Recreation Commission - Regular Meeting

Meeting, Recreation Commission.

Let's call the order. Let's do the roll call.

John Tulloch here. Sean Burns here.

Sarah Ironside here. Gardner here.

Hart here.

Young here.

Thank you, everyone. This is the opportunity for members of the audience to speak on an item not on the agenda. If anybody's available to do that or wants to do that today. Hearing no one. All right. Let's go into the agenda. The chair's report. I do have a little report. I want to say thank you to the 4th of July committee workers and volunteers. We had a really good time with the League of Women Voters. I got to see from the walking side, so it was really great. Thank you so much for that. And the Friday food truck event, it was really great. I had a good time with that. Standing in line with people and, you know, even though it was a little liney, but it was really great to, you know, connect with other people and see everybody. So that was really great. So, yeah. Anything else? Okay. No. Director's report.

For the first time ever, I don't have a director's report, only because item number six I think will cover most of my traditional announcements for the ongoings of PRD.

Okay, and I messed up a little. I have to go back. I would like to amend the agenda this evening and remove... The number three, scholarship via assistance program, the committee at this time has some clarifying questions that came up since the agenda was written. And if that's okay with the commissioners, if there's no objections to it being removed.

Is the idea to postpone it to the next meeting or just remove it entirely?

Just postpone it. Do we need to make a formal vote on that? Okay.

Okay. All right, moving on, back on. All right, and now we're on to number four, the earlier start time for Recreation Commission meetings. Now is the time we're gonna discuss and consider changing the regular meeting start time from 7.30 p.m. to a time between six and seven, and potentially select a new start time, so. Would anybody like to discuss this option?

So I just wanted to say that I was able to watch the video of our last meeting, so I appreciate the discussion by my fellow commissioners. I just had one question and that was for our chair because I wasn't clear you had said that you have a conflict. And so I didn't want there to be the meeting starting and you not being able to attend.

I know, yeah. That would, for me, that's the only one. But I am also of the mind that the greater good, it's moving forward. I am been doing this for over five years and It's come up several times and I feel like it's worthy of conversation and discussion. zero attachment for me. Whatever's best for the body is more important to me. Just putting that out there.

Thank you. And I think there was a general, John wasn't here, but there was a general consensus that 6 p.m. was a good time and I'm great with that. And I think, Shelley, you were going to check if we had to do a vote or if we could just do it, I think.

Yeah, we can decide. Okay.

Mm-hmm, yes. The other deciding factor is if I can't make it, does this automatically fall to the vice chair each time? Because it's probably, I mean, there might be a case, or I can step down and then just retain a seat. Is that how that would work? I don't know how that all would work.

Well, I don't think anybody wants you to step down. Yeah, I know. I appreciate that.

Yeah. I just don't want it to. How early could we start and you could still make it?

Oh, this is it. Yeah, it was kind of one of, the class is six to eight every Wednesday. And between now and next May when I graduate, it's every, I can't get out of it. I mean, I can, but I, you know, it's a little bit of a priority.

Does it make sense then to perhaps table this until May of 2027 and we can take it up at that time?

I don't know. I really would like to hear the staff point of view also. I know that this is a staff thing too that comes up late.

Well, we want it to work, you know, and so for commissioners and we kind of check the public isn't necessarily viewing at 7.30. There are advantages for staff, obviously. We are the latest meeting, so KCON people and things are on it. I mean, something to consider. We could decide tonight that we want to change it and maybe we establish a date that... we would start the new time change. And maybe there's something in the middle there. You know, is that January? So you continue on. And your last meeting with us will be March, I think.

Is it March? Okay. Yeah, I mean, I would really personally like to see the scholarship thing at least through. That would be really nice. And, you know, I'm not wedded, honestly. Like, I feel like it's more important that the body moves forward with and taking care of this staff.

Whatever we decide now, it might not be a bad idea in the future for whenever we do elect a new chair just to have a revisiting of the time at that time to make sure it does work for everyone. Because it would, you can imagine this may shift and change over time. And it might be just a good habit to get into that every time we change over, we have a new chair, we revisit this issue. So we're not making a commitment for all time.

It's up for your discussion and decision.

Let me just ask, are we tied to Wednesdays? And is Wednesday the only day that you have a conflict? I don't know the availability of the room because of other subcommittees and commissions.

Wednesday is pretty much our evening.

It's our evening. And third Wednesday in particular because... Board of Education meets in here second and fourth Wednesdays. Park Commission meets in here.

I'll take it for granted. I'm completely indifferent. I'd love people to be more convenienced, but I think that we also need our commission members and we have a chair.

But really, honestly, like... for the greater good.

Lisa, could I just ask, I don't want to get really personal, but if we started at 5, because you said your class was from 6 to 8, I don't know if it's online, you have to drive somewhere? No, it's online. Would that be, if we tried to be very efficient with our meetings and hold them for an hour, would that help, would that be something that you might be able to sort of swing. I don't know.

Sure. Yeah.

That would be brainstorm.

Yeah. I mean, it'd be better to show up late and miss a portion of it than to miss all of it, you know, just kind of as a general rule.

I think five would be fairly difficult just because city offices are kind of shutting down at that hour. I mean, planning meets at five.

Are they at five? Park meets at 530. So it's... It is eminently doable. Well, I can't speak for staff because I am not staff, but when I was here, it would have been eminently doable.

Yeah, okay. I forgot about planning.

How is that doable for you or for any of the members of your group?

For me, yeah, I'm here to serve you guys. 2 p.m.?

I'll be here at 5.

I know, let's do a lunch meeting. 6 a.m.? Yeah, yeah.

I will just reiterate my concern from last time. Five is early for people who do work. I would worry that it would impede people to be able to serve as commissioners, but also people who might want to comment. It's difficult to be here at five.

Yeah, that's true too.

Just a logistics question. If Lisa wasn't able to attend the meeting that we set up, let's say we decide to move it to an earlier time, what would happen with that position if she wasn't able to just fulfill her duties by being able to attend one more meeting?

Yeah, I don't know if we would reselect the chair or we would have the vice chair serve in capacity and have Lisa be chair when she's here.

Can I ask a question? And this is directed to John because, you know, right, if the planning commission meets at 5 and the park commission at 5.30, does that impact attendance? I mean, I know that the planning commission in particular, you know, they sometimes do have rather, you know, involve discussions that have a lot of community input. Is 5.30 like a chilling effect on that?

I don't have access to any of the more recent data to see when people are watching. You know, for a long time, all of the meetings were later because of the concern that Sean was talking about people needing to work and then wanting to let people come home, have, you know, have a snack, calm down, and then come in to either testify or participate in the meeting. Council used to be at 730. Once the pandemic happened, it was moved to six o'clock and there was no difference in people's ability to, you know, in the amount of participation, I would say. The commission has to have a regular starting time. It's not something that can bounce around. So we have to have a regular starting time. But that regular starting time is of our choosing, or at least was of our choosing, and I don't think anything has changed. So... We could say 5, we could say 5.30, we could say 6, or later than that. We just would have to make the decision. And when everything was virtual and early, start time was easy because everybody was all at home. With people going back to work in person, an earlier start time could be difficult for some.

And can I, I'm sorry, we're going to get into your school schedule. But based on, do you have a semester where it ends and then there's a break? It's just rolling.

Is there a break over the November, December, any? Yeah, and when I looked at it, it still lands on. It hits on every Wednesday still. And even with the break, this meeting still gets hit. Okay. On that, yeah.

I'm a diagnostic student. If it happens at 6 o'clock or later, it's not important to me. But I will say, I mean, Lisa is the chair. She served on the committee for a long time. I think it would be a shame for us to change it at a time where she can't be here to see out at least her term as the chair. And so maybe the right thing to do is to say that we will pick this up at the time when the next term begins and we elect a new chair and pick it up at that point.

