001President Davis, we are now live. You may start the meeting. Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the February 25th regular board meeting of the Capistroni Unified School District. The meeting is now in session. The time is 5:03 p.m. Mrs. Hayes, can you please call the role? >> Trustee Castianos is absent. Trusty Pritchard >> present. >> Trusty Zinger >> here. >> Trusty Adams >> here. Trusty Jones >> here. Trusty Bulicus >> here. >> Trusty Davis >> here. Please note staff has revised the exhibit item 12B1 second reading board policy 1445 response to immigration enforcement. Trustees have been provided with the revision and copies for the public are available at the back of the room on the board's agenda website. May I have a motion to adopt the agenda as amended? >> Moved by trustee Zen
002>> seconded by trustee Adams. Mrs. Mrs. Haste, do we have any requests to speak for the adoption of the agenda? >> There are none. >> Thank you. Um, all those in favor of adopting the agenda, say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes. 601 to adopt the agenda. Mrs. Hayes, before the board recesses to close session, are there any requests to speak for a close session agenda item? >> There are none. >> Thank you. The board will now recess to close session to address the following agenda items. Studented readmission, two cases. Student expulsion, one case. Conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation, two cases. Conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation, one case. Conference with legal counsel existing litigation, two cases. Liability claim, one case, public employee dismissal, discipline or release, two cases. Please note,
003two cases. Item three, resolution number 2526-05C and four, resolution number 2526-06 C were pulled by staff. The board will now recess to close session. President Davis, the live stream is live. >> Please start the meeting. >> Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the February 25th regular board meeting of the Capistroni Unified School District Board of Education. The meeting is now in session. The time is 6:04 p.m. Mrs. Hayes, can you please call the role? >> Student board member Hansen, >> here. >> Castianos >> here. >> Trustee Pritchard >> present. >> Trustee Zinger >> here. >> Trustee Adams >> here. >> Trusty Jones >> here. >> Trusty Bulicus >> here. >> Trusty Davis >> here. >> And the pledge of allegiance. Dave Stuart, would you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance? I aliance
004to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you, Dave. And Mrs. Mrs. Hayes, can you please read the report out from close session? >> On agenda item 4 A, student readmissions, trustees voted 70 to approve staff recommendation on the following cases. Case number 202422. Case number 2025010. On agenda item B4, student expulsion, trustees voted 70 to approve staff recommendations on the following case. Case number 2026008. On agenda item 4 C, trustees gave direction to staff. On agenda item 4 D, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation, trustees voted 70 to approve staff recommendation on the following case. ADR case number 2026112. On agenda item 4E, existing litigation, trustees voted 70 to approve staff recommendations
005on the following cases. OAH case number 2024120147M and OAH case number 2025 090223. On agenda item 4F, liability claim, trustees voted 70 to approve the rejection of government claim number 2514114. On agenda item 4G, public employee discipline dismissal release. Trustees voted 70 to approve the staff recommendations on the following cases. Resolution number 252603 C and resolution number 25264C. This concludes my report. Thank you. We are now moving on to public comment. The total time for public comment is 20 minutes. Mrs. taste. Do we have any requests to speak on non-aggenda items? >> We do. Tonight we have seven students who will speak first and then we will allow for per board policy 13 adults following the students for a total of 20 speakers at one minute each if that's the board's desire. >> Thank you.
006Okay. We have a new system of folders to keep everything organized. So, I'm going to ask the students if you'll line up at the far exit door by by our security support in the yellow shirt. Evelyn Plamer will be be first. Lucy Day, Mila Schneider, Isabelle Schneider, Francine Glassman, Chase Kulic, and Sage. Those will be our first seven student speakers. Evelyn, please go ahead. >> Good evening, school board members and parents. I'm here tonight because our school is more than just a building. It is a stable environment for our most vulnerable students. We are being told that our school is being combined with the charter school. To make this happen, 70 special education students are being displaced and moved into a different facility. For students in special education, consistency isn't just a preference. It is
007a requirement for their development and well-being. These 70 Lobo students are being uprooted from their teachers, peers, and surroundings they trust. It feels as though the needs of private charter students are being placed above the needs of low elementary students who are already here growing, learning, and thriving. We ask ourselves, is this move being made for the benefit of the children, or is it being made for the convenience of a budget? I'm asking the board to reconsider this plan must prioritize the stability of our special education and keep our Lobo students where they are supported, safe, and at home. Thank you FOR YOUR TIME. HI, MY NAME is Mila and I'm a third grade student at Las Palmus. This is my sister Isabella. She is in first grade. I really love my school. I love
008my teacher and I love my classmates. School makes me feel safe and happy and I like learning new things every day. There are people at our school who help kids and families when they need extra help. They are there when someone is having a hard day. They help our school feel kind and strong and and be calmer. When we have enough help in our classrooms, we can focus better and learn more. If there are budget cuts, our school might lose some of that help. That would make things harder for students and for teachers. We are not just numbers. We are kids who want to learn and do our best. Please help keep Los Palma strong for me, my and my friends. Thank you for listening. Hi, my name is Lucy Day and I'm in eighth
009grade. I went to Lobo for elementary school and my little brother was in the Stars and Seals program there. Growing up at Lobo, being around students in special education wasn't unusual or separate. It was just part of our school community. We learned alongside each other, played together, and saw each other every day. Because of that, I learned how to be patient. I learned how to communicate differently. I learned that some kids need extra support, extra support, and that's normal. Even now in 8th grade, my teachers often ask me to sit next to students with autism or or other special needs. They know I'm comfortable and that I understand how to include them. I don't feel awkward or unsure. It feels natural to me because I grew up at Lobo. I also got to go to
010school with my brother. That meant a lot to me. I could see him on campus, check in on him, and feel proud of the progress he was making. It didn't feel like he was separate from the rest of us. He was part of our school. Bobo didn't just support students in special education. It helped create a community where inclusion was normal and that kind of environment shaped students long after elementary school. I hope you'll consider how important that is. Not just >> Thank you. We need to move on to the next speaker. This is Francine. >> Go ahead. >> Hello, my name is Sage. Hello, my name is Sage and I'm a student at Los Palmus Elementary. And >> sorry, technical difficult. Hold on, please. We want to get your name. Hold on. Go ahead.
011>> Hello, my name is Sage Show and I am a student at Los I'm a third grade student at Los Palmus Elementary and I think that Leticia helps bring um the community together through the students um the families and the teachers and everybody. Thank you for listening. My name is Chase Kulick. I'm a former student at Lobo Elementary School. My time at Lobo from preschool to fifth grade was incredible and heartfilled as I had a chance to bond and become best friends with both special ed and gened. During my years at Lobo, I didn't even know the difference between stars and gened. I realized how kids outside of Lobo treated special ed until well, sorry. I didn't even realize how kids outside of Lobo treated special ed until I transferred into middle school and I
012witnessed firsthand how cruel their kids could be. My Lobo peers and I continued to stay close together and stood up for one another as we transition through middle school. I hope you guys understand how Lobo like creates a community and has a strong bond. Our high school slogan at St. Clemen High is one town, one team. and sped and sorry I can't even talk right now a special ed is part of our team and now you guys have to ask yourselves what team you guys are part of and if you guys are going to join our TEAM me Sorry. Before you start the clock, if you don't if you don't don't mind um maybe pausing a little bit. These are my three kids at Lobo. He's the one that's going to be speaking. She's autistic,
013so she needs my help reading. So, if you wouldn't mind. >> My name is Winston. I got a bow. Please. Okay. We love Lo. >> Um, my name is Frankie. I go to Lebo. I start program. School is really hard. I have to work hard really hard, but teachers help her. I know that's where I belong. And that's where I belong. And now I'm being told I don't. Do any of you listening have to me have a child that is like probably not. So you never understand what you're doing to me, to my friends, and to my students. >> Shame on shame on you. >> Lobo is WHERE I LEARNED. GOOD JOB. NEXT, I'll ask the adult speakers, the next 13 speakers to line up along the wall in order. And please wait till I
014call your name so we can get you in the right order um at the podium. Fimi Pringer, Amanda Plamer, Jill Day, Katie Stewart, Jeffrey Boyd, Sarah Olsen, Alex, Roger Perez, William Razer, Sarah, Anne Burgerer, Miranda Felding, and Jamie Hansen. Bimi Pringer, please come forward. >> Good evening trustees. My name is Fem Kapa Ponger and I'm a bilingual parent at Los Palmos Elementary. I have two children in the Spanish dual immersion program. My daughter started in kinder in a class of 24 and is driving now in second grade. My son is currently in kindergarten in a class of 32. I also volunteer in his classroom and see firsthand how much individual attention young learners need to truly understand what they're being taught, also in a foreign language. In kindergarten at Los Palmas, uh instruction is largely
015in Spanish for most of the day from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on most days. And students are learning how to read, do math, and about their classroom routines while also acquiring a new language that requires frequent checks for understanding. And it becomes very difficult when teachers are in front of 30 or more students. Las has very stable enrollment and consistently high demand for the Spanish immersion program. As you make staffing decisions, we respectfully ask that they remain at levels for teachers. >> Our next speaker is Amanda Plamer. Amanda, go ahead. >> Good evening. My name is Amanda and my child attends Lobo Elementary. I am disappointed by the lack of transparency regarding the charter school colllocation. You campaigned on parental involvement, yet Lobo parents were kept unaware while the charter group was fully informed.
016If not for a social media leak, we still wouldn't know today. The decision displaces 70 of our most vulnerable special ed students. My family would have preferred combining the traditional schools. Instead, we were told Marbleheads programs are too important to disrupt, even with fewer students than ours, and that the threat of litigation from the charter is more important than taking our special ed kids away from their friends. I am asking this board to make the decision a public agenda item at your next meeting. Share the analysis conducted behind closed doors. We deserve to know how you arrived at this decision and how you will seek parent input before making decisions that impact our kids. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Jill Day. >> Hi, my name is Jill Day. I'm a mom of five
017kids. My youngest two are at Lobo now in third and fifth grade. My son Pete is the one that's in fifth. He began the SEALS program when he was just three years old. He then continued into STARS. Today he is fully mainstreamed in gened and thriving in fifth grade. But we had when he was when he was three, we had no idea what fifth grade would look like. We didn't know if he would speak confidently in class. We didn't know if he would make friends. We didn't know if he would feel capable and independent at school. What we did know is that he needed support and he needed stability. Stars and Seals didn't just provide services, they provided consistency. They provided teachers who understood him, routines he could rely on in an environment where he
018felt safe enough to grow. For children in sped, safety and consistency aren't small things. They are everything. Those programs gave Pete the foundation to build skills slowly, confidently, and without fear. They gave him trusted adults who saw his strengths and believe in his potential before he could skate himself. Because of that foundation, he was able to transition to new gen ed and thrive in fifth grade. There are families in those programs right now who are standing exactly where I once stood. >> Miss, our next speaker is Katie Stewart. >> Good evening board members and superintendent. My name is Katie Stewart and I'm the PTA president Clarence Lobo Elementary. I'm here to ask for transparency. The decision to locate colllocate a charter school at Lobo was made in a closed session without opportunity for public comment.
019Data used to make this decision has not been shared publicly or with our families. Major decisions affecting an entire school community should not occur without transparency and public engagement. We respectfully ask the board to place collocation at Lobo as an agenda item for the next board meeting so it can be discussed publicly. Transparency comes before decisions that impact families and students. Thank you for your time and thank you for your service to our students. Our next our next speaker is Jeffrey Boyd. Good evening, trustees. Uh I'm a parent of two students at Lobo Elementary School. I was shocked and alarmed to learn that not only was our school colllocating with the charter school, but that our special education students at that school were being transferred to a different campus. My kids are in general education,
020but some of their friends over the years have been people in special education. And it was only after way later down the road did they learn that those kids needed additional assistance and help. But on the playground, they were best friends and thought of them as no different than anyone else. I'm concerned about the lack of advocacy by this board and the uncertainty regarding what's going to happen to Lobo after this. We were found, we found out about this decision after the charter school parents were told. We also um were told that uh uh there would be uh superintendent meetings and the superintendent did not show up to those first two meetings. We then asked for specifically um the public records with respect to their request for this and we're told that we cannot have
021that because it could be subject to litigation. We would ask for transparency. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Sarah Olsen. >> Good evening. I'm the mother of three Lobo students and a public educator of 18 years. We understand that declining enrollment is impacting schools across the district and we know that difficult decisions must be made. But how we make these decisions and who carries their impact is what really matters. For 31 years, Lobo has been more than a school. It is an inclusive community serving a large population of English learners and more than 40% special education students, including those in the Stars and Sills programs. Many of these students, especially STAR students, have called the Lobo their home since they were in preschool. They have found safety, consistency, and belonging there. To consider
022moving the STARS program to make room for collocation is not just a logistical decision. It is a decision about who bears disruption. It asks our most vulnerable students to give up the campus that has given them safety, consistency, and dignity. Public education carries the responsibility to protect those who have been historically marginalized and not make them the first to absorb the change. We must protect these students and find a solution that does not require displacing them and dismantling our community. >> Our next speaker is Alex Hi there. I'm here to speak on behalf of my son Lincoln. He's a third grader at Lobo in the STARS program. He has been kicked around this district. This would be his, if he moves, would be his fourth school he has gone to, which is unacceptable. He is
023not something that can just be moved around. And it's not been my choice and it's not been my family's choice to where he goes. But yet he has been moved constantly, constantly. And we finally found a home at Lobo where his younger brother goes and he's thriving and happy. Please don't separate my children. Don't separate them. Don't separate him from his friends. It's harmful and impactful. There's other ways we can go about this. So please hear us and please open this for a discussion. We We want to be heard. Please don't do this to my son. Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Roger Perez. Roger Perez. Hello. I'm a proud parent of students at Bathgate and New Hart. At the meeting in January, while discussing the bullying policy at approximately 1 hour, 5 minutes,
024and 37 seconds in the broadcast, Lisa Davis said, quote, "Words matter, actions matter from adults and students, and the best move forward is to focus on helping to make things right and helping teach how to build and repair and mend relationships as you move along in life." I completely support every word you said in this quote. So Lisa, tell me why when Trusty Balaka said the N-word at the March 2025 meeting, your words and actions did not call for accountability or mending the relationship with the community. Instead, Lisa Davis and others use CUSD students and adults from outside of her community to defend Judy and attempt to sew misinformation at the April 2025 board meeting. Then Lisa Davis, Judy Buckus, Jennifer Adams, and Lisa Zolinger voted against Trusty Pritchard's request to agentize resolution for censure.
