think we're going to end it which is how we
096then project we're going to um start um if you will which now becomes the projection for the future year. Um what I want to share here a little bit and we'll go into it a little bit later is um you can see that our 2526 budget on the unrestricted side. I'm going to focus a little bit on that. Um that red um negative 11 million that's our deficit spending. Um and if you recall we were at 16 million. We decreased by 6 million. So we should be at 10. But remember I shared with you that our special ed costs are increasing. So, while we should be at 10, we're at 11 because we do have higher cost um going into this budget year. I don't focus a lot on restricted because a lot of times,
097well, those restricted budgets are for restricted purposes and they really balance out um amongst its own um on a on a um routine basis. you see it negative right now is because they have some carryover amounts basically that they are spending down but that's normal for a restricted program. So I kind I have a tendency to focus on restricted because a lot of times the restricted is just spending down their ending fund balance and that's normal for restricted programs. Um oh and there I popped it up in bigger so you can see it bigger. Okay, multi-year projection. I know very small but here in a nutshell um what you'll see in um your multi-year projections is at the end of the day um like I shared with you um where are we in order for
098us if you remember at second interim we talked about how we potentially would need to look at another budget reduction um and and we are looking at another budget reduction. So, if you look at um um let me find it. It's on this page. Um if you look at um our reserve level, our what we are projecting will need to um cut um in order for us to meet our 3% reserve is um $2.7 million. And so that will similar to last time um as we were looking at our projections and where we are right now, we've already made that reduction going into 2526. Now we're looking at potential 2627 and um we'll use this time and the time before December when we bring forward our first interim report to identify what $2.7 million might
099look like. But that will get us to our minimum requirement of 3%. And then the district has had a um history of an additional 2% reserve on top of that. And so this gets us to that that 5%. Why is that important to have like an additional amount you might ask? I'll share. Um so the 3% is a requirement. We have to that doesn't even cover it covers less than two weeks of payroll. So So the 3% covers almost nothing, right? It looks like a big number, but it really doesn't cover, like I said, less than two weeks of payroll. That additional 2% is very helpful when you have situations like steam happen and you have to pay half a million dollars for an emergency that you didn't anticipate for. And so, so um and
100what was that situation that you're referring to? Oh, it we had um if you recall the electrical power outage um where we had to um fix all of that, but we had like temporary we had generators out there and things of that nature. So, it took almost a month for us to get that complete, but it cost us about half a million dollars. Um, and so it's it's that additional amount above the 3% that it helps us be able to do that because without it, we would go negative, right? Because you have to have the 3% at least. So, um, so, so that's where we are right now in terms of what does that, um, number look like. The 2.7 was not arbitrary. the $2.7 million is really the amount needed in order for us
101to get to that 3% in year three which are required to do um with that additional 2% um reserve that we've historically had um for the board add-on basically um so what we're going to be doing obviously like I had shared the state budget is not final yet we'll take a look at that um as I shared with you there are additional um one-time funds that um we anticipate pay coming in. They're restricted in nature. So, they we will add them to our budget. Once that's finalized, we'll bring that forward back to um the board for first interim. Could some of those one-time dollars help us? Yes, absolutely. We'll figure out what that looks like when we come forward back in December. Um and then um continue to do the work that we've been doing
102for attendance rates. Um and then um we'll where when we get to that point, we will have to identify what that potential list might look like similar to what we did this past fiscal year because at that point in time, we'll have to provide a report to the county office of education and bring back some very specific reductions that we'll have to um that we'll have to have the board approve. So, that's kind of where we are um in terms of like our general fund um general fund budget. Um, okay. I'm going to pause there before we go into Measure V, budget and project. So, does anybody have any questions there? I know it's a lot. Yes. Right. So, I noticed on one of the bullet points it says, "Continue the good work increasing attendance
103rates." And I was going to ask that at the last um presentation, too. Do we have a percentage or like how are we because I noticed we changed the system. So, now parents are getting the positive texts. Like, what does that look like? Yeah, we have noticed. We didn't get quite what we wanted to. So, we were hoping to get a 1% increase, right? We're not quite at 1%, but definitely have seen an increase overall. So, yeah. Okay, great. Any other questions? Yes, I have a few. So, I can go last because I have a host. Okay. Um, so one, a couple of my questions relate to the pages about the um planning budget factors and the previous two slides. So the two slides previous to that are the little bar charts showing the enrollment
104history and then the ADA and those have projected three years as well. And here we're showing a reduction in enrollment which correlates with the reduction in ADA but on the budget planning factors we're showing it evening out and then you also verbally said that we're planning for evening out. So are we planning ahead? Which one which one are we incorporating into? So let me explain this a little bit. So, when we're when we're looking at the planning factors, like at the end of the day, it it's a little more complicated than flat in the sense that it looks at a rolling three-year average for what our um LCFF formula like calculates. So, we use we use flat in the budget presentation because it's a lot less complicated. We're staffing, if you go to our enrollment
105page, we're staffing based on this number. So, the staffing is what we have. And then for our LCFF funding, it's based on a roll year. It's based on a three-year rolling average. So it's not as it's not as um finite as this number, this number, this number. Um so at the end of the day, we're staffing on this. And in our um LCFF calculator, we're doing it based on a roll year three a rolling three-year average, which it's kind of like it's a it's a little bit more than the flat that we're using in our planning factors, but it's like diff it doesn't match up exactly to this because of the rolling three-year average. Got it. Got it. Okay. Um and I realized I was looking at the enrollment. I was off a year on
106the enrollment for my following question. So that is not um don't have that question after all. Um and in terms of ADA, I feel like it's been we've definitely increased since I've been on the board. Like our ADA has definitely there's definitely been an increase and so that's like by a couple of percent at least I think you know almost 3% probably. Um which is definitely I think forward progress start. Yeah, I think it's it's about um almost 5% because we were just below 89%. Um coming out of the pandemic. So yeah. Um and which is fantastic. Like I Yeah, we fantastic. Yeah. Um and I know that that's like um Deian said in the previous presentation that that's something that parents were talking about at um the DACA um with the ABSB I can't
107remember which one 218 conversation. I know earlier in the year there was legislation going through the state that CSBA had backed um or had modifications to to support schools in kind of planning for potential litigation and um and and whatnot through that. Do we know if those made it through appropriations? I haven't paid attention to those. Yeah, I CASBO was in the same boat. think I think AXA was also um jumped on that bandwagon to help support because it really is impactful um to school districts, but at this point I don't I don't know where they have landed um in terms of appropriations or whatnot. Um, I just know that it's something it has been really difficult and we've tried to focus on the impact to current kids because it you look like a bad
