SCSD Regular Board Meeting 6-3-2021

001Okay, we're broadcasting and recording. All right, thanks. Good evening, I'll call the order. The June 3rd of 2021, regular school board meeting, the San Carlos school board. We have a new addition tonight with our newest member, Ben Cornell, appearing with us virtually. Trustees, after review of the agenda, is there a motion to approve the agenda as is? Or any changes? I move that we approve the agenda as is. Thank you, Irene. Second. Thank you, Sarah. All in favor, please state by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing none, then that will carry and approved at 5-0. Our first order of business, we have a new trustee appointed last Thursday. Ben Cornell is with us. We had sent out his bio. We are happy to have him and have him joining us on this board to

002fill out trustee, Colonel Elliott's term. But first, Ben, we do have a formal oath of office that we would like you to take to understand the importance of this job, the role you're about to step into, and the lawyer email he says, just to make everything a little bit more binding on you. So when you're ready, I believe you have it in front of you if you just wanna read it out loud and go from there. Yep. I, Ben Cornell, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, that I take this

003obligation freely without any mental reservation for purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter. All right, thanks, Ben. And officially, well, I think you did do this before, but for us just to do it publicly as well, thank you for taking that oath and welcome to the board. So now we have one of those nights where I like to say it's exciting yet sad as we celebrate people in our district who have been a part of us for a long time, but are moving on or at that stage of the career are retiring. So Michelle, I will move to you. All right, good evening, trustees and community members, and especially my fellow retirees. This is my 28th year of education. And for about the

004last 10 years, I've been part of organizing and celebrating retirees. And it's nice tonight to be part of this group. And I think what's important for all of us to realize is this is a very special time for educators. For those of us who've been in education for five, 10, 20, 30 plus years, this is a real commitment and dedication that we have committed our careers to the service of the public and to support our students and our communities by raising just great citizens. And tonight, I just wanna honor and thank every single one of you who have impacted the lives of thousands of children and are now getting ready to transition to another part of your life where you'll probably still support and serve in your community in some way, but probably a different

005way than coming to work every morning to greet students. So with that, we've asked our principals and supervisors and administrators to kind of take the lead on recognizing each one of our retirees tonight and take a few minutes to speak about them and then have the retirees say a few words if they would like. This year, we have 13 retirees. Last year, we had eight. And the year before that, I think it was just three or four. So you can see a real trend here with quite a few people this year. And this is a special time. And let's go ahead and let's kick this off. So I'm going to start with Hans Barber so he can recognize Brenda Bekeke. And then Hans will hand it off to the next person. Thank you, Michelle. And

006I just want to reiterate what Michelle said and thank all of you for the service that you've given to our school district, whether you've been here a year or two or 22 or 40, serving students is a calling, as I like to call it. It's a calling and it's a passion. And it is truly an honor to be able to be involved in honoring each of you and the service that you've done. It's just, you know, I always think fondly when I think back about the many friends and colleagues that I've had that have retired and the service and a number of students that they've touched. So congratulations to all of you. I will get things started here. And I just, you know, listen, I want to just give a disclaimer, first of all, I

007guarantee you that almost every person after me is going to have some awesome speech and they're going to have like a show that they do and all these fun, you know, I'm just going to say some good things about Brenda and hand it off to the rest of you. And, you know, I love, that's why I love this night so much. You all get so into it and it's just fantastic. So, we'll start with Brenda. And so Brenda and I have been partners now for the last two years. And when I say partners, I mean partners on a daily basis, talking on the phone, talking via text, talking all the time, night, day, morning, whatever it might be, we were in constant contact. And I think that's a real strength of Brenda's is that, you

008know, she was always available and always wanting to do the work that was in front of us. I think of Brenda, I think of passion. I said that already, but she's very passionate. She's passionate about all students. She's also passionate about her work in the realm of special education. And really, really passionate about forming relationships, particularly with, you know, parents of special education students. And really has a really heart for the students and their families and really understands and listens. And that was really an important piece of the position when she came in in particular was, you know, really forming those relationships with parents. She's an advocate, as I said, for all students. She does an amazing job of saying, now, you know, we'll often be in meetings and saying, hey, wait a minute, what

009about this or what about that? And that often makes us stop and think, yeah, what about that or what about this? And what about this group of students? In that way, as I said, just a real advocate for students. She's enormously into equity and very much brings up that on a regular basis about wealth. All right, that might be, there's a difference between being fair and being equitable, right? And we've talked about that quite extensively. She's a hard worker and she puts her heart into her work. I think as we all do as educators, and, you know, I've had some real heart to hearts with Brenda over time that have really, you know, made me think too. And I think an excellent colleague is someone that makes you, you know, you don't always agree, okay?

010An excellent colleague isn't someone where you say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I agree and totally right. An excellent colleague is somebody that makes you say, man, think about that. And that's a really good point that you made. And I'm gonna have to think further about that and let's talk about it later after I had a chance to think about it. And, you know, oftentimes I'd have discussions with her and that's exactly what would happen. That she would make me think and I, you know, and I'd like to think probably the other way around, but this isn't about me, this is about Brenda. So, you know, in that way, she embodies a really, you know, a really good colleague, a thought partner on things. And like I said, someone that really made me think. And

011I'm sure you leave that legacy with others as well after, you know, not just your two years with us, but your 20 plus years in public education and the other people with which you have served. So, Brenda, cheers to you. There might be a little jealousy on my face about, you know, you going out and all the best to you. I know you're gonna do great work and in your next endeavor. So, cheers. Right, we can unmute Brenda. She wants to say a couple of words, Veronica. Yes, I'd just like to say that it has been my pleasure to serve the San Carlos community for the past two years. You know, coming into this position and thinking of the leadership and the vision and where the community wanted to go, we never anticipated that the

012majority of the time we would be in a pandemic. And we would be trying to find balance and flexibility and being able to turn on a dime at any given moment. And I just cannot say enough positive things about the special education team that everyone from paraeducators, ed specialists, our speech, our psychologists, our occupational therapists, the clerical support that we receive, everyone behavior and mental health, I can't leave that out, and nursing, everyone has pulled together and really created a community of care, especially for those students who struggled with the remote learning platform as we tried to find ways and tried to be creative in the solutions that we found for them. So, while I'm excited about moving forward, I will certainly miss public education and I will most certainly miss San Carlos community and

013the opportunity that I had to work with the very special people that are on the ground and in the schools here. All right, so Michelle, I will take it from here. Or are you going to kick this off? Well, I have no preference. I'll advance the slides as the slides come up. If the administrator who is going to be presenting, you don't have to jump in Hans, we'll just let the administrator take over and introduce our next retiree and I'll advance our slides as we go. Okay, well, that's me. And I am so honored to be able to recognize Laura Baldini and her 37 years of teaching. Wow, I actually stole Laura and her partner, Nancy Clark from Redwood city in 2013. 2013 is when we set out to create a new district strategic plan.

014We had formed a design team where we met and we mapped out what was important to us to include in this new strategic plan. One of the components was the ability to blur grade level lines. That idea really resonated with me as a principal who often had to make combination classes due to enrollment numbers. It was always a challenge to assign the staff member and the students and the parents to that combination class. I heard about this teaching duo from superintendent Craig Baker as they had been his children's teachers at several years earlier. Laura and Nancy had been teaching K-2 multi-age program in Redwood city. And when that program was being dismantled, they were looking for other opportunities. And I was looking for teachers who were open to blurring those grade level lines. I hired

015them assigning Laura to a one-two grade combination class and Nancy to a second grade class. Before the end of their first year, they approached me about starting a K-2 multi-age program at Heather. Fast forward to 2020-21, Heather has had a successful and very popular multi-age program for seven years, which was spotlighted at a board meeting a year ago, January. Laura was passionate, is passionate about teaching multi-age, teaching kids where they are and getting them to their next level. Laura was always willing to take the role of spokesperson for that K-2 class. As you could imagine, I needed a little bit of assistance. She presented at our kindergarten orientations. She always offered to talk with parents during school tours. She invited them in just to stop by any time to learn more and see her class.

016She always had a true open door policy rain or shine to her students as well as parents at any time. Laura spearheaded several projects and initiatives at Heather beyond the multi-age program. And I fear I'm gonna forget some. She took on the responsibility pretty early on organizing our curriculum room and keeping it that way, probably because the state of that room drove her crazy. She started our Heather's little library, which resides in our amphitheater and is always full of books that children can take, borrow or contribute to. I think she even bubble wrapped it for the last year and a half, because it was all bubble wrapped. I can't talk about Laura without mentioning what a champion she is for the American Cancer Society. As a survivor herself, Laura started an annual relay recess at

017Heather, which became our end of the year all school field day. Our kids became superheroes in the fight against cancer, promoting a healthy lifestyle of sunscreen use, nutrition and exercise. She set up fun competitive penny wars that supported American Cancer Society and became one of our annual community service projects. Laura, you have to promise to come back and continue to lead our relay recess events next year. Laura, I have learned so much from you on so many levels. I have appreciated partnering with you in lots of problem solving and experiencing your always can do attitude. This isn't goodbye, because I do expect to see you hanging around Heather next year. I wanna thank you for all you've done at Heather. Thank you for being the special person you are. Thank you for your laughter, constant

018laughter and all of your LOLs. You will be greatly missed, but we all know that you will have a blast with your next adventures in life with your grandchildren. Congratulations, Laura. Thank you. I've really enjoyed working with you, Pam. I really have loved being in San Carlos. I feel like when I got here, it was all about burning some toast and I felt like that was a great philosophy for me. So really enjoyed my time here. And you can't get rid of me that easily. So I'll be back for relay recess. I'd love to do one at every school. So we'll definitely be around. So thank you so much. Thank you. All right. It's my honor to introduce the teachers that are going to share a little something about Missy Brenner. But I just wanna

019say first that, you know, Missy was the only person I knew at White Oaks when I started through Family Friend. And she introduced the culture at White Oaks to me and couldn't have done a better job representing the warmth and the welcoming atmosphere that White Oaks is. And without taking too much time from our teachers, I just wanna say that White Oaks has a big missing piece now that Missy has retired, but we will always cherish the time that we've had with Missy. And she's been such an inspiration and a foundational part of what White Oaks is today. Without further ado, I'm gonna hand it over to Lori Bishop, Tracy Mitchell-Ardwin and Christine Fox-Sennett. Hi. I've had the pleasure of teaching second grade with Melissa for the past six years. Missy was a pillar in

020our San Carlos community. She lived in San Carlos for over 30 years. After her first few years of teaching in San Francisco, Melissa took time off to be at home full-time with her children. She once told me she would not have traded this time with her children for the world. Her own children attended Heather, Central, and TL. She was an avid volunteer throughout her children's school years from kindergarten through high school. I was once told that she volunteered for the senior all night. Wow. For that, she needs a medal. She was involved in everything, so much so that she has a network of friends all over San Carlos. When we would go to lunch in San Carlos, you could count on Missy to bump into a dear friend or past student and greet them with

021the sweet smile and a giant hug. Missy's roots run deep and wide here in San Carlos. It is with a heavy heart that we have to say goodbye to her, but we know that it is time for her to move on to new adventures with her family. Congratulations, Missy. Missy's middle name is Joy, which is the one key word which describes her perfectly. I have had the pleasure of having her as a colleague, friend, and sister-in-law during our time working in San Carlos. In a twist of fate, we were hired on the same day in 1997 before we even knew one another. Missy went to White Oaks and I went to Heather. A few years later, Missy and Miriam Siegelstern were the matchmakers who introduced me to my husband. For that, I will always be

022grateful because it allowed me to become part of a very special family. Missy is the matriarch of our family, always ensuring that traditions are continued, whether it be making special foods or hosting holiday celebrations. Her greatest worry is FOMO or fear of Missying out. This was the theme of her family birthday celebration in Mexico in February, 2020. Missy brings light and laughter to any gathering. Missy is wife to Ken, mother to Ryan, Jordan, and Courtney, mother-in-law to Danny, and Nana to Luca and Jonah, as well as a beloved sister, sister-in-law, and aunt. We wish her well on this next chapter of her life. In 1997, Missy joined White Oaks Elementary and a certain job share duo that lasted for 17 years. I happened to be part of that duo and couldn't have asked for a

023better teammate. From the moment we met, the comfort and camaraderie of years of friendship had already blossomed. Soon, early mornings with coffee and pumpkin bread trickled into late night phone calls with updates about students and discussing matching Halloween costumes. Our husbands, Ken and Jim, saying, are you girls on the phone again? Each back to school night, we would take turns sharing with our kids' parents. We had our timing down perfectly. We giggled all the way through. Us two ended the night exclaiming at the same time, we are one. The sheer joy and enthusiasm that Missy brought to the table, or shall we say desk, never ceased. But as we all know, good things must come to an end so that better things may grow and blossom. So naturally, two full-time teaching opportunities came along at

024White Oaks. We taught full-time now as next door neighbors in rooms seven and eight for seven glorious, hectic, wonderful years. Throughout every moment of teaching, Missy imbued joy, inspiration, courage and persistence into her students and her oh-so-lucky colleagues. She leaves an imprint of that perseverance and sheer joy on this community. She has been and always will be more than a job share partner or colleague. She has been a mentor, a role model and a dear friend for so many of us. Missy, we wish you retirement filled with endless love, adventure, laughter and magic. Always remember that there's a place for you at White Oaks. There's a place for us all, a light to live in, a gift to give, and a place for us. Excellent. Oh, thank you so much. Let's see if I can

025say what's in my heart right now. Thank you, Leah. I've loved having you as my principal and friend. And to have my sister-in-law Christine has been wonderful and a joy. And Lori, working with you has been just the best. And Tracy, you know, what can I say? We are one and I have always just been so grateful and thankful to have you as my teaching partner all those years. And to the board, thank you so much for this recognition, this honor. Working at White Oaks for the last 24 years has been my home away from home. My dedicated colleagues and my White Oak families made it a dream job for me. I was a parent long before in the district before I was a teacher. And then I was fortunate to job share when I

026returned to teaching for 17 years with the best job share partner. And I was able to have the best of both worlds. So I was a parent volunteer in my own children's classes up at Heather and Central and TL. And then a teacher at White Oaks. And I appreciate this district so much because I know how hard you all work. Having three kids in three different schools most of those years, some years I've had four PTAs and these really dear friends. And that's how I feel at White Oaks. I think she is frozen at the moment. Maybe we can, oh, Missy, you were frozen. I don't know if you wanna just. Yes, I wasn't sure if it was my computer or Missy's. So Missy, if she wanna try to wrap up one more piece go

027right ahead before we go on because you were cutting out there at the end. Okay, I don't know where I left but just that it's just how I felt every day being there working with friends, not just colleagues. And that now I'll be enjoying snuggles and hugs with my four-year-old and 10-day-old grandsons. And hopefully there'll be some traveling in my future. And I just wanna say thank you so much. Thank you, Missy. And I am really glad I got to know you when we all went to Disneyland to celebrate White Oaks becoming a distinguished school and getting to know you and the team was a really special time for me. So thank you for all you've done and congratulations. Thank you very much. Tom, are you out there? I'm here, I didn't see the slide

028change. So, okay, Carol Campbell. Hans did say something about how we're gonna say something special about every teacher. And I do have something special to say about Carol. Although, forgive me, I am not going to sing a song. So when I first came to San Carlos, I thought there must be a large number of German people living here because Central had a German language teacher and a French language teacher. Other districts were moving towards Mandarin and Spanish. So I thought this was a little bit odd until I met Carol Campbell. What I quickly realized about Carol was that actually she teaches everything to everybody. In my many years of being an educator, I've never met anybody more willing to help out and to jump in. I'm willing to bet that Carol Campbell has done something

029to rescue almost every single person in this room. And I'll tell you why. From my own personal experience, at one point I was in desperate need for a Spanish teacher. Because it seemed like Carol speaks every language in the world, I thought, oh, she'll be perfect for this job. So at the very last minute, I went up to Carol and I asked her if she could teach Spanish. And Carol said, well, I don't speak Spanish and I've never taught it before, but sure, I'll teach Spanish. I'll give it a try. So she just jumped right in and started teaching Spanish. She learned Spanish and she became an extremely effective Spanish teacher. I wish I could have kept her there, but she had a German credential. So she couldn't keep teaching Spanish, but she was an

030amazing Spanish teacher. Another important thing that Carol did for St. Carlos was as her role as president of the Teachers Association. I saw her problem solve situations expertly, respectfully and compassionately. Her calm demeanor and competence put everybody at ease and allowed her to make progress no matter what the obstacle. Her experience in the classroom made her very effective at understanding complex situations within the school system. She is the kind of leader we all strive to be. Back in the classroom, another one of Carol's particular strengths is the way she takes times to get to know her students. Carol can tell you something about every single student that has ever been in her classroom and her students love her for that. Carol has been a very important part of the central family for a very long