I agree, Sean.

Yeah, I agree. It's just, if we can all make this time, then let's just make this time. I think that makes sense.

Is that okay for you?

Okay.

Good discussion. I'm really concerned about that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, everyone. All right, is there any public comments about this? Send her home. Okay.

No pressure, Lisa, though. We need to get an A now. Oh, no.

You all are invited to the party, okay? All right, thank you all so much. That's really very magnanimous of all of you. Okay, and moving on to number five. It's the 2026 Summer and Fall Recreation Programs.

Okay, let me just get my screen set up. All right, we'll kick this off. This is an exciting time and we have some guest stars in the audience tonight joining me. So tonight our supervisors are gonna share a look back at our summer programs and really a preview of what's coming this fall. So we're joined by Katrina Morris, Paula Cooper-Tempton, and Liam Kelly. And I'm going to pinch hit for Eva Phelan this evening, who is at the Valkyries game. This was not a typical summer for PRD, our department, which has only 11 full-time staff together with me, coordinated and really supported about 270 part-time staff people who are out there helping bring our programs to life. We opened a pool, expanded camps, adapted to new facilities, reorganize programs, and continue to deliver safe, welcoming experiences that the community expects. None of this happens by accident. Behind every camp, every swim, every practice, field trip, community event, there's months of planning, coordination, and problem solving. And our supervisors and their teams have adjusted constantly while keeping participants and families at the center of their decisions. The work allowed us to serve thousands of campers, increase capacity in high-demand programs, and strengthen inclusive opportunities through our Sidekicks programs. And we're going to be expanding opportunities for girls this fall. So all of the summer stuff happening while we're planning to get ready for fall, which we're in right now, and making greater use of city-owned facilities, improving operational efficiencies, and creating more accessible and flexible options for families. This summer demonstrated what PRD did does best. We adapt, we collaborate, and we continue moving forward with needs of our community at the center of our work. So tonight's presentation will keep you informed on how our department priorities are taking shape and provide useful context as you answer community inquiries and questions and help you make decisions moving forward. So I'm super proud of the team and also having the supervisors here tonight. So thank you guys. You've had a long day as well, but I'm going to turn it over to them. We're going to kick off this evening with Miss Katrina Morris.

Thank you guys for having me. My name is Katrina Morris. I'm recreation supervisor and I supervise preschool and our extended care programs. Summer 2026 was amazing. It was a summer of new energy, new experiences. And more importantly, we worked really hard to stay unplugged. So I'm wearing my camp shirt that says the summer PRD was powered by sunshine and play. And that's exactly what we aimed for rolling into summer. So I'm going to start off with our youngest program. We had four amazing in-house camps, Preschool Explorers, PRD Funtopia, Camp Everything, and NextGen CIT. Preschool Explorers is our new preschool program. Typically, all of our full school year programs operate separately during the summer, and sometimes enrollment can be a little bit smaller in those groups. Seeing the success of Camp Everything, I thought wouldn't it be great to do something similar with Preschool Explorers. So this year we combined all the programs into one at lower level. That combined summer camp model brought our preschool programs together under one roof, which allowed us to open facility space at some of our other spaces for other camps and classes to use. This format allowed us to condense staffing while creating a more collaborative staffing and programming model for our preschool directors. The kids got to rotate through activity zones, which captured the energy of our larger camps while remaining developmentally focused. Each one of our preschool directors got to lead a different area. So one person did music and movement and our two-year-old group started there. They may have rotated outdoors to our preschool director that offered sensory play, another area offered art. So each preschool director got to work with a different age group that they had not done before and it just really created something beautiful this summer for the preschool age group. Our next program is Funtopia, which supports grades TK through two. It allowed our youngest campers to continue their summer at beach learning how to step away from what they typically would do in preschool and kind of get that big camp feel. So the silly songs, the water play Wednesdays, a lot of the big kid activity, those TK kids got to transition into that smoothly. We expanded capacity this summer at Funtopia, we typically took 40 kids, and to accommodate for taking that TKH range, we bumped that up to 60 participants this summer, and it was extremely successful. The kids had a lot of fun. Each week there was a different theme. They got to have inflatable water slides brought down to the play field, and it was really a great program that bridged that early learning camp experience into a traditional camp experience. Next up, we offered Camp Everything for grades two through six. This summer, Camp Everything had a wrecking, breaking summer. Enrollment went up by 38%. We had a total of 560 campers versus last year when we had 470 campers. This year, we had big peak weeks, one of them being we reached 100 campers. The week before, we had 93 campers, which was actually typically one of our slowest weeks. It was our Fourth of July week. We had 93 campers then. 100 campers after, and we typically had over 65 participants consistently each week. camp operated. Everything remained a budget-friendly program where our hourly rates remained unchanged while continuing our early drop-off option for families at 8 a.m. and staying through extended care until 5 p.m. We added swim days this year on Tuesdays at the Piedmont Community Pool, and every Thursday, the campers got to go on a field trip, which was really amazing. They went from California Museum of Sciences, to the Exploratorium, to Boomers, to Call Canyon. They had a lot of fun adventures, and so it was a real great time to see all the kids loaded up with their backpacks on, their camp shirts, big smiles and faces, and having a really great time. It was amazing. Next, to round out our offerings for our in-house camps, we have our NextGen CIT, which was formerly Volunteens last year. This summer, we increased the capacity from 16 to 20 participants, and we trained 124 CITs this summer. CITs are in grades 7 through 10th. We bulked up our program because we really wanted to make it a good training experience and not just a place where they just kind of came to play and didn't really get anything out of it. So this summer we added CPR certification. So PFD came over every Monday and they let that course at each one of our CITs receive their CPR certification and the water training safety was done by our lovely aquatic supervisor, Paul Cooper Tipton, which these CITs got to actually put into practice on Tuesdays when they accompanied Camp Everything to the pool. They got to get in there and learn all the tips and tricks that she gave them, and it was a really amazing time. They did that for the first half hour of the swim time, and then the second half hour, they actually got to just be kids and get into the pool and have a great time. The CITs gained real camp work experience at Camp Everything in Funtopia. While building resumes, they also went through a series of mock interviews with PRD staff. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for NextGen CIT is that this is the way that REC is building their future by developing the next generation of trained, work-ready community leaders. So it was a very awesome and amazing summer at PRD, staying unplugged, powered by sunshine and play. So moving into fall, we typically do a very quick turnaround with our summer camps ending and our fall programs getting anywhere from one to two weeks to prepare for the school year. One week for our extended care school year programs and preschool typically gets two weeks. So we start off the year full swinging with Camp Kaleidoscope. which is the program that we offer at all three of our elementary schools. This program continues to bridge the gap during PUSD early reading assessments when all grades are released at 2 p.m. Each program supports up to 80 campers per site, and during the last week when the staggered reading schedule returns to normal, Camp Kaleidoscope will continue to run, but we upped that week to 100 participants to be able to support that stagger. Each site has four external contractors that help to complement our already on-site PRD staff. And enrollment continues to be high. Campers are having a great time. There's coding. There's Legos. There's sports. There's arts and crafts. It is a great time to dive back into the school year and kind of get that feel of what after-school care programming is like mixed with a little bit of fun enrichment. Something new that is also a very big change in fall is our mini mates program, which is for our transitional kindergarten kids. One of the big changes is that we now have mini mates at all three of our locations with the expansion of Wildwood. while Wood is able to support two classes, one in the a.m. and one in the afternoon, similar to Beach and Havens. So it's really big to have the tiniest of kids on campus. The new TK eligibility means we are also welcoming some of our youngest participants, yet children who turn four typically by September 1st. So with school starting in August, we actually have three year olds in our program. that are TK students at Mini Mates and then also participating in Camp K, which is pretty wild when you see those teeny tiny little bodies and the backpacks are touching their ankles. They're looking for their napping mats and you have to kind of look at them and go, big kid school, right? No naps here. Or getting adjusted to the free hot lunch that's there and it's not typically what they get. So seeing those tiniest of people into our programs just lets you know that there is a lot of change. There's a lot of newness and we are rolling with the tide and embracing it and enjoying the moment for sure. Schoolmates and the Hangout are set to launch on September 8th. Schoolmates remains one of PRD's most in-demand and affordable programs offered on-site at Beach Havens and Wildwood. We have increased our capacity during our peak hours, which reduce wait list. And those of you who have seen me here before, and we've kind of had the schoolmates, the wait list can be crazy. It was a very quiet night, registration night with a lot of happy people. And so I think we've done a lot of work to make sure that this has been smooth and that we have a lot of space to provide for families as the growing need of care in Piedmont continues to rise. Following last year's successful pilot of the Hangout, which is essentially schoolmates for fourth and fifth grade at Piedmont Community Church, the Hangout this year will also expand to Beach, thanks to Principal Valva's partnership and support in extending the use of the auditorium. So our older elementary school kids in grades four through five now have another on-site option focused on independence, connection, and age-appropriate activities. So the hangout is a really cool place to go to. If you guys have time ever after September 8th and you want to stop by Piedmont Community Church or Beach, you kind of get to get to see those older kids in their element. Being themselves, having fun, hanging out and doing something a little different. Since TK kids are really young, you can get your nine and 10 year olds that kind of don't want to be in schoolmates because They see very small kids, so giving them an avenue and something to do where they feel like that they're big kids. And at that age, most of them just want to hang out. And thus, the hangout was created to be able to support those programs. And it also has allowed more movement off the wait list into schoolmates so that those older kids have a space to go. And now we have more spaces to accommodate TK through third grade on site at schoolmates. Look at that preschool. So preschool gets a refresh this school year, which is awesome and fun. This year our tiddlywinks program has moved over to the Hampton Park building and it's been an incredible sight to see. I was there today visiting. They have a new home. They have increased their capacity at Titley Wings from taking 16 participants now to 20. The building received a fresh coat of paint, a major deep clean that was really needed, and it's providing a fresh start for our tiniest of participants. One of the big opportunities that it is also going to open up is exploring enhancements to the outdoor playground environment for our younger participants. The area now, it's nice, but for our tiniest of kids, there are some aspects of it that could be a little bit softer. That blacktop's a little rough, so thinking about our two-year-olds that are going to be out there, it's going to be nice to look into the future of what that playground can expand to since the participants are so young. Hillside Play School is another one of our preschool programs that is back at 801 East Wing, welcoming our pre-K age group into the fold, which is awesome. Our registered pre-K families were offered continuity of care through Hillside. Hillside is an amazing place. Kara is an awesome director. The program is filled with a lot of wonder and natural aspects, and she's been a longtime employee and a director for a really long time, and I think that the Hillside program came to save the day as a superhero, rescuing our pre-K kids, which I'll later get to, and you guys will understand more at that time. We have our Skipping Stones program, which is back now at Lower Level Community Hall, which is awesome. Our former preschool director, Lisa Bunn, brings her experience to our young campers, our young preschool program. Sorry. Our preschool director, Lisa Bunn, brings her experience to our younger preschool campers. children. Lisa Bunn was our pre-K director and has now shifted to support our youngest of participants. Skipping Stones kids are age 2.9 to 3.7. And it's a big change and a shift for Lisa who has been working with our kids who are four to five years old. Because of the moving around of our preschool programs, the center room at lower level is now open and available with the preschool programs only operating on the outside classrooms. So now that center classroom is an open shared space, which is also creating more flexibility for alternative programming. rolling with the tide in the changing pre-K landscape. As anticipated, continued TK growth significantly impacted standalone pre-K enrollment. PRD made the decision not to operate pre-K as a second program this school year. TK has changed, pardon me, the preschool landscape enrollment reflected that shift, and PRD responded by folding those families into hillside rather than operating an unsustainable standalone program. Rather than stretching an under-enrollment program, families were offered hillside space while we continue evaluating how our preschool model should evolve alongside TK. The common thread between our summer and fall programs is adaptation and big transitions. This summer, we experimented with the new preschool camp model, expanded Camp Everything to meet record demand, and completely reimagined our teen CIT experience. This fall, we've expanded Mini Mates to all three elementary schools, brought the Hangout to Beach, moved Tiddlywinks into a new home at Hampton, and adjusted our preschool offerings in response to changing enrollment trends. We're continuing to look at what families need, what participants respond to, and how we can evolve our in-house programs while maintaining the quality and community feel that makes PRD programs special.