108guy when you go in there and say we don't want to pay for this. Um, but it's not about not holding people accountable to what potentially might have happened. Um, it's really about you are asking us to hurt kids that are in the system now for something that happened 20, 30, 40 years ago. And so that's kind of been the argument. Um, so at this point, I haven't heard anything more of where that's gone. Um, and and that's why they're telling us just continue to budget for what you're budgeting for. Um, and we'll see what happens, but nothing that I know at this point in time. Cool. Yeah, I know Figmat had a really good like long list of recommendations and good thorough report on kind of all of the different impacts that this could
109have. So, um uh but I know that there's a lot of hesitation from some um a lot of the um legislators. So, yeah. Um and and Fikmat got um hit a little bit with that because it they were making it look as if it was like we were trying to side on, you know. So it it's a difficult conversation. Um but one of course that I think is is worth, you know, continuing to advocate for because we are talking about things that might have happened many years in the past and it's impacting our students today. So um and then my last question is just generally about the budget. I know that last year the year before when there was we were in an especially you know really did not know what was going on with
110the state budget. Um there had been and it might have been your predecessor that had said this, but there's a potential for um us you having to come back and like provide us with a essentially a revised budget based on what actually came out of um the both the federal and state budgets. Um are we anticipating that that could be a potential, you know, thing that happens this year? Because I know that both of those budgets are very questionable at the moment. Yeah. um depends. So they the when they want us to do it is when it's a material difference to our budget that we adopted. Um they don't typically have us do that for like one-time funds. Um but if there is something that is major then the county office may say yes, we
111want you to do a material revision and we would have to do that within 45 days of adoption. So then we would probably be bringing something forward I would say along with like the unodudited actuals if that was the case which would be in September. Okay cool thank you. Yeah I don't have a question just make a quick statement. So thank you very much for all your hard work. I mean I know we go through this been through this a few years now and I know you're there's a a big effort obviously with this last year and managing the cuts while trying to preserve jobs. Um we we you know I'll applaud you and your efforts for that as other districts are are cutting. I know we were getting emails saying save surgeon positions which
112inherently you guys are already I mean you are already doing that behind the scenes. So, uh, I think every year as we look at the when I first came on, there was a lot of comments I heard from parents of, uh, why do we have such a big reserve? And I've talked about with David all the time and, you know, though each year watching that reserve get get trickle down more and more, you know, it's like a little bit more to cover the the annual expenditures. It's, you know, I think I've asked that question last few years, like what do we do to how do you rebuild it? And then you know as we continue to look at the projection is going lower and lower and in a few years we'll be you know in
113danger of going negative without massive cuts. So hopefully the uh opportunities for you know onetime funds and improvement in the budget improvement in attendance and uh hopefully it's uh not too painful in the upcoming years as you guys continue to make it work to keep the the schools running uh and providing the services all the kids need. So uh we'll have to have a discussion of how you're going to do it. uh that I usually have asked the past is I hope that uh we can uh come together and you guys keep fighting for the schools and the students and the teachers and uh we can keep La Mesa, you know, running as well as it has been for my time in the district. Well, thank you. I just have two questions. um when the
114kids are designated as foster kids and then they're adopted, do they still do does the um district still keep the funds? Um are they still designated to keep to get those additional funds once they're adopted? Because I know obviously once they're adopted, they're still going to need services. Yeah. I don't know specifically the answer to that question. Deian shaking her head no because they're not no longer identified as foster year. I think once they're adopted, they're not considered foster youth anymore. Um, so it's through the year and then they're once that then they're be they become part of a home. So even though they're receiving services, they're not considered foster youth under the law. Oh wow. But I would also say that while we do get additional funding for students that are that are in
115specific categories, one of the things that we do here is really identify programs that help all kids. And so it it is probably just one of the many things that we do in the sense of it doesn't mean that we're not providing the services that we otherwise would provide. We might have less funding for it, but we still are looking at programs that help all students, not just particular subgroups, but obviously providing as much support to those students that need it. Okay. Yeah. I I know once they do get out of this, they still need the the help and actually it's more, but um I was just curious about that. And then um I also wanted to go over um once the claims for the district with the excess liability policy that now like everybody's
116trying to get and I'm starting to see a lot of districts um asking for those quotes. But the other big one are we budgeting for this is one that I've seen a lot of districts ask for the cyber liability policy. Um, I know the the premiums have gone like there was one that was like $3,000 and this company came to us and now um I had to do a premium contract today and it went from 3,000 to $47,000. Like it's like out of control. Yeah. I don't know if that's something within the budget for those type of policies. It is. Yep. Um and and personally I have had to use it in another district twice um in one year. Um and it was a great benefit. great benefit. So, it's worth it. It's worth its
117money in gold. But you're right, they have increased. So, I think it's doubled over the course of the last two years. And I don't quote me on this, but I want to say it's like $20,000. Um, but we have like all the they break it down by the type of insurance that we have. Um, and and if we ever have to use it, there's a lot of things that come with it, like a cyber security coach that walks you through how you might be able to um mitigate what might be happening if somebody's asking for ransom or things of that nature. There's a lot of stuff that happens with that, but yes, there has been an increase. At one point in time, they were talking about um whether or not they were going to continue
118to fund it. Um, but that's one of the things that the county office is doing is they are requiring because it's what the cyber security companies are looking at. They're requiring everybody to do multifactor authentication. And that's one of the things that's helping them um be able to continue to provide the service. Um because if you don't have that, you're not even doing your due diligence and making sure that you're protecting what you have. And we have that here in our district. Okay, perfect. Okay, that was but we have seen increases. Yes. Yeah, that that's what I'm seeing now that I'm in on the commercial side of the insurance and I have to do those contracts and I'm like property and liability insurance has increased um as well. So there definitely has been some and