031time. She is always kind, respectful and hardworking. Her willingness to help other people out is commendable. Carol is a truly great teacher, colleague and professional. She will be greatly missed. Congratulations, Carol. And I know that you have traveling around the world in your future and that you will be able to speak the language in whatever country you happen to land. Safe travels and congratulations on your retirement. Tom, thank you so much for your kind words. I really appreciate that. And I just like to express how lucky I feel I've been to pursue my career for 20 years, 21 years here in the San Carlos School District. I decided on this career as a six-year-old and it's been every bit as fun and satisfying as I imagined it would be when I'd come home for first

032grade and sit down to teach my little brother everything I learned at school that day. My time here in San Carlos has been especially gratifying because I've had the opportunity to meet so many different people along the way are amazingly thoughtful and creative students. They astound me every day. The supportive families that are always there for us and of course our teams of dedicated teachers and staff. And I've been especially lucky to be at so many different school sites, especially in these last few years. And I wanna say a special thank you to all of you who have been so welcoming and helpful to me when I've joined a new school, a new department or a new grade level as a substitute teacher. And it's really come full circle for me. That's how I started

033my career as a substitute and it's worked out well for me. So I'm lucky for that. And I will be back at some point, but I will appreciate having some free time to get back to some other hobbies. I look forward to seeing many of you again. Thank you again. All right. I'm up for Michelle Francesconi as well. Michelle actually also just recently won the honorary service award for RPTA. And so Michelle, forgive me. I kind of recycled your speech a little bit, but the reason for that is because it's a good one and it's true. So here we go. What struck me most about Michelle Francesconi when I first met her was that she had a magical gift. There is something special about her. I could not place it at first, but eventually I

034figured it out. What her magical gift is, is that she seems to know everybody. She even knows my cousins who live really far away. You can't go anywhere without people approaching her to say hello. It's a little like being around a celebrity. So why is this magical? What gives her celebrity status? This is a magical gift because so many people admire Michelle Francesconi very much and for good reason. She is a remarkable person and remarkable educator. Everybody's whose lives Michelle has touched loves her and wants to say hello, just to spend some time with her. Students want to reach out and say hi to their favorite teacher. The reason for this is because Michelle takes the time to care. She takes an interest in her students and their families. Every year I receive requests from

035parents to have Michelle as their child's teacher because their older child had her as a teacher. Likewise, Michelle comes to me every year and requests students because she just loves that family. Now you have to understand, most teachers don't go to their principals year after year and ask for more students in their classroom, but Michelle does. Every year she wants more kids in their classroom. She genuinely wants to get to know the people in her life and especially in her class. And you can tell she likes you right off the bat. She is a great gift giver, note writer and remember of names. These skills translate perfectly into a magical educator. Students want to be in her class and teachers want to work by her side. It is no mistake that Michelle's classroom is the

036closest one to the main office. We needed her close to us because we knew that we could always run to her for support, be it more as support or guidance from a teacher with many years of experience who knows how to empathize with every single person on campus. I personally relied on Michelle's wisdom countless numbers of times. Thank you, Michelle, for all your many years of service. And thank you for sharing your magic with the San Carlos School District for 30 years. I think it says 26 or 27, but it was actually been 30 because she worked part-time for a couple of years. So during these 30 years, Michelle has been a beloved elementary school teacher, a beloved principal and a beloved middle school teacher. Thank you for always caring, for always giving us your

037best self. And congratulations on your retirement and the next chapter in your life. I am counting on an invitation up to that new swimming pool of yours. Enjoy, congratulations. Thank you, Tom. You're right, 30 years total, but 26 in San Carlos. And it feels like yesterday when I wandered into the district office and asked if they needed subs and was hired the next day at Central onto long-term sub at Britton Acres and then hired at Arundel and then back to Britton Acres as principal where I was lucky enough, choked up to meet my husband in the Britton Acres office. And then start my family and then back to Central or back at Central to teach. And it has been my privilege to teach in this district. Everyone whose paths I've crossed have made me a

038better educator, better person. And I am so thankful to all the people I've met and had the privilege to work with and so thankful to be in a district I'm so proud of and I will miss greatly. So thank you everybody. One quick one though I have next on the list though. I did have Dr. Harmar who was on the list, but we will, because there's still more work to be done. I don't want Dr. Harmar to think retirement setting them yet and the board will have a special presentation for her at her last meeting. So. I'm gonna go a little rogue really quickly cause I just have to share that Michelle and I, Michelle Francesconi and I worked together 25 years ago when we were both fairly new teachers. She was at Arundel and

039I was in Belmont Redwood Shore School District and we were part of a program called Challenge 2000 Together and visited each other's classrooms and spent some time together, became friends and then lost touch over the years until I walked into my interview for the central middle school assistant principal and Michelle was in the room and I just knew I was in the right place. It's been so fun to reconnect with you and I wish you all the best. And I have the pleasure of speaking about Heidi Giygas who has also been a teacher in the San Carlos School District for 22 years. Glue guns and saws and robots, oh my. Not typical things you find in the classroom in San Carlos but it's tough to walk into Heidi Giygas' classroom and not see hands-on learning

040happening with all kinds of tools, including glue guns and saws and robots, oh my. Heidi doesn't shy away from an adventure, both in the classroom and out. Over the past 22 years, she's worked at multiple schools across the district in a variety of grade levels and roles. When it came time to design a new upper elementary model, Heidi jumped at the chance to serve on the design committee. Her vision and willingness to try new ideas enabled Arroyo to move forward with innovative thinking, providing students with hands-on opportunities that were often used as models in other schools. Heidi was one of the very first teachers to be trained in project-based learning and held strong beliefs that student exploration and design thinking was an important part of learning. Heidi also built strong partnerships within the community and

041often looked for opportunities for experts in an area being studied in class to come in to guide student learning. She also looked for opportunities for her students to be the experts, inviting other classes to come visit and join in on the fun. Heidi left her fourth grade classroom at Arroyo to pursue other areas of educational technology, but we were lucky enough to woo her back to Arroyo and Central to teach design, makerspace, coding, and more. She also worked in with both feet, designing classes for fourth through eighth graders to meet a variety of needs and give students experiences they wouldn't normally have at school. She helped set up not one, not two, but three makerspace tinkering labs at Central, Arroyo, and Mariposa, and stocked them with all kinds of supplies, tools, and materials to allow

042kids to create, iterate, and learn by trial and error. At both Central and Arroyo, I have loved stopping by Heidi's room to learn about what she needed in her classroom. Heidi's always up for an adventure outside of the classroom too. She loves music and traveling in mind and spending time with friends and going to concerts, especially Dave Matthews. And although Heidi will truly be missed by many friends she has made over the years in our community, we're thrilled about the new adventures awaiting for her in Indiana. Congratulations, Heidi. Thank you so much, Mindy. I think you really captured quite a bit. The thing that I think about most being in this district is the opportunities that I've had to grow as an educator. And everyone that I've worked with, administrators, colleagues, superintendents, have allowed me

043to really take that to another level. And that's really what I feel blessed about. And I've worked at, I know it says Central, Arroyo, and Heather, but I started at Britton Acres. And actually Michelle Francesconi was my first principal. And from there, I went to Central when it used to be at Arroyo. And then from there, I went to Heather and then Arroyo and then back to Central and also at Mariposa. And I spend a little time at TL. So I've been at six of the eight schools. Sorry, I didn't get to Arundel and White Oaks, but have lots of friends there. And I think the thing that I'm most also appreciative of is the lifelong relationships that I've created amongst colleagues and families and students and people, students that I still keep in touch

044with from my very first year at Britton Acres. And they're 31 now. So some of them are my friends and the families that I also will have as lifelong friends. So thank you, San Carlos for the opportunities. And it's bittersweet, but moving on to Indiana where I have a home now and we'll see what the future brings. I don't know yet. Thank you. All right, so my turn again. And I'm also very honored to recognize Simi Javea and his time and work in the San Carlos School District and at Heather School. Simi actually tried to retire last June. He had his retirement meeting with Jennifer Smith a year ago. I even started his retirement presentation for the board meeting last year. And the staff had already made him our traditional memory book that they do

045for retirees. His plans were to go home to his Island of Tonga and with his wife and his daughter, but then COVID locked down Tonga and he couldn't get home. Lucky for us, we got Simi one more year. He has his airline tickets, but he still can't get home as now he would need to stop at either New Zealand or Fiji and both of them are closed to entry due to COVID. So hopefully they'll open up soon and he can finally go home. Simi has a great love for his home Island. Simi started work in San Carlos School District in 2003 before coming to Heather in 2005. We were thrilled when Simi joined our Heather team. The word custodian derives from the term custodial, which relates to providing or being protective, a protective care or

046service. From the start, Simi took on the responsibility of protecting and caring for Heather and its occupants. Heather School is Simi School. He cares for the school buildings and the people, staff, students, and parents. Heather during pre-COVID times was a busy, engaging place to be at after school hours and in the evenings. The campus was filled with enrichment classes, Cub Scouts, and brownies. Parents would show up in the late afternoons to set up and prepare for the many family events in the evenings in our MUR or the amphitheater. Simi would be called often to help with setup or clean up a messy accident in the middle of it during the event. And of course, afterwards with clean up again, he always showed up with a smile on his face and a I sure will attitude.

047Simi loves his Heather staff, teachers, parents, librarians, secretary, and principal. If a teacher worked late, past dark in the winter, Simi was there to walk her to her car safely. If a teacher was working late and her car was about to be locked into the back staffing area, Simi would get the keys and move it for her. Of course, then we'd get into our cars and couldn't reach the gas pedal and wonder why our seat was pulled all the way back because Simi's pretty tall. This next story really defines how much Simi cares. One summer, we had ordered round tables for the kindergarten classes and the teachers were really excited about them. Those tables literally arrived the day before school started, but they turned out to not be adjustable. The teachers were so disappointed as

048I was trying to explain they'd have to be returned and they'd have to start the year with their old furniture. But then during the night, just like the shoemaker and the elves, the tables were fixed just for kindergarten sized kids. Simi had worked late into the night, removing the legs and doing something, I guess cutting them to size maybe, I don't remember the details, but whatever he did, he made them fit, putting the legs back on and surprising the teachers on their first day of school. What we will miss about Simi is his heart. He cared big. Actually, it's more accurate to say he loves big. His last day was Friday and it was a tearful day for many of us, including Simi. Simi, thank you for all you have done for Heather. Thank you

049for being the special person you are. You will be greatly missed and we all love you too. Congratulations. Thank you, Ben. You're welcome, Simi. We hugged a lot on Friday, COVID or no COVID. I'm sorry. I'm not the speaker. I'm listening. That's okay. We're gonna miss you, all of you. We wish you the best of luck in Tonga Simi and we hope you get there sooner than later. All right, thank you, Simi. Thank you, Simi, too, for the warm welcome when I came to the district and you showed me around, Heather, and helped me really understand the culture of Heather and everything that you do. So thank you, Simi, and safe travels. Thank you very much. I have the pleasure of speaking about Teresa Honda New tonight. Teresa Honda New has been a parent educator

050for 12 years with San Carlos School District. I'm not quite sure how long she's been at Central, but she has been there, I think, the majority of her time in San Carlos. Teresa has just the gift of building great relationships with her students. I remember I had this particularly rowdy bunch of sixth grade students in study skills and they loved to call her Miss New Honda. They got a kick out of it and so did she. She loved that, but she just had this magical gift of coming into the room and being able to get them on task and working, but they were having fun while they were doing it. She just had that great relationship with them where they trusted her and she could get them right to work. Teresa has just been a

051wonderful support for all the teachers she's worked with throughout the years and all of the students that she's made such a difference in their lives. So congratulations, Teresa. We will miss you at Central. And she also moved to Indiana, so she has moved back to where she came from, so I wish her the best. Is Teresa with us tonight, Megan, or should I move on to the next one? I didn't see her. I don't know if she's here, if she's listening. If she comes back, let me know, but we'll go ahead and go to our next retiree. That means it's my turn. Doug Johnson is our Director of Facilities, Maintenance, Operations, and Transportation. And he really has the honor of being our most senior staff member in the San Carlos School District with 38 years

052of service in San Carlos, but that's not his entire career. Doug is one of these quiet leaders in the background that we know we cannot operate the district without Doug and his wisdom and his service and his dedication. And he's had an amazing career. So I wanna talk a little bit about Doug's full career. Back in 1978, he actually started in our California school system at Mountain View School District. And he was employed as a warehouse man and a delivery driver. But then in 83, they had to do some reductions and layoffs. So he applied to be a custodian substitute in San Carlos School District. That was back in 83. He was hired as a sub and worked any shift that was available to him. And in 85, he was hired full-time by that time.

053And the district had just sold the maintenance corporation yard, which was located on Industrial Road. And at the time, Superintendent Jim Stansfield asked Doug to help with cleaning out the warehouse in preparation for the pending sale. So he really started to really get connected in the district, take on more responsibilities. And after that warehouse was closed and the district then created a new position called driver and maintenance assistance. And at that time in 1986, Doug was hired for this position. In 86, Doug was also asked by the superintendent if he would consider being trained as a school bus driver because they needed that in this little small district. So he received his school bus driver certificate. And from 1986 to 2011, this was his primary duty. He was a bus driver. He focused on the

054special education population and also did all the pony mail delivery throughout the district. In 2009, something really special happened. And I didn't learn about this until this week. So I don't know who else is going to know this story, but Doug was driving his school bus and he was stopped at the railroad crossing at Whipple in Redwood City. At the time, he saw a woman and her dog crossing the railroad tracks and she fell. And she fell really hard. And then all of a sudden the gate arms came down and the alarm started going off and she was not moving. And the Cal train was coming. He jumped out of his bus and he ran to her and essentially rescued her, pulling her off the tracks with her dog. What he learned is she couldn't

055move because she broke her arm. So she couldn't push herself up and lift herself off the tracks. Doug actually saved their lives. So that next month in January of 2010, Doug was awarded by many different groups for his bravery in recognition of his service by our own San Carlos school board trustees as a hometown hero award. He was also recognized by the board of trustees with a resolution commending him for honoring and honoring him for bravery. Even the board of supervisors for the County of San Mateo passed a resolution honoring and commending Doug for his bravery. And another one from Cal train actually and a resolution of appreciation for Doug, honoring and commending him for his bravery. That's amazing story, Doug. And I didn't even know that until I found that out this week. In

0562011, the district expanded the busing service and stopped using contracted services and decided to build their own fleet and hire their own drivers. And this was to help transport our students from East Palo Alto that were participating in the Tinsley Transfer Program. So at that time around that soon after that, Doug received his California Highway Patrol school bus driver safe driving award, a certificate of achievement in 2014. And he was recognized for driving a school bus without a preventable accident on the California highways for 30 years. That's an amazing driving record. I don't even have that driving record. I'm sure most people don't have that watching tonight. In 2017, Doug was promoted to be the transportation manager as we expanded our transportation department and had drivers that he would be supervising. And around that time,

057he also got a license to become a school bus driver instructor. And that was in 2018. In 2019, Doug was appointed as the director of facilities maintenance operation and transportation and continued to manage the transportation department at the same time. I was fortunate to be able to appoint Doug to this position. We were, as you know, going through our financial crisis and looking at ways we can consolidate and make our operations more efficient. And Doug stepped up and said, I could be the director of FMOT and I can continue to do the transportation oversight. And I know for these three years that I've been here, Doug's been doing that work at night, on the weekends, early in the morning. And he has done an amazing job of stepping up and taking on so much responsibility

058during these last three years. Since I arrived here, Doug has really been a critical part of my leadership team. His dedication, his strong work ethic, integrity, his skills and talent, but also his experience in the district really helped us through some really challenging budget reductions, lots of facilities improvements while providing really much needed leadership in his department for his transportation team, the maintenance team, and for our custodians. He knows every campus like it's his own home. And you know, you can even find him there on nights and weekends whenever duty calls. And that's a long drive coming over from Half Moon Bay. He has really developed a lot of special relationships with many of the families that he has served as a bus driver over the years. And he truly is a beloved member of

059our San Carlos family. He won't retire until the fall. We still have him for a few months, but I was really honored that I could honor Doug tonight and recognize him for his 38 years of service in San Carlos School District and 43 years total in our public schools. Thank you so much, Doug. And I'm really honored to have worked with you. Thank you. Well, I wanna say that the whole saying is true, time flies. It doesn't seem like 38 years has passed. It seems like yesterday or today. This confirms that I work in a great place, the greatest district. I wanna say thank you to the San Carlos community, all the board members who served, students, family, administrators, and to the best FMOT staff in the world, custodians, maintenance guys, and bus drivers. I