025>> I have I have gifts for you. Talking our next speaker is William Razer. Hi, I'm a teacher in the district. In 2022, the CUSD school board denied the CRLA charter, citing 11 specific reasons. One reason was our insufficient plan to achieve a balance of student demographics similar to CUSD as required by EDC code. Most recent school data shows that the charter's e population is less than 1%. Whereas CUSD's EL population is 10% and Lobos is 18%. As we're cutting uh bilingual leaison, if CUSD can share their best practices and resource with the charter to help them increase their EL population uh per ed code to something similar to CUSD, that would be appreciated. Um as a publicly funded schools, both charter and district, we have an obligation to educate all students, not just a
026select demographic. On another note, I'm a teacher at St. Lia High School and we rely on our librarians and our bilingual liaison every day. They are essential. They're heroes. Um, please keep funding them. >> Our next speaker is Sarah Otaki. >> She was not in line. >> Okay. Anne Burgerer. Go ahead. >> Good evening everyone. My name is Anne Berger. I'm a proud CSD educator and a proud parent of two CSD graduates. I came here tonight just to share with you the amazing things that are going on at my school site, Asencia, out in Rancho, Miss Viejo. But as I sat here and listened to the amazing kiddos from Clarence Lobo Elementary, I kind of pivoted my decision to talk and to also request the board to reconsider this relocation of the students from Lobo
027and the collocation of CRLA. Just like the previous speaker mentioned in 2022, that school was not approved by the our board and I believe that we need to uphold that and we need to put our students of Capistron Unified as a priority and put them first as a mother of a person with autism, our special ed education students should be our utmost priority to make sure they are in an environment where they are protected, supported, and encouraged. And I believe they need to remain at Lobo. Thank you, >> Miranda Feling. Miranda Felding. >> I'm Miranda Fielding from Marblehead Elementary. Um, we had a similar situation a couple years ago and we kind of knew after us Lobo would be on the chopping block. Um, the tagline for the advocates of CRLA have always said it's
028all about parent choice. Lisa, you've told me that it's about parent choice. Um, it's all about offering more choices for the parents and when but when marblehead or level parents ask for advocacy and helping with and concerns about the collading co colllocating, the tagline is very different. It has always been we are just putting friends and friends together and parents need to get out of the way. That was a direct quote. That has been told to my family. That has been told to many of my other friends. It has been repeated many, many times. And I think that is a grand hypocrisy to be only advocating for CRLA but telling parents of our small and but mighty schools to get out of the way. >> Jamie Hansen. Hi, my daughter is in her final year
029at RH Dana and I'm here tonight simply to say thank you. Our family chose RHD Stana because of its dual immersion program. But what we've experienced has been so much more than academics. The school has given my daughter the gift of being part of a truly multicultural multilingual community. She has learned not only another language, but also how to navigate different perspectives, appreciate different cultures, and feel at home in a diverse environment. That is an incredible foundation to carry into the world. As she finishes her final year at this very sweet and special school, I find myself feeling deeply grateful for the teachers, the staff, the leadership, and the families who make this community what it is. And I would like to also specifically acknowledge Mari Soul, a bilingual community liaison. The sense of connection
030and inclusion that defines this school doesn't happen by accident. Mari Soul helps make that possible every single day by building bridges between families and the school with warmth, care, and dedication. RHD Dana is a special place and we are so thankful to have been part of it. Thank you. We will add there was one absent so we'll add one speaker for oral communications to meet the 20. Galina Connory are you still here? Galina. >> Okay we'll move on. That was the end of oral communications. Thank you. And we'd like to recognize student board member Hansen to present her comments. >> All right. Um today I wanted to just highlight some exciting things going on at all of the high schools in our district. Um starting with um my school, San Juan Hills High School. Recently,
031we just had a multicultural fair fundraiser and two clubs per uh represented like each country with over 50 countries represented. Um we had a mariachi band and students could purchase food and participate in cultural activities. It was a really fun way to bring our school together and just have um a fun activity up in the quad and get some good food and for everyone to hang out. So, it was really a good experience. Um over at San Clemeni they're doing battle of the bands where all the bands on campus get to play in the quad at lunch throughout the week and at the end of the week everyone votes for their favorite band. So that's one thing over at St. Clemeni. Um over at Kappo they're having an annual um air guitar event. They're going
032to have two shows um one at 6 p.m. and one at 8:00 p.m. on March 13th. And the theme is is it fair guitar? At to Sorro, they are hosting a fill your cup event where every month they're offering students a giveaway reward where they can bring their cups and receive they received at the beginning of the year and get them filled with a prize related to the month during lunch such as lucky charms for March. Um, and then they did Valentine's candy in February. And then over at Dana, I believe they're doing they just did their ASB blood drive where students could sign up to donate blood and get a $10 In-N-Out gift card. they got around 40 signups. So, these are just some of the amazing things going on at our schools and
033it's just such it's just such a blessing to be able to see all of these things going on that our students are participating in. And as a high school student, I can say that I'm just so grateful for our district and all the opportunities we have. And um yeah, that is all I have for today. Thank you. Okay, we're moving on to 11A, the district state of the budget. This is an information item and no board action is necessary. I'd like to recognize Chris Brown, superintendent, to present the item. >> I'm going to present from down. >> Perfect. Thank you. and millions of people watching at home. Um, you know, I often tell people I love my job, but that doesn't mean that I get to make only positive decisions all day, every day. Um,
034and unfortunately when we talk about budget, there's always those trade-offs, right? There's only so much that we can control and we have to make decisions that that um, frankly stink sometimes, right? And and we have to make decisions that affect people and their livelihood and that doesn't make them feel good. It doesn't make us feel good. Um, but we also can't go broke and we have a fiscal uh, responsibility to the district. So, uh, later tonight you'll be voting on, uh, some possible layoffs, uh, which is always a tough topic, and I thought it'd be good to see the state of the budget and understand the pressures that we're under as we look towards a future where we're fiscally stable. Um, and I always start with uh, unlike most industries, we don't get to look
035at revenue and expense. We only get to look at expense. The revenue is not determined by us. It's determined by the state of California. So there's nothing we can do to increase revenues or change the amount of money we have. We have a set amount of money and then we have to figure out how to best spend it. Uh that doesn't mean uh that we don't uh do we don't get to do everything we want unfortunately. So as we go through this today, I really want to talk about some of the pressures that are on our budget. I want to review what the governor has said and the governor's proposal and how it's going to impact CUSD specifically with the funding formula, our enrollment in ADA, uh as well as special education funding. And then
036I'm going to talk a little bit about why this feels the way it feels right now. Uh when some of these trends that we're going to talk about have been happening for for years and nearly a decade, why do things have to change in the last few years and why didn't they have to change earlier? And so that looks at COVID funding, staffing trends, uh and and what it means to be a district that has 12,000 fewer students than it used to. Um, so every year our funding is determined by the governor's budget proposal and then the negotiation that the governor has with legislators to end up with a final budget. And and it's an interesting process. We have to predict our budget years out. In fact, we have to submit a three-year budget, and
037I'll talk more about that later, to the county to get a qualified budget. But I don't know what the governor's budget's going to be for next year, right? And so in January, the governor makes a proposal. that proposal will get mitigated. So, I'm going to say things um and I'm going to say right now, put a pin in this. This is to be changed. In fact, I can almost promise you that the numbers I give you tonight will not be the numbers that come out in the governor's may revise, nor in the June final adopted budget from the state of California, uh as well as the budget trailer bills that then change what you must do with some of the funds that they're going to give. Um but for example, every year the the federal
038uh indicators calculate COLA, the cost of living adjustment. Uh this year, COLA, the governor is proposing to fully fund a COLA of 2.41%. That is substantially lower than the estimates were over the previous few years. So the estimates that we used when we submitted our three-year budgets and every other district, uh the COLA came in lower. Um so that's about $2.7 million less revenue we were going to have were going to have ongoing because COLA compounds on itself each year. Uh on the flip side, the governor has proposed to increase the base grant for special education funding uh by $81 per student. Uh so this could mean a $3 million increase to ongoing revenues for CAPO. Uh in addition, there's going to be a onetime block grant which hopefully will be in the realm of
039$19 million. Uh and I say I I stress that it's one time. So there's a big difference for us in budgeting between onetime dollars and ongoing dollars, right? in terms of what we can do with it and when we know it's going away. And right, we can fund things like uh resources out of one-time money, but it's hard to fund long-term staff out of dollars you only get in one year. Uh and the state's position is that you should spend the money you have now for the kids you have now to the extent possible. Um and then hopefully we'll get some uh the learning recovery block grant. We will get two final payments as well as hopefully Clark will get the deferral payments at some point which will add more money. Um, but when I
040say deferral payments, the reason they're not on here is because they're money they just didn't give us last year that they were supposed to give us that they'll now give us in the future. Um, however, he's also proposing things like in Prop 98 $1 billion for community schools, and that's a great program, but it's not a program that almost all of the schools in capital qualify for. So, it's a billion dollars more towards education, but it's not a billion dollars that Kappa will have access to. Um, last year he withheld 1.9 billion. This year, the governor's proposing to withhold 5.6 6 billion. So, in other words, after you get all your funding, then he would defer $5.6 billion with a promise to repay it eventually. Um, and and so far he has, but but that's
041going to be a legislative issue. Historically, they've not been able to defer without taking legislative action to to suspend Prop 98. They did not do that last year and they still deferred. Um and then we'll see what the May revise says in terms of monies because uh his revenue projections are much higher than what the legislative analyst office are producing for revenue. So he's predicting that the state will get in more money than other entities are predicting. And if the revenues come in closer to the lower end, he'll have to revise his his budgetary allocations as well as what Prop 98 will get. I go out and I do coffee chats with parents and invariably one of the things that comes up is budget. One of the things parents are really, really, really shocked to
042learn usually is that every school district does not get the same amount of money per kid. Um, I believe the governor recently said something like California will allocate $27,000 per student. Was that the number he used? $27,000 per student statewide. That's a fabulous number. That is not what Capistrono Unified will get per student. So, this is an example of where we are in Orange County in terms of how we get uh money per student. And in in the coffee chats with parents, I often talk about how that funding formula works and why we are one of the lowest funded districts in the county. And and ultimately, if you're the lowest in Orange County, you're some of the lowest funded districts in the state of California. So, you'll see that we get about 12,615 per student.
043Um whereas a district like Santa Ana gets $165,000 per student. In fact, if we were to get Santa Ana's funding, it would be $151 million more into our annual budget. Um, and then Laguna Beach and Newport Mesa are basic aid and they get substantially more money. So, I think people are are often think that if well one district can do something, why can't another district do the same thing? And the reality is we're not funded at the same level. And so, we have to make different choices based on the funding options that we have available to us. Um, and and I would strongly recommend that if people have a problem with this, um, the state of California should hear from you. And I just killed any political career I would have ever had, but that's
044fine. I'm not looking for one. The other thing that impacts revenue is of course enrollment. So, one of the things I keep on this chart is the funded ADA. The ADA is is basically how the state calculates how many kids you have to fund. And someone might say, um, we have more than 38,000 kids, and we do, but the state uses two factors, and I'll talk about what those are to get the number of students. Um, so, as you can see, we're the biggest district in Orange County, and we're the 10th largest district in the state of California. Um, and I'm going to go through some charts. And what I will say is that the numbers might be different than numbers you've heard me say in the past. So, in the back of the room,
045I believe we put a handout and you should all have it in your in your binders. This is the actual census day number that the state of California uses each year. It just passed for us this year. Census day is in October. Um, but what I'll tell you is that we'll lose a kid tomorrow and gain three kids, right? The number changes dayto day. And also depending on where you get the number, it includes some groups and not others. So, please take the numbers as for illustrative purposes. And you may be like, "But that number doesn't match that number." The trends are exactly the same. And and I'm just trying to use this to help everyone understand how a budget gets calculated for us. Um, one of the things that all the districts in Orange
046County are now facing is declining enrollment. Uh, that is every single district in Orange County. Uh, as well as 98% of the districts in the state of California. Uh, and most districts nationwide. So, our enrollment peaked at over 52,000 students. And if you were here, uh, back in the period sort of from 1990 to09, you'll notice that the district got much, much larger in that period of time. People were moving to South Orange County. People in South Orange County were starting their families, having lots of children, and we built a lot of schools, and we became a very large district. But since that peak in '09, we, like almost every other district, have been declining in enrollment. So, from that peak, we were down about 12,000 students uh from where we were. And you can
047see that over that time, we've closed a few schools to try and to match on that. Um but not 12,000 students worth of schools. And so, I often get asked what's behind the declining enrollment and and really we use projections and our projections are very very close. And and it's because we use really good data and it comes from the hospitals in our area basically on how many kids are born each year. And the reality is there are fewer and fewer kids born. And when there are fewer kids born, fewer kids show up to kindergarten five years later. Um, and then as those kids metriculate through the system, you end up with less graduates. So right now we are graduating students who were born 18 years ago when the birth rate was high. And we
048have fairly large graduating classes. And I'll demonstrate this in a minute. Um, combined with that is we have aging neighborhoods, which means in addition to all those families that moved down here and bought houses and had kids, they're still here. Um, which I don't blame them. This is a great place to live and their kids have moved and and gone on and and new families have not replaced them. We are aging in place. So, we have a low birth rate and we have families that have already had their children who are staying in their homes, which makes smaller and smaller student cohorts. uh we do see some intrad district growth which basically means that we actually gain kids from kindergarten to 12th grade. We we attract students to us from other districts from other programs.
049Uh we get a little bit of a jump of them in sixth grade and then we get another jump in 9th grade. People, you know, have a different option in elementary school and then they come to us for middle school. Uh but it's not nearly enough to offset the number of students we lose from the from the kindergarten classes just being small because kids weren't born. And and we do have a lot of choice in South OC. We have a lot of charter schools and we have a lot of private schools. Um and we have a percentage of students who go to private charter home school and that percentage has been relatively stable uh every year which is why our projections are so good. We know if there is x number of students born some
050of them will go to private home or charter school and the rest will come to us and we're able to predict that number pretty closely. Uh for every charter school that opens there's another one that's closing. For every private school that has a long wait list there's one that's been open for 50 years that that ceases to exist. Uh they all have the same problem we have. Uh, in fact, they're starting to expand their areas to m take maintain their enrollments, which is not an option we have. I can't just go and uh start stealing area from other school districts. Um, they wouldn't think kindly of that. So, this is an example of the birth rates. So, you can see sort of where we are. You see the peak birth rate was in 2005 where
051we had about 5,600 births in our district area and our peak enrollment was slightly after that, which makes sense, right? Those kids are coming in a few years later. Um, and now we're down into about 3,800 births. So we have about 2,000 fewer students being born every year. Uh and that trend is not looking to change. Uh our demog demographic predictions show that birth rate in South OC for the foreseeable future is going to continue to decline and then hopefully flatten out uh in the late 2030s. And so I talk about this a lot, but and you guys have a bunch of slides and they all kind of look the same because it's an animation. So I apologize for that. Would you look at as you look at sort of as you go through the
052year, what happens to our enrollment? And as you go through and the birth rate declines, you'll start to see the kindergarten rate decline and then the first grade and the second grade and the third grade and then our enrollment starts to drop as the birth rate drops. And so you end up here where we are um as it goes. And and it's interesting. I said all of Orange County has this. Some areas are worse than others. So Santa Ana's declining enrollment is much greater than ours. Irvine had their first ever declining enrollment. Um but we're all declining. And so the question becomes, why does that matter? Um because it creates a fiscal impact. So what happens is if you have less students, the state gives you less money. Remember this chart I showed that showed
053$12,615 per kid. But if you have less kids, you get less money. So, for example, if you had 479 student decline, which was our decline year-over-year for one of our years, and I know the revenue number is different because I'm not including the federal revenue in this, which as you can see, federal is a tiny portion of our revenue. Um, you have $5.8 million. So, you're going to bring in $5.8 million to your to your revenue side um the following year. And of course, teachers sort of follow that pattern, right? teachers retire, we have less students, we don't hire quite as many new teachers, and the teacher number goes down. So, you save about $1.9 million in teacher costs. Um, but other things didn't change. The lights are still on, the schools are still open,
054and we still have all of our other staffing. Um, and so what happens is you you end up with $3.9 million less revenue that you were not able to cut expenses to match. Um, and that's with 479 kids. So when you start to realize the number overall for 12,000 students, it's $147 million. It's it's not an inconsequential amount of money. Unfortunately, um we've lost 12,000 students. Uh there are similar districts that are 12 their whole district is 12,000 students. They have about 11 elementary schools. So get in perspective of of sort of an entire element 11 elementary school district has disappeared in terms of birth rate from our areas. Um but enrollment is not the only thing the state uses to fund co had another beautiful impact for us. California is one of only six
055states that funds on attendance. So um if you are curious what the other five are they are Idaho, Missouri, Texas, Kentucky and Mississippi. Um everyone else funds on enrollment because the reality is when the student doesn't show up everything else still happened. Um, but in the state of California, when the student doesn't show up, they don't um count that student as existing for your enrollment for that day. And let me be very clear, we want kids in class because we know that the more students are in class, the better they do in reading, writing, math. We that's why we want them here. We don't want them here because of the dollars. However, it does make a difference. About $93 per kid per day to the district. And so in COVID times, our attendance was about
0562% higher than it was. So the state theoretically should fund us at 100%. That'd be about $28 million more than we get. I understand we would never have 100% attendance. That's that would be incredible. But that means no one would ever be sick because it doesn't matter if it's an excused absence or an unexcused absence. The state still counts as the student wasn't there. So even the student was sick or the parent requested it or the student had a driver's test, it doesn't matter. Um, but at pre-COVID times we had about a 96% attendance rate and now the attendance rate is about 94 and a.5%. So that's about 7.5 million less annually in our budget due to attendance. Um, and and the reality is uh most of those if we look at the dip is
057almost all caused by Mondays and Fridays at this current time. Um, you can figure out what they're doing on Mondays and Fridays but they're not here. The other thing is the federal government when it passed IDEIDA in the 70s said it would fund 40% of special education costs. It funds about 8% of special education costs. Um and so uh while our overall enrollment has declined, we are very proud of the work that we do um for our students with IEPs and we actually have uh families who move into the area specifically for that. And so our special education number has increased um which is fabulous. We will help all of those kids and we want them here. Um but it does impact the budget to an extent um because what happens is we still we
058still provide those services, right? And so um while the state is going to increase special education funding, it's about $99 million a year that comes from the unrestricted budget to the restricted special ed budget for what the federal government doesn't cover. And so the question is why does this feel the way it does now? And the reality is a couple things happened politically and socially that sort of hid the fact for all districts not just capo that there was declining enrollment and loss of revenue. The first was Governor Brown implemented LCFF and when Governor Brown was finishing his term he had a funding plan that he accelerated. So in other words every year states got or districts got more money than they had predicted they were going to get. He had said it's going to
059take eight years to fully fund it. He fully funded it in I want to say five years. Um and so that acceleration meant he you got more money faster which was a great place to be in. Right? So if you had declining enrollment it was you didn't really have to deal with it because you were actually getting an increase in revenue from the new um state funding model that was happening. And right as that was h ending COVID hit. And in CO we ended up with two things that happened. one is as everyone knows the the the state stimulus package for education. So the state gave one-time COVID funds and they gave big amounts of money in one-time grants that then we used to spend over the multitude of years because it was more money
060than you would spend in a year um to do things like hire extra teachers, hire extra pair educators, hire PLC coaches and reading intervention specialists and and intervention coaches. Um, but it was with onetime money, so it was never going to be able to be ongoing. The other thing the state did is they said, "We will hold you harmless for your declining enrollment. We know that COVID means people will stay home and may not come to school and may not come back, and so we will hold you harmless for your declining enrollment. We will let you use your previous high enrollment number before COVID from 1920 as your enrollment number for the years coming out of 1920." So it means even though you had less students, you got funded as if you had more students.