119yeah I I was going to I was going to share something but I yeah um I I'll I'll share it in an update. Um I just don't want to get ahead of myself but um at any rate. So yeah. Okay, any other questions there? Okay. So, now we're going to go into you've seen the last couple of um times we've done um measure V updates. So, I focus a lot on the general fund because that's really where our operating expenses are in the district. We have other funds as you see in the board packet um that are restricted in nature. Child nutrition is one of them. They pretty much run on their own. They are required to basically run to the positive. Um but we do have other um uh funds within the budget that
120are restricted in nature. We just don't spend a lot of time on them, but they are included in your budget. They do balance amongst themselves. One of those is for our Measure V program. Um and so we want to provide a budget update on that. Um and then we also want to give just a little update um as it relates to just some of the projects that are happening. Um and Dan has been chomping at the bit to do a presentation. So, I'm going to have um Dan come up and just give you an update. Some of you will have seen this before because we have our facilities oversight committee where we have two rotating board members that come and so a lot of this is from our last um uh FOC meeting. Um but
121just to provide you an update on where we are and then where we are with budget. It all gets included in the Sachs documents. I do want to point out if you're trying to run a comparison against the um budget with um as I'm looking at Brianna um with the budget of the projects that you see for the bond program and what you might see in Sachs the what we're what you're seeing in the Sachs documents which is those you know really small forms in the board packet those are the forms that we're required to use for the state you see one year so when so it's one year current year only what you see in the larger spreadsheet that will show you is really the the um project budget over the course of the
122entire bond program. Um so you're not going to you're not going to be able to match. Um and that's the difference. So I just wanted to share that information with you. So then I'll have Dan come up since he's dying to present. Dan told me beforehand that he would really appreciate if everyone did like a rating system of one through five on how well he does with the presentation. And afterwards you can just hold up your number. That'd be awesome. Thank you. Uh well I do want to thank Jay again for coming to uh you know present the annual report and he said something that has been true of this program and most of you have been you know through this updates more than the ones that I've given or seen u but largely major
123v does focus around uh perimeter security single point of access critical infrastructure and also controlled access to our sites. So, as we go through these projects, uh we have a number of updates um here at Lemon Avenue Elementary as well as Maryland Avenue Elementary. Uh again, single point of entry. We have the decorative metal fence going around the perimeter security. You can see some of the playgrounds that went up there uh both at Lemon Avenue and uh Maryland. uh as well. Uh one of the things that we will talk about a little bit later as we get into some of the budget numbers is that both of these sites we are currently exploring uh some ways that we will add a little bit of uh security in terms of visibility into the campuses especially at
124the kinder areas. Uh so I'll talk a little bit more about that as we get into some of the budget numbers. Um, we do talk a lot about just the single point of entry, but I like this slide because while it does update the Murray Manor, Northmont, and Fletcher Hills projects, uh, this pro these three pictures do an excellent job of highlighting also the accessibility improvements that we've had to make to our campuses. Uh, I got the pleasure to be at Murray Manor the first day that it opened up and see the students taking advantage of this new accessible path to travel. Uh, it it's a great thing. It just really warms your heart to be able to see students accessing our campuses um you know and have that independence of to themselves. Um and
125then as we move through again uh Parkway Middle School this c this building is just about complete at this point. In fact, uh tomorrow afternoon, our first delivery of furniture is going to be coming to the site and we'll be uh also in the last week and a half of school here having uh some of the admin staff do kind of a soft move and then we'll have the movers come in. Uh we're excited for a number of reasons to have uh the admin staff move over. one uh obviously this is a great benefit to this campus to be able to move uh a centrallylo currently administration building out to the perimeter of campus and create that single point of access that controlled access uh so that we just provide better safety and security for
126our students. The other reason that we're really excited is because as soon as they move out the construction crews are moving in. Uh we're going to come in and modernize that existing administration space and build three new classrooms here at Parkway Middle School. So we're really excited about that. That work will start here, as I said, just after uh the summer break starts and we look to finish that project up here towards the end of uh October, first part of November of this calendar year. And then this one uh I've got some pictures here. Uh it was mentioned earlier that we had a ribbon cutting uh at La Mesa Dale. And I think, you know, for me coming in and realizing as I go through some of the documents here in this district that this
127is the first new building in this district in over 20 years. So obviously we should take time to celebrate that. And we had a a good um a well attended uh ribbon cutting process. Uh and and that building makes a beautiful backdrop for this picture. But of course, I think it's also important to celebrate what this brings to this campus. Uh those of you that are familiar know that we had a pickup and drop off lane that went right through the middle of our campus. Uh this parking lot and the queuing for off streetet um pickup and drop off is a huge improvement to the safety for our students that are getting uh picked up and dropped off in the mornings and afternoons. Uh so while it is a beautiful building and staff is enjoying
128it um you know it it really does uh bring uh uh it enhances the safety and security of this campus. Uh I did mention earlier that we have some things that we're required to do in terms of accessibility and of course those are a benefit to our students. One of the other things that we're required to do that benefits us all uh as we do new parking lots, we are required to include EV charging stations. And so with La Mesa and Rolando, uh we have a total of 10 new EV charging stations. Uh since the last time we updated you, um both these uh they're it's an open network, so it's something like a charge point or something that you can uh have an access card. Uh these are powered up and almost ready to
129go. We're still going through some of the programming just to make sure that uh we have all of the u online databases uh set up so that folks can start signing up and using these. Uh also one of the things that we've done a number of projects a number of improvements is as part of Measure V are playground improvements. uh since the last time that you were updated here at the board level for uh playgrounds or for measure V, I'm sorry, uh we've installed six new playgrounds across the campus and we have four more that are opening soon and we've done a number of the turf overlay projects. Uh for those of you that have seen some of our sites, some of the poured in place, the Tina likes to call the squishy rubber surface
130uh was in u disrepair. So, we've been able to, you know, basically make good use of that uh by repairing it and then overlaying it with a turf product. That one uh increases the accessibility for students that are going to the playgrounds, but it also enhances the fall protection at all of those playgrounds as well. So, as we transition kind of looking at a little bit more of the projects that are getting ready to start this summer, uh the first one is a small project at Loma Elementary School. Uh the water district is requiring us to upgra upgrade a uh backflow device for our fire main u system. So essentially what we have right now is an underground vault with a backflow device in it that is not very accessible and it's hard to maintain.