Want to wait for questions till we get to the end, or do you have questions?

Oh, I do have a question. Did you say that Schoolmates doesn't start until September?

Yes, September 8th. So we open, we start our year with Camp Kaleidoscope, which is essentially our Schoolmates staff paired with external contractors inside of our Schoolmates facilities. Okay, thank you.

It's because the regular school schedule doesn't start until September, until September. They do early reading.

Yes, I recall.

It's really fun for parents.

As a working parent, it's tough. Yes. Thank you.

Katrina, how long have you been with the city? Sorry, she was supposed to tell you how long she's been with the city.

21 years and 11 months. Awesome. Thank you for catching that.

I had one quick question. Where was pre-K housed previously? So we closed pre-K, but where was it?

Pre-K was housed previously at lower level, which is now the Skipping Stones classroom.

Makes sense. Thank you.

I had a couple reactions and questions too. So first of all, scaling back to the summer. So I have two high school boys. Actually, my older one's going off to college. And they both have been camp counselors. I camp everything. I'm almost emotional. Because it's so awesome that we have opportunities for employment and development for kids. So not only as participants, but as members of the community as they're getting their first jobs and getting this amazing support.

It's pretty awesome. Thank you.

And it's a super covenanted job. Like there were a lot of kids who did, it's not a shoo-in to be a PRD camp counselor. So they got to work hard and they know that and they talk about that. Like how to prep for the interviews and all those things. So I love the continuity of what we're creating in the community. And not only for PRD, but certainly for the pool. Like I know so many kids who are now working at the pool and just as a community to offer. all of that, I don't want. The next time you give this presentation, make sure to comment on the number of Piedmont kids that you hire. It's really impressive.

Thank you, I definitely will include that for sure. It's also great to have seen the kids who come up to become rec aides or rec leaders. And they were schoolmates' kids, so it's nice to sit across them in interviews and go, I remember when you didn't check into schoolmates, or I remember when I had to hunt you down for snack. And now you're on the job. And so it's really cool to see them coming back, and it's a full circle moment for sure.

They're really proud of it. My kid owns six PRD t-shirts. So he won't take them to college because they stay here. It's part of his life here. So thank you for that. I also wanted to ask, oh, I'm fascinated by schoolmates, because last year it was so difficult to figure out what to do with the wait list, and that was such a challenge for parents. What's minimizing that problem this year?

I think the hangout has been really huge. There are 20 to 30 spaces daily. And so making that shift so that those older kids have a space to go, now that frees up essentially 20 to 30 other spaces. that would have been at Schoolmates. So I think that, and people are figuring out a lot of things, like ASE is starting programs a lot earlier too. And so people can do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And we're stretching our capacity, staffing as heavy as we can, using contract support when we can. Like Beach is one of the programs that has Z Sports with them all throughout the school year. And so having an external contractor every day, Monday through Friday, during those peak hours, definitely helps to support those numbers as well. And so it's been pretty nice.