060wanna give a special thanks to our superintendent, Dr. Harmeier. Dr. Harmeier, thank you for believing in me, giving me the opportunity to finish my career in the district as the director of FMOT and for being a great mentor and leader to me. Thank you all for allowing me to serve you over the years. All right. Thank you again, Doug. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, thank you so much. And we are here tonight also to honor Laura McElhane from Arundel School. And Laura McElhane shared 13 of her over 35 years of special education experience with our families and staff at Arundel School. Her dedication to her students shine through every single day as she provided intervention services for students with special needs, as well as those in need of additional academic support at

061our school. Known as Ms. Mack around campus, she rarely missed an opportunity to share her unforgettable sense of humor with us. All her students were often seen enjoying her sound effects as they got answers right in room 17. She shared the following perspective with our staff about her work. She says she's always felt that being the resource specialist teacher was the best job in a school. One had the privilege of serving children and families over multiple years and seeing the children continuously build their skills, independence and joy as learners. Equally important to the work, however, was having the unique opportunity to build long-term relationships with all the teachers and staff in order to create seamless support services for our children. Laura's words resonate with all of us as her presence in our lives and as

062CSD consistently helped us see students shine in their talents as she always found the treasure in every single soul. Thank you, Laura, for the impact you have had on so many lives. Enjoy your retirement. Thank you for that, Jennifer Gabbory. And Laura's not with us tonight. She's out of town. So hopefully she is listening in. Thank you so much, Laura, for your service. I have the honor of sending Kim Mitchell off into her retirement, which I'm very sad about. Kim says that she swapped lives with the previous teacher that she replaced because that teacher left teaching to become a lawyer and Kim left being a lawyer to become a teacher. And there are hundreds of students, families, and colleagues that are very happy that she swapped lives with this other teacher and made the choice

063to become a teacher. Kim is by far one of the best teachers I've worked with. If you've had the pleasure of working with her, you will know she is just one of the smartest people I know and she's one of those people that just continues to learn and grow and share that with her colleagues. Kim is also just calm and thoughtful. She's the person that you want on your committees. She's the person you want evaluating new curriculum because you know she's gonna look at it from all angles and really be critical in a good way. She is gonna be very sorely missed at Central. She has been just such the rock of our math team. And Kim, we wish you the best in your retirement and hope you get to spend a lot of time

064with your two daughters and sons-in-law and husband. So wish you the best. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Unlike so many of my colleagues who've been speaking tonight, I didn't have a lot of different roles in San Carlos School District. I came 13 years ago to teach seventh grade math and pretty much I've been teaching seventh grade math and I have loved it. I've had a wonderful time. It's just been such a joy. I loved my first career and I've loved my second career. I've been so fortunate to land straight out of grad school to become a math teacher. My very first job out was Central Middle School. I've loved it. I am so grateful to all of you for all of the support, all the encouragement, all of the education, my goodness. I have leaned

065on so many people in so many ways. Thank you. All right. Imagine you're a fourth grade student. You're at a new school and a class with some kids you've known since kindergarten, some that you may have played sports with or taken an enrichment class with and some that you've just met. Imagine walking into your classroom for the first time and discovering the world of Harry Potter, complete with house banners and even a cardboard fireplace mantle. Fast forward a couple of weeks as the class begins to get to know each other and suddenly a sorting hat is placed on your head, whispering to you which house you now belong to. This is the magical world Kirstie Mooney creates in her classroom. Kirstie sees each of her students for who they are. She knows their strengths and

066understands the areas in which they can grow and how to get them there. More than that, she empowers them to discover these things for themselves and encourages them to learn how to advocate for themselves and appreciate their unique needs and learning styles. She also shares her own strengths and struggles with students so they have a fantastic role model to help them grow. She makes sure that her students feel accepted, connected and included in all aspects of the classroom and continues to grow her own learning around diversity, equity and inclusion. Kirstie is a lover of science and is passionate about developing curriculum that is engaging and relevant to students. She empowers them to observe the world around them, to understand their impact on it and to make an environmental difference in their neighborhoods and communities. Kirstie

067not only shares this passion with her class, but also served on the district science committee and participated in county sustainability programs. She loves developing creativity in her students and she helps them see the world and themselves in different ways and teaches them to see beauty all around them. She exposes her students to different artists and has organized field trips to the SF MoMA for the entire fourth grade for the last several years. She also helps her kids become artists leading guided lessons on creating owls and dragons. And when you walk into her classroom, you can see the art displayed after one of her lessons. You can see that each student piece looks different from the rest and all are spectacularly done. And it's clear that Kirstie took time to help all of her students to

068be successful and unique artists in the same way she helps them to be successful and unique humans. Kirstie has been such a bright spot at Arroyo and everywhere else she has taught in her 14 years with the San Carlos school district, including White Oaks, Terra Linda and Britton Anchors. Her positive can-do attitude is infectious and helps everyone around her be their best too. Just today, I received an email from a parent that sums Kirstie up perfectly. Our daughter was able to still thrive during this time because she had the amazing Mrs. Mooney. Wonderful, kind, creative and warm, Mrs. Mooney is truly one of those once-in-a-lifetime teachers for a child and we feel so honored to have had her. And I feel just as honored to have had her on our staff. Congratulations on your retirement,

069Kirstie. Thank you. It's been Mr. Toad's wild ride and such a joy with so many amazing colleagues. And San Carlos is a special place. Of course, I'm a parent here, so I know that from that perspective, but also as a teacher, we're like family and we don't always get along, but we're in it for the long haul and we push each other to grow. So it's just been my pleasure to, well, I'll be glad to sleep in. Okay, I will say, I will be glad to sleep in, but to wake up every morning and the way the kids challenge you and the work challenges you and to be your best self is phenomenal. It is a gift to be able to have this job. And it's been wonderful. My colleagues, Christine Fox-Sennett, who started it

070all. Thank you very much. And my dear friends around the district, I appreciate you so much. Thank you, Mindy. Thank you, all my leaders, fearless leaders. We couldn't do it without you as well. Thank you. And happy birthday to Kirstie, who is here on her birthday at a board meeting. Thank you. All right, that concludes our celebration. Thank you for all of our administrators and speakers in congratulating our retirees and congratulations. Thank you to all of you and trustees. I'll give you each a moment or two to say something as we wind down our celebration. Neil, sorry, should we read the public comment? Or sorry, I have that first. Yeah, let's take the public comment first, Wendy, and then we'll have trustees go from there. Okay. I just wanted to invite Lindsay Kneebone to share

071because she'd like to share her comments verbally. I don't see her on the call right now. Okay, thanks, Veronica. If she comes on, we'll come back to her. Trustees, anyone want to start? Well, I'll start just because I, as a son of a teacher who worked for 23 years, and I think just always reflecting on my educational journey, I like to call it, I think sometimes in retirement, what I've watched from my mom is you get to enjoy the lives that you touched. I think as a teacher, you often forget that you are the inspiration for someone to start a career, to go down a certain path, to change their life or turn around. Sometimes when you're caught up, I think in the career, it doesn't set in as much, but I've seen it with

072my mom afterwards as it sets in with students that reach back out when they're graduating high school, graduating college, starting their first jobs. So I wish you all the best in that next stage of your career. I thank you for your time and commitment to this district and making us all look good. And more importantly, I thank you on behalf of all your students who you touch their lives to do something different. So thank you again for being a part of it. Mrs. Baldini, I do get one advantage of saying that as my daughters both went through your class and Rory currently being in your class, it's the little things that you always do that I think have inspired her, hamburger and the other animals, just in general are the ones that have always made

073Rory wanna come back to class. I've always made her excited about going, but also I think what Ms. Jasso said as well as your laugh is always what she talks about and just making her day brighter. So I do thank you personally as a school board member, you can get to take this platform, so I'm gonna use it when I can. So other trustees, go ahead. Sure, I just wanted to say that on this evening, you can just hear what makes a school district so special. I mean, it is just so heartfelt, the love that our teachers pour into our children, their students, and it's just heartwarming to hear the lifelong friendships that you formed with your colleagues and just wishing you all the best with so much gratitude. May you just continue to enjoy

074the next chapter. I'll just jump in and say, I'm really glad we took the time to reflect and honor each retiree for your individual contributions and just to hear about your unique talents that behind the scenes, we don't always get to see some of that, but it was really fun and joyful to hear the stories. And I did some shout outs personally by email to a few of the teachers that I've had the pleasure of knowing through my child being in your classroom. So thank you, Ms. Mooney and Ms. Mitchell. I'm just so glad my child was in your classroom before you retired. And yeah, I just want to say to all of you, I admire your passion and your dedication to our district, so thank you. I'll jump in and just say, just really

075how humbled and blown away I am to hear about all of the passion and talent that is in our district. And I wish that I had more time with each of you who was leaving, but I'm inspired by all that you have done to make a difference in the lives of people in our community. And if I even have a tiny bit of that impact, I will feel like I have done something. So thank you for inspiring all of us and for all of your hard work, lots of gratitude and best wishes for a wonderful retirement or whatever is coming next for you. This is my first board meeting and it's an honor to have this as the first agenda item, just to have the stories that each of you shared as well as the

076leaders at your school sites. I like sometimes maybe the seventh grade math teacher and me likes to do the numbers a little bit. And I did some snooping because behind some of these numbers in the district, there's actually many, many years as educators, both inside San Carlos and outside. And I calculated 212 years in the district, but over 350 years collectively in education. And when you think about 350 years, 20 students per year, 25 students per year, middle school, we're talking 60, 70 schools, think of students, think of how many families these amazing men and women have impacted. It's profound. And behind each of the stories you shared tonight, there's stories of families that you've touched. Ms. Baldini also has touched our family. My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. And our

077district talks about being a whole child. I found Ms. Baldini was whole family in her support. And so that's to me, what really makes this a special district is that we are whole family. And so on behalf of the 5,000 to 10,000 families, it's looking like 8,500 families, 9,000 families that you have each touched, I say thank you. And as a new brand new board member, I say thank you. And I'll do my very best to keep the torch lit that you all have carried for our families. Okay, before we finish, we'll just see if Lindsay Neibone, did she ever join Veronica? No, she didn't. Okay, I will move us on then and thank everyone for being with us as a special part tonight. And I will move us then to the consent agenda. For

078reminder, the consent agenda is items that we feel are routine in nature or do not take a lot of discussion or debate. Therefore, we approve them in mass. So in review of the consent agenda trustees, is there an approval of the consent agenda? I move approval of the consent agenda items 4A through 4G. Thank you, Irene. Second. Thank you, Sarah. All in favor, please state by saying aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing none, that will carry five, zero. I will move us on then to our discussion action items. First, starting with 5A, Dr. Harmar to you for our return to in-person learning and campus on-campus update. Trustees, I just have a brief update tonight. There have not been changes really coming down the pike since our last meeting. We are still planning on coming back full-time

079in-person learning in the fall, back to our regular instructional schedule with five days a week with our early release on Wednesday for teacher professional time. We did as a county just move into the yellow tier. And so that's really good news. Conditions are improving still. So we are being optimistic about having a pretty typical year next year. We are anticipating some news sometime this summer about maybe a less restrictive spacing requirement coming and maybe less restrictive stable group guidance as more and more people in our community get vaccinated. And we have a kind of that herd immunity that they keep talking about. They're finding that masks and hand hygiene are going to be the key factors that are going to keep people from spreading COVID next year. So we're likely going to be masking still

080inside of our classrooms and at school. That's our understanding for now. So we'll prepare to be masked and continue to really reinforce hand hygiene. But some of the other mitigation factors will probably be lifted. Testing of students and staff will probably just be upon showing symptoms. So more of a responsive testing approach versus a surveillance testing approach like we were doing with our teachers this year and kind of returning to normal. So we're looking for new guidance from Cal OSHA coming out sometime in the next month or so. The Cal OSHA requirements right now for the employees will remain in place through the end of July. And so we'll practice all the same protocols. We're practicing right now all the way through summer school. So no change in our summer school approach using all four

081pillars just like we are. Not mixing up groups, keeping a stable group of kids together. So through the summer, we're gonna keep operating in the same way. In the fall, hopefully there's a little more flexibility. Perhaps instead of having four lunch periods, we might only have two lunch periods at our elementary campuses, for example. So we're gonna learn about that over the summer. Our principals will come back late July, early August and start preparing for the year. By then Dr. Frentris and Hans and the team will have a chance to learn what those new protocols are and put those things into place and be ready to go on the first day of school, August 18th. So are there any questions or comments about our return to school plan at this point? Anything I could clarify?

082Trustee, anything? Michelle, could you just share out a word about electives in middle school, what the expectations are and if you need any help from community in terms of campus supervisor roles? According to our middle school principals, as I check in with Tom and Kristen, we're looking at having a pretty typical elective program again. We weren't quite sure about that several weeks ago, again, because we didn't know what the guidance was going to tell us. So we're gonna make some assumptions right now that we can go ahead and have our band and our orchestra classes in similar ways as we have in the class. We'll still have other electives available. We are looking at offering that zero period opportunity like we used to do. We didn't do it this year because of our unique circumstances.

083So it's kind of a return to normal. Now the types of electives are changing like they do a little bit every year, but our fourth and fifth graders will still have their elective and their elective wheel options so that they are getting that enriching experience in our four or five program, which is kind of a hallmark of that opportunity because staff is shared between the fourth and fifth grade school and the sixth, eighth school. So there's still work to do and staffing to do, working out details, which is typical for this time of year. But the good news is we are adequately staffed as far as budget goes and the flexibility is given to those middle school principals where we've given them some additional staffing using our in-person grant and our ELO grant so that

084they have ample staffing budget. Now the challenge is just trying to find the staff to fill the jobs. We always have a hard time filling our science teacher positions. So please, if you know anyone who would like to teach science, have them contact us and we can help get them into this new career. Just like Kim moved from lawyer to seventh grade teacher, we would love to have a scientist come and teach science in our middle school. There's a lot of fun and could be a nice second career. We've had several people move into the science realm from the private sector. We're always in need of science teachers and also ed specialists for our special ed program. So we really want to encourage any recruitment efforts. As far as supervision goes, we will need campus

085supervisors, which are essentially our parent labor force to really help us next year. As you know, we have a very difficult time hiring labor in our SMARTy program and our supervision kind of roles because it's just a couple of hours a day. So our parents have stepped up and done an amazing job of helping with campus supervision. We need that support to continue next year. In our one-time grants, we are spending additional funds with La Garza in our K-3 program so that our PE coaches will be on site more than they used to be. So they can help with those extended lunch times and offer more structured play, really developing the social emotional skills kids need, the structured play. So we have more La Garza PE coach time, which will in a way help with

086supervision, but it's really to help our kids learn to play and socialize. We're very intentional about providing more opportunities, not just at PE, but recess, but lunchtime to help our kids. But so that means we still need campus supervisor help, not just at K-3, but we don't have La Garza help in our fourth through eighth grade. So we really need parents to step up and help a couple hours a day, just a handful of hours per week. It's been a gift. I think it provides more engagement for our parents in the fourth through eighth grade where they don't always have that volunteer opportunity like they did in the younger grades because the kids and teachers don't need it as much. So it does give a pathway for parents to see what's going on in campus,

087help out and be able to provide some hours of support. So big thank you to people who are doing that now and please continue that support next year. All right, trustees, anything else? Okay, thank you, Michelle, for that. We look forward to the always changing landscape and updates. So I'll move us on then to 5B, which is I believe to Christine for the May revise update. Yes, and I'll just kind of introduce this as she gets ready to go and gets her screen set with the presentation. Tonight is about updating the board with the May revise information and that changed since our second interim and just giving you a preview of some of the key factors that we are considering for our budget development. We are pretty close to being done with our budget development

088for next year. We have two meetings coming up back to back to back, right? We have next Thursday, the 10th and then the 17th where the draft budget and LCAP will be presented and then the final budget will be voted on on the 17th. So we started this process with the board and engagement way back in February and March when we started our LCAP engagement and then our second interim with a budget assumptions during that time. So this is a continued ongoing process of engaging our board with letting you know what the impacts are and any last input or direction tonight that we should consider as we bring you our draft budget next Thursday night. All right, Christine, you ready? Right, good evening. So the May revise is a different budget from a year ago.