131Uh what this project will look to do is um bring that backflow device out of that vault and place it down on the uh Cali I think it's sorry Vonita uh so that it's accessible and easy to maintain and also has the double check valve requirements that the water district needs. Uh other projects that are starting in fact they've already started to mobilize at this project. done walking the site tomorrow with the principal just to make sure that as we get ready to mobilize. Um we're staying out of the way for promotion. So we're having a walk to tomorrow morning. Uh but what we're uh looking for in this project, it's actually phase two of a larger project that took place at steam. And the project was kind of split into two phases for a
132couple of reasons. One of the big ones though was uh as we worked with the division of state architect to make sure that we had right sized the scope within uh both our project uh needs as well as the timeline or the budget. Uh but we also wanted to make sure that we tried to um line this project up with summer so that we could do the majority of the work when the students are here. So this is the beginning of phase two of the steam project where we're looking to upgrade the basketball courts that you can see there. we have throughout our district expansive soil. Uh and over time it just really, you know, does a number on our asphalt and you can see that in the picture. We're going to grind all of
133this up, bring in new soil, relay the asphalt, and have new basketball courts uh there in the kind of lower left of the bigger uh area on that uh upper left picture. We're going to also bring in some outdoor PE equipment for the students there. And then I've highlighted just a little section of the locker room uh because we will be making some ADA improvements to the restroom. So also we want to talk a little bit about our projects that are both in planning and in transition. So um the first one we have here in big letters the education center uh being on hold. And I'll get into a little bit of the Did is that where that came from? Um, so as we look at some of the other projects across the district, and
134I think Jay mentioned this and a couple others have tonight, there's always more need in a district than we have resources. So, as we're looking at security and safety, a couple of the things that we've noticed is that there are probably ways there are ways that we can directly impact student safety um, a little bit more than this particular project. So, we're looking to place this project on hold for the time being. Um other projects that we're looking to bring forward though are uh room signage. If you walk through some of our campuses, um they're either multiple signs or not signed well enough. Uh so in addition to the building signage that we're already doing, we're going to look to do some room signage across the campuses. Uh we're going to continue to do more
135playgrounds and surfacing um mostly turf overlays over uh playgrounds that uh could use the fall protection and the accessibility. And then as we mentioned, a lot of this uh some of the projects for this program have also been around critical infrastructure. So there's some irrigation control upgrades that will really benefit our district in terms of just the usage of water. Water costs are extremely high. If we have leaks, we don't necessarily know until we come in the next morning. These systems will help us control some of those uh deficiencies that we currently have. So, as we look at some of those projects that do have a more direct impact on student safety, two of the big ones that have come to our attention through conversations with principles and other staff throughout the district uh are
136both Murdoch Elementary School and LMA Elementary School. Uh if you've been to Loma Elementary School, it might not be quite as drastic as La Mesaale was by driving through the middle of the campus. Uh, but you'll notice the the pickup and drop off lane actually does drive through the playground to where students are on the wrong side of the pickup and drop off lane if they're in the playground or vice versa. Uh, so while this image is just conceptual in nature at this point, uh, one of the things that we're proposing to do is make parking lot upgrades uh, both to LMA and Murdoch. And again, conceptual there on the left as well, but the idea would be to add some additional parking and improve the pickup and drop off lane uh there at Murdoch
137as it gets really congested and there's a lot of um there's a lot of vehicle traffic crossing with foot traffic and it's um definitely could be improved in ter from its safety perspective. Uh just as a side note, uh I am meeting with a traffic engineer on Thursday to take a look at this project. So that'll be kind of the uh initiating factors for this project. So, I mentioned that we were going to talk a little bit later about some of the budget numbers. I'm not going to ask you to try to read that. We conveniently provided an enlarged version. So, just real quick, I'm going to go through kind of the three columns here. uh the adopted budget from from December is the budget that you saw last year. And this one is the
138updated budget that we're proposing tonight. And then this third column, I'm going to kind of live in this third column for a few minutes. Uh just as we go over kind of the deltas. And I'm not going to go through every single number. Uh but I do want to invite your attention to almost at the bottom here with Lemon Avenue. There is a project there is a um an item on the board agenda tonight to talk about some of the additional fencing and privacy screening that we talked about at Lemon Avenue. Uh so this is a budget adjustment to help offset some of the u cost of that project. Um and then again kind of living in that third column you'll see there's about $500,000 coming back from projects that are closing out uh there
139from bundle D. And then in bundle E you see a lot of no changes uh as we start to close out Murray Manor, North and Fletcher Hills. you'll see those uh have some project savings hopefully as well coming back in a future update. And then Parkway because it won't finish until uh October, November. It'll be later this calendar year, early part of next year that we'll see some of those adjustments there. Um we talked about infrastructure projects. So there are some budget increases here. Um the little over 560,000 that we're talking about for additional signage and irrigation controls. Uh there's an additional $2 million that we're looking uh to do the accessible playground surfacing and the new playgrounds as well as the about $530,000 for the water district required uh fire main uh backflow pre