And are you adjusting the cost for schoolmates to allow, so it's still within original budget? Still affordable and the same. That's great. That's great. And I have like 9 million questions, but I'll keep it to just a few. On the preschool, so what, I guess I'm just confused what happened with the Piedmont Play School program as far as that being a separate program from the PRD preschool program. And is that program completely dissolved? Are those... students now at people what's happening with serving preschool age piedmont kids now no they um i don't know their new location they've moved to a new location so they've moved out of hampton and the city now as katrina said is has moved one of our preschool programs over to that space got it so that program still exists just elsewhere so potentially a different program serving piedmont preschool kids just not on our and probably non-piedmont And probably non-piedmont as well. Okay.

I'll keep it to that for now.

Thank you.

Just very quickly, I just want to commend you. I was here at our meeting when We heard a complaint from beach parents about their inability to get spaces in schoolmates and the fact that the hangout was up here up the hill and this is you guys reacting and adapting to that input from the community and taking what I think is an amazing idea the hangout and improving it and making it more accessible to the community. Kudos to you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Great job. Okay, I told you I was pinch-hitting, so. I have actually the pleasure of talking about summer camps, which is every other camp, not in-house run camps. So the in-house run camps are run actually by PRD staff, and these are contractor camps. Two amazing people, Eva Phelan and Carrie Villa, are the two people who put together not only camps, but all of our class programs, anything you see in the activity guide that kids are registering for. So over the summer, We kept our usual, which is a huge number for a small city, but over 300 camps. You know some of this because you get the updates. We did a great job this year of reducing the number of canceled camps. So we're really trying to get in the camps we think are going to go. And that's an incredible thing, even now. adding 73 new programs, so new opportunities for kiddos to try over the summer. And six new camp contractors were added. We were utilizing and really working on utilizing city facilities. It gives us the opportunity to control when we're using the facility. It's free for us. Um, the church we're paying for Zion, we were paying for additional space, uh, school district, uh, spaces became more limited. So we've tried to reduce that and really focus on putting programs in the spaces that we operate. We offered a week zero. Again, this is for people who aren't in the school district, live in Piedmont, maybe, or maybe they're in Oakland people who are, have the first week of summer starts before Piedmont schools we've offered. camps for that, so we had 37 campers who participated in those camps. And we were a little higher this year for the number of campers, so 4,300 campers over the 10 weeks of summer camp. But we did see an increase in revenue, so that was exciting. That could be a number of reasons. Could be because camps are more expensive. Could be we had more people registering for certain camps. Again, with contractor camps, they set the prices for their camps. So they're the ones kind of determining that. And we take a portion of it and we pay them a portion of it. So again, another successful summer of camps, which is 10 weeks. And our whole office transforms into the camp machine over there of weekly change outs. Sidekicks, you've gotten some really great reports from Eva. And I think you've heard this already. It was a wonderful summer. This is the first year we were able to offer a sidekick camp every week of the summer, which was amazing. That was one of the goals for that program. And three weeks of the one-on-one matching also. So about 38 campers utilized the programs. And 14 of those were new sidekicks kiddos. We had 54 volunteers, so those are the ones that will go to camp and help kiddos that are in our program. And that's fewer than last summer, but that was intentional. We found when we had too many sidekicks helpers, they didn't get a number of spots during the summer to be a volunteer. So this allowed these 54 teens to really get a meaningful experience, be in a few different camps during the summer, and And I think they enjoyed that experience much better. 16 of them were matched up doing the one-on-one program. And so it was a great summer. We do a survey at the end of all of our sidekicks programs to survey families. It's a small number of people, but really good feedback that we get and a lot of, obviously, compliments and kids really enjoying that program. So Larissa and Eva put a lot of effort into that. So this is a lot of that shifting and transitioning here impacting Katrina by moving preschools to Hampton. And what that did for us is open up that middle portion. I don't know if you've been to the lower level. There's a classroom on either end. And in the middle is a really big space. And so what we're doing is not, setting it up like a preschool, which sometimes can feel like it's a museum and you can't touch anything and nothing else can happen because it's so cute and everything's so perfect. We're leaving that open. So the preschools will use it, but in the afternoons, we're gonna be using it for classes and programs. And it could be potentially used as a rental facility. Sometimes we have brides or grooms who need an extra space for changing or if it's just a gathering spot on that special day. So we're excited about having that space. Eva's task this year was to really focus on utilizing city facilities, reducing our reliance on school district facilities or facilities we're having to pay for. So coming in the fall, we have public speaking, art lab, cinecraft, the cinecraft, and STEM that are happening over at the Hampton Preschool facility, either after preschool, so that's another opportunity for us. After our preschool, we use that space for programming. The lower level, it'll be used for knitting, sewing, SF rock, which is our one-on-one music. You can learn any instrument you want, and adults can do it too. So if you're looking to start drumming, there's a program. Legos, and... And then we will have a couple of camps that would utilize those spaces, too. So the only programs we have in the fall, this is kind of an amazing thing that Eva has been able to pull off, is Taekwondo, which is a PRD-run program, judo, volleyball, which is our developmental volleyball, and adaptive soccer are the only programs that will be on campus. the school district campus. This is really basically so that we know we can schedule something, we have it, we know when we can be there and we don't have to ask if something else is there or we don't get booted out if the school district needs it. So it just allows us to be self-sufficient. Taekwondo and judo use the NPR at the middle school and we need that for the space, the size of the space with the mat. But great work by Eva really working through that. And I'm done. Oh, good. That was good, Eva. Thank you for the short slides. So we're going to switch over to Paula. Oh, you don't want, yeah, you might have questions.

I have a couple of questions. Sorry. But I'm happy to yield to others if they do. Okay. I really appreciate that POS, or that the rec department is looking for more sustainability and control over the programs that it provides and I know that one of the ways that that's happening is using school district facilities less. That is a shame that we can't rely on our partners in the school district. We have a joint use of facilities agreement with the school district that goes back years and years and years and it sets priorities and it says essentially the school district gets first dibs on city facilities when we're not using them and vice versa. And over the years, for reasons necessary to the school district, they have pulled back from that. And they have not... Some would say they have not lived up to that agreement in recent years. And the reality is that the city and the school district serve the same population. We're 1.7 square miles, we're 11,000 residents, and the fact that Even a task force that was pulled together earlier this year and late last year to talk about this couldn't get these two organizations that serve the same people in the same 1.7 square miles. Nothing's changed except the fact that the school district has been less willing to let us use their facilities. So it's great that the city and the rec, it's great that the rec department is focusing on providing reliable programming in facilities that we can control. And it's a bloody shame that the school district is not cooperating in the way that they used to. This goes back years, but I'm sorry to... be knocking on our neighbors down the street a little bit. But this is something that's been going on for a long time and it's sort of been winnowing away. The city's use, the city's ability to use school district facilities reliably has been sort of winnowing away and that's a damn shame in my opinion. So thank you.

I had a quick question and a comment. It's great that summer camp revenue is up. Does summer camp generate a surplus for us or is it a cost center?

It's part of a budget that is comprised of a number of different activities. So the bottom line for all the different activities is not quite cost recovered.

Okay, very cool. And my only comment is I just, we all have different opinions. This is not the right forum for it. I think that it's a mistake to vilify the school board. They have a lot of challenges they're facing that are very different than what we face. in terms of budgets and cash flows. And so I think that we can only hope that we're all doing our best for the community that we're in and we have difficult times and difficult problems that we need to solve and we all try to do our best.