061Again, great place to be in fiscally. It allowed us to do a lot of really good things. And and I think when you look at the data that's put out by the OC register about districts to perform, we're one of the only districts that now performs higher than we did pre-COVID. We use that money to support our students to recover from the learning loss and get back to above where they were before CO. Um but that money was never going to last forever. You see it in the shaded bars here. It was called the ADA home hold harmless. And so what happened is they let you use your previous 1920 enrollment for a couple of years and then they let you average your three highest years before that for another couple years to sort of
062slow the decline for you. Right? So for our district it end up being this sort of green area. So what we should have had was the revenue on the red line. what we actually got was all the extra revenue in the green shaded area. Um so again, we were able to sort of not have to make drastic decisions. Us and every other district in the state of California, these this is none of this is unique to Kappo. Um for us, it was about $165 million just in the ADA holdless. So if you wonder what you can do with $165 million, it's a lot of things. Um, and that's why we've only recently returned to our precoid class size because we used that money to hire a bunch of extra teachers to keep our class sizes
063as low as we could for as long as we could. But that money didn't exist long term and all those extra teachers who were temporaries have since had to move on um either to replace our retiring teachers, which is the best option, or if we didn't have enough retiring spots to other districts. Um, and this is the same sort of statewide. Um, everyone says there's a teacher shortage, and there absolutely is, but not in Kappo. So we we get lots of applicants. Um but that's not even the co money. That's just the ADA hold harmless money that we got. CO money was another Clark, you can quote me on the number 150 million 100 million. So So you're talking about $265 million in that sort of green shaded area um that allowed us to basically
064deficit spend. We were spending more than our true revenue was um as we should to help kids recover from COVID learning loss. Please. >> All right. I And my understanding is we had to spend that money during that time. Didn't we have limitations on what we could spend it on and how quickly we had to spend it, so we couldn't save it for a rainy day? Like >> Yeah. I wasn't going to get too political about like the requirements, but but yes, there is always um strings. There is no free money. So there are things and in fact actually districts that didn't spend all of it in a certain time were then given requirements with what they had to do with the remainder of it um in terms of targeting certain uh types of students
065for supports. Uh we actually spent ours on time in the in the required aotment. So we were able to do what we did with it. And uh again if you've if you've been in these meetings for the past few years we've talked about things like the class size returning to normal uh the PLC coaches that we had going back to the classroom, the intervention coaches that we had going back to the classroom. the extra elementary PE that we were able to offer having to be reduced. Those were all things that were funded out of that extra $265 million. That was sort of that one time. And the idea was that you were to use it at that time to to mitigate the learning loss from COVID, which we did um and and uh very successfully,
066but you have to have an exit plan from it. Um and unfortunately, when you use those things to hire people, those exit plans are challenging. Um and and that's sort of where we are now. And Please be clear, we are not cutting $265 million. Um, if you've been reading the news, there are many districts that are cutting. I believe LA USD is something like almost $900 million they have to cut. Uh, there's a small district in our neighboring county that has to cut 10% of its staffing across the board. Um, we've actually been really good at sort of runwaying out of here to try and have the minimal impact. I I can't say no impact because there's never no impact when you have less money, but a minimal as easy an impact as we possibly
067can. >> Dr. Brown. >> Yep. >> Uh you alluded to this earlier, but uh CUSD did spend our money wisely and in comparison to other school districts, we did not have the learning loss that other school districts did. >> Yeah. There was an article last year um that looked at districts around the state and how they had spent their money and recovered. one of the only districts that had actually not only gotten back to pre-COVID levels, but had exceeded them. So, on average, our students are achieving higher than they ever have in the history of our district. Um, and and I mean, I wish I still had $265 million to keep doing those things. The question is for us, of course, how do we do as much as we possibly can to keep that moving
068forward? Um, but a lot of districts are still um unfortunately well behind their their precoid levels um even though their base funding might be a lot higher. >> And Dr. What percentage of the budget comes from reserves or one-time funds? >> Uh, so I'll show the deficit spending in a second. >> Okay. >> So, the the the answer is I think like 11% has been our deficit spend for the last couple years. Does that sound right? >> And how sustainable is that? >> It's not sustainable. And so, we'll we'll show that. Um, because when you submit your three-year budget, you have to have and show you can have at least a 2% reserve. And 2%'s the number. Uh the board has a resolution that we target 4% as a reserve, but um 2% is what
069we're trying to get to. Um because the state doesn't want you to hold 40% of your money in reserve because it means you didn't spend the money for the students you had in the classrooms right now, right? They don't want you to hoard the money and not spend it on the students. The idea is they give you money every year. You spend all of that money minus two um every year. Actually, you spend all of it. And the idea is you have an ongoing 2% reserve in case their revenue or your projections were off by a little. that 2% reserve should cover that that off, right? Um and then you as a board, you get to see the first interim budget. We make adjustments to the second interim budget. We don't wait every three years
070and readjust. We readjust every few months, right? Um to try and make sure we're going to hit that 2%. But because we had all that money come in at once, we actually had bigger reserves and we've been deficit spending to spend them down. As opposed to spending it all in one year, we chose to spend it over a five to six year window. um like I said to ease the transition from a lot of money to a lot less money. So the other thing that's happened across this this state over the same time has been an increase in adults. So what's happened um pre-COVID postcoid which is completely predictable right districts got more money what did they invest that money in people and so as enrollment has gone down across the state by about 6%
071classified and certificated uh FTE FTE is full-time equivalents have gone up uh over time and so so you have this world where the state's facing a structural deficit districts are in declining enrollment funding is down district revenue is down but we have more adults working in all these districts than we ever had before fewer students to fund them. Um so this is what it looks like statewide uh over the past few years. It's been the same in Kappo. Um I have to say that that's through 2024. We will finish the numbers this year. The certificated number is much reduced now because um again when we put class sizes back to normal um we had many teachers retired and we backfilled them with temps and then we had many temps that did not get to come
072back. So our our teaching staff was reduced uh in number pretty drastically over the last two years. And remember we did that over a three-year roll out. So we didn't do it all at once again so that we didn't have 200 teachers have to walk out at one day. But we did it a little a little a little. But we did have a bunch of teachers who didn't get to come back. If you look historically this is what you see in Kappo. You see that attendance ro or enrollment rose and then it declined like I showed earlier. Um, and for a while staffing sort of stayed right there under attendance. What that big drop in staffing was is the great recession, right? So, everyone remembers how fabulous 0708, right, was. It was really good. Um,
073and we unfortunately had to really reduce staff and and cut expenses and everyone else. And so, you see the staffing sort of ratios drop. Uh, uh, and ratios being like the number of staff per student, right? And then as you had the recovery economically and Governor Brown starting to get more money, you see districts having declining enrollment but hiring staff. And then postcoid, you see a real hiring staff. Um, in real numbers, what this means in Kappo is that as of the end of last year, we had 12,000 fewer students, but we had 1,000 more adults. Um, and that's fabulous for our kids. There's no doubt that that helps to do what we do. And if there was a way for me to keep that ratio in anything, I would do. This is the worst
074part of my job is that I don't get to keep those ratios. Um and and there's just no way to sugarcoat it, unfortunately. But that's what it looks like for Kappo. Um so like I said, growth. We opened 15 schools. We tried to keep a pretty tight funding ratio. We had the great recession while we had the most students. So I would say that this was a very challenging time in our district. I was in another district at the time um and it was very very challenging. Um then you have sort of enrollment recovery and then you had postcoid. Um and and sort of that's where we are. But now you can see the gap that we're facing in terms of revenue versus expense. And remember I started with and I don't get to control
075the revenue side. I can't just raise taxes or charge more property tax or um ask people to just pay to bring their kids to public school. I can't control revenue like other entities can. I can only control expenses. And so we have to think about what does that look like over time. And so we're talking about this today and we've been talking about budget a lot. We've never had to take action because we've been taking action slowly to the maximum extent that we possibly can. Uh because what happens is you want to provide the highest possible level to service and in good times it you don't want to rush to increase services too much because if a bad time follows it right up then you'd have to rush to decrease, right? So some years you
076get to add to the reserve like we were doing during the great recovery and when we got the co grants and then other years you deficit spend to try and bring down your reserves but not have to reduce what you were providing to students. And that's sort of the roller coaster that is education funding. It's just been a little more exacerbated because our last two major events were the great recession and COVID um which are pretty unprecedented in sort of the ups and downs of of school resourcing. And so when you submit a budget to the county and ultimately to the state, there's a few rules. So you have to maintain a minimum of 2% reserve. You have to show that you can maintain that 2% for the current year and two more out years,
077which again, if you remember, I said that's kind of a challenge because we don't know what the governor is going to give us two years from now, let alone next year. Um, and so you're making predictions based on your enrollment, based on what you think COLA will be, um, based on what your grants might be, etc. You have to approve the budget. Obviously, we do the first interim report, the second interim report, and then we do the adopted budget. Um, and then the the county gives you what's called a certified, negative, qualified, or positive. And our goals always have a positive budget, right? Qualified budget basically means you're not going to make it. So, you need to tell us what you're going to cut to make it. And the negative we don't want to talk
078about. We're not going to have that. It's not happening. Um, but but that idea is it's you have immediate, right? And then ultimately they can provide um people who will come in and make those cuts for you. And in the case of you not making your budget, if you go into fiscal receiverhip, the state takes over your school district. They give you a loan. And when they give you a loan, they also then provide the person who approves every single expenditure. The board doesn't have any power over the budget or expenditures. There is no superintendent. It's a state person who does it all. Um and and your budget is severely declined because a portion of your budget goes to repay back that loan. and you stay in receiverhip until you can demonstrate fiscal responsibility. For
079some districts, it's 10 years, 20 years. I think it's 20 years that it's been. Um there was a district in LA County that came out of it and went right back into it. It's not good for kids. The results have shown that kids do not excel, perform, and achieve when the state takes over your district. So, we do not want to end up in that point where we have to take a loan because we didn't manage our budget because we kept our expenses high. Um so, here's what we've done. Over the last few years, we've made multiple reductions and and um most of them were things like admin in the board building, um admin ratios, uh contracts, technology pieces, anything that we could do that didn't put the cuts at the class or the school
080site level, the stuff that we could do to keep the the FAR away from possible. As people left, retired, got promoted, we didn't refill their positions. We just eliminated them. Um we restructured the central office. We removed people from many offices in the central office as those positions went away. Um that way we didn't change the instructional program. And then we did another 1.4 million ongoing and 1.1 million on time uh onetime reductions. Again, mainly in this building to reduce the administrative overload, to reduce management, um to try and be more efficient. So if we had two pieces of software that were doing the same thing, we canceled one of those contracts and have one piece of software that does it right. Really trying to build efficiency. uh and again keep cuts as far away
081from the schools as we possibly can. Um but we weren't going to have a positive budget if we didn't continue to make cuts. And I'll be honest, um with with the state of the California budget and declining enrollment, there are cuts coming for the next few years. This is not going to be done this year. I'd like to tell you it is, but it's not for us to be done cutting for three years in one year. We'd have to cut like $14 million all at once. We don't have to cut $14 million all at once. We can do it incrementally over time. So, we're going to choose to do it incrementally over time. The other part though is the more you do up front, the less you do. If we made no cuts, we'd have
082to make $21 million in cuts in three years um after having a negative budget. Whereas, if we make the cuts over time, we don't have to cut 21 million. It's kind of like your credit card. If you don't pay it, the interest acrru, right? So, the earlier you make the cuts, the longer you and lower they can be. Um but we've done things like the deferred maintenance, which I know doesn't sound great, but we've cut the deferred maintenance budget by a million dollars each year. Um again because that helps protect people and services that we provide to kids. Um the paint on our schools doesn't look quite as great. But those are the types of things that we have to do. Um as well as continue to to slow things down. So for example um
083we have less uh delivery routes and drivers. So all the things still get delivered to schools but they take longer to do it because there's you know as people have left we haven't backfilled them. Um so services are slower but we still provide them. So at the first interim uh remember the goal is 2% and this is the budget you saw which was fine right because the three years are 56 67 and 78 and you see a 2.3% reserve in 78 we were good at the first interim we were good at June when you adopted your budget but at the second interim which is next month the 89 comes into play for Orange County to certify our budget and you'll see that that's a problem so you asked earlier President Davis what's our deficit spend
084so with No, not much change. Here's our deficit spend. It's been sorry, it was 11% this year, 15 17%. Um, again, because we had that extra money from COVID and the ADA holdless, we had a slightly larger reserve. We able to deficit spend, but but it's not sustainable. You'll see that in the outyear, uh, not only do we not have a 2% reserve, we have negative cash, negative money. That doesn't work. That would be a negative budget. We we'd be bankrupt. We can't go there. Um, and so we have to make cuts to be able to balance that third year out as it comes in. So, with the cuts that are being proposed, you'll see that that's still red, but it's at least 1.6%. Um, so it's at least positive, right? It's just not above
0852%. I'm hopeful, hope is not a strategy, but I'm hopeful that with the governor's one-time grants and the the increase in special ed revenue that that at the second interim, that number would be 2%. But again, those are to help again having made cuts. Without making cuts, you're here. Um and so we have to make some changes. Um so and then obviously you'll see that we're still deficit spending in the out years which means remember I said earlier cuts would still have to happen because you're still deficit spending. So you don't see on the board yet but the 2930 year would be very very negative. So every year we will have to continue to chase this a little bit as we rightsize our district. And it's not just about making cuts to the level, but
086obviously making sure that we're we're the appropriate size for our student population. So things like, for example, um Delabispo being combined with Konosha, right, in the in the next year and some of those other discussions that we've had in the DAC schools. Um trying to maximize our resources so that we don't spread out um so we can provide more services to kids. >> Dr. Brown, when will we know the increase in the special ed funding? Well, officially the budget's not adopted till June 15th 30th. >> Yeah, June 30th. So, what'll happen is the governor will So, so there'll be negotiations. I don't know where those happen now. Um, but in May, the governor will propose a May revise based on revised revenue estimates for the state of California. In the May revise, um, also what
087happens is all of the legislation legislators have met with everybody and they start talking about which programs they would or would not support. um like maybe community schools money or the special ed money or the green bus grants or whatever other sort of special projects. So it's not unlimited funding, right? It's some of it's earmarked. Um and that'll come out in the May revise. So the governor will produce a May revise. Uh we will use that May revise to readjust our numbers and then in June they will adopt a budget and then so in June July we will bring ours. We will have it ready. Uh and then we start this process all over again. We have a first interim January they produce the second bud their next budget and we just keep going with
088the process. Uh right now the legislative analyst office is predicting three years of structural deficit at the state level that is state expenses are expected to expected to um exceed revenue by significant amounts for the next three years in the state of California which means the ability for them to increase funding um for any program let alone education will be a challenge. Now remember uh theoretically without the deferrals that I talked about we have Prop 98. So Prop 98 sets a minimum that they have to give education but it doesn't say what they can do with it right so like they can say for example the $1 billion for community schools that's part of Prop 98. Prop 98 requires we spend X number of dollars we'll spend them but a billion of them are going