140updates. And then I really want to focus on this next bundle of three uh where it starts with the education center. Uh what we're showing here in these next three numbers is that we are essentially defunding this project with the exception of some of the planning that we've already looked at just to study uh what does need to be done with this building. And just because we're defunding or prioritizing other projects over this one doesn't mean that this need has gone away. The work that we've done to identify uh the work that still needs to be done at this building was critical to future planning. Um but at this time we're looking to uh reallocate those dollars towards the pickup and drop off and parking lot improvements at both Murray I'm sorry um Murdoch Elementary
141School and Lom Elementary School. And then the last two numbers I want to draw some attention to as well. And I'm going to jump back over to the first column now um because you've seen these numbers hover right around these numbers uh right around this level for the duration of the program. Uh and now you're seeing them change a little bit. And I want to just kind of briefly touch on why that's happening. So at the beginning of the program, we had $136 million bond program. We have aging schools. We have a lot of unforeseen. And so it's appropriate to carry project reserves and project contingencies because when we do projects like the infrastructure at Parkway, we don't know what we're going to uncover. When you're working in the ground, that's where all of the
142unforeseen and dirt is expensive coming and going. It's expensive to take away. it's expensive to bring in. Um, but as we draw closer to the end of this project, it is appropriate to start allocating that those dollars towards other priorities that the district has. And so you'll see that we've uh started to draw down on our program reserves and we've started to draw down on our program contingency as well. Uh we do still have some healthy reserves for the remainder of the projects that we do have and we will continue to monitor that. But as these rounds of projects that we're looking to do now uh start to come closer to completion, you will start to see us again address district priorities and of course with the ballot language um that we promised the voters
143that we would prioritize our projects uh upon, we will um validate those projects against that and bring uh future projects uh for your consideration. And I think that's the last slide I have. So, if there are any questions, um, I want to thank you for all your work. This is incredible. It's always incredible to see. Um, I think for me the returned project contingencies, like those were those aren't, you know, other than the 27 cents for security fencing. Everything else was like impressive numbers um that that were being returned, which is exciting. And then also being able to see that we are able to do more projects than we were expecting to do. Um you know adding these additional projects has been is not something that um I expected out of this especially knowing that
144we started this bond in 2020 when construction costs were going a little crazy. And so knowing that um like yeah, not only were we able to get everything done that you know all of these bundles that we set aside but do more things and that's you know really incredible to see. That's all. Yeah. Uh I think yeah really interesting looking forward to seeing some of these um improvements as outside the role of a parent school board member. I think there are certain campuses I I come across of of the roles like soccer coach AYSO that utilizes Dale. So, uh I get I got to see it unofficial when I go to games there last year and excited to see the additional changes. I did have a few follow-up questions. Um well, one near and dear
145to my heart is the Murdoch one. My my kids go there. Um, I think it's one of my the thing that get gets my blood pressure elevated the most when I when I go to pick up is the the safety concerns as you um um as you said I've been discussing with Tina and David for some time when it comes to the both parking lot but also the the the Conrad roads uh you know literally one time I saw a near hit of two families by a car not looking the right way as they're turning because it's a very congested busy street u street as people line up to pick up their kids and uh sometimes driving the wrong side of the road to pick up their kids when they're they're late at the park.
146So, uh I I do have a question. When it comes to the the the study, is that going to be the the financial responsibility of the district or is that to the local government when it comes to that study? I'm assuming the 4.5 million is related to the highlighted um both the dirt road that needs to have a retaining wall and parking lot changes. But that also include the road studying and changes that will happen. You're talking about the traffic stud. Yeah, that's going to be our responsibility. That in addition to the four 4.5 million or is that included in the 4.5? I think it's it will be in the 4.5. Okay. Yeah, because I know that that traffic study isn't highlighted in the pictures. I wasn't sure if it was incorporated or not because
147it really focused on the parking lot in your picture and then our discussion during the last the last meeting we had. Um what is the timeline for I'm curious for these parking the projects I'm planning both LMA and Murdoch. Obviously it's probably the very early phase but I mean I'm assuming these are these will both have major impact on the drop off of kids. Uh so it's like a one lane to get to both schools. I live by LMO my kids go to Murdoch. What's it what's like the projected ideal timeline for this getting done and what part of the the year is that the work going to be completed? Sure. So, it is a little bit tough. It's a little bit of a crystal ball to kind of predict where the project may go
148because we're just in the early conceptual stages. But to give you an idea, we are I am meeting with a traffic engineer later this week. I may have misspoke if I didn't say Thursday. Thursday is okay, perfect. Uh I am meeting with a traffic engineer out there Thursday so they can observe some pickup and drop off and general circulation from that uh initial meeting with the traffic engineer. He may want to have additional observations. Um but they will also make a number of recommendations. Uh and also we will need to bring on an architect because any of this project uh not only will it require design uh but it will also require approval from the division of state architect. So when you think about you know a project from beginning to end that you know
149from conception to the end of a project uh you know realistically you are looking at you know 12 to 18 months um just because there's a a you know you're probably looking at four months just in review at the division of state architect. Yeah right u there's probably four to six months that going to be required for design in this project. Uh so you already we've almost burned a year just before we even broke ground. Right. Right. Right. And I was assuming the projection of when the actual work will be done will have to be in a time of year summertime. Right. Because of how the the the location of the work is going to be happening. School won't be accessible. I do have a question. I mean something I've talked to David and Tina.