I just want to say I don't think I didn't take the comments as vilifying the school district. I've been talking to a lot of people in town and one of the things I think is super important is to, as John said, the school board and the city serve the same community. And so I think improving relations and opening the channels of communication, and I'm hopeful that with a new superintendent coming in and maybe with the interim superintendent that those communications will be bridged and there will be a lot more collaboration. But I just want to thank you for you know trying to address the situation and and do what we can and and obviously um having control over the programs is important and it sounds like you guys have done an amazing job and trying to and really revamp things from you know and not just saying well this is the way it's been done but like looking for solutions and really like working on on how to how to pivot and and do um these amazing things that you have all doing you've been doing and Just on a fun personal note, I saw the campers walking from Hampton Field to the pool multiple times. It passed me, you know, and it was just really cute and wonderful and heartwarming to see. So, you know, I'm glad that we now have a pool and that we can like we can we can do those things. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, the only thing I'll say about it, and it's silly, is that in our world in PRD, like, we don't stop, right? We want to continue providing those services, and as we work through improving communication or how we work together, it's wonderful. We are so on board with that, but we can't stop, right? So it is looking for, as you can remember from last year, last year was, okay, we'll find some other spaces and we'll rent them and we'll figure out where to put programming. So we're just trying to make sure that we continue to serve the community at the level that they're expecting and put them in spots that, right now, we'll take it wherever we can. But yeah, so thank you for all of the comments. We appreciate that. Good for Eva, okay. All right, Paula.

Hi.

This is also the tallest supervisor team possible. I think they're all at least six feet tall, so our basketball team is really...

I'm Paula Cooper-Tipton and the recreation supervisor for aquatics. So I oversee, I think it's obvious, the Piedmont pool. And I've been working here for exactly two years now. I'm happy that my slides come after Eva's because mine are not as colorful as Katrina's. But we have a lot that we've we've been doing at the pool. So hopefully hearing about it will be very colorful. This past summer, our first summer, we had a total of 286 classes in our inaugural season for swim lessons for the June through August. That is comprised of 62 preschool classes And preschool is three through five-year-olds. We have what we call anchovies and shrimp. I'm going to tell you all the names because that's my favorite part of my job. And 181 learn to swim level classes, which is... six to about 12 years old. And we're very flexible with ages when need be. And those are levels one through five. We use the American Red Cross curriculum. And so we call them turtles, penguins, otters, stingrays, and orcas. We also have had 15 adult baby classes Those are happy splashers. And we had 28 teen and adult classes. Those are combo. We offered initially adult, teen, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. We didn't have takers for advanced, but we did continue with the beginner and intermediate classes. And what we found was that the most sought after classes with wait lists on a regular basis were the anchovies and shrimp, which is the preschool level, and then our level one LEARN TO SWIM TURTLES. WE ALSO HAD WAIT LISTS FOR OTHERS BUT THOSE WERE THE ONES THAT WE LEARNED VERY QUICKLY WERE THE MOST IN HIGH DEMAND. WE HAD A TOTAL OF 816 INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPANTS IN THOSE CLASSES. 573 WERE CHILDREN AND THAT IS ACTUALLY 1,430 REGISTRATIONS TOTAL. We learned a lot about the impact of how swim lessons affected pool use. This was something that It wasn't exactly a surprise that swim lessons were going to be taking up a lot of space in especially the activity pool. What probably was a big surprise was that so many other people wanted to be there at that exact same time. And so what we ended up doing is implementing a reservation system during those high demand times. And what this did was it helped to reduce lines and turning away people due to overcrowding because initially that was something that happened when you have swim lessons taking over a good chunk of a pool and then also having families coming in wanting to use that exact same space something's got to give so it's not perfect but it ended up people found spaces and we'll continue working on that. We had our adult group exercise. The main class that happened this summer was Aqua Hit. We had 152 participants and then we also had 101 in water aerobics. That was, Aqua Hit is Monday noontime class And it's a high-energy class that's consolidated into a 40-minute period. Water aerobics, the 101 was just, that's just from this August. So those are, they're both very popular, averaging about 15 people per class. But we can get up to 25 people. Junior lifeguard camps. This is something near and dear to me. I love developing programs that help feed into my staffing pool. I am always looking for somebody who has talent, skill that can translate into helping me do my job. And so when we had two weeks of junior lifeguards and 37 junior lifeguard campers and seeing them come back and say hi to the lifeguards and sometimes even going up and giving one of them a hug, it was amazing. Those are for 11 to 14 year olds and at 15 they can actually qualify to be lifeguards and take the American Red Cross lifeguarding course at 15 years old. I hope and I expect to see many of those kids apply to be lifeguards someday. If nothing else, they understand the reason why lifeguards exist. They understand the reason that lifeguards ask them to obey the rules. And they understand some of the things that the lifeguards are looking for. And they themselves were doing the same thing, like having opportunities to sit in a lifeguard chair and look around and look at things that are difficult to see in the water when the water is moving and ask questions and learn how to be part of a team. And they used kazoos instead of whistles. And it was a full-day program from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. And like I said, we had two weeks of that. Our splash camps and splash slash tennis camps were also really popular. Splash camps were for six to 10 year olds, and splash and tennis camps were for eight to 12 year olds. We had five weeks and 118 campers total. There were 24 campers in each. The math doesn't math out exactly. There were a couple weeks with like 23 campers. 24 campers each week, and they would come and learn water safety. There is this program that American Red Cross puts out that's called Longfellow's Whale's Tales, and they would watch videos and do activities. They even did tie-dying, but the main focus was get in the pool, have some swim lessons, get out of the pool, eat some snacks because you're going to get hangry, and then get back in the pool, play in the pool, do some games, and then they're done at 1 o'clock when it's splash camp. But if it's splash and tennis camp, they take off at 1230, go walk up to the tennis courts, conveniently located, and then go play tennis. And I can't believe they have energy for that. But it's impressive. 4th of July, this was my second 4th of July with the city. The first one with just a parade and then this one was parade and let's make the pool a fun 4th of July destination. So what we ended up doing is having two sessions where folks could sign up and 250 people total could sign up. There was an early session and then a later session. And it was just a fun day at the pool with cornhole and ring toss and red, white and blue duckies and just red, white and blue themed fun. little tattoos. The nice thing was that people who walked up could usually get in even if they hadn't signed up just because some people sign up and then decide to stay at the parade or at the park or something like that. I do want to talk about some of the, didn't stay up here on the slide, but the staff, we hired 116 staff over the course of April through the end of summer. About 60 to 70 of them are current or former Piedmont High School or just Piedmont. I say kids, college students. But that's really, it's fun to see some of them walk across the street to come to work. And I was just talking to one of them today feeling very overwhelmed about the beginning of school and then, you know, just kind of playing around with, you know, is this going to work for you and your commitment to work versus your commitment to water polo versus your commitment to school, these are all important things. And just kind of having that discussion about what works. And she said, well, I actually, on Wednesdays and Fridays, I don't have my last period and I get out at 12 something, would that be helpful for you? I almost cried and hugged her because that is exactly what we need. When we reopen before all the high schoolers are out of school, that's a really tough time to staff. And just, you know, when things work out like that, and she came to me apologetic about a situation that happened, but we ended up having like a really good situation. And nicely, like I said, walking across the street to work is very convenient for a lot of these kids, especially the ones who aren't driving. So we learned a lot this summer and we did a lot of listening and we got a lot of feedback and a lot of what we've learned and heard about is something that we can use to implement when we move forward for next summer but also immediately into fall. So when we look at our fall programs, Again, we're going to have swim lessons. We're continuing with swim lessons right now. We're just doing Saturday and Sunday lessons. But at the end of September, we're going to resume our weekday lessons. We had in the summer 286 classes from June through August and in the fall we will have 222 so it's pretty close Even though we're taking a little bit of a break right now from our weekday lessons So from September to November, it'll be a total of 222 classes we go from Previously we had 62 preschool classes, now we're going to have 98 preschool classes. Like I said, those were the ones that had the wait list, they were very high demand, and not only are we increasing the number of classes, instead of our anchovies and shrimp, we now have anchovies, shrimp, and seahorses. That is the seahorses are the level three. So for the little ones who are amazing swimmers already, but keeping them in the age range. where they belong. Our learn to swim classes, previously we had 181 learn to swim classes in the summer and now we have dropped that down to 84 because we're really focusing on those preschool classes but we have actually increased a lot of those level one turtles. And so we have a lot more of the level one. We have about the same of level two, and then three, four, and five are dropped down a bit. When we have classes that have low enrollment or canceled, we're getting a clear message that those are not needed, at least right now. So it's something that we maybe will find, oh, everybody's progressing and now we need to have more of those level four or fives. So we'll accommodate that and make it happen when we need to. Our adult baby happy splashers and our teen adult, those are pretty similar. Those are pretty much staying where they are. So what we've done to learn and adjust is looking at the numbers, that community feedback, what people have been saying they want. One of the changes that we are making has to do with looking at it's hard for people to come to a two day a week class. So instead of having like a class that's on Tuesdays and Thursdays or Mondays and Wednesdays, we're going to be doing Tuesday only, Wednesday only, Thursday only. So that way you can fit in your piano that's on Tuesdays and then just come to swimming on Thursdays or Wednesdays or something. We also are just aiming to get as many people as we can using the pool in whatever ways that they want and need to use the pool. That's really important and we are just trying to balance those needs because As much as one person will say this is what you should do, there's somebody on the other side, as soon as I turn around, who's saying the exact opposite. So our goal is to hear all of it and try to accommodate as much as we can. So that's a little bit of a juggling act, but we're gonna keep trying. The adult group exercise, we're gonna continue with our aqua hit and our water aerobics and hopefully adding this Saturday morning aqua Zumba, working on a contractor who is, we're hopefully, getting that signed and starting in September. Each of these classes are sign up by class, not by session, so it offers a lot of flexibility for somebody who maybe can only come the first and the fourth Saturday of the month or just can come occasionally. Water polo, that's the season we're in right now. We currently have the Piedmont High School water polo team practicing, and that started, their pre-season conditioning started two weeks before school started, and that was in the middle of the day. Right now, they're currently having nine practices per week, and that started the first day of school, and when I walked up here from the pool, they were having practice. We also have a lot of our lifeguards who are on the water polo team. So that's fun to see them, different sides of who they are. Piedmont Swim Team, they are starting next week. They will be practicing four times a week using five lanes on Tuesdays through Fridays. They were coming and using the pool a little bit in the spring while they're pool that they were using wasn't available, and then they did also use the pool during a portion of the summer. This is the new schedule, and it's just going to be busy, busy, busy. They've been good partners, too. They're very, very accommodating for whatever we've asked them to do, like checking in their swimmers. The swimmers have been very nice, so we're happy to help as much as we can with their swimmers. We have a couple exciting events coming up. And the first one is the Piedmont Cup Cardboard Boat Races. And that is Saturday, September 19th from 2 to 6 p.m. This is in the activity guide. So you can find that there. We are working with the new Scouts Executive Director who has done this a million times. And when she talks, we met with her last week, I think. We talked with her. I got so excited when she started talking about they, yeah, you just do it like this and this is how. And she shared a lot of information, which was fantastic. which was great, but the thing that I liked the most was whoever gets there first or time, whatever, but on the way back, then everybody gets cannonballed. And so I said, I just told all my staff that, and I said, make sure you're available on that day if you wanna do cannonballing of the Piedmont Cup cardboard boats as they're coming back. If they haven't sunk yet, you get to cannonball them. I mean we got to have some fun The so that information registration will be coming out soon. We're just kind of finalizing exactly what that is like cardboard Duct tape that's basically it that's all you get Put a kid in the boat the floating pumpkin patch Pumpkins float. If you haven't seen them, come watch them. One of my favorite things is throwing pumpkins in the water and it just sinks slowly and then it bobs back up. Saturday, October 24th from 1 to 5, we will have three different sessions for people to sign up. for an hour, come pick your pumpkin out of the floating pumpkin patch, play with it, decorate it, swim a little bit, get out of here, and the next group can come in and get their pumpkins. This, we're not even through our first year, but this first round in this first year of pool operations, we are already learning a lot from seeing how things actually fit in the space that we have and seeing things like how many people actually want to be at the pool at the same time and how long they want to stay there. We're just learning a lot and it's been good to see and we've done a lot of listening and received a lot of feedback and we'll just continue to use that information to improve and grow. There's no need to keep things exactly the same if we need to change them. That's what we'll do. There is going to be a survey coming out in the coming weeks about the pool. So that information will be shared with the commission when we have those results. So that's all I have.