089to be for community schools which is great if you have a school that that that fits those needs. Um but if you don't it doesn't. So, it's not like every increase in Prop 98 is just an even increase for all districts across the state. Some will get more, some will get less. Uh, in other years, they've put more money into the concentration grant, for example. So, for anybody who hears PTSA's raise the base, I suggest you get on board with it because what it means is when the state gets more money, they put it into the base. And the base is good because every district gets the base. Um, so it's not like asking someone else to get less so we can get more. It's everyone gets more. When they put into the concentration or
090the supplemental grant, well, we don't get any concentration grant. Um, so that means some districts get more and other districts don't get anything. So, so if you hear your PTSA give you a raise the base pin, please wear it. >> On that end, are there any new funding streams such as grants? >> There's always grants, but when you think about a $650 million budget, a $100,000 grant um is is relatively small and and again, they're they're always targeted to something. So, usually the grant requires you to do work for the grant, which is fabulous, but it it's not something we can put in the general fund to to fund whatever we want, right? It has to be used for whatever the grant was harded for. So, we generally only chase grants that are aligned to
091the work we want to do in the district and we don't go after grants that are aligned to work that don't fit with what we're trying to do as a district because it would just be extra work. So, in terms of it impacting the the ability to manage revenue and expenses, it doesn't. But, we do have grant writers and we do have grants. Uh, a lot of our grants go to fund CCA to be honest. CCA gets big grants and that's how they provide autoshop at a lot of our schools, engineering courses, uh, medical terminology courses. Um, a lot of those are grant funded programs that we have and that we're very fortunate to have and Chris Carter and his team do a good job getting for us. >> Dr. Brown, could you explain um
092special education funding because I I think it gets confusing and I know in my mind it seems like in the same way that the state would give money per student. It seems like you would get special education funds per student with an IEP. >> You do. >> Okay. So, is that how it works or is it a percentage? >> Yeah. So, the special education you get you get So, your funding is based on your total enrollment, right? So, um, if your enrollment goes down, you get less special education funding. So, it's not per special education student. It's just per total student. You get a an amount for special education. So, when I Let me go back. >> What is that amount? >> So, it's >> it's part of the 12,600. So, it's part it's in
093there. >> It's not necessarily per student with an IEP. >> Okay, that's what I meant. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. It's not per student with an IEP. So, it's just per student. So, as your enrollment goes down, regardless of whether your special education student number changes, you get less from the state special education money. Now, the federal government provides is supposed to provide 40% of all special education costs for students with IEPs. Uh they provide eight eight or nine%. It's about 8 point something, right? >> Did they ever provide more than eight? Like, how long? >> No, they've never met it. They've never provided it. >> And I'm assuming people have tried to hold them accountable. Like, has people have people been advocating for? >> Yes. In fact, PTSA has traveled to Washington DC, >> myself
094included, >> and it just falls on deaf ears like >> Well, we can have that discussion, but yes, >> I don't know if it falls on >> But wait, wait, I want to go over that number. So, let's just say IDA was funded as they promised. What would be that number for Capital Unified at 40%. >> $30 million more. Is that about right? I think it's approximately because it's about 100 million that we spend right now on top of the the budget that we get. Yeah. So >> 100 million is a nice number because it's 140%. So uh they give about eight and it' be about 32 more million. >> Yeah. $32 million. >> Uh but Dr. Brown, uh my understanding could be wrong is that we all districts are funded based on the assumption
095that 10% of your students will have IEPs. So if 20% of your students have IEPs, you don't get more money. >> No, >> you only get the money for that 10%. >> Okay. >> And statewide the number has been slowly growing over time for a lot of reasons we know. Um statewide I think the number is more like 13% not 10%. For us it's just over 14% I believe. Um so but yeah >> and Dr. Brown uh with Trustee Jones and I working with CSBA um as delegates every time we including yourself meet with legislators, we keep telling them no more unfunded mandates. The federal government gives us all these things we have to live up to but no funding to accomplish it. In fact, we spend a lot more money than we ever have
096had. >> Yeah. I mean, there there's unfortunately a lot of um places where people would point to and say, "Well, why do you have that position? It doesn't support students." and they're not wrong. Um, but it it is bills compliance that is required by the government. Um, in fact, there was a a mandate from the legislature two years ago for the CDE to to do an audit of all the reports that they require um and try and find a way to minimize those reports. Um, they did the audit and they didn't that was it. Nothing's ever happened. But but yes, it's it's multiple staff members that just >> they didn't even complete the audit. Yes, >> they basically said it's too complicated for us to tell you how complicated it is. >> Yes. >> That's
097on the state and the federal level. That's not just the federal government. >> We have to submit lots of reporting, >> right? >> Yes. >> And would you say I believe you've told me that it's the equivalent of three employees time to uh annually to produce the reports that the state and federal I >> think it's a little more than that now, but yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's their full-time job. So, I mean, obviously there's some things to take away from this and and if you read in the news, um I I do want to commend the team that we've had here for years, predating me, of course. Um there are districts right now, many many many districts that are in the news every single day because they have massive budget deficits to cover. They're going
098to lay off 20% of their staff. They're going to cut 10 to 20% of their budget. um we're we're talking about 1% of our budget that we have to deal with. Um because we've done a a good job. Again, that doesn't make it feel any better. It doesn't mean making cuts is easy and it doesn't mean that they don't stink. Um so like those are the realities that we have to deal with, unfortunately. Um and there's just no way around it. But the reality is we have far less dollars than we used to. So, um, and and for the reasons that you've seen, right, we're one of the lowest funded districts in Orange County, one of the lowest funded districts in the in the state. Um, those funds are not equally distributed across state of
099California, and we have 12,000 fewer students than we had at our peak. And the reality is over the next few years, that number is going to go down. We hope to level out in the 30 to 32,000 student range over time. Um, which would be, you know, nearly 20,000 students, fewer than our peak. Um, again, us and everybody else, we're all dealing with the same issue. But this is why you'll see it sort of around right now. Um, and then of course attendance rates. There's also a push. You talk about the state legislature. There's a push. The legislature has authorized uh the state to look at going to enrollment and not ADA based funding. There's a philosophical debate about um if you don't make the money based on attendance. Would school districts not encourage kids
100to attend? My personal position is like I said earlier um kids do better when they attend. If kids don't attend, their scores go down, their learning goes down, and we don't want that. We want them to learn. Um, and for the states that are doing enrollment based funding, many of them outperform California. So I don't know that that argument holds water, but that is the argument against making that change right now. Um, and so we have that to deal with as well. Um, we do have programs in place like independent study, short-term independent study, Saturday school and secondary schools, homework club, and the elementary schools that help families recover attendance um so that the students can get credit for days that they were sick or or had to miss for some sort of an event.
101Uh but it's really only about a quarter of a percent of attendance. It's not going to massively change our revenue stream. Um and then obviously the big deal is that we have about $265 million less in our budget separate from the enrollment decline just because we don't no longer get to hold harmless or the COVID funds that we have to deal with. And and we put ourselves in a situation as is everyone in the state where we have far more staff um because about 90% of our budget is people, right? Um and far fewer students. So, so unfortunately that's where we are and that's where we have to take some actions and and they don't feel good. >> Any other questions about the budget, about the decisions we have to make about the codes? I
102would I would ask what um what can someone who's sitting in this room do to um make their voice heard to uh address the funding? You know, it from what we're seeing, districts are not funded equally. So, how I know I'm so grateful for trustees um Jones and Bulacus and for yourself that have gone to our legislators to address these issues. What can you offer or what would you encourage? >> Yeah, sure. So, like I said earlier, I think our um you know, PTSAs around the area and our PTSA in particularly does a a pretty good job of meeting with legislators, going up to Sacramento, going to Washington DC to really advocate for things that that would help capital but not necessarily be at the detriment of other districts, right? It's really hard message when
103you say give us more if that means you have to give someone else less. That that that that's tough on legislators to make that decision. They don't they don't want to have to make some of those decisions that are unfortunately challenging. Um, but I would say get involved with the raise the base. I would say the other thing that that letters matter. So, as Trusty Jones and Bulacus and I have met with our local legislators, one of the things that their staffers often tell us is that a letter is worth like 10 votes, right? That's how they think about it in their mind. So, when you write a letter and sign it, not just like a form email, but an actual letter and send it to them, they actually do take notice at the state
104level. I can't speak to the federal government, but at the state level, they take notice. So sending it when you look at things that are coming out around certain types of funding streams. For us, the big thing is um keep it all in the base and keep it all unrestricted. Please stop putting strings in the money because when you put strings in the money, what you're basically saying is we don't trust you to do your job district. So we're going to tell you how how to spend the money. Um and again, like I started with, we're a very high achieving district. On average, our students are very very much above standard and very high compared to where they were pre-COVID. We know what we're doing. Um and when we had unfettered access, we could do
105a lot of really good things for our kids. So, anything that that removes restrictions and unfunded mandates. What happens in every trailer bill that comes out of the budget is you must also do X, Y, and Z, there is no money for those things, but you must accomplish them. So, for example, one of the things that I agree with right now is that they're going to put a require for a fiscal literacy class. I think that's a great idea. I think it's fabulous. Um, but it's an extra class, so either kids will have to give up something to take it or have to add to their schedule. Adding to their schedule costs money. um we have to pay a teacher to teach that. Like those are the things we to develop that curriculum. So um
106great idea, put some money behind it. It's an unfunded mandate. >> Um Dr. Brown, I you I've been doing this since before you started. So you may not know I maintain a list of all the representatives, state, federal, um um the uh board of supervisors for uh the entire district. So like if you live in this city, here's who your legislators are. and I have it on uh in a Google doc. Anybody who wants to have it, I have all their email addresses. In many cases, I have phone numbers. I have uh their office staff, so their district director, their uh chief of staff, their legislative director, if I have it. Anybody who would like to write an email uh should just get in touch with me. My my email address, I always say it's
107gione capital.org. I'm famous with this. um and just just send me an email and I will send you a link to that document and I can even send you uh some talking points that someone else provided to me and um and I've written to everyone who represents our district uh in the state and I just hope that all the trustees will do it and students particularly high school students, parents, uh staff members, etc. because it it does make a difference. And can you explain um how the budget aligns with the district's um strategy plan and goals for improving education? >> Yeah, I mean right now most of what our budget reductions are doing, we're trying to to brightize, right? So we have less students that we're providing services for. And so we have to match,
108like I said, teachers match those numbers, but we don't always match that across the board. Like for example, over the last couple years, we've been reducing administrators because we had less students. We need less administrators, right? In fact, tonight we'll be reducing administrators even more. Um, in fact, when we look at the cuts tonight, about uh 2.6 million of them just for tonight are in administrative positions, right? And 2.2 million of them are in classified position. So, we're we're again with our strategy, we're trying to as much as possible make those cuts as far away from the classroom as we possibly can, as far away from the instructional program as we can because our goal is to increase reading, uh, math scores, right, and student sense of belonging. Uh, also, as we have different smaller
109groups of students, um, we can sort of target. So, so tonight you'll see that some of the things we're reason we're not eliminating positions in their entirety in some cases. U we're just reducing the number of positions. Again, not that that feels good. Um but but the kids have moved in terms of where they are and the numbers of them. So, so some schools won't see any change based on the numbers of students they have um that that have a certain need and need a certain support and other schools that don't have those students might see a change in the support that they're getting. So, we're trying to be very targeted about it um to the extent that we possibly can. I have a question, Dr. Brown. >> So, um, because we've had, um, parents
110and families in the room concerned about the charter school moving to Lobo, can we talk about what charter schools do and how much does that cost us as a district for um, and how we kind of grapple that. >> Yeah. I mean, arguably charter schools as a dis, they've always been around. So, like I said, part of it is the enrollment that they take that we don't see. um they're fed by our property taxes from the extent that they mostly are our students in terms of live in our area. I don't mean ours like CAPOS, they live in our area. Uh so the law states that you must provide space to any charter school that has more than 80 students who live in district, right? You're not allowed to not provide them space. If they
111somehow utilize more space than they need, they actually pay rent, but most of them try and use the exact amount of space based on the number of students that they have. Um, and as those charter schools grow, you have to to move their space, right? Um, to to fit their needs. Um, that's a legal requirement in the state of California. So, it it colllocating them is not always a budgetary issue, right? It doesn't save us money. It doesn't help us in our budget. It doesn't do anything. It's just us conforming. Now, I will say it costs us a lot of staff time and legal time. So, it's expensive from that standpoint. um every time you're paying staff to work um you have a cost right that's associated with it and in fact uh because we
112also have to provide charter school visits and oversight we have to have a full-time staff member who does that um so there is a cost associated with charter schools but it's again when you talk about things that are mandated by the state of California that's not a position I'm allowed to cut right from a standpoint of I have to have it I have to provide the oversight and I have to enter in negotiations with them every year whether I want to or not so those are the the things that happen. Um, ultimately if they didn't exist, those students might come to us. Um, and that would increase our enrollment, which would increase our revenue. They might go to private schools, which wouldn't change us. They might go to home school. Um, like I said, we've
113had about the same percentage. So, while we have one charter school that is growing, we've had another one that ceased to exist um because they kind of again are competing for that same group of students uh with homeschool and private school. Before you go on, could you back go back to slide 46 and then 47? >> Can you tell me which one that was? >> It was Well, now you're on 52. >> 54, >> I think. 54. >> 46. Okay. >> Yeah. >> Bear with me. >> Yep. So, here's 40. >> That's 47. >> Yeah. Go to 46. It more or less tells the same story that um that while the um the where we've or leveled off with uh certificated which is teachers the non-eing staff is is remains high and that's uh we
114trustees and I think staff members as well got uh emails this week about that and um uh well if you could go to the slide as well. It, you know, classified has continued to go up and certificated now is again sort of uh stable there. And and I think it's just important for the public to see that this has been in since 2017 where our biggest employment growth has been. >> Yeah. And I would tell you that this ends in 2024. When the 2025 data is finalized, the certificated number will be precipitously dropped because remember class sizes went back to normal, which means last year as we had a lot of teachers retire, we did not hire new teachers. And in fact, we unfortunately had to release um some very successful temporary teachers because we
115did not have a spot for them, right? As as all those programs that I told you that were COVID funded, MTSS, class size reduction, um PLC coordinators, those teachers either went back to the classroom or classes went back to pre-COVID numbers because that was all one-time funding. So the the certificated number has since dropped. >> Yeah. It's just I think it's just hard to understand. Um uh there was a political joke I heard recently that um the people um people from the um let's see I didn't know the leopards were going to eat my eyes said the people in the leopards eating people's eyes party. And basically it's just I my ox is being gored. What I'm care about is being hurt. So hurt someone else. Uh do something that bothers somebody else, not what
116bothers me. And unfortunately, this is just the environment we're in in this budget situation. And and we have been, I think, very responsible. My husband often reads to me things about some other district that's laying off, you know, thousands or hundreds of people. And we haven't had to do that. We haven't uh we've done ve very gradual, very strategic uh decreases and and it's been much less painful than it has been in some districts, but it has to be done. Um and and if if we if there's something that happens that ha that is a problem for this person and we don't do it, then it's a problem for this person. We don't want it to be a problem for anyone. Uh but it we have to do this. We have to balance our budget.