150I also talked to Miss Megan over at Murdoch. What is if you're talking about a year and a half timeline, is there any any temporary steps you could do to increase safety at the school? It's a great question because yeah, I mean it's like I said, people almost getting hit pretty ridiculous as they sit there. Uh yeah, what can be done to kind of make it a little bit safer until the long-term solutions can be implemented or or built? No, it's a great question. And because we know it is going to take some time to go through design, one of the things that we've asked the traffic engineer to do when they're out observing the site is not only to make long-term permanent uh recommendations for the eventual plan, but to also give us some
151intermediate solutions that we can hopefully improve based on. So I don't know what they are today. Yeah. But based on what a traffic engineer would be able to evaluate and make recommendations, uh they do intend to do that with their traffic study. Okay, perfect. Um, I did have a another qu question. Maybe I missed it when we were having our our facilities meeting, but when it comes to the playground and surfacing the turf overlay, I guess I was looking at the budget. I think I saw a $2 million adjustment. Is that related to that that part of the budget, the the adjustment? Let me see where is Yes, there was about million dollar adjustment. That's referring to this project. So, that's correct. Is there going to be like study assessment determine obviously you go to
152the different playgrounds? I mean you did it in a very general term. Can you give a little more detailed explanation of what is going to be worked on and has that already been assessed and selected the schools that are going to be um worked on or is that something to be determined at a later date? It's a it's a little bit of both. So there are some sites that have already been determined uh as we look at doing the the turf overlays. Uh there has been an assessment uh that was done a little while back on all of the playgrounds that kind of prioritized um which ones uh could really just use, you know, turf overlay and which ones actually needed a little bit more work than than that. So um at the end of
153the day, we're going to have more playground need than we have in the $2.1 million budget. Yeah. Um, the idea is to make as many of the new playgrounds as accessible to as many students as we possibly can and then move through and make sure that uh accessibility and safety uh are are taken into consideration on the playgrounds that are in good enough shape to go ahead and make those improvements to. Um, at that point I'm fairly certain that we'll have uh either exhausted that $2.1 million uh or that may be one of these things that when we come back looking at uh what would we do with uh you know additional reserves there may be uh additional capacity there to to continue that uh progress forward on our playground projects. Okay. And if my
154last section related to this was I know you said that we discussed the last meeting as well the additional kind of uh security screens around the kindergarten area especially those that are near the school um kind of the street access. I mean obviously some elementaryaries are kind of pushed back to the back campus but some are like Lemon is right on the on the street. Is that is that funding already is that an adjustment or is that is it already built into the existing budget? Obviously, a lot of these line items that we're talking about, the additions are are are adjustments to the budget. I'm not sure if I saw that when I looked at it. Is that already built in? Uh, so for for Lemon and Mer So, Maryland, we're we're doing a little
155bit of a two-pronged approach at Maryland because we have uh some some area that we can use planting. It's a little bit cheaper to create privacy screen with a green screen and planting and irrigation. Uh so that I think we're going to be able to capture within the budget that the project already had. Uh with Lemon, um the street on Glenn is or the sidewalk on Glenn is so close to the playground already, there isn't a strip of land there that we could plant on. So unfortunately the the only real option to create some privacy along was to do the privacy panels along the fence and those do come at a higher cost than planting does. um for some of the other projects. Um I'm not sure I understood the question. I just want Yeah.
156No, really the L with the one that with one we we specifically talked about. Do we have is that an part of an adjustment or is that already existing funds in the budget to pay for that panel? Y and any other projects that that might be applicable to outside the lemon. Yeah. So so to do some of the other projects that are already one of the reasons that we're bringing Lemon and Maryland up is because those are projects that are still ongoing. uh the projects that are already complete that may have that same condition, we would have to bring another project forward in order to do that. Okay. But but for the lemon specifically, it's part of the adjustment. That's correct. Sorry. No, you're good. Those are my questions. I just want to say I
157don't know whose idea Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know whose idea it was to put turf underneath the playground, but it was brilliant. Like it looks so good. It's at Maryland Avenue and it looks so good. It almost looks like I don't want to say tropical because that sounds really dumb in the middle of a giant sand field, but uh the kids call it the island now and it's really cute and so yeah, I think that was really smart and it's gravitate toward it too. It's so cool. Like when it goes in all of a sudden all the kids are just like sitting on the ground. It's so cool. So yeah, so that was really smart whoever came up with that idea. Yeah, I think that was Robert's brilliant idea if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.
158Yeah. I just have a um a quick question. I know when um the money for the bond was sitting, I know a lot of conversation was what what were you guys going to do with the interest that the bond had accumulated while the money was just sitting there? Was was that money already um factored into the updated budget? Yeah. Can I go back a slide? So they would always show it broken out and I was just curious having things broken out like separately anymore. Sure. So the original authorization for the bond was $136 million. So the delta you see between the 140,673,000 u that delta is the interest uh earned. Y one last question from me. I like got so excited about the numbers side of things that I like my we're two hours into
159this meeting. I my mind forgot that there was another portion of this presentation. Um the EV chargers at what is it? Rolando Laame Mesa Dale. Um are those parking lots available or open like after school is closed or are those gated off? So like can the public come charge their EV cars in our parking lots after hours? But to the extent that the gates are left open, they are available. Chargers can the public can use chargers now at La Mesa Dale for instance we do have gates that we close uh at that point that would be after hours they wouldn't be accessible to the public. Yeah. And then in terms of you had mentioned that those are like I I don't know if you said that they were charge points but or something like that
160are um are do we see any of the revenue from that or is it purely to whoever the manufacturer is? They're off of our meter. So to the extent that there's revenue now there's some revenue sharing because of the um platform that charge point has to provide in order to uh maintain that data but there is some revenue but it's it's not a lot not exciting. Okay cool and then yeah I'll echo what uh Nate said about the Murdoch parking upgrades. Both of my younger siblings went there and parking was always a pain and especially with the single point of entry now um you know not having the back uh entry open it yeah this will be this is very much so necessary and has been necessary for many many years and then um similarly