Are there any questions?

I just had one quick question, which is, hey, this is all awesome and fantastic, and it's so awesome we have a pool. The activity this summer sounded great, but they're all absolute numbers. Do you have any sort of estimate of like of the people, were all our classes completely full? Were we at like 90% or how much? Oh, okay.

Yeah. Of the swim lessons, I would say like the classes that I was telling you about that have wait lists, those were generally full. Okay. The classes that didn't have wait lists, they were we would cancel classes if they had very low enrollment. So but occasionally, yeah, we did have like some low enrollment classes. But. We aim to have low enrollment in general. We don't want to have too high of a ratio of students to instructors. But yeah, it was the preschool and the level one, level two, they were pretty full and even more so now. Does that answer the question? If you're interested in like the water aerobics, it was very rare for water aerobics or aqua hit to be full, but we've approached it, like we have been full a couple times.

I was just going to say, so I'm a regular pool user and love it and love to see the community and the vibe. And even if it's a busy pool, that's a great pool. Rarely have I had to circle swim. So even at its busy times, there's still plenty of lane space, which as a swimmer, that's awesome. So I'm loving that you're learning along the way. I'm curious about... Cost recovery, and I know that we're just finished with the summer season, but do you have a sense on who's attending and do you have a lot of drop-ins? Are these summer pass purchasers? Are these annual pass purchasers? It might be too early for some of those stats, but do you have a sense around what people are buying?

I don't have that data. Do you want to talk about that? No.

Yeah, I didn't bring pass. We were kind of doing programmatic things, but we found that we beat all of the expectations that we had set in our operational analysis, which is not surprising, I think, to me. I think it would be surprising to our consultant. People wanted to buy a family pass and use an annual family pass versus, you know, just an adult getting a pass. So We did have to stop our summer pass sales at a point and just let the number that we had ride. So I don't have the exact numbers, but they're really high. They're higher than we had anticipated. It was also a strange time. So we opened in April, then we ended up fiscal year, and now we're starting the new fiscal year. And so in the finance world, we're still kind of balancing out how that deferred revenue is split over that year to see where we kind of land with our budgets. but right on target is swim lessons. If we were to look at those estimates, what we should do each year for revenue, they're right on schedule. So we're using those numbers as our target for each of the sessions. The only other thing we didn't talk about, we did offer private lessons. Some. Everybody wants a private lesson, and those are really big wait lists operationally for the number of instructors that we have we can teach more kids to swim in a group of five kids and versus one so we did offer some and we'd offer some in the fall but we will never probably offer enough one-on-one lessons so we're still trying to figure out how we can do more of those without taking away from really getting a bunch of kids to swim or learn to swim that's been our focus yeah a really big not speaking for Paula, but I know that this is the answer, is that teaching kids to swim, being water safe, is just an incredibly important thing with a community that has a pool. And it's one of our top missions in the community pool. And that's why we launched with swim lessons really strong this summer. And I think that what you'll see in the spring is probably getting parents ready. Let's get your kids ready to be in the water in the summer so that our spring should probably be a really strong making sure kids know how to swim before they go to camps or before they are at friends pools and things like that.