089The state is in a different position in terms of higher revenue and improve health conditions. So I'm gonna talk about highlights from the May revise and how these assumptions impact our district. The biggest change from January to the May revise is the cost of living adjustments. In the governor's January budget, the COLA for 21-22 was 3.84%, which represents a compounded 20-21 COLA of 2.31% and a 21-22 COLA of 1.5%, which was the assumptions we use for second interim. The COLA being put forward for the May revision is 5.07%. The change is in the increase in the statutory COLA from 1.5% to 1.7% and an additional 1%. The compounded amount not including the additional 1% will be applied for special ed. For our state child nutrition and mandated costs, the COLA amount is only the 21-22

090statutory COLA of 1.7. In the May revise, the governor proposes additional funds, ongoing funds and one-time funds. We don't have enough details or enough information on these additional proposals, so they are not included in the 21-22 budget. However, once the amounts and we get further information, they will be added in the budget at the 45-day budget revision or first interim. I did wanna point out some of the governor's budget items that will not impact our district. And on this first page, it's the after school and summer programs, broadband, and then I'm gonna go to the next slide. Community schools and the Prop 98 concentration grant funding. We won't see additional funding because we currently do not receive concentration grant funds and our poverty level is under 2%. So there's no additional funding for us. We

091may see additional funds in the in-person and expanded learning opportunities funds, but for now, we're not sure how those funds will be allocated to our district. Okay, this slide shows our enrollment assumptions for 21, 22 and the next two years. At second interim, we were anticipating 2,800 students enrolling for the next school year. However, as of this week, we see enrollment to be at the 2,700 level, which is a loss about 170 students and anticipating it to be being flat for the next two years. Amber will give some update on the current enrollment. So I will have Amber join in right now. Hi there, can I go ahead and share my screen? Yeah, hold on. Okay, wish me luck with doing this, let's say. Yeah, hold on. Okay, can you see blue enrollment? Okay, great.

092Hello everyone, how are you doing? I wanted to just provide you with a quick update on what our numbers look like as of today. Christine and I have been working and following enrollment as they're, it's kind of moving up and down and in and out. So as of today, Alejandro and I have been working on the numbers and this is what it looks like as of right now. So you can see our enrollment comparison from last year's CBEDS numbers, which we were at 2,870 to our projected enrollment as of today. And you can see the difference on the far right column of how many students have either come in or come out of each site. So we're at about 170-ish, 174 students have dropped as of last year. And that's quite a bigger difference than

093we had anticipated. We knew our demographer had said about 60 students and we knew because of COVID, we would have more than 60 students drop, but right now we're at about 174. So that's a big dip. And I can show you what we know so far. You can see, hopefully you can see this pie chart okay. But we're looking at about 40% of students have transferred to a private school. Another 26% have transferred to another public school outside of San Carlos. So just in a different school district or in a different city. 11% declined to state why they're leaving. So we're not sure why. 8% have relocated out of the state. So within the United States, but out of California. 8% are going to charter, which we knew would happen. They usually accept students after

094March. And so we had a bigger drop of kids since then. We've had 4% of our students relocate out of the country. And we've had 1% go into homeschool and 2% keep their students home and they're gonna send them next year. So they'll keep them in preschool for one more year. So these are kind of our current trends for enrollments. We and I did a new projection for Christine. So these were the numbers as of a couple of days ago and we've gone down to about 2,700. So this is 2,800 down to 2,708. And right now, let me kind of back up a little bit. So we, as we're at 2,696 as of today, so this is even kids are kind of coming in and out. And right now we're doing all of our power

095school check-in and check-out with parents. And so it's gonna continue to flex until things kind of settle down a little bit. So we're at 2,696. However, we do have students that are continuing to register. So if you look at Britton Acres, for example, that had 29 students have left, a lot of those families moved and their houses are open or available for new families to move in. So we do anticipate families moving in and adding into Britton Acres and White Oaks as well. But we just don't know what grade levels are those are gonna be or what that's gonna look like. So we're waiting as students register the month of June and July, we are gonna monitor during summer to make sure that we're not sort of surprised when August hits so that we know

096an idea of who's coming and who's going over the summer. So we will put a voicemail message and have a phone number for parents to call if they're planning to leave the district over the summer so we can keep account of that and let the schools know. And then they can still continue to register online in the summertime. And we can keep an eye on that because that's all through Power School. So that's kind of the update for enrollment as of tonight. Do you have any questions about that that I can provide answers to? Okay. I have a question. And is this presentation available in the board materials? Yeah, so this was, I just updated tonight. So we will make these slides available. I'll add to Christine's presentation and put these on these slides into

097her presentation and then re-upload it tonight or tomorrow. So it'll be on the board docs. Okay, thank you. Yes. I'm curious about whether you have a grade by grade level breakdown, often at the cusp between elementary and middle or elementary like lower middle and upper middle, those are transition points. Right. I'm curious about whether we're losing people or losing families at transition points or whether these are people in the middle of grade. So like a grade one to grade two jump versus at a transition point. I can get you that information. I'll pull that for you so we know. But you can see from, yeah, I'll do it by grade because it's hard to kind of see that. You can't actually tell because Arroyo Mariposa, Mariposa lost more students because Mariposa and TL are kind

098of in a Rundle and Heather are sort of in the same neighborhood. It's interesting to see how that's transitioning from these four elementary schools into Mariposa and then how that works. So yeah, I can do that by grade level and I'll get that to Michelle so she can get that too. And so here also 40% going to private schools, that's about 70 students. I would be curious to have more of a breakdown on those 70 students, is it multi-student families, just to have a sense of how many families are transitioning. I feel like what's behind my question is really how much of this is due to temporary change during COVID, how much of this is going to be long-term and what's the multi-year impact, like a second grader leaving has a very long impact, whereas

099like an eighth grader leaving has a one-year fiscal impact. Obviously, we don't want any families to leave the district, but just really kind of getting deeper here. So look forward to diving in more. Thanks. I'll get that information for you. All right, great. Thank you. Amber, just a quick question kind of based on what Ben was just asking about. I think you had surveyed families to understand if they were returning. And so I'm wondering, like he was saying due to COVID, we know that there was some shifting because of that. So on the latest round of surveys, it sounds like you're still gathering some of that information to understand if some families are going to be returning. Is that the case? So I think at this point, because it's actually parents are answering, yes, we're

100returning, no, we're not. So we won't know moving forward if they're planning to come back. We will just know if they're not returning. And these are the questions that they answer when they fill out the survey. So we won't actually know that unless they've spoken to their secretary and given them more narrative about why they're going and where they're going. And yes, maybe we plan to come back. So we wouldn't actually know that just because we're using a survey format and there's only certain questions that they answer. So this is kind of as much information as I can give you in terms of where they have responded to where they're going, but I can give you details on what grade levels and all of that. And then I can look at if it's families and

101multi-students leaving at the same time and going to new schools or different school or moving. Okay. All right. Ready, Christine? Thank you, Amber. Thanks for pulling that together. I know this was a very last minute request and I asked if she could just pull that together so we could add more. We'll have more information as we try to solidify our numbers for actually the draft budget next Thursday. And we're gonna have to just kind of use our dart board and we're gonna have to find that number, commit to it. And then what, as you know, board, we make our adjustment at the 45 days. If there's a significant change in our budget situation, we can submit a revised budget to the county. And also we make adjustments at the first interim in December. Okay. So

102this slide shows the impact of our funding based on the May revise. As a reminder, for the 2021 funding, there is a reprieve because of the ADA hold harmless provision in the governor's 2021 budget, which allows us to use the 2019-20 attendance number, which was 2,931. The funding protection continues in 21-22 because we will be funded on the higher of 2019-20 ADA or the 2021 ADA. So in our case, it's the 2019-20 level. There is a slight increase in the number 2932 because on NPS, the non-public school students, we will be funded based on the higher level of the 2021 ADA. We're anticipating a little bit higher. For 22-23, we no longer have that protection. Our ADA will be funded on 2,627 students. So that is about 2.1 million loss in our revenue. At second

103interim, we were projecting a 1 million loss, but that was based on enrollment of 2,800 kids. For 23-24, we will see an increase because of the statutory COA and being funded on the 2,600 students. We anticipate to remain a LCFF district, but it will depend on our enrollment and how the state economy is doing. So we will need to monitor this very closely. Here's a snapshot of the school services start board that we used to plan our 2,122 budget in our multi-year. This is a chart of the CalPERS rates that we use for our budget and our multi-year projections. I want to point out that at May revised, the contribution rate is lower, 22.91%, than what was proposed in January, which was 23%, but it's still an increase from our 2021 rate, which is 20.70%.

104The same goes for CalSTRS. In January, the proposal was that we would get a relief in 2,122, which was the 15.92%, but at May revised, that rate increased by 1%. Here's another significant increase that we had no control over, is the unemployment insurance rates, which will increase from 0.05% to 1.23% for 2,122. And the statutory rate is estimated to be 0.90% for the out years. You can see the impact it is to our district. 12,000 this year to 200,000 for the out years. The reason for the increase is EDD is spending down the reserves, and there were overpayments of claim during the pandemic. So they're increasing the LEA rate to restore their fund reserves. So for May revised, it did not address the additional funding to the unemployment insurance and any future increases for the

105state retirement rates. Like Michelle said, next week we'll bring forth a draft of the LCAP and our proposed 2,122 budget. And on June 17th is the board adoption for the LCAP and our final budget. Once the state budget is adopted in July, we anticipate bringing back a 45 day revision in August, which with any changes that was different from the May revision. Any questions? Thanks, Christine. Trustees, any questions that you'd like to ask Christine in regards to the May revised update? I have a question, Christine. So can you give me with the COLA increase, the kind of super COLA increase, but with the addition of the increase in unemployment insurance, STIRS and PERS contributions, what's the number? Are we really getting more money or is it kind of what's the difference of the increase in

106expenses compared to the increase in the revenue that they're giving us? I'll be bringing forth and reviewing that information to the next board meeting. Okay. Anything, I guess in the other question I have for you too, in this regards, everyone kind of defines it as staring at the cliff with drop-up enrollment. From your perspective, I know you've done kind of a lot of many calculations on it. Where does that put us in terms of closer, not necessarily closer to basic aid, but in terms of the calculation for our planning purposes? You may not know it off the top of your head. We might dip our toe into basic aid two years out, but that depends also on enrollment. If we increase in enrollment, we remain LCFF. If we continue to decline in enrollment, it will

107push us closer into the basic aid territory. And I know with just the change in housing, obviously, it's not like houses have gone for less around here, but do you know when that calculation is done for the increase to our tax base at the county level? I won't know until November. Okay. It's usually around first interim. All right, thank you, trustees. Any other questions for Christine? Christine, first I wanna thank you so much for putting all this stuff together. I can only imagine how much work it is to monitor. And then the May revise with all kinds of surprise programs and so on. So really, really appreciate your work here and just have enjoyed kind of getting up to speed and diving in. I had a couple of questions. One to build off of what

108trustee Layton was saying regarding basic aid. If we do have declining enrollment and dip into basic aid, that still means that our total revenue, total dollars are going down because our enrollment is going down. The dollars per student might be higher or might end up crossing a higher threshold than an LCFF calculation would be, but it means that we are essentially a declining revenue district, even if we are now in basic aid, not in LCFF. Correct. I think that's an important thing for the public to understand is that LCFF versus basic aid, you know, there's a lot of fixed costs in terms of running the school sites that we have and the administration and the number of teachers that you need for the subjects that you need to provide and so on. And so while

109it might look great on a per student or look better on a per student basis over time, still means fewer resources for the district as a whole. Yes? Yes, because when I say dip our toe into basic aid, we might be 30,000 into being basic aid. We're not gonna be a million or more like the high school districts or some of the elementary districts around us. So when we flip, we might be only 30,000 more than the state funding. Great, that's very helpful. And then on, I had a question on slide six and slide seven, and I just think it would bear some just further explanation repeating, and I think I've got it, but I wanna walk it through with you. So on slide six, it says 2021 average daily attendance of 2,931, but budgeted

110enrollment of 2,878. That's because the 2,931 is coming from the prior year. We only have 2,878 enrolled in the 2020-21 year, but we're getting the credit of 2,931 from the prior year. Is that correct? Correct. And then talk me through the thinking long-term here, we've got 2,708 budgeted enrollment for next year. What was your decision-making or what's the thought around flatlining that from 21, 22, 22, 23, 23, 24, rather than the downward trend that we've had historically? So maybe I can jump in here. I think what you're saying is how did we come up with 2,708? This is the dartboard I just talked about, Ben, where we are so uncertain about where we're going. And this is why we are monitoring our enrollment right now. We felt like this could be the lowest. This is

111when we posted on Monday, and then we just did our calculation today. So this is what we have to decide as a cabinet team and our recommendation is where do we wanna predict our enrollment to be in the year two and three after next year. So I think that it's kind of a do your best guess right now. Many districts in California, the majority of districts are in a declining enrollment situation. Many people are leaving California due to the high cost of living in the jobs situation because of COVID. So I think a lot of us are working in uncertainty. So we are also working with the county office and we want them to weigh in on our numbers also just to be another validation point because they're seeing trends across the entire county. So

112Christine and I have both been in communication with the county office. So when we bring this back to you as a draft budget next week, we'll have some set numbers and then there'll probably be a little bit lower just based on what happened today. Yeah, and just my comment on that and just for the public to know I was a chief business officer before and I think when you're doing one year budgets and kind of living year to year, it can be hard to know what kind of trade offs to make or decisions to make because it's so uncertain in California being so variable with one time expenses, it is also uncertain. But what we can clearly see is a trend over multiple years, five years of declining enrollment and to hope that there's a

113bounce back, I think that would be an extremely optimistic view. And then furthermore, the information on the expanded pre-K may mean that over time, it's the loss slows down. But I will just also add that the teacher student ratios of expanded pre-K are it's a much lower 10 to one or something like that student teacher ratio. So now Christine on slide seven, can you just tie so on slide six, we said 2021-22 is 2,627 ADA. But now we're on slide seven back to in the center, 2021-22 ADA is 2,932. And that's because it's porting that same number from 2019 forward with just a smidge of benefit due to some calculations, is that right? Right, we're hold harmless for two years. Yeah, so this home hold harmless cliff, I'm wrapping my head around it. And I

114just think that what it means is the following budget year projected 2022-23 ADA 2,627. We just saw a report that it was a loss of 140 or 170 students in that report, but we're looking at a funding drop of 300 because we've essentially had this multi-year holdover. Is that a good recap, Christine? Well, the 2,600 is based on our enrollment to be 2,708. Yeah, that's right. And that's the dartboard exercise. But I think dropping by 140 learners is challenging, dropping your funding simultaneously by 300 learners, that will definitely be something we need to plan for and watch. Thank you, those are all my questions. And Christine, just again, thank you for pulling all this together. Trustees and Christine, and I think Ben brings up a good point. If you can go back, Christine, to the

115slide with transitional kindergarten, there is a proposal to essentially offer preschool for all four-year-olds in the state of California. Transitional kindergarten was originally brought about around 10 years ago when they made the date for kindergartners shift by turning five by December 1st, down to September 1st. I mean, there was an adjustment and it was really young five-year-olds were in TK. Now what they're looking at is how do you provide more of a preschool opportunity for all California students to have more equity around our early learning. So the proposal is to add four-year-old programming, and they're calling that transitional kindergarten in this proposal. So what we need to be prepared for as a district is what impact will mandatory transitional kindergarten for four-year-olds have on our district? This is a big conversation. And if this goes

116through and it gets passed in the final budget by June 15th, we will need to really look at our facilities master plan committee coming back in the fall like we'd already intended on doing to really look at do we have room and how will we phase this in? They were looking at year one as more of a planning and infrastructure year, which would be next year. And then for the next few years after that, phasing in this program because there's quite an impact on facilities for school districts. They feel that this is an opportunity because many districts in California are declining enrollment, so they should have space. That's the thought behind this proposal. For us, it creates challenges. We don't have space. We have about 275 kindergartners this year. If we all of a sudden

117had 275 four-year-olds, think about the classes. We would need 23 classrooms immediately because of the 12 to one ratio. So there's some complexity around this proposal and that would really challenge our district. Another factor of just having a space issue to manage, they're proposing it needs to be full day versus a three-hour program. So that means you can't share a classroom with an AMP model. And for us, it means that our enterprise preschool program would change significantly, possibly, possibly, because people may opt for the public school preschool TK option, which would really affect our revenue from our preschool program. So right now about half of our kiddos are four in our preschool program and half of them are three. So if you think about losing those customers that are paying for preschool now and possibly