161the steam upgrades I remember um walking the site with a principal two or three years ago now um talking about you know their desire for um that upper uh upper field. And so it's exciting to see that we were able to incorporate some um some of these funds into that. So yeah, now I'm done. Dan, how long have you been in the district now? Uh seven. Yeah, a little over six months. I just think it's fantastic. Like your knowledge of the school sites um is awesome, you know? It's it's great. So, I just appreciate all your hard work. You know, it's clear that you um you know, really take it to heart and care a lot about the school. So, we appreciate it. Yeah. I just wanted to give a big thank you. And I
162get to see Lame Sedale every day. And I used to not see it. Like, I didn't move, but it was not something that I could see. And it just stands out. We were some neighbors new to the neighborhood, and I'm like, "That's the elementary like I'm going to go check it out." I'm like, "Yeah, you should go check it out." like that one right there. But just made such a huge difference. So, thanks. Okay. All right. Did you give him anything? Do anything. I I gave you this one, but it was before you did such a wonderful job. I just wanted to make you feel bad. Okay. So, we're on item 6A, which is an action item of board policy updates. Go for it. I'll move to approve the board policy updates. I'll second. Any
163questions or discussion regarding these updates? There's a lot of them today. I know. Okay. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. And that brings us to our business services consent items. I'll move to approve um item 7A. Any questions or discussions regarding these consent items? I just like to note that the um the early retirement incentive program that was a quite a bit of savings that we were getting from that and um that was an impressive number. Anything else? Okay. Um all in favor say I. I oppose. And that brings us to our um 7B the 2526 adopted budget. We don't adopt it this time though. So do we have the action? It's there is no adoption. Yes. So that's a mistake. It's just on here for fun. We can Yeah, for funsies. Um that'll
164be coming at the June 24th meeting. So we official meeting we can pull that item I guess from Yeah. Okay. Good catch. Thank you. So that brings us to educational services 8A which is consent items. I'll move to approve item 8A. Any discussion or questions regarding this item? All in favor say I. I. I. Next 8B is an action item for the extended school services the ACES waiver. You need an explanation. I mean I think I know what it is but everyone should know what it is. Brianna heard me explain this to the district parent advisory committee. The the long and short of this is that the schools that run an ASUS program with ELOP, which are I'm going to tell you the school sites, Braftoft, Highlands, Kemp, Lessa, and Steam have a requirement in
165ED code that means that the parents have to come in the morning 30 minutes before students would be allowed to attend for breakfast. So if breakfast say starts at 7:15 for the school, students have to get to the ASUS program by 6:45 or their attendance doesn't count and therefore they cannot attend the program. So there's afternoon attendance, but there's also morning attendance. And what that has become is a huge barrier for families because they want to be able to bring their kids to school or they want to come a little later or they want to drop off on their way to work. And so, um, when we discovered that this was an ED code provision that was creating a barrier, um, we decided we would apply for a general waiver request because it's not one
166of the things that are prohibited under a general general waiver request, um, to the state board of education to see if we can wave this requirement on behalf of our families. Our families at DACA said, "What can we do? How do we tell them how strongly we are in support of this?" Um, so we're going to try it. Um, we're going to submit it to the state board and see if they approve it. And if they approve it, what it provides is flexibility to our families. Yeah, I absolutely loved this when you presented it at DPAC and the response from the parents there of like, well, yes, we would like to do this obviously. Um, so with that, I would like to move to approve this um action. Any additional questions? All in favor say
167I. I. I. Next is an adoption of McLass dibbles as reading difficulties risk screener tool. This is the one they were piloting and this is what they agreed on. Correct. So we presented last month. This is the one that the committee recommends. Yep. I'll move to approve item 8 C. I'll second. Any questions? All in favor say I. I. And next we have 8 DN action item, the art and music in school annual report. This is just our annual report we present every year on Prop 28. I'll move to approve item 888B. Second. Any questions, discussion? All in favor say I. I. Next, human resources consent items. I'll move to approve item 98. I'll second. And as always, there are so many people on here. It is incredible. And this one's also the one that
168we do the ESY and you know, so thank you for all of these folks taking time out of their summer to um you know, teach for ESY. Any additional questions? All in favor say I. I. I. Okay, which leads us to our closing communications. I have a bunch because I was at everywhere I feel like this month. Um, so I wrote things down. Uh, it's hard to believe that this is our last board meeting before the end of the school year. Um, congratulations on everyone. You're almost done. Um, and I wanted to acknowledge that this is a stressful and uncertain time for many of our families. Um, there's a lot of growing concerns about immigration enforcement that's weighing on a lot of people right now. And um I'm really proud of the work that we've
169done with you know some of these statements that we've made and our resolution you know last month or the month before of you know everyone belongs in our schools and and that's really important for our kids to know and to feel. Um but all that said let's focus on all the amazing things going on in our schools. Um, I got to go to glow night at Lemon Avenue and the kids were all done up with very It was really impressive what they were able to do with the little glow sticks and the little connectors and all of the different things that they were able to make. Um, the La Mesa Police Department also had a presence there and it was um, good to see them as, you know, in incorporated into the community um, in
170a positive manner and they were decked out in glow bracelets as well and asked to take, you know, some back to the officers that were not able to participate. Um and all of the it was really cool that we have the AMS annual report this year because there's so much going on with VAPA in our schools. Um for the first time I was able to attend the Casadora choir concert. It normally follow fall falls on this board meeting you know the day of this board meeting. So um it was really cool to be able to be there in person. The kids were adorable. They did a medley of or a song in French which was so cool. Um, and then Parkway Middle School, um, had their first theater production in I think they were saying
171at least 20 years. And, um, they did The Little Mermaid, which is always an incredible, um, per performance, and so it was cool seeing all the hard work that was put into um, making that happen. Um, and then PTA reflections, I got to walk through that. Um, we got to see that today. Um, and last week Murdoch Elementary had their little art expo or something or I can't remember exactly what it was called, but I helped volunteer with putting up some of the artwork for that. And there's so much talent and creativity in our district. It's really incredible. Um, and you know, it's a real reminder of the power of art in our schools. Um, and then this month is Pride Month. It's June. Um, and so I was honored to participate in the city