117We just otherwise we go into receiverhip and uh then nobody gets what they want because the state comes in and they just come at your budget with an axe and they don't care about anybody. They don't care about strategy. They don't care about who is harmed. They just come at it with an axe. And and if something changes and we can not do some of these things, I would love to not do them. So, but the reality is this is where we at. And I always tell people when I retire, I'm going to sell ice cream for a living so I can make everybody happy. Um, but unfortunately, this is the path I chose. And I understand that people are very displeased and it doesn't change the hurt. And I completely understand that. Um, and
118I I wish I didn't have to sometimes make some of the proposals to you that I have to make. Uh, but here we are and ultimately my job is to make sure that we stay in good fiscal standing. um as I you know create programs to help all as many of our students uh improve. Um and so we will continue to make cuts. Um we will continue to try and rightsize the district. Um and hopefully the budget will change and improve and then we can go back to to those areas where we add more services and add more supports and add more of everything to our students. Um but but we do have a lot of good things going on. again doesn't make it feel any better when when the bad things happen to you.
119>> Dr. Brown, I'd just like to add maybe especially for new trustees and it's not just a matter of if your district goes into receiverhip, the state then charges you, it costs you more for them to take over and run your district. >> Yeah. Like I said, I wish we didn't have to make cuts. I really do. Um but we will continue to try and uh come back and talk to you about our budget. Um, again, our enrollment numbers are in the back if you need them. If you don't like the numbers in the slides, that's okay. They're here for you. Um, and we will continue to to share this information. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Any other comments? >> Oh, yeah. I can answer any other questions. >> Well, I just want to
120say I appreciate it. That was very informative and it gives me better insight. I think we all I I shouldn't say what we all feel because I haven't talked to everybody, but but I will say what I feel. Um, it's heartbreaking to make these cuts. It's It hurts. I got a lot of emails. It sounds like we have the potential of losing some really, really incredible staff members and I know CUSD takes the hiring process very seriously when we get people with a lot of heart and a lot of skills and um it makes me sick with every email. You know, I was literally emotional reading some of these emails like this is and even tonight listening to those children it's it's heartbreaking. So none of this is taken lightly. No. and and we try
121to do things like for example all year as people have left retired we've only offered positions internally right to try and move people into positions that we have to mitigate those that might have to leave um we do as much as we possibly can uh to try and have as much grace as we can again doesn't make it perfect but that's where we're at thank you >> okay Mrs. Mrs. Haste, do we have any requests to speak for this item? >> We have one speaker, Samantha Tar. >> Thank you. >> Sam, I'm sorry, not Samantha. Sam. >> Thank you, Sam. >> Good evening. Uh before I begin tonight with a quote by John Wayne. Um he said that courage is being scared to death and saddling up. Anyway, I bring that quote up because in
122this moment of our nation's history, when people speak truth to power, they do so with great courage. And if a po if a person's voice is raised, I hope the board offers grace rather than judgment. Dr. Brown gave a fabulous uh assessment of the state of our budget. So, I'm not going to continue to repeat the obvious, but I do want to tag on the efforts of Luca Greu Klouse, who is our current CUC PTSA advocacy chair. uh she pioneered and championed raise the base along with Trusty Costanos. Um and speaking of PTA and Trusty Costanos, earlier this month, 18 cappo representatives went to Sacramento to advocate to protect the 5.6 billion in that funding. Trusty Costanos has been a longtime PTA friend, as is uh Trusty Jones. And I also want to thank her
123for her email advocacy this week as well. Um, I like sports. They make heroes and villains of people. So, let's talk about this scoreboard. Let's talk about responsible and proactive trustees versus irresponsible and Johnny come lately trustees. Recently, uh, Trustee Costanos went to the state to advocate with us. Trustee Jones emailed as well. In the four years that I have listened and attended these board meetings regularly, tonight is the first time that I can recall Trustee Davis asking what the deficit was, what our operating deficit was. Additionally, um she also is responsible for three board meetings that required legal counsel fees, uh security fees, all fees, all money that could have been spent on our students. I'd also like to point out that Trusty Zinger's daughter attend or one of her children, excuse me, I
124can't remember which one it is. Um, attends CRLA. Um, what else? Oh, yes. And trustee, let's talk about another proactive trustee again. Trustees Casiano and Trustees Jones and trustees Pritchard um all advocated for a bond in Alisa VJO to offset facilities cost. Mike Munzing, a known associate of Republicans like Lisa Davis, thwarted those efforts. The one the 11% 15% 17% operating deficit could have been offset if it wasn't for irresponsible decisions. And lastly, three trustees on this board currently campaigned on the promise that students would return to this school district. Where are they? Your roosters have come home. It is time for you to face accountability. I encourage all in the audience to vote this fall. Thank you. I'd like to I'd like to thank staff for this report. This was a a very wellput
125together report and I appreciate the overview of the budget and um appreciate Dr. Brown presentation. Thank you. Okay. And we are moving on to 11B English learner annual program evaluation. This is an information item only and no board action is necessary. I'd like to recognize Greg Merwin, associate superintendent to introduce the item. Okay. Thank you so much, President Davis and trustees. It is our pleasure to present item 11B, English learner annual program evaluation. Director of language acquisition, Dr. Rowena Mack, joins us this evening to share information and a presentation regarding our English learner students for the 2425 school year. So, as is our custom now, please feel free to stop us along the way if you have any questions. We're happy to answer answer them as we go. So, this is an annual report where
126we're sharing information regarding the progress of our English learners with language proficiency to with the ultimate goal again of redesating as fully proficient in English. So, in our report tonight, you're going to note measurable progress in language acquisition compared to last year's uh updates, as well as highlights that we will make regarding the work that we're doing to enhance and strengthen support for this group of students. Also like to point out that the data that we're sharing with you this evening supports the data we shared with you back in October. So at the October 15th board meeting, we shared with you the state uh state test scores and you'll remember that English learners were demonstrating significant growth in both English language arts and mathematics at that time. Their language acquisition is absolutely key to that
127success. I'm now going to hand it over to Dr. Wayne Mack and she will continue with the demographic data and continue with the report. Thank you Dr. Mack. >> Thank you. Good evening trustees, Dr. Brown and CUSD community. Uh the as Dr. Merwin uh explained this report reflects outcomes from the 2425 and our continued focusing on strengthening results for our English learners or EELs. So tonight I'll highlight growth trends, progress and recommendations from last uh made from last year and next steps. We'll begin with some demographic data here of who comprises our English learner population here at CUSD. We currently serve a little over 3,000 English learners, which make up about 7 and a half% of total CUSD population. We'll see here that students at the elementary school level make up about 58% of the
128English learners and with the rest of that being at the secondary school level. More than numbers alone, that breakdown of the distribution of EELS at the elementary and the secondary informs us of differentiated supports, the importance of acceleration at the elementary level to ensure that they reclassify or that we work towards helping them reclassify by the time that they are leaving us at the fifth grade and promoting to middle school. and then acceleration and reclassification focus at the secondary level because as we'll see on the breakdown here once the students reach the secondary schools at the secondary level the majority of them namely 65% remain English learners or long long-term English learners. This diagram here represents to the left the top 10 birth countries of English learners in CUSD. Always illuminating to see that the
129majority of our English learners by and large were born here in the United States. And then all of the other countries where our students are from the top 10 countries are represented on the world map there to the left to the right represents the top 10 home languages not including English in order of um numbers of the languages spoken home languages spoken and reported by our multilingual families. These are the languages that we support their families in interacting meaningfully with our schools and with our sites. At this time last year when I presented here, our evaluation identified very clear areas for improvement. And so the actions on this slide reflect how we responded intentionally to those recommendations. And there were three specific areas that we identified. First is with strategic professional development. And in each
130of those area, I delineate here for you how those recommendations were put into play at both the elementary and the secondary level. At the elementary level, we prioritized dashboard schools and supported teachers understanding of the ELPAC and how it can really be leveraged as assessment for learning. We found through this process that teachers really appreciated understanding ELPAC and the assessment the different domains and how it can really be a leverage for assessment for learning. So it isn't about teaching to the test but rather teaching to the task. And once teachers really had a greater understanding of the ways the students are being assessed, they gain greater clarity on how to align that to grade first instruction. At the secondary level, we focus our work on long-term English learners or LELS. Middle school is our inflection
131point. So if we accelerate ELTELS there, we know that we are expanding high school opportunity, increasing their opportunity for greater access once they reach high school. And if we miss that window before they get into high school, then supports just become a little bit more complex and their options become a little more narrow. In the area of consistent implementation of ELD, we also like to make sure that we do a crosswalk and alignment of the work that we're doing in other areas and that support and how that supports English language development or ELD. This is really important because we don't want teachers to get the idea that EL is a standalone separate thing, but really is something that they're doing as part of their instruction already. So the elementary level we had a lot of
132opportunities to help teachers understand how in math and the language routines that we do in math with our newer adoption for instance how that emphasizes the English language development support that students are needing. And so those two work together rather than separate things that teachers have to develop, understand or to implement. At the secondary level, we focused our work on integrated EL. We had a a lot of great professional learning for our secondary teachers in universal priority standards. And we had the opportunity to really present to those teachers and help teachers understand how their content area standards, how EL standards already live within those content area standards. And again, once the teachers understood that, they really appreciated the importance and the impact of the work that they're making through their universal priority standards in supporting
133our English learners. To echo what Dr. Brown was saying before that our work doesn't minimize, doesn't go away, or doesn't diminish just because our resources are declining. We want to do this in English learners as well. So, we want to make sure to leverage the resources that we already have. what are the areas of opportunity that we can already use to continue the work that we're doing so that we're not really shortch changing the opportunities and the support that our English learners are receiving. For instance, the advent of interim ELPACs and using those types of assessment to help our teachers understand how to progress monitor students and to help them deepen their understanding of English language development standards has been a really helpful thing that we've done especially for our elementary teachers. At the secondary
134level, a lot of collaboration took place between our secondary curriculum and instruction staff, the coaches that we have, and the coordinators in making sure that we work together, we align our work together so that really the voice is united and the work that we're doing is aligned. I really love this slide and I'll tell you why I really love this slide. because I think when we talk about English learners, we're only referring only to students currently identified as English learner. However, that does not capture the full story of the impact that we're making on our students. So, tonight I'd really like to emphasize what I mean by ever eels. Everals combines the number of our current English learners and our students who have reclassified or ARFP. So we see here on the left, so we
135have about over 6,800 students that are ever eelss at one point in time. Some of these students are English learners and some of them are reclassified already. For instance, you'll see on the left about 44% of our ever eel population are current English learners. of those students about 57% of them are on track English learners meaning they're making the adequate progress and growth that we are expecting them to make year after year. However, about 43% of them seem to be stuck or need additional support. So that's the 43% that we really want to capture. what are the differentiated supports that they need in order to reclassify because as you can see the number on the right 56% of our ever eel population are reclassified students that's our success story those are our students that we've
136provided them adequate support and are competing adequately ade academically with their peers and accessing and thriving in all of their content areas. So we want to make sure that we capture that number because it prevents us from telling an incomplete story about progress. And both of these different areas of current ELELS and RFBS make up really our overall district impact and success towards supporting English learners. Moving on to students that are dual identified, we have about 20% of our ever eels, now that everyone knows what ever eels mean. um with IEP so that they are dual identified. It's just a tad over the percentage of overall um students with IEP. Here at CUSD, we see that the percentage increases in upper grades because both statuses are cumulative meaning students remain ever e after reclassification. They
137don't lose their even if they lose their classification in EL and become RFP because these percentages both include EL and RFP they don't necessarily lose their IEP classification. So what does that number tells tell us? That number tells us really the important partnership that we need to have with our colleagues in special ed. How is it that we don't choose one over the other and provide both support, both academic language support and whatever accommodations are needed by our students with disabilities? I'm going to pause there really quickly before I move on to the data and growth and the LP indicator. Are there any questions I can answer at this time? Okay, I'm going to move on to the English language progress indicator or the LP. That is the indicator on English learners that appear on
138the dashboard and it measures annual language growth based on EL students. I'd like to remind everyone again that LP is a cohort, right? So in order for there to be growth, it needs to measure the number of students that took the LPAC both years. So it's really exciting because LP is probably one of the few growthbased indicators that we see on the dashboard in comparison to other indicators that's just outcome or achievementbased. Okay. And here I am excited to present to everyone that CUSD moved from the orange level performance to the yellow when compared from 24 to 25. Nearly 47% of our students made progress stabilizing and improving from the prior decline which I presented to the board last year. And this growth really reflects strong implementation of EL and the implementation of the recommendations
139we presented to the board last year. But if one were to look even closer, that growth is even more impressive because we see that the LTE growth increased significantly. in fact by over nine points moving from 45.9% making progress to 55.1% making progress. So those targeted secondary supports and those recommendations that I highlighted earlier we look forward to continuing that increasing that even more in the coming year. Lots to celebrate in this diagram as well in this illustration as well because it tells us the growth of our schools that appear on the dashboard. So we'll see that we have 27. We had 29 schools last year. I know that we have more than 29 schools, but in order for you to be on the dashboard again, you need to have at least 30 English learners
140with two consecutive years taking the LPAC, which is why you have fewer schools in compared to last year because both uh I believe Ambiel and Molton did not hit that number of 30 students. They definitely had 30 students, 30 English learners, but it has to be 30 at least 30 students taking the LPAC both years. Okay. >> And just to clarify, the reason a student wouldn't take the LPAC both years is because they reclassified after the first year. So that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's a good thing. >> Correct. Okay. So the colors determine that growth or that change in both status and change. Schools will see here that lots to celebrate because we had schools last year. We had 12 out of the 29 schools in the red performance level. We only have
141four of those schools this year. And then if you were to take a look at the green and the blue, those are your highest performance levels. We doubled the number of schools that are in the green performance level and then quadrupled the schools that are in the blue performance level. And a reminder that while performance colors provide one snapshot, our deeper analysis shows broader progress. We have many schools showing growth in different ways and upward momentum happening across many of our sites. The ELPAC or the English language proficiency assessments for California is the assessment that is taken by all of our English learners every year. And these are the domains that are included in the test. We have the oral language and the written language with the oral language consisting of listening and speaking and
142the written language consisting of reading and writing. I bring this up because the next diagram shows how our students grew in these areas grew in these different areas. And while we see that they are growing in all the different domains and we want to celebrate that and continue that, we also see that the greatest need is still in intentional systemwide professional learning that really leverage their oral language strength and how we can stren uh translate or query over that strength into their written language and increasing their reading and writing performance level even more. This is our reclassification criteria. The four criterion that's included in our reclassification. And I always like to just emphasize that a higher reclassification rate is to be celebrated because it is definitely a positive outcome of our English language development program.