118moving into a free public school model, that's great for families, great for kids, but we do have to take that into consideration as far as our revenue generation in future years with our preschool program and enterprise. So a lot more discussion to come. I don't have any more information than what I just shared, but just know that as we learn more, this will be an important topic for, I'd say August and September for the board to tackle. Michelle and Christine, could you go back to the slide with the enrollment for the next few years? Yeah, that one, perfect, thank you. And I just wanted to thank Trustee Cornell for just really kind of bringing this to the surface because, Ben, I think what I hear you saying is if you look at the assumptions right

119now of enrollment of 2708 for the years 2022 and 23 and the two out years, I think you're saying is like, in some ways this could be an optimistic situation. And if you even had say a declining 3% enrollment which feels like a statewide trend, you could have like a drop of like 80 kids, for example. And so we know that's significant. And so I think the question is as a governing team, right? And Christine's guidance, it's we've always wanted to be conservative. You know, if you're overly conservative, then it's hard because you have to look for savings and that's uncomfortable. But if you're not conservative enough, then it means that you end up having to make cuts unexpectedly and you can't plan for it. That's also not good. So I feel like, and Michelle

120and Christine, you're gonna want us to be as a team rock solid on these assumptions the next time we talk about it. So do we need to spend a little time right now tonight? Yes, I think this is the time to kind of have discussion. It's funny you say that this is optimistic, Irene. You know, a month ago we had 2,800 and I thought that was optimistic. I know, and what I'm saying is like, I think we've had this huge drop from the 2,878 to the 2,708. And so I don't know that we'd see another drop of that magnitude, but to keep it flat is- Yeah, I'm agreeing with you. I'm just saying how it changed so fast because in our enrollment meetings with our cabinet team, we were at 2,800 and some members thought

121that was just too low. I'm like, no, no, we gotta look at this again. And then we said, well, we better put 2,700 down because of what's happening. And then to see it again today drop below that 2,700. So this really is unpredictable. And I think looking at the next two years out, I think we could anticipate and build in a projected decline right now so that we are really planning conservatively because what Ben brought up too was important. And our Neil, they gave us the COLA and increased the COLA and said, hey, this looks great. And then they increased our operational costs. Here's more insurance. I mean, just the unemployment insurance is almost a 1% in our district. And then they increased the CalSTRS and CalPERS contribution again. So they say, the government likes

122to look good. Look at all the money we're giving you. And then they increase our obligations. And so our discretionary money is shrinking every time they do these kinds of bait and switch things. So I think we need to continue to point out that the money going into public education right now is not making it available for us for discretionary purposes. Some very, these one-time grants are just going to give us some recovery for next year, but we're still struggling as a district in decline and this structural problem that the state is doing to us by increasing our operational costs. So what are some thoughts around our, I call it year two and year three as far as our enrollment numbers? Before we start going down that road, and the reason I don't want to

123go around it now is I don't think we have the data in front of us to really do it at this point with this presentation. Reason being is we have a demographer that relies on this information. There's historical information we can look at to see those comparisons for us to just kind of guess based off of end of year data, try to plug it lower. Essentially what we're doing is just cutting ourselves money that we don't know if we need to cut or not without the right data points in front of us. So if it's something we want to look at, then I suggest we bring it at the next meeting when we have to talk about a budget and improve the budget. But if we just do it now, we're not even going to

124be throwing at the dartboard, we're just going to be throwing at random walls to see if we hit the dartboard. So I prefer we wait on that topic. And I'll just add on, we did get our demographers report and it is so off, it's not anywhere near it and they're not going to be able to help us really this year. So you have a good point, Neil. It really is any guess as good as yours. What we need to make sure is whatever we use that the county office will validate because we don't want to be too conservative and really put ourselves in a difficult situation and have a qualified budget. We don't want to put ourselves in that situation. But at the same time, we just need to continue to be realistic. And I

125think you make a good point there. So my original proposal is that we would do this work between now and next week. And the budget draft that we bring to you will have our proposed numbers in there just a point of clarification on that one. We only are really approving the 2021-22 budget, correct? Not the projected budget for 22-23 or 23-24. We're actually having to approve the... We're approving this budget, but the multi-year projection according to law has to demonstrate a 3% reserve in year three. So that's why it's so critical. So our budget is pending on our third year out. So we have to ensure that our out years are solid. Thank you for clarifying. All right, go ahead. Neil, one quick question and then we can discuss this next week. I'm just curious

126if we... What other sources of information are there for us to anticipate these numbers? Are there, have you all Michelle talked to other districts that are also in declining enrollment? I mean, like we're talking about, it's a dartboard. So what are we even gonna know between tonight and next week that's gonna give us any more insight into this? The key piece right now, we had 239 people who did not complete their InfoSap Power School. Shame on them. So all the secretaries got the report today. There's an average of 20 students per school. There's something like that. So there's not an enormous... They're calling every family who did not confirm their enrollment. That's what's going to help us a lot. We need people to tell us their situation for next year. And we understand some people

127are just not sure. And so we'll either get a yes, no, or maybe. So that will give us a lot of information. So we'll reconvene again on Monday and have another enrollment meeting and look at our numbers at that point. And at that point, I think that's the best information. Otherwise there is not another source for us that's going to provide us data. It's going to be our own expertise, consulting with the county, and really just relying on our parents to communicate to us what their plans are for next year. One thing I would like to see in that comparison, Michelle, is the demographers' predictions compared to what the enrollment was historically. That's been, they've been fairly... In normal years, they've been fairly spot on, so. They have, and we'll share that with you as

128well. All right, trustees, any other questions? I don't want to cut anyone off. Okay, not hearing any then. Christine, Amber, thank you very much for the hard work on that and difficult work. We appreciate it. And obviously still more to come as well. So thank you two very much, especially at the end of the year. So we appreciate it. I will move us on then to five, sorry, on discussion. Item 6A are 2021 to 24 draft LCAP goals and actions. This is to Hans. Hans, just one procedural question I want to make sure I'm getting correctly. So we're going to see this three times, correct? Tonight's kind of the draft to give a little bit of background. There'll be another draft of the 10th fourth approval on the 17th, right? Is that kind of the

129procedure we're at with it? Yeah, Neil, so tonight you're going to see the most detailed that you're going to see. This is kind of the overview of where we're headed with our LCAP because the meat of the LCAP really is, the goals, the actions and services. And so that's what we'll cover a lot tonight, looking for your input in ways that we might need to augment what we've come up with. And then by Monday evening, we'll have a draft of the large document that will then go to public hearing on the 10th and for any public comment at that point. And then we'll also be providing it to the county to take a look at so that by the 17th, we've got everybody's revisions built in and the 17th is really just a final look

130and an approval along with the budget, the budget overview for parents and the local indicators presentation that I will also have to give that evening. That's a new part of the timeline that goes along with LCAP. So as of right now, I don't believe that we'll have to pass the federal addendum, which is another, all of those go together. So we've got local indicators, we've got federal addendum, we've got the LCAP, all need to go now on the same night. And we most likely will not need to pass a federal addendum because we're not asking for new funds. And that's the latest guidance that we got from the county just earlier this week. So this was all part of the rewrite of the LCAP and the LCAP template that was supposed to take place last

131year that was obviously interrupted because of COVID. So your timeline is spot on and we'll be spending a lot of time on these items in the next three weeks. So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. Give me a moment here, hit present. As I was saying, before we get started, I remember when we started this year, you might recall, take you on a little bit of a bird walk here. We started the year with a plan, right? With the local or the LCP as we called it, and that was really the learning continuity plan, right? For how we were going to maintain learning in distance. And we've done a plan in between called the yellow grant plan, right? And we've planned a lot around in-person instruction grant and these other monies. And now

132we're really talking about the meat of our plans, which really this LCAP kind of consolidates all of that. So in the LCAP, tonight, you're really gonna see goals and actions that relate to the next three years. Another piece of the LCAP that you will see next week is the annual updates. So normally you have an annual update section that you have to do and that is usually one year. This particular annual update is for 19-20 and also for the LCP. So that's a whole nother arm of this document that we're not covering tonight, really because those are pieces that we've spent a lot of time talking about already previous to this. And our goal tonight is for you to understand where we're headed, not where we've been, okay? But you will see that annual update

133as part of this document. It is part of the, they're married together, okay? So as we look at our little graphic here of continuous improvement in the state of California, you know, we have the state dashboard that's really kind of out of date because the last time the state had enough data to publish a dashboard was the beginning of 2019 school year, okay? This year they really didn't do much in dashboard other than update our enrollment numbers. You won't find much else in the 2020 dashboard because the data was not there. And as we've talked about already, things like attendance, we were in hold harmless mode. So we weren't necessarily collecting and reporting in the way that we have in the past. Our first slide is just a reminder about, and this is really as

134much for the public as it is for you as a board, just a reminder kind of what is the LCAP? Why do we do it? You know, what are the pieces that go together? It's really kind of consolidates a lot on one slide because the LCAP is so much more than just an acronym, right? It's the key piece of the continuous improvement model. We have to update it annually. You know, it contains actions, metrics, budget. It's one plan as we move forward really that was related to the look control funding formula. And I've got a couple, a graphic up there that I like. It's kind of demonstrates the iterative process that really results in continuous improvement. And that's the California way actually is what that's called outside of California. It's kind of funny when you

135talk to somebody out of the state, they say, we just think California's really got it going on this idea of the California way. And the first time I heard that, I said, what do you mean by that? Because the state hasn't done a great job educating us about what that is. It's really just a continuous improvement model. So it's a growth model rather than, you know, the previous model where everybody was supposed to achieve at a proficient level. This is about monitoring growth of all students. We talked a little bit about the timeline, comes in May and June each year. You know, we get feedback from you, from San Mateo County office, and they are the approving entity. It doesn't actually go to the state or the CDE, the approving entity is actually the County

136Office of Education. And so we work closely with them. We have a good support person that both Christine and I've talked to a couple of times already this week, let alone previous to this. The other piece, Neil, I wanna remind you about a question you asked me and you said, hey, do you think the engagement is gonna go like it has in the past? Or do you think you're gonna be able to do as much? Because the template came out late, right? This template really wasn't presented us until late January, early February, which is late. Normally this template is ready to go by, you know, you're talking about certainly by December. And I think my reply was, I'm not really sure. I think we'll be able to get three meetings in, I don't know. We

137actually had our fifth meeting this morning with the group, with PAC and DLAC, and to get some final notes and ideas around what they thought of what they saw. And so that's one of the reasons that we didn't upload the presentation until about noon today. So very successful meeting, you know, they had good input and obviously we're looking for the same from you tonight. As I display the goals, the first goal you're going to see is really the short-term goal. It's really related directly to the ELO grant, okay? This is a one-year short-term goal that is outcome-based based on, you know, our plans around the ELO grant. And as you know, we've spent the majority of the last couple of meetings talking about this grant and plans for this grant, and how we feel it's

138best to be used. The primary outcomes really are in identifying students that need extra support, and then offering those extra supports and monitoring their growth. So rather than putting down all of the actions and services on this particular slide, you'll notice I just gave a link to the ELO grant plan that was shared the last meeting on May 20th and was approved by you all. We do give some of the metrics, but again, really the main metric on this is really that first bullet, which is monitoring the growth of the students that we identify as needing learning recovery, okay? And remember, we shifted that narrative from learning loss to learning recovery, because as I've said before, and you'll hear me say many times, when something is lost, it's as if it's gone forever, and when

139you're recovering something, it's recoverable. So you get it back. So we really wanna shift that vocabulary. It's an important piece. So rather than ask for a lot of input on this goal, I think it's pretty clear to all of you what this speaks to. The next four goals, what you'll see, those of you that have looked at the LCAP before, been involved in goal development or sat on the board, you'll notice that it looks very similar. Some of the goals are similar to what they looked like before. The difference is this, okay? And one of the real pieces of guidance that we received from the state and from the county is that we wanna try to unpack the goals. Previous goals, not just for our district, but for districts across the state, they really kind

140of mixed pieces in. So you might have a goal that was related to academic achievement, and then you might throw in a social emotional learning goal into that, and you might also talk about equity, all in the same goal. And that makes it difficult to measure, that makes it difficult to focus and narrow. And the primary guidance we got about goal writing was, let's unpack those. Kind of like you're gonna unpack a standard as a teacher. So you look at the standard and it's like, wow, what does that really mean? What it really means is let's take it apart and dissect it so we can understand it, and then we can pick the most appropriate measures. So that's really what was our goal in the last six weeks or so, as we were changing these

141goals and really drafting then redrafting and trying to perfect to make them understandable to all. The other piece I want you to take, I'm gonna present each goal and then we're gonna pause for a moment, because rather than trying to take all of this in and all four goals at once, we'll do a goal and then I'm gonna ask you for reflections or suggestions at that point. And as you're thinking about that, I really want you to use this lens when you read the goal, what is it you think you wanna know, number one, and then what metrics would help you with measuring that? And then is something missing, okay? Because we've really tried to take a comprehensive look at, here's the goal, here's the metric, and then here are the actions or services that

142we plan to provide that will help us meet that goal. So it's really, it's that idea of is something missing? Are we covering what you think you would want to know out of that goal, okay? That's kind of the framing I want you to take as you're looking at this. So our second goal is, and I'll go ahead and read it for the public. All students will receive core instruction in a well-maintained facility from educators who are fully credentialed, appropriately assigned and supported, and who value and believe in the development of the whole child as a means to prepare our youth to become successful and well-rounded college and career-ready individuals in a global society. It's a long goal, they're all quite long, and this goal is meant to really address a number of the state

143priorities, including a broad course of study requirement, one piece is monitoring educators and properly supporting them, monitoring credentialing, making sure they're properly assigned. This is all part of the requirements to meet all of the state priorities. So this is similar to the second goal of our previous LCAP, just the difference is it's not as pointed at, it was more about CCSS at that point. And at this point, the common core state standards, while they're still, that terminology is still fairly common, it's more just about state standards, right? It's not considered new anymore, it's really just what we do. So with that in mind, the metrics we chose that we're looking at are similar to what we had previously, we have to monitor the percent of teachers we have appropriately assigned year to year, it's a

144required part of the school accountability report card, it's something we do regularly. Not surprisingly, we do have a few folks that are not fully credentialed, because they're, and you approve these folks when we say, intern permits, tips and steps that have to come to you and that you approve. So some people might interpret that as fully credentialed. And really the definition is that it's not fully credentialed, it means they're on the road to be fully credentialed. And those are generally in challenging areas that we've talked about many times, math, science and special education are the highest ones. The percent of students having access to core line, to a standards line core curriculum and materials, that is something we're very proud to say that our students are exposed every day to. That goes kind of hand

145in hand with the Williams complaints, which again, you approve on a quarterly basis as part of consent agenda. I'm proud to say we haven't had any Williams complaints that were related to instructional materials, even since I've been here in the last three years. So that's a positive. You see something on here called the fit tool and actually got a couple of questions about this earlier today. This is a facilities inspection tool that's used statewide for all school districts to monitor the conditions of their facilities. And it talks about a variety of things, plumbing, is the site fit, concrete, things like that. They're all meant to be, they're all meant in a safe environment in a safety mode. And so you're really just monitoring to make sure that your schools are safe places for students to

146be. And then the concept of broad course of study is something that is included on the California state dashboard. You might remember those of you that are experienced board members, that is a piece that we talk about. When we actually talk about the local indicators, it's something we have to rate ourselves on. And our students are 100% exposed to a broad course of study, proud to say that as well. Some of the actions, and you'll see some of these repeated in other goals, but these are specific. So professional development, this is really professional development for new educators that's in this goal. So all new teachers have to go through an induction program previously called BITSA. And it's a two-year program that allows them to clear their credential. We really want to focus in on creating

147and continuing opportunities for teacher leadership in our own teaching force, which would allow us to allow, it gives them opportunities for teaching others and for really growing themselves and their practice. Obviously a big piece, as I already covered, is maintaining and enhancing facility maintenance. Another big part of this goal is maintaining and enhancing technology infrastructure, which you might remember about a couple of months ago, maybe back in February, I think we'd spent quite a bit of time talking about our technology plans and infrastructure for the future and how important that is and how that's only been accentuated by COVID, but for our school district, it was already on the forefront previous to COVID and it will continue to be so afterwards. Providing families in need with internet hotspot devices, that's not something new that was

148in our LCAP previously and something that we want to continue to be able to do. And then along with the broad course of study idea is having a well-rounded electives and wheel classes for, it's really only part of six through eight for a lot of school districts, but we have the goal of really making it true for fourth through eighth grade, thanks to our shared campuses. So with that, I will take a sip of water and then with that, are there questions as we think about that piece, is something missing? Are the measures that you're looking for there? What input do you have on this particular goal? I have one input for you, Hans, on this goal. I think the biggest question, or I think when I look at the matrix of what we're looking