172of La Mesa's pride flag raising ceremony um, last week. And um it was a beautiful reminder of the importance of standing in solidarity with our LGBTQ plus families, students, and staff. And especially right now when there's so many LGBTQ plus youth are facing harmful rhetoric um and policies across the country. And it's critical that we make our schools where places where everyone is safe and supported and celebrated. And so, um, looking forward, um, ne this Saturday, uh, city of La Mesa is hosting their flag day parade. Um, I know that Le le Lemon Avenue is going to be participating and so, um, come out and cheer them on. It's always a fun event. And then, um, next week, I believe, um, La Mesa Junth Foundation has pivoted from their normal festival that they hold and
173they're going to be hosting a financial literacy pancake breakfast on the 19th instead. And so that'll still be over at MacArthur Park. Um but it'll be a kickoff. They're going to be hosting some financial literacy classes for youth. And so it'll be um an opportunity to hear more about that and um and I believe sign up and and different things for that. Um and so I wanted to thank again thanks again to all of our students, staff, and families. And hopefully everyone has a joyful, relaxing, recharging summer. Um, and then I also wanted to ask um, not sure if everyone heard, but um, this past weekend um, former Lameisa Mayor Art Madrid passed away and um, he had been in a female figure in the community. He had been in public service for over 40
174years. Um, and so I was going to ask if we could adjourn in his honor tonight. Um, and so because he was such a big piece of the community. Excellent. Thank you. Does somebody else want to share announcements? I just want to say thank everyone for sticking around. Yeah. For the students, teachers, and staff, I hope you have a relaxing summer and recharge for next year. And uh yeah, that's it. I just want to say also um hope teachers, students, staff, everybody has a great summer and take time to um I know it's trying times and especially with social media seeing everything that's going on. Uh for me, obviously it's personal. I as a first um first generation immigrant um daughter, it's it's been very um it's been very difficult to see a lot of
175things that have been going on the last uh week. Um but the good thing is we had our daughter come down from uh UCLA before everything went down, so she's home safe. Um, but everybody just take a second. You know, I know things can get overwhelming and uh just recharge without your phone and social media and um everybody have a great summer and then I'll see everybody at ceremonies next week and Friday at La Presa. Yes, I'm definitely looking forward to um the eighth grade promotion that's coming up. That's exciting. And I wish everyone a safe and exciting end of school year and a great relaxing and safe summer. and we'll still be here. So, we will still be open. We are here. Mr. Superintendent. Yeah. I just wanted to share a few updates on
176things. Um first off, uh the school-based mental health grant that was um terminated in a notice that we received from the Trump administration. We've updated everyone on that. We submitted our appeal to that grant um termination uh last week. Was it last week or week before last? Week before last. Time is going. I don't know if it's going fast or slow. I'm not sure. Um but we've submitted that appeal. There is some hope that there may be granting of some appeals. Um just um we've heard that the administration might think that there's a message to be sent in granting some and not others. No idea. I know that they don't have any requirement to um respond or notify us either way, but um we're really holding out hope that that um you know the appeal
177is granted. We think that the work that we're doing around um our the work with our social workers, the support for our families, um our parent empowerment program, all of that is really powerful and we think it really um goes beyond political lines or anything like that. If someone would just stop and look um that there couldn't be anyone that would have a problem with that. So that's our hope. Um they're on that front. the National Education Association, NEA, um actually sponsoring a lawsuit um on this issue and they're really seeking to um require the administration to um come back and look at each of the grants that were um uh terminated and give um individual uh attention to each one so that they can ensure that whatever direction they go with it that it's
178based on uh how that grant is running on a per district basis versus it being sort of like a just cart blanch uniform um uh termination. Uh it's a good thing. Just want to say that we all support it. The district supports it 100% and hopes that they're successful in that. We hope that we're granted our appeal. We hope that all legal avenues are pursued in order to um restore that funding to to schools and school districts. Um I also just want to share, you know, with everything that's going on in Los Angeles and and just statewide um you know, all of the anxiety that people are feeling um sort of echoing that what um Manurva shared. Uh it's just it's it's really impossible for that not to spill over into our day-to-day lives. You
179know, anytime like, you know, it you wake up first thing in the morning, a lot of us, we pick up our phones and we read whatever articles are the articles that we, you know, typically look at first thing or, you know, right now it's it's it's hard. And um I'll just say like I know it's made me on edge and kind of like punchy with my team and that sort of thing. Um, you know, you just realize like you start wearing the sort of anxiety of of all. And I just go back to, you know, I do think that for us just as human beings, the best thing we can do is refocus on our kingdoms, like where we are, the people that are within our span of influence, and um, and just stand up
180for what's right. And um anyway, so I just the reason why I'm bringing that up is because it's the end of the year and um it's always an exciting time as we're going into summer, but it's always a stressful time, you know, and I think that the stress of the end of the year is just amplified with everything that's going on in the world right now. And just want to say I hope everyone recognizes that and so grateful to be working with people who have dedicated themselves to something that is the most important work there is which is shaping the lives of kids, you know. So, um, thank you to all of our staff. Um, the last thing I want to share is something that's kind of cool. Um, talk about something that hasn't happened
181in 20 years. Um Rebecca and I had a meeting with the with um Dr. A and our city manager um uh Gay Kamura. Um there used to be 20 years ago district city meetings with the board president and the superintendent and the mayor and the city manager just to coordinate, you know, and talk about the things that are happening and and all of that. So, we had our first sort of reboot of those and then I think they're going to be either quarterly or ever every other month going forward. And um you know, even like the Flag Day celebration and the parade and all of that, like we're able to just talk about like getting our social medias um connected and sharing and all and everything. So, it was a great meeting. It was so
182fun to hear about, you know, um kind of where things are at development wise in the city and and all of that. So, um yeah, and thank you all for staying here tonight and being here for this long board meeting. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's been some time. It's been a long time. Um are we good? Are you Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So at 8:33 we will adjourn this meeting in honor of former mayor Art Madrid.