143But what that means is that it would have implications for the students who still remain as English learners because they are still developing their English. Right? And here is our local reclassification rates that have ranged between 14 to 17% over the last four years. Um and that really that stability reflects the consistent application of our criteria, fidelity and using our criteria and a continued focus on writing proficiency really driving those higher rates. As I present all of that growth data to all of you, I'd like to get closer approach to the end by offering you this time what are our next steps for next year for elementary professional learning plan. We want to continue to embed explicit language development. We look forward to the new adoption of the new ELA EL adoption that's coming up
144not too long from now. And I think we're going to be positioning ourselves in a great place because we are really planting the seeds of helping our teachers understand ELD standards so they can be better informed on how to really be critical in evaluating the curriculum that comes forward and how those resources and the curriculum are going to support them in their delivery of effective designated ELD and at the secondary level. Oh yes, >> I'm sorry. Can I ask a question? >> How many teachers do we have um in terms of the focus here of the teachers we have? How many of them are newer have been with us working on this and might be our experts as we talk about next steps to build their capacity to help our students. >> So are we
145talking about uh e teachers? >> Yeah. >> Okay. So everyone is an e teacher, right? So the number the at the the quick answer the short answer to that question is however many teachers we have is however many English learner EL teachers we have right. However at the elementary level that designated EL is helping them understand how to deliver that during the 30 minutes of dedicated time. And yes at the secondary level we have designated EL courses. So we have about 60 to 70 teachers specifically across all of our secondary sites that are teaching the standalone EL class. However, that's one part of their day where they're getting that support. all the other areas and all the other content areas, the math teacher, the social studies uh teacher, the science teacher, they too need to
146increase and develop their understanding of EL because we also provide integrated EL which is a support they get in those classes. >> And you guys have heard me talk about our focus on great first instruction um and we use things like elevation and elevation strategies which are integrated EL strategies for students. But what we know is that when you are doing those kinds of strategies that help EL students learn to to decode and learn English, they actually help all students with their high level vocab knowledge with their ability to read and to access the resources. So those strategies are actually core to great first instruction even though they are integrated EL strategies and and we have elevation as a way for all of our teachers to get those integrated ELD strategies. Yeah, that is actually
147reminding me of the work that we did with our secondary teachers this year with the universal priority standards where teachers identified and unpacked their universal priority standard. And part of the work that we did with them is that I did a crosswalk of their content area standards that they prioritized and the ELD standards and they were very pleasantly surprised about the close alignment and correlation of those standards, right? Because for the longest time there was this myth and this elusiveness of I can't teach eels because I don't know language right I'm not a language teacher but it really is about literacy development that both our eels and none need all of our students need to develop their language and their literacy. So, they were very pleasantly surprised that even though we are saying we need
148to focus on our English learners, they're not seeing it as a separate entity or something else that they really need to do, but just being very mindful about what those language scaffolds might look like in their teaching. >> I I have a quick question. >> Yes. >> So, we've talked a lot about tonight about declining enrollment. What about declining EELs coming into the district? Are we seeing a decline in our EL e population? >> Yes, we are. Yeah, we have about a thousand fewer now than we used to uh in terms of coming into the system. So, we we the decline in enrollment is matched. Actually, the the EL and and a few other characteristic populations are actually declining faster than our general population in this area. Well, thank you for that information because the
149best way for us to have greater for our students to have greater success is from the teachers that they're learning from >> and so they need to become the experts so that we can have the the success with our students. So the focus on their training is really essential. I know. I just want to say one thing about the ELPAC because I know Trusty Jones and I have talked a lot about the ELPAC, but um just so the public understands how great of a job this is and how hard our students work, how hard our teachers work, the ELPAC is an extremely difficult exam. And my own children, uh EOS probably could not pass the test. >> It's very challenging in writing and reading. And so, um, the higher they get in the grades, obviously,
150the the the test gets more difficult and then becomes very challenging as, as you've pointed out in secondary school. >> Yeah, I would agree with you, Trusty Castanos. I also put my child through the own when it first came around in 2017. She only got a three, so she has some interim elpac to be doing when I get home. >> So, uh, big surprise. I have a lot of questions. Um, and uh I I did the online uh writing uh ELPAC uh for 12th grade a few years ago and I would be willing to bet that most of the adults that I know could not pass it the 12th grade writing ELPAC. >> Um it was challenging. Um okay, so uh first of all, what is a dashboard school? You mentioned that at one point.
151>> The dashboard school would be the students that received an LP performance level. So, they receive an LP performance level on the dashboard. They're included in the dashboard. If they have 30 or more students that took the LPAC for two consecutive years and we can measure their growth, their status, and their change, they received a performance level, they appear on the dashboard. >> Okay. Just because they have enough enough students. Okay, correct. >> Um, and then what is the what's an what's the interim LPAC? The interim LPAC much like the IABS or the interim assessments that we have for the ESBback is probably an it's it's it's not probably it's a great tool because it serves as a practice test. >> And when do we give it? >> We the sites can give it at
152any time during the year. So the part of the work that we did with the elementary sites in particular this year is when we trained all of the teachers at their school site, helped them understand what the interim LPAC is and backwards map it from the time that they will be get taking the LPAC at their school and helping them see and understand how can we use the interim ELPAC as part of our intentional lesson design and planning that they can deliver during designated EL. And the reason why the interim LPAC is great is it really is an assessment for learning. It's a teaching tool because they can use it in so many ways. It gives exemplars and anchors um that the teachers can see and the students can see what is the performance level
153that I need to reach in order to get a high score on this. It's very very specific and gives very uh clear success criteria. >> Okay. And we're starting to give the regular LPAC in March, right? >> Yeah. The summitative LPAC, we're in that season right now. It begins in February. Um and then it ends at the end of May. So the interim LPAC, what we encourage sites to do is to use that throughout the year >> to use that throughout the year as part of so it's not just one session. We're taking a practice test. they can do that and they should do that at some point during the year to really get students accustomed to the rigor that they need and you know the the the discipline I guess that's needed for taking
154the test but what's more important is how they can really allocate that as part of their instruction during designated EL >> so in secondary school that the inter male pack is given as sort of a practice test say correct in the EL class >> correct >> okay >> but it can also be chunked in Like you can use parts of it, correct? As teaching >> tools. I see. So you don't have to just sit and give it in one sitting. You can break it out and use parts of it. Like here's some examples of the types of writing you might do. So we'll break it down and do writing instruction. >> Okay. I see. And then let's see. Um now I forgot what I was going to ask next. But anyway, uh I I do
155appreciate the ELPAC training and the just general what is an L EL? what is that about training that's going on? Because I know a few years ago uh a lot of teachers were very unaware of what it was and they felt that students who had not reclassified were not at all capable in English and in many cases they are very capable. >> Correct. >> But there may be one domain they're not that strong in or uh any number of things can happen and I think that having teachers understand that is really really important. Uh I know that we have in our high schools we have uh eelss who are taking AP classes uh because they are capable of doing the AP classes their their language is sufficiently evolved for that. So I appreciate that. Um
156let's see. Um can you do you have an idea of what percentage of our uh elses came to us past say second grade something like that didn't didn't come in in kindergarten or first? >> Not at this moment but I'm happy to look and research into that. I'm I'm kind of interested in that because my assumption is that many of them just come later on in life and uh or come to the US but uh and but we not may not always know that. We may only know when they come to us or come to California. Um >> um let's see. Oh, and then for special ed students, students with an IEP, >> are there al is there an alternative elpac? Okay. Yes, there's an alternate ELPAC, but it's not taken by all students with
157an IEP. >> Okay? >> It's only taken by students with an IEP that have severe cognitive disability. So, still a very few number of EELs with disability, but still it's progress toward delineating language disability and the other disability that they may show up on their IEP. >> Okay, great. All right, that helps me. Um, and then a a couple of years ago, we changed the reclassification protocol, not the criteria, but the protocol. And we're partly able to do that because Elevation gives us that tool. And I did talk to a principal, I think at last year's um, uh, open house about how that affected her school. And I I I don't know if I mentioned this before because I can't remember what year it was. Uh but I asked asked how it affected and she
158said and I thought this was so great that it that allowed the kids who were like right there they couldn't quite make it out. Uh it allowed them to reclassify and then the remaining EL population were the ones who really really needed the targeted support. So more resources were able to be able to be put towards those kids. And I think we have seen here in the dashboard the difference that's made because now instead of maybe in a middle school 100 kids, maybe there's only 30 um eelss or something, but those are the 30 eelss who really need help. So I really appreciate that. Um uh then I guess I Oh, I know what I wanted to ask. Um, you said that we're giving the ELPAC from now until May. So, what decides when a
159site or a grade or whatever is giving the ELPAC? >> Well, the site determines the date that they're going to be giving the group administration, which is the reading, listening, and the writing. And they partly align that with their other testing calendar. Right? So your grades three to five might take it earlier in the ELPAC season than the K2 that we encourage the sites and they do push it a little bit toward the end of the testing season uh because we don't have to test them in other areas and also we want to as much as possible gain more instructional time so more language is being developed still by students. >> Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions? And as usual, the last page linked here are the resources for some of the acronyms and
160jarens that I might have mentioned to you folks tonight. And as always, thank you very much for your support of our program. >> Thank you. I have a couple of questions. First, the alphabet suit always important. How are reclassified eels monitors post reclassification? >> Yes, we have uh Oh, sorry. Go ahead. >> And what what are triggers? um if they struggle like what are triggers to help and assist with that? >> Sure. We have to reclass we have to monitor the progress of reclassified students for four years after they reclassify. Um and so at the elementary school level, we monitor their progress by their teachers pretty much telling us are they making adequate progress by all means and that um is there anything standing in the way of their pro progress that you may attribute
161to their language use and language development. And then at the secondary level we ask for the progress monitoring not only of their English teacher but their other core content teachers. So their math, their social studies and their science. So for each reclassified student, four teachers are providing input that they're making adequate progress. And if they're not, then the support provided for them falls within the MTSS structure of the school in the levels of support that they have in their particular site. >> I would also add that we're we're one of a few districts where the gap between our our sort of general student population and our RFP group is negligible. our RFB students perform as well as and in many cases outperform our general population students. So our students once they reclass do very very
162well. Um and that's again a tribute to the fact that we kind of that that whole approach that Rowan and her team have been working on with our teachers that we're all teachers of literacy and so we do we do well across the board. >> I have two more questions. Sure. Um, how has the number of every in schools for six plus years changed over our years in COSD and what strategies are we in place to continue to reduce that? I don't have the specific number but I do know that the number of LES and as they grow it's not at the number that we would want it to be because we want that of course to be minimized but I'm happy to provide specific data in the percentage of LELS over the last five
163years for instance right um but that work tells us again the focus and all the other things that I've mentioned before about that differentiated support how EL support looks different at the elementary where it's about early lit literacy and what it means for secondary when it's really making sure that they reclassify before they get to the high school. >> Right. Right. Because then they, you know, they lose a an elective as well. >> Correct. Makes it tricky. >> Correct. >> My last question is, how do our reclassification rates for EL performance shifts compared to other districts in Orange County and the state? >> And I'm sure you don't have that now and but I would just be really interested in that. I don't have that at the ready for you. But next year, I'll make
164sure to have all of these at the ready for you. So, I hope someone is recording all of this so that I can study this later, but I I fear that Dr. Oh, I mean, I'm sure that Dr. Brown is taking notes of it as well. Um, but if we if we are not on par uh better than the the the neighboring districts. >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. >> Thank you everyone. Mrs. Hayes, do we have any requests to speak for this item? >> There are none. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Trustees, any other comments or thoughts? Okay, we'll move on to 11C, updated elementary boundary to accommodate the repurposing of Delabispo Elementary School. It's an information item only and no board action is necessary. I'd like to recognize
165Clark Hampton to present the item. >> Good evening, trustees. Thank you. that is a a information item. This will be followed with an action item at the next regular board meeting. So this is relating to the repurposing of Delabispo Elementary School. So uh as a result of that, as trustees know there's going to be some changes that occur and so I'm going to go through each of these then we'll go through the impact and uh what kind of uh boundary adjustments need to take place uh that will be brought back to you for consideration at the next meeting. So the early childhood center the plan is to relocate from RH Dana to uh the Delabispo site and so that will make some changes with how students who uh attend RH who live in the RH
166Dana boundary but don't want to attend the immersion boundary how that will impact them. So rather than attending Delabispo they would attend uh Konosha. So that'll be part of the um uh what's part of the consideration and then uh staff is proposing to reassign the delispal boundary and to merge it with the current uh Kenosha boundary. So going through the boundaries right now, these are the elementary schools that are surrounding the current Delabispo boundary that's highlighted in yellow. And the goal of combining the two boundaries, it would then look like joining those two together. And then of course the schools are very close to each other. They're literally I think a 100 yards apart. Delus Konosha. So this is a zoom in of what the new boundary would look like and where it is in
167relation to the rest of the district. So right now the student the the the new proposed boundary contains 841 TK5 students. Uh the capacity of Kenosha Elementary is 722. But of the 845 that live in that new boundary uh 42% uh attend Delabus Bor Konosha. So that's the the number of students that attend those schools. Now the other 36.75% attend a dual immersion a dual immersion program and 21% are attending other schools in the district. So the uh combined boundary projections uh the students would never the projected students out till 2034 would never exceed the capacity of Kenosha Elementary School. And those dots on the map are the all the students in the school district. So now secondary boundaries. So that so that right so we would combined the bispo with Kosha. Now let's talk
168about the middle school boundaries. So the middle school boundaries would remain the same. Both schools are currently served by uh uh by Marco Forester. So you can see the Marco Forester boundary in this map. The new boundary would be contained within that same boundary. So no changes for middle school. So high school assignment uh currently a portion of Delabby Bispo uh is boundary to Dana Hills High School and the remaining of uh Delabispo and all of Kenosha is boundary to San Juan Hills High School. So that would remain unchanged as well. So this is the the white outline is the new proposed boundary and so that and the way they're uh uh cut to attend Danny Hills High School or San Juan Hills High School would remain the same. So the people that live in
169those neighborhoods would not have any change to their high school assignments with this new proposal. >> Question. Um, since those in this boundary that are dedicated to San Juan Hills High School are to the west side of the five, why does it not make sense? Because I think San Hills is if it is not impacted, it's almost impacted and yet we have Dana Hills High School is one of the lowest in uh in enrollments in high school that we don't try to balance our high schools. Why do we not shift some of those students if not that whole section to Dana Hills? >> So the initial boundary uh is to try to minimize the impact on current boundaries. So keep it the way it is. >> Yeah. So we're minimizing impact on middle school and
170high school and what the expectations are of the neighbors that live within those um boundaries. But it's >> yeah I mean the proposal is to keep it where it is. So if if you've always lived in Adana Hills, you still live in Adana Hills. If you've always lived in a Sanwan Hills, you still live in a Sanwan Hills. What we know about Marco is Marco is as a middle school kind of already split that way, right? Because Marco serves Dana Hills and Sanwin Hills and Capitol Valley to an extent as far as kids choice. Um, none of our high schools are actually really impacted anymore. Um, again that declining enrollment thing that we talked about earlier unfortunately. Um, we we could of course look at changing high school boundaries. I know that that that is
171sometimes a little bit difficult discussion um just because people have historically always you know if I live here I go to this high school and we say well not anymore. Um but we can I mean if if the board wants us to explore it we can look at what it would look like um to change um the boundary and what that would look like for uh attendance levels for the schools. We can bring that back as a possible option in the next one if we wanted to if the board would like us to explore that. The reality is a lot of the kids choice anyways. So >> this way it rem maintains the same boundary that the neighbor the the home is used to. But then of course there's always choice >> and because we
172don't have as much of an impact on enrollment anymore. Um kids from Marco choose to go all over the place. We have kids from Marco at San Clemeni, Dana Hills, San Hills, Capitol Valley. Um they kind of go everywhere. >> Okay. So at the March 18th board meeting, we would bring an action item for the board to consider. And those items would be for repurposing Del uh um Delbispo Elementary School. Uh making it official that students resigned in RHDana elementary school boundary who do not want to attend the RHDA immersion program would then go to Kenosha. students have choice in or all any of the schools they want to go to. And then uh merge the Delabby Elementary School boundary with Kenosha as depicted in this presentation to have a new Kenosha Elementary School boundary
173that was shown right here. This would be the new uh Kenosha boundary uh and this would be for action at the March meeting. Happy to take any questions. The open doors are really helping a lot. So better. I was Yeah, it's hot. >> I got to ask any curious question um on this where it shoots down south to South Cove. Um, is that just a population number trying to get the um attendance uh areas more even as opposed to I'm not sure if that's Selba Road that by Albertson's there's I guess those are students um in there. Why does it jet down there as opposed to kind of just following a a more straight line uh on the south side? So that's the original Delispo boundary. Um, and >> so again >> why it was