149at, the way it stands out to me or the way I read it is it sounds like it's kind of like, well, if things aren't falling into themselves, then that's kind of our baseline to measure success. But what I'm really looking for as a board member in terms of long-term planning is does it match our facilities master plan and what we want in our facilities? That's kind of a big part of what I would want to know is are they aligned? Because the big thing for me in the LCAP is always to make sure that we're using it as our guide throughout the year. And obviously I don't want it just to be, that we're not receiving complaints because obviously if complaints start coming in then we've missed something along the way. So that would

150be my one matrix I'd like to see added to it. I have an open question that's more process-related. Hans, thank you so much for putting all this together and on board, like I encourage others to weigh in too, is that, do you view the LCAP, Hans, as the floor is what we need to achieve or the ceiling or an aspirational goal? As I think about both the metrics, actions, services, I wonder, like, is this the minimum threshold that we need to achieve and we have aspiration for more or is this really the benchmark that we're ascribing to? Can you just help me orient a little bit to the LCAP goals that way? Yeah, and Ben, I think the piece that we didn't talk about here the LCAP is that guiding document. It also generally goes

151hand in hand with strategic plan. Okay, and so kind of the guiding light in our district has always been the strategic plan. So our LCAP is really related to meeting those pieces of the strategic plan that are kind of those loftier pieces, right? Like that's our ultimate goal. And our LCAP is a way to get there, right? It's not the ceiling per se, but it's a way to get towards those goals and monitor growth. I mean, really that is the definition of what an LCAP is supposed to do. Are we monitoring growth and are we seeing that growth? And then if we're not seeing that growth, then why? So that spiral that we had on that first, that second slide really kind of defines it for me, right? So, all right, we're going up and

152we get to a place and we're not seeing the growth we wanna see. So we go back and we'll say, why is that? And so, and at the whole time, the top of the spiral really is our strategic plan. It's not the LCAP per se, okay? And so, as we look forward, we've talked about this before, and I think by now we would have had the time to start a revision of that, right? Because we agree that, and this board has talked about, hey, we love that plan, it's fantastic, and it needs an update, right? And really without COVID, we probably would already have an updated strategic plan that then we could say, okay, based on our updated strategic plan, that might change our LCAP goals, okay? Or it might change some of the services

153or actions we're gonna offer. It also doesn't mean that we haven't updated one in two years and we then add actions to this, okay? That's a really important point to make because when you get into the frame of mind of thinking that the LCAP is the end-all be-all and you can't change it, is when we go down the wrong road, right? It really is supposed to be iterative. So if we have an action or a goal that isn't working for us, we need to just explain why that is and then choose another action or write a separate goal for that. And that is allowed. That's an allowable part of the process because the key is to have a process, okay? So to me, that's the definition of an LCAP and that's really what it's meant

154to be is mirroring that process of the iterative process and getting better, so to speak. Does that help, Ben? Yeah, that was super helpful. Thank you so much. And definitely connects the dots for me in a way that they weren't connected before. Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. Appreciate that question. All right, so anything else from Sarah or Wendy? Otherwise, we'll move on to goal three. All right, quick question on the second metric. I guess what I'm trying to understand is if we, my, I guess, concern is knowing that we have standards aligned core curriculum materials across the board, K through eight in the major disciplines. So percent of students having access, I'm just trying to understand that metric because my question goes to the fact that we are sort of putting off the

155acquisition of new social studies curriculum. So help me just understand that metric and what we're actually, by measuring that, what does that tell us? Because to me, the importance is having standards aligned core curriculum materials. So just to speak specifically about social studies, I think it's important we have not conducted a full adoption of social studies, right? That's what you mean by that. And that is a true story. That doesn't mean that we're not using other materials that align to current social studies standards, okay? And we're supplementing because we have not adopted something updated. So our formal curriculum is something that's from, I wanna say 2005, might be even earlier. Our teachers have that curriculum and it's a baseline and we're supplementing with other measures because when you supplement, you don't necessarily have to go

156through a full adoption, okay? And we're in need of a full adoption because it's not directly up to date and it doesn't meet some of our other goals. Like when we get into goal five and we start talking about equity, we haven't taken a full look at an adoption in social studies with that lens. And remember too, Wendy, we have conducted an adoption in sixth or eighth grade. So the middle school does have social studies, core materials was just adopted two years ago. It's the TK to five that doesn't, which is more, this isn't really a word, but it's more supplementable, I would say. Than a middle school or high school program, right? So it's kind of a mixed answer to your question, but the students do have access to standards aligned core curriculum through

157the supplements that we're providing, even though our core curriculum that we have is aligned to previous standards. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, I just was trying to, sometimes if it's a metric that is, so many things roll up into that, what does it really tell us? I guess, like percent of students having access. Anyways, I'm just saying, I think it's important that we, that this helps us to understand where maybe we're falling short or paints a realistic picture. And I'm not trying to point out necessarily where we're falling short. I'm just saying, we're striving to achieve certain things. And if there is a gap, we just need to be able to have these metrics tell us what we wanna measure. Well, and Wendy, you just said it all right there. We're striving to get

158somewhere. And so certainly acknowledging that we need to update that curriculum is really important. And that would go in the plan and sort of framing around that piece of the goal, right? We would mention that and say, yes, we are actually going to do that. We have a timeline by which we will. And I can tell you a couple of our surrounding districts, I've had discussions with them as well. And they're in the same place because there's been such an emphasis on math and language arts. And now science, right, is also being measured that social studies is kind of like, we'll get to it, we'll get to it, we'll get to it. But we do have a plan to get to that within the next year or two, okay? And that's what we would talk

159about here. Yeah, and just pointing out again, this is three years. We're required to have this 2021, 2024. So it's over a period of time. So people just, public has to keep that in context, you know? Correct, correct. Okay, thanks for answering. Thanks, Wendy. Okay, go ahead. Hans, Irene here, just real fast. I just wanna let you know that what I'm listening most for, because you've just spoken to so many people is what you've learned, what was surprising. Because to me, I'm trying to just track the lessons and the thought process in your head because that's steering the strategy behind all these actions and services. Yeah, and I have, sorry, Hans, I have a quick question back onto, I think building on what Irene just said actually is how you and the team has been

160thinking about the whole child piece of this goal. And I think we acknowledge as a community, and I know many times that that's a hard thing to measure and that we value that anyways because we know it's important. But if there is a piece of this that the team has talked about as somehow getting to that, evaluating whether we're meeting that piece of the goal. Sarah, you'll see that later. Goal four is really oriented around the five Cs and the whole child. Specifically that addresses that too. So as I said, some of these actions you're gonna see repeated with different vocabulary because professional development is in three of the five, actually four of the five, if you consider the first goal. But it's different professional development, right? It's not the same thing in each goal.

161So you'll see some themes as we go through. Okay, so thank you both, appreciate that. And Irene, I think your point is well taken and we've spent a lot of time in the last couple of meetings talking about what we were hearing in all of the various engagement meetings that we've had. And what we've tried to do is embody that, what we've heard and take that guidance that we've received from state level and county level folks and really try to consolidate. So if I'm not speaking to that enough, Irene, please feel free to call me out on that again, I appreciate it. Oh, I went one ahead here. Okay, so this goal is really our academic goal, okay? And it will not come as any surprise to anyone and it's pretty pointed. And I'll read

162it again, for the public increase the academic achievement of all students in English language arts, math, science, considering opportunities to personalize learning and intentionally planning for English learners, students with disabilities and socioeconomically disadvantaged student groups. So, this really is, this talks about what we want for all students. It talks about acknowledging that there's a gap for our students and how, what are the actions and services that we plan to implement to try to really mitigate that gap. And this is the question, as you know, this is the statewide question, okay? This isn't just a San Carlos question. This is a statewide and a nationwide question that everyone is grappling with. So, a lot of what you'll see here are your standardized assessments. And part of what we are required to monitor because the way that

163the dashboard is built, as you know, is really just around state assessments. They don't really, they don't look at your local measures. They don't necessarily care what you're doing locally. They're just gonna look at your test scores and give you kind of a, remember it's the red to green dashboard rating. And, you know, so that's always a piece of this goal. Now we don't have updated metrics on that, right? We're really, our baseline is from 2019. And this year's CASP, along with many of the other assessments we have, you know, this year's CASP is different. It's shorter, it's apples to oranges almost. And then some of our other measures we were giving remotely for so long. So, you know, reliability is a question that we're all asking. And it's something that you undoubtedly have in

164your head. It's certainly something that I've thought about that's come up in our stakeholder engagement meetings. And it's come in at every single meeting that I've attended around LCAP with, you know, fellow colleagues who are in my position and working on this document and working with boards and children. And so, you know, that's just something we wanna state right off the bat. You know, reliability and validity of our current measures is a question mark. And that's why next year is so crucial. And that's why we have that first goal to really push ourselves to monitor and get back to knowing that we have reliable assessments and we have reliable levels that we can look at for students. So with all of that being said, we'll go into the rest of this goal. I don't think

165you'll find much here that's surprising. There is one piece that I wanna point out that's really important that is information that has recently been communicated to us from the state level. So the first measure, as I said, is all the CAST assessments. So your SBAC in language arts, the SBAC in math, and then the CAST, which is the California science test, and monitoring percent, you know, proficient and or above, and for every subgroup, student groups that we have. And then there's another measure that's really becoming more commonly used called distance from standard. And if you think about what that means, all it is is, you know, there's a baseline of proficiency that they want students to have in any given grade level. And it's kind of randomly assigned. To be honest, nobody really knows the

166Y around Y. For example, I'm just gonna pull this out. You know, 2432 is proficient in fourth grade math. I don't know why that is, that's a state level. But if that's the number 2432, then the concept is distance from standard means either you're above that, so you're plus whatever number or you're minus that. And the goal is to move anybody that's minus closer to it. And anybody that's above farther from it, okay? And, you know, in so doing, eventually just lowering that gap that's between. And so, you know, that's a second piece that we really wanna be looking at. You might've heard it if you, you know, previously it was called distance from three when they assigned a numerical number to the bucket. And now it's really distance from standard. So that goes along

167with monitoring percent proficient. We, as you well know, we have established benchmarks in reading and writing and in math. And they're really kind of part of the fabric at this point, certainly in K through five. And in middle school, you know, the concept of a benchmark is no longer new. It's not like, you know, we're doing benchmarks. Everybody knows we're going to do benchmarks. What we're trying to do now in middle school is choose benchmarks that will give us the data that we need to be actionable. And so, you know, part of building a benchmark culture is understanding why we're going to be doing the benchmarks. And then the second part of having a benchmark is making it actionable. So we're now moving into more of an actionable related benchmark than kind of that first

168hurdle of why are we doing this and taking the time to do it? It's part of the fabric. And in so doing, we're really looking at a new system in middle school that is called, you may or may not have heard of it, but it's called iReady. So when you look into the LCAP document, the large document, you'll see that in middle school as part of what we're really going to make as our benchmark process for reading and math, reading and language arts and math. It also has an intervention module that comes with it for students that would need extra intervention and we'll be providing that for them. So that's kind of more detailed than you might want it, but it's kind of a package that goes together. We also wanna make sure we're monitoring

169closely our English learners and their standardized exam is the LPAC, as you know. And we also closely monitor our reclassification rates, which have been quite impressive in the last couple of years. The latest reclassification rate is from 2019. Obviously we didn't reclassify students last year because the LPAC summative was not really given, it was interrupted by the shutdown. But the previous rate was, we had reclassified about a third of our English learners, 33%, which is massive and really impressive. And a piece of this also is monitoring our long-term English learners and their progress and really avoiding students from getting to that point. So this has really ramped up over the last three years, even during these COVID years as a management team, as a management team, we've talked a lot about this and teachers are

170really, it's becoming a fabric again of what we do and really talking about it. And I think we've made a lot of progress in this over the last three or four years in this area. The one piece that's fairly new is we have had, the last couple of years we've been, the state's monitoring rates of students with disabilities students with disabilities in any student group, okay? And they're really monitoring to see if, you have crossed the threshold into what they call disproportionality, okay? And that's defined as a certain percentage above their baseline and the baseline is three. And what's hard for us on this is that, just like our dashboard data, because of the previous structure of the district having the charters, we don't have a dashboard, right? We have six dashboards and similarly in

171this way in monitoring disproportionality, they're monitoring disproportionality, they're monitoring six different pieces. So six different charters. Our current definition of San Carlos School District when this piece started three years ago was Arroyo and Central. And they're really still monitoring us in that way so that Arroyo and Central is representing San Carlos School District when they're monitoring the special education numbers. So we have recently been told that we are significantly disproportionate which means we've been above 3% for the last three years. Remember now that's based in numbers from Central and Arroyo that's not based in numbers from even four schools because we went Central, Arroyo, we opened Mariposa and then Heather was in the charter, it's not even that. And then it's certainly not all eight of our schools. So it's a rather complex issue to

172explain in a short amount of time. I think our way of looking at it is we're working with the county on this already. We've been working with them over the last couple of years and we wanna acknowledge that it's something we really wanna look closely at. So this measure, this is how we're disproportionate is looking at the percent of Hispanic students that are on an IEP for a specific learning disability. And regardless of whether we know the data for the whole district or not, it's something we wanna continue to monitor. So we wanted to make sure that that was a metric that we use in our LCAP and acknowledge that. Now, of course, behind the scenes, I'm trying to work on the numbers so that we can find out what our actual number is but

173it's pretty complex, I would say, to put it mildly, it's fairly complex to put together and finding the time to do that. But it's something that I plan to do in June so that we have a really June and July. So we have a realistic perspective on, are we really in this boat? What boat are we in? Do we know where we stand with this? But nonetheless, doing the work to lessen that is something we feel is very important. And then as you know, we have our annual student parent teacher surveys that we give out and part of what we're doing with those is monitoring a number of different pieces. So you'll see those in the next three slides, obviously related to different pieces. So this is related to academic achievement, to use of technology

174expectations and then communication. And by communication, you'll see that later again, this communication is about standards, academic achievement. We do a lot of different types of communications, right? And so you'll see that repeated as we go through. The actions and services will come as no surprise, a lot of professional development and subject areas. We purchased the new science materials and implementing the implementation of that. Monitoring rather, I should say. Taking a personalized approach to our ELs so they're getting what they need and monitoring their progress. And then still providing chances for students to personalize and providing a robust selection of educational technology tools, which again, that's not new for us. And that was part of the reason that we were able to pivot so well, even as far back as last March, because those things

175were part of our fabric already. And then a parent education nights is another piece that would be actions or services that we would wanna provide. In this particular area. So again, I pause and ask, are we missing something? What questions do you have? One thing I'd like to add is, I know that all the groups have engaged around this and when they engage, this is kind of the, almost everybody kind of goes, yeah, okay, this one makes sense. It's very logical. It's the easiest to choose metrics. And kind of, because they're numerically valued. As a former math teacher, it's like, we need numbers to monitor, right? So there are direct numbers related to this goal. Hans, I just have one, I don't even know if it's even a metric or just one maybe comment and

176thought. And it's not something even to think about tonight. We've never been a district historically that has always measured ourself on numbers and statistics. And I've been doing, I've been on the board long enough to know that those numbers and statistics, especially around standardized testing often shift, right? So one school has a great year, another school has an off year. But we as a district never mean that, has never said that's gonna hit the panic button for us. I would like us to just kind of have a, I don't even know if it's a metric or just a baseline of when we know we're still doing okay, even if that's possible. But that could be, that's the only thing that came up as you were talking through. I don't even know if that's something that

177can be thought about or put into it, but that was just a comment I wanted to make. Yeah, Neil, that's a great point. And I mean, I think that's also a piece that sometimes, when we're talking about, when you get down to the teacher level or the supporting educator level, that can often be like, well, I don't wanna be judged on a number, right? Because there's so much more that goes into what we do as educators. And I respect and value that very much because you're right, year to year things vary, students vary, strengths vary, assets that they bring vary. And really, it always goes back to me just as, this is a benchmark, it's a way to monitor, right? And it's a way that, like you said, how do we know we're okay? And

178those are discussions that we'll continue to have as we move forward, hopefully more into normalcy, as we've said a couple of times tonight, and really talking about how we monitor that, what does that mean that we're okay? It's not getting necessarily into that granular level of, gosh, what's going on in the X grade at X school, right? That's not our role. Our role is to keep that high level view in that and let that work as it needs to be done, be done at that school level with that principal and with that team of teachers. Anything else on this goal? I have a question, but I'd love to wait and keep the floor open for my other fellow colleagues. Yeah, questions first. Go ahead, Ben. Thank you. I have a question around assessment and grade