So, yeah, we even focused on that. And like Katrina was talking about the next CIT next gen is, you know, understandably not all those kids signed up there on their own, signed up to be there because they wanted to be there was a parent. So one of the things I would tell them is even if you're in your friend's backyard pool, you can be helpful. You can help save someone's life. And we want to keep kids safe, not just when they're at our pool, but when they're anywhere, a hotel pool, backyard pool, beach, lake. Yeah, that's incredibly important.

And those 100 and some odd kids from NextGen, now we have this little army of CPR certified people running around. So it's pretty great.

Just a historical question. What are the numbers like? for the old pool versus the new pool. Do you have anything about that? I don't think they're going to be comparable. Oh, I'm just curious. It's a great question. But unfortunately, at the tail end of the old pool's life, it was really struggling.

I know, at its heyday. The city took it over in 2011, and it had a couple really fine years. And then as the facility just kept degrading. So once you get to about the 2015, 2016 years, it's starting to take that really sharp decline. And so when we were doing the operational analysis, and I'm pointing at Sarah because she was on the pool advisory committee, it was like, it was really hard to develop any sort of historical analysis on old numbers to formulate what we're going to do with this new pool, which has twice the amount of water, right? It was a challenge. And also the tracking and the software system, this is before me, was not something that was reliable. So data was not our... not on our side. So REC Technologies has been wonderful because we do have this information. It is something that now we can start pulling data and start to use for each season that comes next.

I have a couple. Yeah. Well, first, you shout out to the staff at every level. I walk in. I've been saying a lot more time out there lately. Not all for swimming, but the... The people at the front desk, incredibly friendly, incredibly welcoming. All the guards, everyone to do with maintenance or everything has, you know, he's out here to measure lane lines again. Can I help you get that off the reel? Everyone has been just fantastic. Hadley, right? Super fantastic. Helped us with... finding a ton of equipment, like where's that hiding, and deploying it, understanding where the boundaries are, how can we get it again, and the protocols, that's all been great. And I know the water polo people know they've been a little difficult, but they are super appreciative. And also just like I asked a guard the other day, it was like there were four lanes open, but no one was in the pool. I said, how about I just swim more here? They're like, yeah, that's great. Afterwards, how was the workout? You know, how'd that work out? Really nice. Um, communication, I, I, you've said you've heard the exact opposite. Um, with my rec commissioner hat on, I have been a little out in the community and I have been hearing exact opposite things too. I mean, what the, what, you know, the kind of the swim program people want or the, you know, the organized sports people want, what the rec swimmers want and why are there swim lessons now? Because I want to rec swim and why aren't there more swim lessons? It's, it's, I can't imagine what you're hearing. I have heard a little static about communications. This caught me off guard. I didn't expect that. I would say from a user perspective, communications have been really good. I get updates on my phone of, hello, Rec Swimmer, the schedule has changed. I'm like, that's fantastic. Yeah. I'm really kudos to you for trying to get as much information and manage expectations and changes and whatnot, because I know it's hard, and I think using the technology, maybe that's from REC, but that really works.

You have to read it.

You do have to read it, but I mean... That's our challenge.

I think it's... You're 100% right, and as you're out in the community, if you hear... people's suggestions or ways that they get information, we are open to this because we do use REC, just like your REC technologies, we can send emails and things through. I believe we're gonna, I'll be getting this information on how we can do SMS, so we'll be able to send texts if that's the way people get information. We are at the most challenging point in our schedule, I think, that we're gonna have for the year, which is the start of school, the start of water polo, swim lessons, end of summer people. And so it's like this convergence and swim team of everybody, every single user you could think of wanting to be in the pool. And they all want more water than we have. And a schedule that changes with water polo as they settle their teams and who's going to be there and trying to communicate. Everybody's trying to put their head together of how you can visually put together a schedule for someone to look at and know when they can come swim and when they can't. but also continually be able to give updates as things change. Like we just have something changed for tomorrow night. That's what we sent out. Like, Hey, you can come do laps on tomorrow night because there's a change in the water polo schedule and you can come on Saturday, but it's a constant. It's a constant communication. And trying to get people to know where to look to get the information, I think, is our challenge.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a great point.

The only other thing I was curious about, and maybe it's premature, is are there times of low usage? Mm-hmm. And identifying those and thinking about, well, how, I mean, obviously you're thinking about this, about how to use it. Like if there's, I've been out there a couple of times in the afternoon and it seems kind of low, you know, it's after school, but. And I was just wondering, can we do, just off the top of my head, like middle school sports kind of activities like we do with, you know, soccer and basketball and not, or, you know, just other things. Think about the low usage times and how we can, maybe it's low staff time too, I don't know.

Yeah, the trends aren't really trends yet, but I'm trying to learn what they are. So are you asking about low use times, does it matter which pool or for what type of use, like lap swim versus just coming in and playing in the pool for activity, the activity pool, the

Yeah, I'm just thinking that it seems to me that things like if we have one of the two pools, or even in the activity pool, it's split between the lanes versus the beach area. If there are times and spaces that look underutilized, and then just being creative about... Is there demand? Is there revenue to be found? Are there opportunities to be had around that? Because I think there's understandably an appropriate focus on, okay, this is my high impact. This is where everyone's complaining I can't serve all the need because I just don't have enough water at this time in this pool. But are there, in the meantime, kind of dead zones that are, and maybe it's, maybe that's three years from now.

Yeah. I don't know if we've had a dead time. I will say it's slowed down when school started, but today was hopping. Everybody came on a Wednesday and, but then yesterday it was eerily quiet, like uncomfortably quiet. And I thought, Oh no, is this our new thing? No, it's not. It's just a fluke. Okay, so it's the learning show. Yeah, sometimes we'll even see like, okay, late mornings. It's quiet. And then other times it's really, really busy. And like nannies will show up with little kids and they'll just be taking over this area. Or grandparents, we've got a lot of grandparents who show up with their grandchildren. It's some of my favorites. They come and use, if it's warm, people will come.

Interesting, yeah.

So for middle school sports, because we're always on the lookout, but that after school time slot is the highest use. So we're about to really kick in next week with Piedmont swim team starting. So when you are looking at that comp pool of 12 lanes and we do open up rec swim at like two in case kids are, you know, they're out early on Wednesdays or they have different schedules. But that it means we're only going to have rec swim time in addition to laps. I'm going at the same time from like two to four. four o'clock, then we are giving up five lanes to swim team. We're trying to maintain four lanes for, um, the lap swimmers and then a few lanes for rec. And then that shifts again, depending on the day at six where water pool is taking over the entire pool. And so we're lap swimmers are losing time. So we're then evening lap swimmers are mad, uh, and swim teams mad cause they don't get more lanes that they want, you know, and then if you take away rec swim, So every little shift we make has an impact on one of the groups that wants to use the pool. That activity pool, I think the biggest thing we learned is that the activity pool should have been twice the size. It holds 140 people or something all in there at once, like standing. And so that's the capacity problem we have to battle. Not that the place is full of people sitting everywhere. It's how many people are in that one body of water, and that's where all the little ones are. So we've been doing this big thing about trying to get people to go to the comp pool. So you could see we introduced inner tube time in our rec swim. Diving boards are always open, noodles, anything to get people over to the bigger pool and kind of relief, give some relief to that activity pool. That's been our biggest Achilles heel, I would say, is that the activity pool is so small and it is very popular.

And thank you for clear inner tubes.

They're clear for, Paula said they had to be clear. I wanted inner tubes. Paula said maybe if they're clear. So we met in the middle. Excellent. But we put the World Cup on the big screen. People were floating, watching the World Cup, and people really enjoyed that. And so it was nice. We see adults in there just floating and talking to each other, and we're experimenting with ways to maximize the use of that comp pool.

Is there a plan for NFL games?