174drawn at that point that way I I probably had to do with the trying to balance schools at the time because remember from the earlier presentation we were rapidly growing and our schools were having to drop portables to house all the kids. And so as we were building new schools, drawing boundaries to try and you know not overcrowd them at the time led to Deliso. If you go back a couple slides Clark Delispo having a keep going. That's there it is. That's the Delobiso boundary. Um it's this interesting sort of >> shape that's not really globular, but it kind of reaches up along certain neighborhoods to grab certain >> populations. Yeah. Looks kind like a bird. Um just, you know, because of the time you had Malcolm and George White in those schools and you're
175trying to not overfill them because we built 15 schools in like a >> Yeah. >> six year or 10 year window there. >> Um >> Yeah. So, so it's, you know, the idea was when we first started to Delo families a year ago was the idea was you we're combining the schools, right? You have two schools right next to each other that have enough kids to be one school. And so, um, the idea would be in in going with that, we're combining the two, um, boundaries. Obviously, we have a very robust school of choice process in this district that that wouldn't be impacted by this, but um, that that that little tail down at the bottom is a legacy of how Del was drawn. And then if you look at the b if you look
176at the boundaries well think about the Asencian Rienda. We just did the boundaries for Rienda when it opens and 20 years from now I'll have to remember you tell people this is how why we drew the boundary the way it is. But the school districts broken up into study areas. And also and with Capistrano Unified in particular, the ne the the neighborhoods were built in they weren't built in like squares like in North Orange County where they're just nice and even squares and you can kind of carve it out. If you were to look at the satellite map of this, you would see big open spaces and then pockets of neighborhoods. And so the boundaries sometimes might look odd, but it could be that it's not even picking up any homes or it could be
177there study areas that happened to exist at the time and then as new developments were brought online, they carve they added to the boundaries to then bring those new boundaries either into that new school or or this or that school just like we did with Brian and Asencia. Because if you go forward two more slides where we were at at the most northern part >> right right here. >> No, the the next slide. >> Yeah. If you go to the most northern part and you see where the line is. I mean, it looks like it's actually being cut right through a house. Several of them. Um >> when you zoom in, it doesn't cut through the house. >> Yeah. But it just goes to show it's kind of interesting how that looks like a neighborhood
178and then a real division in terms of students. But again, by choice. Yeah, if we if we threw it all up in the air and redrrew lines, I'm sure it would be very different today. >> Okay. Thank you. I just wondered about that. >> You're welcome. Just as a reminder, a lot of like go back a couple slides, Clark, to the one that shows all the elementary boundaries. >> Yeah. So, if you look right like above there, you've got the San Juan elementary boundary. But if you are a student who doesn't want to attend a dual immersion program at San Juan, you're not going to go to San Juan Elementary. You're going to uh be boundaried for another area. So, that neighborhood that that is split there is boundary to San Juan Elementary. um but
179but only if they want dual immersion right so when we started bringing dual immersion programs on in the past that sort of changed attendance patterns um same with RH Dana right so right now RH Dana if you live in the RH Dana attendance area but you don't want dual immersion you're you go to Delabispo this now changes that you'd go to Kenosha but u so the boundaries have that sort of dual immersion flex to them as Hey trustees. >> Okay, thank you clerk. Mrs. H, do you have any requests to speak for this item? >> Thank you. And this is a um information item only. So we'll move on to 11D. May I have a motion to wave the second reading and approve first reading board bylaw 9324 minutes and recordings? >> So move. >>
180Moved by Trusty Jones. >> Second. Seconded by trustee Adams. Trustees, do you have any questions for staff? Okay, Mrs. H, do we have any requests to speak for this item? >> We have one request to speak. Saman Sam Tar. >> Thank you. >> Good evening. I need to clarify really quickly that in my prior comment, I was not speaking on behalf of the PTA, but as a parent of this district. Thank you. Now to this moment. Um, I'm the daughter of a 40-year Oklahoma public school teacher and a 35-y year car salesman. My husband also comes from a workingclass background. I carry the proud tradition of advocating for my children and their classmates public education in the margin of my day. The draft before the board strikes the requirement that board meetings that board meet
181recordings be available on the district's website. Although the law may allow access upon request, removing proactive access creates a real barrier for workingclass families like mine and the 13 elementaryaries, three middle schools, and one high school that are title one families in this district and community members who rely on online availability. This is not merely a technical change. It alters how transparent board proceedings are in practice. Transparency should be proactive, not something families should have to ask permission for. And because this is something, this is how I operate in my daily life. I don't want to come with a problem, but also a solution. I propose that you add the following statement into the policy. For purposes of transparency and public access, recordings of open session board meetings shall continue to be made available on
182the district's website for public viewing. THANK YOU. H COULD TRUSTEES. >> YEAH, I do have a question. On page 113 at the bottom, it says any district recording may be erased or destroyed 30 days after the meeting. But then on the next page uh second paragraph starting with class three class three disposable records shall be destroyed during the third school year after the school year in which they were originated. That sounds that's confusing. >> Yeah. So the 30-day part is the law. >> Okay. >> 3 years is what we've established as our practice. So while we can delete them in 30 days, we will be retaining them on the website for 3 years and then YouTube retains them in perpetuity as far as I know at this point because they're also there. So we will
183not be deleting them in 30 days. We will contain three years and then the minutes are available forever. Um those are durable record. >> We might need to add language just to make that clear in there because it sounds just may be erased or destroyed in 30 days. Maybe. Maybe. >> Yeah, that's why it says it. It says the government code. It's just reciting the government code. But we >> Yeah. And not I guess I'm done talking. Um that's why the next line says however we will. Right. So so like basically we can do it but however we won't. >> Okay. And so they'll remain indefinitely until YouTube decides to take them down. >> Yeah. We will keep them on our website for three years >> and Yeah. >> And then we'll keep minutes in
184perpetuity. But we we're not going to delete the YouTube ones. Okay. Any other comments? Okay, Mrs. Hayes, can you please call the role? >> Student board member Hansen had to leave, so she is absent. Trustee Castianos, >> I. >> Trusty Pritchard, >> I. >> Trusty Zinger, >> I. >> Trusty Adams, >> I. >> Trusty Jones, >> I. >> Trusty Bulicus, >> I. >> Trusty Davis, >> I. The motion carries 70. Okay, moving on to 11E. Trusty Bulkas and Jones recommend voting for the incumbents to continue the work that has been started. We have a motion to approve the 2026 ballot for the California School Boards Association Delegate Assembly Region 15. Casting votes for the following candidates: Carrie Buck, Carol Crane, Katie Mchuan, Diane Miller, Barbara Schulman, Jonathan Stone, and Ann Marie Randall Tjo. So moved.
185>> Moved by Trusty Zinger. >> Seconded by Trusty Bolicus. Miss Haste, do we have any requests to speak for this item? >> There are none. >> Thank you. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? I. Motion carries 61. We will now move to the consent calendar. Mrs. Haste, do we have any requests to speak for this item? >> Yes, we have 17 speakers. Per board policy, we will do one minute each. I'll call and ask you that you line up over by the far wall as we've done earlier tonight. Our first speaker, Lorine Sherry, Karen Strong Berg, Miss Bergman, Jen Moid, Julie Isola, Michelle Blanchard, Jennifer McAteer, Nicole Mvvis, Lisa Meyers, Alicia Roses, Don Long, Aaron Bowen, Whitney Gun, and Amy Bean. I'm going to set the timer for one minute
186and ask uh Lorine to come forward. Thank you, members of the board. My name is Lorraine Sherry. I'm a certified occupational therapy assistant. question. When you hear the word assistant, does it resonate as an extra expense? Let's analyze it. COD has keep CUSD in IDA compliance by providing the largest amount of reimburseable minutes with the lowest labor cost in the district. For 26 years, CUSD has used this model to maximize returns on mandated IEP directed sessions. The efficacy is in the delivery. At a 50% savings in labor cost to the district in comparison to the OTR, codas are able to be reimbursed for services delivered. The district is in full legal compliance since the kota works under the supervision of an otr. In the 202526 school year, each kota has carried a case load of
187250 students per week in four to five schools. That's in the classroom and that's in special ed. Funds raised from our revenue generate money to purchase supplies for the students in our underfunded department. Am I time? Okay. >> Thank you. Speaker is Karen Strong. >> Good evening. My name is Karen. I'm an occupational therapist with CUSD for the past 14 years. Um in this time I've carried a case load of somewhere between 60 to 90 students each year. um always with a coded by my side. Um the only reason way I've been able to manage a case load of this size and still meet students IEP requirements is because I've had the support of my OT assistants. Um with OT assistances, the services are delivered consistently and with fidelity. Students receive the frequency and duration
188of therapy that their IEPs require. Collaboration with teachers and families happen. Documentation is completed accurately and progress is monitored appropriately. Without codas, it's simply not a possible to maintain quality services under the number of students on my case load. The math does not work. The time does not exist. Um, if that support is removed, students will not receive the quality therapy that they deserve, nor will they reliably receive the frequency and duration mandated in their IEPs. >> Thank you. Our next speaker is Lene Bergman. Uh hello, my name is Len Bergman and I am the library media technician at Duro High School. As you are aware, Capistrano Unified School District's mission statement is an unwavering commitment to student success. If the library media clerk's positions are eliminated, students success success will be impacted in the
189following ways. The library will be closed for more of the school day, limiting students access to printers, calculators, a supervised space for students to spend their free period studying. Language arts teachers may also face limitations of bringing their entire classes in to check out supplemental novels. Distribution of instructional materials be delayed because there'll be less staff to do check-ins and checkouts. student Chromebooks may not be processed in a timely manner, leaving a backlog for our TIS um and getting into getting them into circulation. Essential library tasks that uh directly support instruction and um aid in the students educations like ordering workbooks, taking accurate inventories, ensuring um the Williams Act, compliance, and processing any student acrudeed fees and fines may be delayed. Our next speaker is Jen. Hi, my name is Jennifer Mofo and I'm a
190high school library media technician at San Clemeny High School. Last week we were informed that the high school library media clerks are being selected for layoff and this will severely underserve the 34% of CUSD students enrolled in our high schools. CUSD enrollment breaks down roughly into thirds by high school, middle school, and elementary age students. And the it follows that library staffing should mirror that enrollment with 34% of students at the high schools. We currently have 12 uh FTE, but you're proposing to cut it to six. 25% are at middle schools and they have 13 full-time equivalent library staff. And 41% our students are at elementary with 12.6 six full-time equivalent library staff. We're proposing that you continue to keep it even and have 12 library staff for the 30 34% of high school CUSD
191students. Thank you, Julie. Good evening, trustees. I am the CSEA chapter president and I'm very very proud and humbled by the turnout we had tonight. Um on behalf of CUSD classified professionals, I want to acknowledge the weight of the decision before you tonight. We understand that budget reductions are difficult. At the same time, the nature of these reductions matters. While management staffing levels are being adjusted, the administrative structure at our schools remains intact. In contrast, many of our classified reductions directly affect sitebased student service roles and in some cases eliminate entire classifications. Library media clerks, occupational therapist assistants, bilingual community liaison, and guidance techs are em and guidance techs are embedded in the daily functioning of our schools. They provide safe student access, deliver legally required services, support multilingual families, and maintain critical testing and
192data systems. When these roles are reduced or removed, the responsibilities do not disappear. We respectfully ask for clarity on these studentf facing compliance driven services. >> Michelle Blanchard. >> Good evening, um board. Uh thank you. This I'm Michelle Blanchard. I am an ELMT. Um, and I came here last um, board meeting to uh, ask you to approve the the library media tech clerk position at the Cappo High School. And now I know that that is one of the things on the cutting block. Um, and it was a little hard to sit through the budget. Um, honestly, which I didn't think was a clear reflection reflection of the entire budget as you went over enrollment um, or classified and um, certificated, but that's not everybody. That's not admin. I feel like there was a lot of
193things in the budget that that weren't shared. Um, I think it's very disheartening to hear about the library media clerk as I'm already hearing it is affecting people that are in those positions. The bilingual community service leaison is very upsetting because I work closely with that person at my kids school and at my school that I work at. And lastly, I just have to say I'm also very saddened to see about Lobo. I was working at Lobo two years and to hear about that community affected that was disheartening. I hope you do better. Jennifer Mcier >> sorry before you vote vote please consider the immense impact of removing our leison from our schools. Please remember that these roles were put in place to help our students thrive and they work to remove these roles puts
194our students at risk of losing resources that could otherwise set them up for success in life. I ask that you remember that we are all here for the students and that one of the board's roles is to ensure student achievement. You can do this in part by taking the time to listen to your community here in front of you asking for resources not to be stripped away. But we are sadly getting used to these scenarios replaying with staff cuts, classroom sizes increasing, and other means of resources being removed. We will not stay silent and picking up where you continue to challenge our strengths. I respectfully ask the board to stop cutting the lowhanging fruits of assistance team supporting leaison. Look to the top. Average salary as superintendent is around 17600,000. Ours is a top earner
195of over 33500,000. That goes beyond the top earners in the state. Please explore alternative options. My number down there call >> Nicole Mvvis. Nicole, go ahead. >> Good evening members of the board. My name is Nicole Mvvis. I'm a parent of two children in the Capitol School District. one at BAMS and the other at Los Palmus. Lisa Davis, you are my trustee. I understand the very difficult position that the deficit is putting our school district in. With that being said, I feel the need to come and express how important our bilingual community leaison is to our school. As an immersion school, the families that our leaison works with are invaluable members of our community. Our school would not be what it is without them. I have been a member of the Los Palmus community for
196seven years. And in that time, I've had the pleasure of working side by side with our liaison and have seen firsthand the impact her work has done. Although she may not be working directly with all the families at Los Palmus, her impact is very much felt in all the classrooms. Los Palmus has a student body of nearly 750 students. Her work directly impacts the academic achievements of these kids. Losing this role would be devastating for our school. The hat she wears is expansive, and with a population this large, who would be able to fill this role? Thank you. Lisa Meyers. Hello. As a fellow dual immersion parent, that's exactly what I'm here to talk about as well. I continue to be very concerned by the lack of support for the Latino community in our district.
197Many of the current schoolboard members ran on the platform of parents rights, especially increasing parents involvement in their children education. How could you possibly eliminate a bilingual community liaison? How is your first target to cut support to our Latino community? Has anyone on this board ever spoken to a bilingual community liaison about their position? Do you have any idea what they do? Has anyone spoken to principles or teachers about how essential this position is? Ask Ruina Mack if she thinks that bilingual community liaison play a part in what you guys just saw in that presentation. A school that has 50% of its students who are English language learners may depend on this liaison for their sole communication to the parents. Alicia Alicia Rosas. Good evening, trustees. My name is Alicia Rosas and I'm proudly serve
198as a bilingual community exam. I'm here to share uh why is the role on is not simple helpful but essential to the success and instability of our schools. Current currently 27% of our students population is Hispanic or Latino that represents more than a stats. It represents families with deserts clear communication, equal access and meaningful connection to their children's education. A bilingual community license serves as a vital link between schools and home. Many families feel overwhelmed by school system, techn platform, academic technology, encompass process such enrollment or special education services. We ensure that critical information about attendance, great safety programs, the opportunity, it is clear, understood by the families. So thank you so much for helping us. Don Long. >> Thank you. My name is Don Long and I work at Alisa Nagel High School as
199a guidance technician. The guidance technician role is more than a position on a campus. It is a visible, steady presence at the heart of our schools. We organize and execute some of the district's most meaningful academic markers, academic placement programs, CASP, PSAT, SAT, Stamp, and ASVAB testing. These assessments are more than tests. They are pathways to college, careers, scholarships, and personal achievement. Beyond academics, we are behind the scenes boots on the ground force that facilitate experiences that students and their families will remember for a lifetime, such as award ceremonies, graduation, welcome expose, and registration events. Our work quietly but powerfully shapes how CSD is experience is experienced. It builds trust, confidence, and connection. If declining enrollment is the concern driving the proposed guidance technician reductions, it is important to consider that reducing the role that
200helps attract, engage, and retain families risks weakening the very bridge between our schools and our community. We are not simply operational support. We are Thank you, >> Aaron Bowen. >> Hello, I am Aaron Bowen. I'm a guidance technician at Tasora High School. This is my 25th year working for COSD. I became a guidance technician in 2021 when the position was created. Guidance technicians are the main support for our school counselors at Toro. The studentto counselor ratio is an average of 500 students per counselor due to counselor cuts last year. The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250 to1. We are double that. Our counselors are drowning. I see this in real time every workday. Removing four of their main supports across the district isn't a smart move. They would have to absorb what
201is left behind. Cutting four GT positions and an additional 12 positions across the board is showing is showing that we are okay and support overworking our remaining student support employees. Our guidance tech job description is three pages long. Two of those pages are just our duties as assigned, not the extra we take on. These two pages are the duties that we take away from the counselors so they can better support their students academically and social and their social emotional needs. There is a reason why we're at every middle school and high school site. The same for the districts around us. There is a need for us. All of us with Whitney Gun. >> Hi. Um, I've been able to serve at Los Palmus for the last seven years and I just wanted to share a
202little bit about my experiences. I've been able to work with our bilingual community leaison. Um, she stands in the gaps for our families in our district who are the most vulnerable, the most unseen, and the most in need of support. Because of our liaison, we know which students come to school hungry. We know which families face eviction. We know who needs clothing, transportation, emergency support, and access to services. We know which parents are confused or intimidated by the school system and we know how to help them feel safe and feel welcomed and feel included. This position literally allows us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. When we do that, students are able to learn. A child who is fed, cared for, and whose parents feel supported is a child who can succeed academically.