179levels and whether the plan here, you feel, sufficiently assesses kindergartners or first graders or second graders who may not be taking some of the more advanced exams. And as we know in education, it is much, much harder to catch kids up later if they're falling behind and a lot easier and very productive to work with students at the younger ages to really keep them on track. Can you talk a little bit about how this plan equitably assesses learners at the different age groups? Yeah, sure, Ben, thanks for that. Yeah, I mean, they don't take the standardized assessments, but remember that we're doing quite a bit of assessment with our students, even starting in TK. Our reading benchmark assessment is really the key one. As you know, early learning to read is extremely important and students

180that learn to read by second grade then can read to learn. And monitoring that progress is extremely important. And part of what we talked about in the previous meeting last time was we showed some of the data and our data, even during COVID, our running record data, which is the monitoring of students' reading levels is still quite good. Students overall are doing really, really well in the mid 80s percents, either meeting or exceeding standard. And one of the reasons that that's so important is as we go back to goal one, it's about providing the services for students that aren't there yet and identifying who those students are. And that concept just kind of goes throughout, whether it's reading, whether it's a math benchmarks that we give that are aligned to our current program, math and

181focus, whether it's the writing assessment, they're doing that at all the early grades too, don't forget that. So those three assessments really do help guide what sort of intervention we need to give for students. One of the other important pieces that we wanna point out here, you know, this current school year, which is almost over, so it's almost the past school year, we eliminated our literacy program, right? And that was a key piece to really identify students who needed extra support in reading and give them that. And, you know, that's a really important piece to note that that's coming back, okay? And it's coming back in a fairly sustainable model, you saw a lot of uncertainty, I think, in the next two years out, given our enrollment. But, you know, the one thing we know

182is that one piece that's been fairly stable is our unduplicated count and the, you don't get a lot of dollars in that account, but we get enough dollars to provide supports that are necessary. And one of those supports is the literacy program. And we're building that into the LCAP now. We're going to fund, we have two reading, we have two half-time reading teachers, I should say, so one FTE, and then we've built in two additional literacy support associates who are classified employees into that categorical account to help really, you know, speak to that need. And when I say speak to that need, close to libraries, the two L's were the most common. We talked about this last time. No matter what group we talked to, the two L's were the most common suggestion. We want

183our libraries and we want our literacy associates. Those were the two pieces that were heard loud and clear across all stakeholder groups, teachers, parents. It didn't really matter who we talked to. Those were the loudest voices. So building that in as a sustainable piece is important. We're providing two additional next year. Of course, this is all pending being able to hire these folks as Dr. Harmeyer said earlier, so that we'll have a, you know, a workforce of six that would be able to support that reading intervention as necessary in the early grades. So, you know, Ben, that really is the primary piece is that that benchmark assessment reading is so incredibly important. And monitoring that data is really number one in kinder one and two, right? Because everything else follows after that. So hopefully that

184helps address your question. I do, again, I just think those pieces in the last three years have only been fortified as practice in our district. Whereas previous, you know, maybe eight, nine years ago, they weren't as fortified, right? Or they weren't as standardized across the district. So it would be difficult to look at, you know, were they doing the same thing at, you know, Heather, that they were at White Oaks, right? We know that. Everybody's doing it. In a standardized manner. And that allows us to really, you know, identify students on the same standard. So, so much work has been done on that to get us to that point. Thanks so much. And I would just say like one of the top things on every parent's mind right now is where is my learner? Like,

185what are their needs? And so just to hear that there's comprehensive plan like that, and I would just ask however best the board can echo with simplicity and clarity here's what you're going to get when it comes to assessment. I think that can be a huge burden off parent shoulder and a selling point that coming back to school and engaging full on. Thank you. Yeah, and Ben, that's an important point. I mean, these are things that we've been talking about a lot last, you know, five or six months is how do we guarantee that we're gonna assess early and then continue? And that's something that really we are, we're shifting our practice because generally these benchmark assessments don't take place until a month or two into the school year, right? And we need to have

186that baseline data so that we know who needs help with the recovery, okay? And that holds true and not just in academics but also in social emotional. So we're really building those into what we're doing. And that is a change in practice. Whereas those trimester monitoring assessments really are part of our fabric. That's the difference in the coming year. And that's a really detailed in the first goal too. Can I just, can I jump in with a question? It doesn't have to, I don't wanna belabor this too much. I mean, these goals, what I was gonna say is that what I appreciate is that the goals are discrete. And like you said, you know, there's not three different, you know, goals built into each one of these. However, there's one area Hans that in the

187LCAP, you know, historically, you know, there is a goal around parent involvement. And I noticed in goal three and in goal four, there are metrics and actions that do talk, you know, speak to parents. And I did wanna understand, cause in a prior meeting you had sort of a long list of what you heard and priorities that were surfaced. And I just wanted to know a little bit more about like in this goal, you have a metric that includes, you know, the parent student and parent survey questions related to academic achievement, technology, expectations, communication. And then in goal four, which we're gonna get to, there is also a metric, you know, and around goal setting, you know, parents survey questions around goal setting. But just help me understand where the parent involvement piece, like how

188that surfaced in your stakeholder meetings and if we're gonna do anything differently. I mean, certainly parent education is, you know, historically something that I think we do fairly well. And it really does focus in on curriculum, helping parents to understand new curriculum and so that they can hopefully help translate that at home in support for their kids. But I just wanted to touch on the parent involvement piece and where across these goals, how you see that embedded really. Well, you know, Wendy, I think none of this would happen without the engagement that we did. To say it in any other way wouldn't make a lot of sense. And, you know, one of the things that we had, you know, I was out, as you know, during a significant portion of this. And Lisa Cesario talked

189about this today in the meeting this morning. And she said, you know, the difference, she was a superintendent before, right, in the previous school district. And she said, you know, the difference for me is I was listening to the input from no matter who it was or looking at the survey data. For her, she said she didn't have a tie to it, right? She wasn't emotionally tied to what people were saying, like, well, yeah, but this, or we do that, but I heard this, but this. You know, it really was for her, she was very objective and be able to just listen and just put the input. Like, hey, this is what I heard, am I right? Is this what I heard? And folks would say, yeah, wow, that's what we said. And there weren't,

190you know, there wasn't that sense of wanting to say, well, but we do this really well, but maybe that's some, right? It wasn't that she had no tie to it. And that kind of made this year, you know, a little bit unique in that nobody was there to say, hey, wait a minute. Now that doesn't mean that I do that per se, because I like to think that I'm a pretty good listener and part of it is ownership. So I think that made a lot of the engagement that we did this year, maybe the word's more authentic. And I think too, that a lot more people participated because of some of the methods that we used. You know, if you have a meeting in person and, you know, folks can't attend, you know, then, right?

191Whereas you're doing things on Zoom, it has a different feeling to it. Sure. And sorry, Hans, I might have, I might not have just focused my question well enough, and I don't want to belabor this too, it's getting late. But I think my question is around, like specifically goal three is around increasing the academic achievement of all students, you know, in these various areas and especially for listeners. Anyways, my point is how in our goal setting can we, do we consider parents' role in supporting these goals? I see parent involvement as cross-cutting across many of these goal areas. And I'm just trying to understand how that might've been surfaced in the stakeholder engagement in terms of new and better ways to engage parents early, you know, goal setting for their kids, like Ben was speaking

192to, even just coming out of, you know, COVID year, understanding where our kids are at, helping parents to see their role in supporting the learning and growth. It's just, yeah. And so maybe, maybe like, I mean, Hans, in other LCAPs I've seen, and maybe this is something we get to, but those are, parent involvement is something that all districts had to report on. And there wasn't a common metric that we were supposed to be using. So anyways, maybe that's in a later version or a more detailed version. But I just wanted to raise parent involvement and just know that I think that should be a part of our LCAP. Yeah, and Winnie, it is a required portion of the LCAP. It's not necessarily part of a goal. It's kind of embedded in a goal. There's

193a state priority on parent engagement. And many of these goals speak to parent engagement. There's also a separate section in the LCAP that talks about how you engaged and what surface when you engaged. And so, that's not something that we're talking about tonight, although we've talked a lot about that previously. So I think, what I can say is, there weren't necessarily any concerns that came up from the community. There wasn't any further need for engagement if you're asking that, based on what folks said. But I also heard you say, what role do parents have in supporting the learning? And what can they expect early on? And that's what I hear you asking. And I think that Ben was alluding to a similar concept. So, that's something that we can take forward as we move and

194say, all right, so what is it we're designing as we get back to school in the fall? What's gonna be different? How are we gonna communicate to parents right away about here's what you're gonna see in the next few weeks? And this is how it might be different than what we've done in the past. Does that kind of speak a little bit to what you're saying? Yeah, but it's also about the engaging parents to help support the learning outside of the classroom. So, again, parent education is a tool we've used in the past, but really helping parents to understand where their kids are at, where their needs are, and how... And then what they can do to help further that, right? Yeah, exactly. So, if it's the literacy piece that we really have identified that

195that's where we need to focus on the learning recovery, how are parents gonna be supported to help their kids with that? Because I think we've talked this year how we know flipping to shifting to distance learning, parents had to step in as teachers. It was a whole new paradigm. So, I'm not saying that they were teachers, I'm just saying they had to try and support the learning. So anyways, I just think it's an opportunity for us to, we had to strengthen, people had to strengthen that muscle or learn something new. And I think we need to continue to support parents in knowing how to do that better. Okay, I think I hear you, Wendy, I'm with you. I appreciate that. And again, sorry, like my point about where it shows up in the LCAP, like

196it doesn't necessarily show up in these goals. I wasn't sure how to articulate that, like where it's addressed or when we see that. But I mean, it is somewhat embedded here seeing these metrics in action. So, sorry, that was long-winded and thanks Hans for addressing that. No problem, Wendy. Okay, so we have two more goals to go. Our fourth goal is really, it's really a local passion goal. I mean, that's the best way to describe it. And really creating systemic structures that foster the five Cs, support SEL, social-emotional student needs that are developmentally appropriate to our structure, which really makes us unique, as you know, and allow for meaningful progress monitoring. So, the metrics on this, there aren't necessarily heavy metrics where like math-related metrics, like I mentioned last time, but we do have some

197student and parent survey questions. One of my favorite questions on the student survey is, do you feel you have tools to solve a problem in a variety of ways? And just asking kids that, because really that speaks to this, and that speaks to the five Cs, right? Are you building those muscles to be able to be perseverant, not give up? Are we giving you different ways to think about a problem? And that's a lofty goal, but it's something that that question speaks directly to this. We have a really robust system of mental health, as we've talked about before, that we are really pleased to be able to continue at that level. And that includes our school counselors, our associates that work through OneLife. We have our lead counselor at the district office, and we have,

198obviously, there's the director of student services and our wellness director. And as well as me, and we're all part of this team. And the focus has been on developing these care teams and really having a team of folks that owns that site and owns the students at that site. And one of the ways we monitor that is through this log that we say, and people worry when we're talking about a counseling log or what are we looking at? And what does that mean? And I wanna just make sure that folks understand. It doesn't mean that X student did X thing on X day, and we're not getting to that level of granularity. We're really looking at it on a global level as far as, hey, at X school, they had X number of encounters, if

199you will. I don't like to call them incidents or problems right there, encounters. Like this is how many times a student asked to speak to someone or a parent called about someone and expressed a concern. And we logged that. Those are important pieces. And just having a sense for that. And then California Healthy Kids data is, similar to the rest of the data that we've had the last couple of years since the last 16 months, 17 months. We gave the Healthy Kids survey, and we recently finished that in the fifth grade, and it was given remotely, and it was given during asynchronous time. And so there's a lot of factors with that. And all that being said, it's important we continue to look at it. And so there are several questions that speak to social-emotional

200needs on that survey. So that's always been a key metric in this area. A variety of actions and services here, as we think about, we have social-emotional learning curriculum for all of our grade levels. We have Second Step and K-5. And just memorialize Carol and Kathleen talking about middle school and do we have an appropriate curriculum for middle school? And there is a new curriculum thanks to collaborative effort and a grant that we have that we're a part of from the county called CWK. So you'll hear that bantered about. And now there'll be some training around that for middle school this coming year. We have a program called WEB, and that's where everybody belongs. And that's really a middle school program where you're just partnering kids, right? And you're saying, welcome to the school. This

201really speaks to our transitions. Welcome to middle school. We're gonna partner you with the seventh or eighth grader and help you feel like you're part of the school and helps us monitor how you're feeling, what, and you always have like an older kid that you can say, hey, what's this about? What does that mean? Help me with this. And that's become part of our fabric over the last couple of years. Environmental literacy, PBL, this again, this is something that this initiative has taken off at the county level. And I'm really proud to say that our district was on the ground floor of it. And just project-based learning in general, but the concept of the solutionary piece of it is something that our teachers have taken and run with. And when the county talks about it,

202they often say, oh, in San Carlos, or you'll hear that, well, there's a group of teachers in San Carlos, you'll hear that a lot. And again, that really fosters the five Cs. Ropes, right, is a unique opportunity for our kids. It's not something that everybody does, but it's certainly something that we wanna continue to do. And we wanna recognize the importance of that by putting it into the LCAP. So it doesn't get lost in the shuffle of, gosh, who's gonna do that work? And what does it look like? We really wanna monitor and that's an important piece of what we do. Obviously providing counselors. And another really cool opportunity for our kids is clubs. And we talked about this this morning, it's funny because Pam Jasso said, we have clubs at the elementary school too,

203they just look a little bit different. They look more like, hey, I wanna start a club about X, Y, or Z. And the kid says in an assembly with the whole school, and then meet me out on the lawn and we'll do some gymnastics, right? And it's completely unorganized and it's just a thought. And then as we move into our structures, we think about fourth and fifth grade and really kids wanting to start clubs that are interest-based and really fostering those leadership qualities. And then moving into middle school where the clubs actually stick, right? Because in fourth and fifth grade, they're becoming a club and they're learning what it means to be that. And then you might have 25 clubs and end up with seven at the end of a school year, right? And in

204middle school, you're closing that gap. You might have 20 clubs and end up with 15 at the end of the year. So that's an important part of the uniqueness of our structure. It really allows our fourth and fifth graders kind of dip their toe in the water of student leadership in a different way than they would if they were on a K-5 campus. So questions, what's missing? Irene, go ahead. So love everything on this school. It's often, the things here are often what makes like St. Carl was just so distinctive. We made a heavy, as you know, like investment in PBLs and we do it well. But one thing I wanted to just point out is to sustain it and to keep giving it more depth is, I know that some of the teachers mentioned

205we had this a day of sharing, fostering teacher to teacher sharing of what they're doing with PBLs. We had the kind of like a day of, I think we call it a celebration of innovation day where the teachers would share the PBLs that they did with one another. And it was just a way of continuing that change bottoms up as well as tops down. So. Yeah, and Irene, that's, you know, because of COVID that's been disruptive hugely. Cause it was, that was something that was fabric. It was built in and it was kind of that last one of the year. Like, let's celebrate. What did you do? How did yours go, right? And so getting back to that is super important. I would also say, Irene, you know, as we talk to our leaders, this

206is something I wanna say reigniting because, you know, after two years of really, really difficult circumstances, you know, it's an opportunity for us to reignite. And remember, and I wanna just say this again, it's a three-year plan, right? We're not trying to cram this all into doing it next year. But it's acknowledging that these are still pieces that we really value and that we want them to. Like you said, Irene, this is the San Carlos goal, right? This is like, this is us in a lot of ways. So anything else? All right, thank you. And we'll go on to our last goal, which is our equity goal. And, you know, there was always an equity goal. Again, it was built in with other pieces. And this is really trying to isolate what this means and

207what we want to do. Again, we'll read it for the public. Ensure equitable access to learning for all students by monitoring necessary structures and intentionally, sorry, by providing necessary structures and intentionally monitoring student engagement and student sense of belonging within each school community and across all student groups. So you'll see a lot of reoccurring themes here, okay? As far as metrics, so student and parent survey questions related directly to engagement and sets of belonging. And those have been going on now for about five years in the district. Even though we didn't have panorama, we kept those questions in our latest format of the survey. Healthy kids survey data that's related to those two aspects. These other pieces that we have as metrics are required pieces for us to monitor. And they're part of the California

208school dashboard. So we have to make sure we address them in our LCAP. So average daily attendance, chronic absenteeism, those are obviously related. Our suspension and expulsion rate, which right now is almost none. And I don't know how they will, I don't know that they will ask for any data around this for next year's dashboard. And then the middle school dropout rate. And this is one that's become really, really, has a different meaning than it had in previous years for a lot of school districts because they do have for the first time middle school dropouts. In other words, kids, they've lost track of, they don't know where they are. And I will tell you that we don't have any of those students where we really are fortunate in that way. In that we have a

209really good tracking system when students leave and we know where they went if they left. And that's an important part coming out of the pandemic. You'll hear this across the state as a really big issue for lost children. And like I said, we're fortunate in that way. That's the only word I can use. I think that's really it. I don't wanna say lucky, we're just fortunate. And our systems that we have work and our small schools work in our favor here a lot because in a large school, right? If you have 700 kids in your school, in your K-5 school, say, the chances of not knowing someone are much higher than if you have somewhere in the neighborhood of 300, right? And so our small schools really help us. And not to mention just having

210close ties with families and being a smaller community is to our advantage. Some of the important actions, nothing will come as a surprise at all. We all know about our DEI work and that initiative and really making that part of our fabric. And I've talked a lot about that tonight, kind of that concept that it's just what we do and making it part of our fabric is we're beginning this work, right? And over time, we wanna see it grow. And we wanna see it grow in those metrics, providing parent education in that area as well and around school engagement. Translation services have always been built into this. And I think we're becoming better at that. And our translation system is becoming more robust. Enhancing our library collections, as we bring back our libraries, it's about

211keeping our libraries up to date. It's also about acknowledging that we want the collections there to embody what students are learning and thinking about right now. And we all know that over the past year that our students said, this has come to the forefront for all kids. And we want our collections to speak to that and have high interest books on these things that really they're gonna learn from and it will spur conversations in positive ways. Enhancing our district website is important. All of our communication tools and making them clear and embody that work. We talk a lot about our MTSS, our multi-tiered system of support and to really ensure that we have the proper interventions for tier one, tier two and tier three. And tier three is something that we're constantly are working on

212trying to implement for, what is it that students need at that top level that still we're doing a lot for and they're not quite getting there. PBIS, we've talked about a lot. I'm not gonna go into a big explanation of that other than really wanting to continue to acknowledge that work and keep it moving forward. And then trauma and restorative practices. Some of our employees have had training around that and some of them have it. And again, thinking about, over the course of the next three years, what does that look like? How do we have everybody access that? And then still providing our robust mental health teams. So that's our fifth goal. That concludes kind of our look at goals and actions and services and metrics. What do you have on this one for me?

213I think it looks good, Hans. Thanks, Neil. It's getting late. Yeah. Very comprehensive. So no additional comments. I'm the new guy, so I'm still energized at 9.48. I wonder whether we could get a breakdown of our attendance losses through a DEI lens, just like we had that pie chart. I would love an annual monitoring of the students that are leaving or transferring. As you mentioned, we don't really have a dropout rate per se, but I do think it's important to understand who feels like their need is not getting met in our district and are there demographic or through lines in that data that we should be sensitive to. And then to me, your point about the strategic plan, really being the vision, to me, this is one of those LCAP goals that I'd love to

214be able to hold next to the strategic plan and see where that is. And it's probably an area worth developing in their revision. If there is a new revision, this seems to be one that feels like not necessarily as fleshed out as could be, although some of that language is there. And then as I sit back and look at all the LCAP goals, sometimes when you have five goals and this many metrics and this many actions, what's the priority here? And to me, as a board member, part of my role is to ask good questions and part of my role is to give input on priorities at the highest level. And the way I view, the way you've laid out this LCAP, if we don't achieve number one, we don't achieve two, three, four, five.

215And so to me, it's a short-term window potentially or a long-term window around number one, but I just think trying to give voice to what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing and just to see the nesting of these Russian dolls here if number one doesn't happen, the rest is somewhat moot for our learners. Yeah, and Ben, that's a great point. And I think when we talked about this concept back in January and February, I remember Irene making a comment similar to that of, let's just be honest, all of us are really struggling with making a three-year plan. And by all of us, I mean all districts. We're really struggling with that concept because we just don't know enough about what school will look like next year when everyone comes back together. We just don't, and

216nobody does. And I think a lot of folks that are in my position and writing these pieces, and of course we have to do this, it's a compliance document, right? We don't have a choice. And our heart is in doing the work for next year and really wanting to iterate and saying, okay, we're seeing this and we've not seen this before. This is new. It's a new behavior or this is a new gap that we've identified and wanting to really go and fill that. And I think, so in a lot of ways, I don't disagree with what you said, right? It's about, really it's about goal one and how goal one will lead us into meeting these other pieces. And if we're not meeting goal one, what are we gonna do to meet it, right?

217And so a lot of this will come out as we monitor our data early on and look at what we're seeing in a variety of ways. So those are excellent points. Yeah, I also just wanna appreciate Trustee Chen, her comment about what really makes us unique and different. And I think that that's why people love San Carlos schools. So I thought her point of emphasis, in terms of priorities, her point of emphasis there was great. And then I also would echo what Trustee Doherty's role that has changed at least for this generation is the role of parent. The veil has been pulled back and parents want to be engaged, want to know how they can help. And so no need to comment on that, but I just would add a plus mark to those two

218comments. They were really salient. Appreciate the two of you for those. Well, I just wanna say, I appreciate, this took obviously, when I saw 20 minutes on the agenda, I kind of laughed. I said, 20 minutes for five goals. That's really optimistic. I think we did it in a little bit over an hour, but and this morning it took about 40 minutes and obviously they don't have, folks don't have the depth of understanding that you would have as a board member in a lot of ways. So, and just running through it this morning, I said, oh, we've got an hour on this. And I just appreciate the level of engagement that you had in this. And it does help to give us some areas to add in, if you will. And there's still a lot

219of work to do. I mean, I'll just be honest with you all. This has been quite a year, as you know, and I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the work of the staff that's really making this happen, right? I mean, I was charged with trying to consolidate all this and now I'm charged with really trying to write it, right, into a document. And it's been quite a process. And I just wanna acknowledge all those that have been involved. And that means from the student level on up, students, parents, administrators, teachers, they've all given great feedback that have helped us be able to come up with this. And in particular, just recognizing that, even with me being out, things didn't come to a stop. We kept moving. And we're a little bit further behind

220than we would normally be. And it's okay. I have to, I'm reconciling that, right? Really, it's okay. We're still in a good place. So, because I'm not used to that, not used to being like behind, right? So again, I appreciate the input and always the level of engagement that you have. Hans, I have one comment on this last goal. So I think an area we're gonna wanna dig into more as a district in the coming years is are the metrics around, what questions are we asking related to engagement and sense of belonging? And how, I mean, there's a lot to dig into what that means. And the information that you get depends on what you ask in these areas. And so I think maybe that's work for the DEI committee or going forward or something

221like that. But I think there's a lot there to think about going forward. Yeah, and really, Sarah, we should mention the steering committee here for sure, because that is still an action that we want. And that really is gonna kind of guide us as we move forward over the next couple of years. So I'll make sure I add that piece in too. And I do agree. I think that's the correct place for that, right? Like, well, what about this? What information are we looking for? How might we better ask the question so we're getting that for sure. Trustees, I wanna, I know, cause we still have other work to do tonight. And usually we try to keep these under 11. So can we, any final comments for Hans before we wrap up? I just wanted

222to say, thank you, Hans. I just think this is an incredibly useful compass. And this is, I think honestly, it's taken us longer to go through this because we are all so excited to like focus on this and think about the new year and sort of moving forward. I mean, we wanna reflect back and, goal one is very much about understanding where we're at. But anyways, I just wanna thank you. I think this is just an excellent compass for us. And I think you can see in a way we're kind of all energized by this. So thank you. Thanks, Hans. I think the one thing too, I always like to say is this, 50% is getting it down on paper, but then the other 50% is keeping us guided as we go throughout the year

223to make sure we're attacking these goals as we go forward. So we look forward to the next 50% from there. So- Great, thanks everybody. I will move us on then to 7A, future agenda items. Trustees, any future agenda items you'd like to see something we missed, something bring back up. All right. Seeing here. Go ahead, Sarah. Sorry. Did you want us to give a DEI update before the end of the school year? If you think you have information to provide or there's updates that would be valuable, then I think it would be great to do at our June 17th meeting. Okay. I think it's worth just recapping what we've done this year and maybe thoughts for where we're gonna be next year. Okay. Well, let's put it down on our last meeting, 17. Trustees, anything

224else? All right. Wendy, I didn't see any public comment on anything else, but has anything come in since the beginning? No, I have refreshed multiple times. We're good. Okay. Dan, to you for the employee group comments. We gotta unmute Dan. There we go. Yeah, I was getting to go to bed pretty soon. So yeah, this is a late night for a teacher. But I would like to welcome our new trustee, Ben Cornell, and thank you for serving. And then I would like to acknowledge our amazing retirees to hear all of them. There's a lot of sadness because we're losing so many amazing teachers. And some of them were losing at 55 or 56 or 57 or 54. And so they're actually leaving the profession early, which is a concern. And we can't easily replace people

225of such talent and caliber and experience. So I'm happy for them, but I'm sad for our district, for us as colleagues, for our students. It's a real loss. It's a real loss. But I'd like to acknowledge Semi Hevea for all of his years of service, and Doug Johnson for being such an amazing person in our district for so many years. And in terms of teachers, I'd like to acknowledge Heidi Giygas, who's an amazing teacher, Michelle Francesconi, who was my first principal. And she hired me when I was, I don't know, 30 years old, 31. And then Melissa Brenner and Laura Baldini and Carol Campbell, who also served as a union president and our negotiations chair for many, many years. Kirsty Mooney, Kim Mitchell, and then Laura McCurling. And as we're at impasse with our district,

226or with our board, if you were to settle with us, that makes an impact on those retirees with what they bring in in retirement in the years to come. And so it doesn't just affect teachers who are staying in our district, it actually impacts their retirement. And so I think one way that we as a district can say thank you to them is by giving them and us a 2% raise, which will also go to classified and to our administrators as well. So, sorry, I'm a little fried at the end of the year, but thank you, good night. Thank you, Dan. And we will go then to Lisa. Hi, everyone. Welcome, Trustee Cornell. Welcome to our team. Tonight, I wanted to talk about two things. First, it is graduation season. This year is significant for

227me because my daughter is graduating high school. And I speak personally about this because I'm so grateful for the education she received here from San Carlos School District teachers. The teachers and staff at Heather and Tara Linda were phenomenal. And I don't believe my daughter would have been as successful were it not for special people like Ms. Hawkins, Ms. Giygas, Ms. Tinney, Ms. Elmasu, Ms. Nida, Mr. Murphy, Ms. Campbell, and so many others. I've lost track, I'm sorry. I love you all, you guys know that. But without staff like them building a strong educational foundation, I don't believe my daughter would have gotten into the middle college program at Kenyatta and wouldn't therefore be graduating high school with over 40 units of college credits. So as she's going off to University of Hawaii, I wanna

228thank you guys for giving her that base. Congratulations to all of the eighth graders as you move on to the next chapter and to all San Carlos School District alumni who are graduating high school and college this year. Thank you to all the San Carlos School District teachers for helping them get there. I also wanted to talk on a personal level about Doug Johnson. I have known Doug since I was in elementary school here in the district. When my mom used to drive me and my brother to Rundle on rainy days, cause we had to walk when it wasn't raining, we would often see Mr. Doug driving the school bus. We always waved at him and he would always wave back. We began work, when I began working at the district, nearly 25 years ago,

229all those memories came flooding back. It has been an honor to work with Doug all these years. He's an invaluable employee. All the years he never called in sick on school days because he was the only bus driver in our district and those kids needed to get to school. To working all summer long changing combinations on all of the lockers at both the middle schools, to his management in the maintenance department these last few years, to saving a woman who fell on the railroad tracks, his contributions to this district are countless. He's a remarkable man. San Carlos School District is better because he's part of our team. His shoes will be hard to fill. I wish Doug and all of you retirees this year who have had the pleasure of working with all these years,

230happy retirement and best wishes. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Lisa. And we will go to board member comments. Ben, it's your inaugural night. I don't wanna put you on the spot, but we'll let you go first if you'd like. Sure. An overall comment is just gratitude for an amazing, incredible year. And Lisa, man, your words, I would just echo those things for every educator and every district team member this past year. Man, what a year it has been for all of us in our country. And as an educator myself, having taught middle school for five years, one of the things that I've learned is that every year is a new adventure. And so if people are tuned into this meeting, I just hope that our educators are able to take some time off this summer

231and regenerate or find whatever fulfills them and fills their cup so that they can return ready to meet the joy and energy of our learners next fall. And as for me, I'm just very humbled to join this board and I'm very excited to get involved in serving this mission. So thank you all for the great welcome. And man, Lisa, we're gonna have you like write our end of year recaps every year. This is incredible what you said. I'll pass it back to you, Neil. Thanks, Ben. Trustees, any other comments for the evening? Just wanted to say, you know, I know May is like often the 100 days of May. You know, it's the end of the year, a lot. And so just deep thanks to kind of our staff and state leaders staying strong to

232the end of the school year. Thank you to all of our parents and PTA leaders for making kind of the end of school year activities extra special for our kids and graduates. And thanks all. It's late, so I'll just say plus one to all of that. Wendy, any comments? Just, I'm a little, I was saying before about just talking about goals kind of reinvigorated very much looking forward to our new school year and know that we're not quite ready to think about it. Yeah, we all need a break. And yeah, I mean, we have some more meetings here before the end of the school year for our, you know, so we'll be meeting again. But yeah, just deep, deep gratitude to the teachers and staff who we recognize tonight for their incredible commitment and service

233to our district. So thanks. I will just echo everyone briefly and just say, you know, this is the funniest part about this year when you look back on it is it's a defining moment of just time at this point in time. Everyone, you know, it's pre-COVID, post-COVID will be the way we discuss things. So I appreciate everyone. What's the line is always is, you know, to get the other side, you have to go through it. So I appreciate everyone going with us together as we got through the other side of it. Obviously new challenges, new things to come next year, but at least looking back, I think we will all have found ourselves in different ways and as leaders, as professionals. And so I appreciate everyone for going through the journey with me as we've

234gone through it this year and look forward to, I would say, a more normal discussion year about the topics instead of the things we talked about a lot this year. So I appreciate everyone. Thanks for that. And Michelle, to you for the last word. All right, thank you, Neil. Next meeting is June 10th. That's also our last day of school. So I just wanna thank all of our teachers and staff and everything they've done for this year. What an incredible year and plus, a year plus. And it doesn't feel like we ended the school year last year. We just went from March 13th right into the first day of school and really never took a break. As educators, we didn't take a break. And I just wanna acknowledge that we're tired. All of our staff,

235our teachers are really tired. We know our parents are too, but this is a time, like Ben said, it's time to regenerate this summer and come back refreshed. So thank you, all of our staff members and educators. And for us who are retiring, yes, we will be sleeping in a lot. Next meeting on June 10th, we'll be bringing our two new assistant principal recommendations to you as a board. We just weren't able to get them on to the agenda tonight, but we've gone through our interview process. We're very excited to announce that we'll have two more leaders to help out with our middle schools for next year. So we'll introduce you to them and bring you them next week. Also just happy pride month to everybody. I just wanna acknowledge and thank the city of

236San Carlos for flying the pride flag in support of our LGBTQ San Carlos community members. It shows some safety, solidarity, and support. So thank you to the city of San Carlos for doing that. When trustee Elliott was here, we went to their first flag raising together. And at that time we talked about what could we do as a district? And then COVID hit last year and we didn't really move forward with anything. But that's something to think about it's another part of our DEI work that we're really supporting all of our community members. And thank you city of San Carlos. I'm enjoying spending some time with Dr. Frentress. We've been having several transition meetings, phone calls, meetings in person, and just really enjoying spending time with her in these past few weeks. And we still

237have more work to do in the coming weeks as we move ahead. And welcome Ben, just nice to have you. Nice to spend some time with you and thanks for stepping up and joining this group. It's a really thoughtful, high functioning team of board members that really has the students best interest at heart. And I really appreciate you being here and having some good conversations with us. So thank you for joining. That's it Neil. Great, thanks Michelle. And then Wendy, any comment before I adjourn us to closed session? No comments. Okay, thank you everyone for joining us tonight. We'll be back from closed session if there's anything to report out. But if not, thank you for being with us and we'll see you next week, hopefully. We're recording. Great, thanks everyone we're back. I will

238bring us back from closed session. We have nothing to report out from closed session. Therefore I will adjourn the meeting and our next meeting will be next Thursday, June 10th. All right, thank you very much. Thanks Michelle, thanks Veronica, thanks Alejandro. Thanks, good night. You're welcome, bye bye. All right, you guys be safe going home. I know it's late right now, so drive carefully and be sure that you take some time in the morning.