203and Amy. Amy, go ahead. Hi there. Thank you. I am a parent uh at Los Palmus Elementary School and I've worked with our community bilingual liaison very closely for the last couple of years. I'm representing her, but also the other liaison uh as well as the families who rely on them. Um I appreciate the difficult decisions you all are facing. I appreciated the budget overview. Uh I might have missed the total number uh the total projected budget for next year, but this does feel like a haircut that is going to really impact some of our most vulnerable students in the district. Uh I challenge the assumption that 17 and a half hours is enough to serve all of these families. So um you know and I and I know that we are still uh looking
204at what this further centralized model will look like daytoday on the ground. So I think until we have more information about what that will actually look like and the impact that it will have I hope that we can consider holding off on a vote on this. Um we saw that one to two% of increase in average daily attendance matters to the tune of millions and these liaison impact that average daily attendance. >> Do any trustees have any consent items they'd like to pull? What is the number for um where the BCL's are noted in the agenda? I don't have a big notebook. C2 consent C2. >> Thank you. I would like to pull C2. >> Any other trustees? Okay, we have a motion to approve the consent calendar with the exception of C2. >> Moved
205by Trusty Zinger. >> Second by Trusty Adams. Mrs. Hayes, can you please call the role? Student board member Hansen is absent. Trusty Castianis >> I. >> Trusty Pritchard. >> I. >> Trusty Zelinger. >> I. >> Trusty Jones. >> I. >> Trusty Adams. >> I. Trusty Bulicus I. >> Trusty Davis >> I. Motion carries 70 to approve the consent calendar with the exception of item C2. >> Okay. AND Trusty Valkus I realize this is 2.2 almost 2.3 million. Um, I just in good conscience can't vote for this because I have explained to some parents who've written to me, I know at New Hart Middle School that that BCL works far more hours than what um, she's paid for because of the need of these families and because we had the whole presentation. We want to help
206the ELAS and all. I know how much this position means and I may not get others to vote with me, but I in good conscience cannot vote to reduce this category. >> Trustees, other comments? >> Can we can we talk about BCL's and how many we have? I mean, I just would like more information on what this involves and then what's the follow-up plan to certain sites who lose their BCL. >> Sure. I'll let uh Dr. Merwin talk more about the plan. >> Um, yes. So there first first of all of course we absolutely value this position and I've seen it firsthand as at the school site as a principal as a teacher and and at the district office all these years. I we absolutely value it. So we are not eliminating the position. We
207are going to in this proposal 22 positions will remain. It will all be full-time 30 30 hours and one 40 hour position. We will then focus on new on additional criteria to decide where these the um the focus of these positions will be. So the previous model that we've been using has been just a threshold model which states if you are u you have a ELAC requirement and a translation requirement and then you automatically get u a BCSL. In this new model we are looking at things such as enrollment. We are looking at total number of English learners on the campus. We are looking at the ELAC and the translation requirements, but also the total number of students with IEPs who need translating into another language. We're looking at total number of students free and
208qualify for free and reduced lunch. So, we're looking more deeply at these uh these criteria and just instead of just a standard acrosstheboard threshold. So many of the speakers speaking tonight, we absolutely are aware of those criteria and we would focus the allocations on those schools and then the others that would have a decrease in allocation, we would have centralized positions that will be available >> and the decrease positions and that's based on so that those that are here tonight and those that might be listening is based on enrollment based on the total number of ELS on campuses and the change in how that has what that has looked like over the past few years. Correct. >> Yes. And like Dr. Brown said, there are a thousand fewer English learners over the last four years.
209So, we're just focusing in and see where are our students and then making sure the new allocation model matches where those students are. >> Trusty Bulgus, >> we're down a thousand students, but we still have 39,000 students roughly. Um the elimination of 18 full-time would leave us uh where you said keeping 22 when we had 38 would be eliminating 18 positions if I understand it correctly. >> Yes. But those are not full-time positions. Many of those are part-time positions. So instead, we're shifting to full to full-time 30 hours with one 40 hour uh in order to have um fewer 17 and 1 half hour positions, but then going to more 30 hours and then a 40 hour. >> And I understand this and it's costly, but I have to make the point. Um, I've been
210on campus and seen um, and I'm have to keep giving New Hart as an example that BCL has an office at the front of the school because there's a lot of Spanish-sp speakaking families that don't want to have to walk through the school where people see you because they've got questions and they don't understand. Um, and to say that there's a regional office, many of them won't be able to drive to to get there and there's something lost on the telephone or an email versus that personal and those BCLs are very personal, speaking the language. Um, I just know in my heart it's it's not going to be the same thing. And I I just think in a particular category where we're really trying to help these students, this position is a very strong support
211to the success of students. >> Trusty Bulicus, I appreciate that. And if they may, if I may also point out, we have a I've talked about how we would allocate differently. We have a draft plan of what that would look like. And our first priority is to work with our principles, principal Bajoric and others to say, "Okay, this is what we're proposing. Let's look and see if this is matching the needs of your school." We are I've already reached out to our principles to to have them work on the draft with us and to give us feedback so that we are making sure we are matching where those most significant needs are. So you're not relying on like you said someone who who is residing at the central office if you need direct support on
212your site. So we're aware of that. We want to work with the principles to make sure that what we have put together matches those needs >> and the principles will be sharing with their community what this will look like. >> We will help with the communication but absolutely the principles will be part of this solution to help us with how do we allocate these positions. I guess I'm just worried about the idea of centralizing. I that uh you know when I live and breathe in the school every day and then a job gets centralized to the deal then there's a disconnect that happens for families. >> Can you speak a little bit on that centralizing? Can you speak on how many will stay on sites and what give a little bit more information on that?
213Yes, absolutely. Currently, we we have two they are called um bilingual special program liaison at the district office. They are available right now to support with translating needs. U so it's not um it's not that they are then doing all your meetings over the phone. They're available to support in other ways to the schools. They come they can come out to sites if they have significant needs to be there for translation services but they are uh more of that backup for translation services than take some of the needs out the schools. Some of the schools right now have uh BCSL support and they have like I said they're barely meeting the threshold of BLAC and translation services and they don't need to have the same amount of services they've had based on the students that
214they serve. So this is where we're we're right sizing. We're using the word right sizing. We're trying to now match where the needs are. And then these two at this at the district office are not meant to um take the place uh perfectly, but they are there to provide that backup support with translating services and can come to a site with an extreme need. >> Um I have a question Dr. Mwin. So I think um from some of the emails I got I had the impression that uh people saw that 15 BCL's were jobs were going to be eliminated and they don't know how many we have. So that seemed like that might be all of them and it's about half. Um and I think the most the emails I received were from parents uh
215community members who had been involved or were involved in a very very high uh English learner population uh school. And my assumption is that if you're in a high English learner population school, you may be getting more more BCL. you you might have had only a 17 1/2 hour and now you'll be getting a 20our. Uh is that a a correct assumption? >> It is correct that some some the ones with the highest allocations would remain the same or very close to the exact allocation they have and others could have actually in the draft gained um support because that oneizefits-all threshold approach is some get more than they need and some don't have as much as they need. So we're trying to we're trying to make it match what the schools need. >> So some
216BCL's will so let's say there's a BCL a school with 400 English learners. Uh presumably that they would still have a full-time BCL. I don't know what the threshold is. I'm just saying 400. Uh but then maybe there's a school two schools that have only uh 30 English learners. They might well probably more than that. let's say 50 English learners, they might split a BCL. They might each get a BCL for two and a half days for a certain number of days, something like that week. >> Okay. So, uh, so it's probably not going away entirely for any schools, although I'm aware that there are some schools that have really a tiny number of English learners or they have uh, you know, three Farsy speakers and four Russian speakers and two Korean speakers and four
217Spanish speakers. So the BCL doesn't speak the language of all those people and that's going to have to happen some other way with with talking points or through our translation services or whatever. Um but uh anyway there are schools that have quite a small number of English learners and not a concentration of any one or two languages. Correct. >> That's correct. And again, this is a draft plan that we would be working with the principles to make sure that it's matching, you know, what's what they're seeing on their sites and what the families are are needing. And uh then these centralized positions again and provide translation supports with documents, right, for those schools that like you said, they they are not going to have the same support because they have a very small amount of
218English learners that need the families need help. Then that's where these centralized positions could jump in with we'll translate those documents for you. For example, >> to be clear, we're not adding centralized positions. We're not we're not replacing sitebased positions to add centralized positions. We're not going to do we're >> just what we currently have. >> Yeah. What we currently have to to provide because the reality is our kids are not evenly distributed across the district. Remember, there's only 27 schools that had 30 eels for two years, right? We have 60 sites in the district. Um, and so as we try and think about how to do this with any sort of uh strategy, we have to be targeted. And so we we have far fewer of those students. Um, so how do we target
219our strategy and target our resources to be at those sites as opposed to we're going to put one sort of everywhere um where the needs aren't the same? Again, like I said earlier, none of it's ideal, but this is a way to try and bridge that gap. >> Do we know when we analyze um the workload of BCL's how much they help. I mean, I know they help at the school a lot and students, but do we know how much they interface with families that come to see them because that's kind of difficult and that that in my head is when you get into this regional as I talked about them being able to drive and go see because I see them coming in. Um, so do do we know um how much is with
220>> It's not consistent. It's different at every site depending on how the site uses, how the families interact with the site. Sure. So it's there isn't like a it's this number for across the sites. It's it's not really a and they all don't you know they they all approach the job slightly differently of course right based on the site and the needs. So what New Hart looks like what Los Palmus looks like might be a bit different also different than what Bathgate or Asencia looks like. And so we don't have a like this is the number of family interactions a BCL does. I guess I'd have to express the same thing that parents said. If I knew where you were putting them, who had full time, I'd feel better. But I don't. >> My thought
221was the same. My thought was the same. >> So, I'm a little uncomfortable because I don't feel >> it's hard to eliminate a position when you don't know the impact of what site and where it's happening. I mean, not that it makes it any easier for anybody, but I'm very concerned about the students that need the most support and and I know we're we're guaranteeing that they're going to get a BCL, but that's still a concern because there's that unknown of not knowing what site is truly directly affected. And not that that would make my decision any any easier, but it's just more information that I guess helps. I don't know at this point. I appreciate that we are looking to match where the needs are and that's what I've been told by staff is
222that we will be matching where the needs are and I think that's the most important piece for our families is to know that we are looking at matching where the needs are. I also I know the BCL's and the principles and the um office manager and the attendance clerk at most I think almost all of our uh dual immersion schools and all of them are Spanish speakers or well okay at RHDana the principal is not a Spanish speaker but they're pretty much all Spanish speakers and in many cases native Spanish speakers um and so it's not the BCL isn't the only Spanish speaking person in the office. Uh you go into um uh San Juan Elementary and uh you know I I know the office manager. I know and the PTA president who was here
223earlier is a native Spanish speaker. Uh and and that's the case in again several of our immersion schools. There are a lot of people who speak Spanish. Um and you know I'm the only Spanish speaker on this board. I'm not going to embarrass myself trying to show off to you tonight as I sometimes do, but I mean I care tremendously about this community and I know um uh I I spend a good part of almost every day in downtown San Pestrono where most of uh the adults at least are uh Spanish speakers and I carried care very much about this community. But I don't think that that there's only one way of of helping them. Um I also know when I go to back to school night and open house uh or mostly open house
224and the parents in the immersion schools are talking to their kids. The parents are Latinos but but they are primarily English speakers. They are speaking to their kids in English right there in the office. not in the classroom. Not all of them of course, but uh so it's not that there is no language ability, no English language ability in these families. In many cases, there is. This is often uh the parents who came here as young people or who were born here themselves and are very English fluent. Um, so I I I want this community to be served well. I want this community to be successful. I believe that they can be successful. I believe they will be successful. And in my experience in this district, um, I was a volunteer for many years at
225Kenosha School uh, before I got on the board. uh the the achievement levels of that community have gone up since I have been involved with it. So uh and I think they will continue to go up and we see a lot of of improvement in the ELPACs and the reclassification. I I I don't think there's only just one way to do this. I think that we do serve them well. We will continue to serve them well. And I I believe that the staff has researched this. I think there may be some tweaks that happen as more research is done. And I think that the number, you know, of reducing by 15 could change a little bit because I've seen it change before when things come back. But I'm I'm I'm confident in this and and
226not because I think we have to do it because I think it actually can work. >> Can I get clarification? Are we eliminating 15 or 18? It's going from 38 total positions to 22 total positions. But again, of the 22, there are 30 hour positions, >> but there is one that's not being filled. That's that's already um that has been unfilled and not that's been an open position. So, and then again, of those 38, many of those I don't know the exact number are 17 and 1 half hour positions. So instead it would be 22 there will be 30hour positions and one 40-hour position. And again I just want to make the commitment again and I understand wondering what does the final assignment look like. I promise we will work closely with the principles to
227make sure that the allocations match the student needs at the sites. I promise that. >> Yes. And I appreciate the work that's been done on this and I know that there's been much care and consideration for all of this as we are back to that word right sizing our district and and I want our communities to know that there has been much care in these decisions and every student will their needs will be met that will not change. Um, any other questions with the board? Otherwise, I think we need to call the question if someone. Okay. Trusty Zinger and seconded by Trusty Adams. And all those in favor? No, we are. This is a we'll roll call roll, right? Since we pulled it twice. Okay. Uh, let's go ahead and roll call. >> Trusty Castianos.
228>> I. >> Trusty Pritchard. >> Hi. >> Trusty Zinger. >> I. >> Trusty Jones. >> I. >> Trustee Adams. >> I. >> Trusty Bullicus. >> Nay. >> Trusty Davis. >> I. Motion carry 61. And I'd like to recognize Dr. Chris Brown. Do you have any comments? I >> think people have probably heard enough from me tonight. Um so I would just ask that you please take a look at the wonderful artwork that is done by students in the room uh as you leave. Um it's amazing really the some of the artistic talent of our students. I wish I could share it with them. And that is the end of my comments for the evening. >> Thank you trustees. Any comments? Okay. Um, I just would like to recognize a few of the retirees. Beatatrice Landeros,
229bilingual Kirk, 38 years. Christina Wilfrung, high school campus supervisor, 35 years. Na Abu Zayab, preschool teacher, 24 years. And Susan Cameron, pair educator, 2, 14 years. May I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? >> Hold on one second. I just want to comment on uh uh um sorry um uh uh Cat Thompson, the principal of Marco Forester Middle School, was named the uh Orange County Middle School Administrator of the year. The Orange County Middle School Administrator of the year. And she really is fabulous. And also, uh, Tan Nuen was Atlanta Newen was named the Orange County, help me out. Um, >> yeah, it's the AXA uh, region 17. So, Cat was the AXA region 17 middle school administrator of the year and Lana was, and you can help me with this, Stephanie, the AXA
230region 17 technology administrator of the year. >> Yeah. Which and for us to get two of those is a pretty big deal. Thanks. >> Absolutely. And with that, may I have a motion to adjurnn? >> So move. >> Moved by trusty Bulicus, seconded by Trustee Jones, and MOT. And all those in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries 70 to adjourn the meeting. The time is now 911 p.m. Thank you. Have a good night.