I've got to look up if we're okay to do it. I had to look up World Cup if we were fine showing it, and we were.

Paul's a lawyer. He'll tell you it's okay.

It doesn't have any sound, so you've got to be fine with just watching the action. It's pretty great. It's pretty great. Sorry. Thank you.

Thanks so much. It's wonderful.

Thanks. All right. Closer.

Hi, my name is Liam Kelly. I am a rec supervisor with the City of Piedmont Recreation Department. On paper, it's going to look like Liam. It is Liam Kelly, one syllable, and Without our fearless director, I would have just gone with Liam in this city. So you all know that it's a long story. If you ever want to know why it's one syllable, I'm happy to tell you. But we don't have enough time tonight. I've been with the city of Piedmont for four and a half years. And I oversee youth sports, middle school sports, facilities, sports field rentals and reservations, as well as some special events. As you've seen tonight, I'm just one player on a very high functioning team. Each element of what I'm about to talk about, what they talked about, we all do together. Just like Shelly said, we're very collaborative. We pivot, we adjust, and we really enjoy working together. I really enjoy working with them. I sure hope they like working with me. I am twice as loud as this in the office, just so everyone knows. All right, let's go. Oh, I got a hype man here too. She is a youth athlete as well and just came back from cross country. So I'm actually pretty proud of her because she got the opportunity to go to her grandparents and like do grandparent things or go to like work and cross country. And she chose that, so. So incredible. All right. So also one more thing about the pace to all of this. There's youth sports and middle school sports don't do much in the summer. So you'll know when I give an update on summer stuff because I'll be like that we did during the summer. So we're going to jump right into it. Youth sports. PRD hosts many sports classes and camps. These programs are considered in-house. As Shelly mentioned from Eva's programs, those are contract classes, a lot of like the Skyhawks and Ants tennis and things like that. So I'm mostly going to focus on youth sports, which are in-house programs. We hire all of our coaches, we manage them daily, and we also facilitate all of the activities, scheduling games, equipment, supplies, and bringing the energy. We at PRD believe that every kiddo can find their jam, and we believe that everyone is an athlete. Both programs that we're about to talk about in the youth sports, if you want to go to the next one. Both programs have incredible teams, and they manage day-to-day staff. They manage day-to-day opportunities. And many of our staff coach and facilitate youth sports and PMS sports programs. The big one that we got coming up now is our rec basketball program. Just like Shelly said earlier, we pivot on a lot of the... Issues that we found in the past. So this year we're starting rec basketball a lot earlier than we have in the past. And that's because the high school needs the gyms, as we talked about, for their incredible basketball teams, which go really far in the playoffs every year. So we're going to start our programs a little bit earlier to not hit those pinch points. You know, in the past we've had unbalanced teams. What do we do? We do self-assessments to hopefully get more people kind of watching how their kids play basketball and give us the results. It's hard to get a bunch of kids at the same place at the same time and eyes watching everybody. We also, like I said earlier, just have opportunities for basketball at every level. So from kindergarten all the way up to eighth grade, there is a league for you. Within that, there are clinics, there's developmental opportunities. And the best part that we have talked about already tonight is that a lot of our staff and referees are like local people. And parents and even high schoolers, you know, some of the star athletes that go on to play college basketball started in PRD rec basketball and they score keep and they referee. And it's just an incredible thing to see. Our junior running program, again, is another creation of this pipeline all the way from little kids all the way up to high school and older sports. Right. So our junior running program is an after school program. We had to pivot a little bit this year, and they're in a single location. It used to be at each elementary school, but that's to give the coaches more opportunities to foster the love of running with a lot of these young kids in a safe space that we get access to every day. And then they do really cool things like a cross-country race in Drisina Park at the end of the year. It's incredible for the kids. It's incredible for the coaches. But it's great for us as well, too, because the AB 2404, which is gender equity data, which I'll be back later on this year to talk about, it needs a competition point. So by adding a cross-country meet, we get to use those gender equity numbers into our larger numbers as a department. All right. So the next step after youth sports is middle school sports. Middle schoolers are youth, but if you ask a middle schooler, they are not. They are middle schoolers. So PRD runs PMS sports. We've run it since the 70s. We have our own athletic director. Her name is Joan A. Gonzalez. She's a wonderful athlete, parent, and facilitator of sports programs. And she is the athletic director as well as the sports coordinator within the city of Piedmont. We work closely with PMS administration as well to stay consistent with behavioral expectations and academics. We have three main seasons for middle school sports, fall, winter, and spring. And we take a step back in the summer. We've tried to do conditioning and things like that, but we really want to give middle schoolers a break. They have a lot of other things going on in life and doing great CIT and junior lifeguard programs as well. So let's get into our middle school sports. So the three main sports are flag football, cross country, and girls volleyball. Just like Shelly said earlier, we are adapting and expanding. We had some incredible success with our developmental volleyball programs for fifth graders and sixth graders. Previously, we had not offered sixth grade volleyball. But with all of that success, we've brought them into the fold. So now we have sixth grade volleyball as well as seventh and eighth grade volleyball. And as you can see, 72 total participants. That's 12 kids per team. Two teams per grade. Incredible. And the cool thing about middle school sports is you need someone to play. Right. And volleyball is one of those sports where the surrounding middle schools all have those ages as well, too. So we're able to offer competition for the kiddos. And you know what? No program is a monolith. Just like we have talked about earlier, we pivot, we adjust each season. And then as well as the developmental level to it, our flag football program, we have a girls team. We have never had that before at the middle school. We tried to have the girls play co-ed. It didn't quite work. But from the youth in sports survey, which we sent out as a department earlier last year, In 2025, what we came back was is girls were really interested in playing football. It's a CIF sport now. And so we opened up the program to a girls only team and we have one. They just started practice this week and they're practicing up at coaches field. Again, another super popular sport that we have flag football, 70 or 69 total participants. That's 10 to 15 per team. three to four teams, that's a really tricky one because you gotta find people to play. And Piedmont has 60 participants in flag football, Willard has like 12. So we always gotta find those opportunities to get competition for the kiddos, but again, we adapt. So we create rotating rosters, we have developmental programs where they can play against each other and scrimmage. And then lastly, we have our great cross-country program One of the, just the consistent sports that we've always had for Piedmont Middle School, it's run by two incredible coaches, Minori Sung and Christine Champon. And they divide up the teams all by grade and gender and A and B. So typically there's about, 15 to 20 kids per each grade. They're split up by A and B fastest runners. Another incredible part of our cross country team is that we host a big championship race at Kennedy Grove Regional Park. I don't know if you've been there. It's in El Sobrante and it's beautiful. So again, talking about watching kids go from junior running into middle school running and then watching them like absolutely kill it on a cross country course in a beautiful surrounding like Kennedy Grove. It really brings joy to our hearts, and it's everything that we want to do. We want to create opportunities from the youngest to the oldest. Everyone's an athlete, and cross-country is certainly one of those sports. All right, moving on to the next. So sports, more sports. Our Try It Out Tuesdays are another opportunity to find the gaps and pivot within our department. We need more girls playing sports. We need more girls playing sports, period. Doesn't matter where you are, doesn't matter what sport it is. And our department is really committed to that. I think a lot of you have seen the great Play Like a Girl event down at Witter Field. Well, consider the Try It Out sports just like a grab-and-go version of that. So instead of 40 different athletic organizations and thousands of girls, we have like three sports organizations and like 100 girls. And they really get one-on-one trainings with professional athletes. This year, we have three of them. September 15th, badminton, lacrosse, and ultimate frisbee. October 6th, fencing and flag football. And then October 27th, disc golf and another sport. We couldn't get that last sport before the activity guide came out, but we'll get another one in there. Disc golf is going to be great for that single sport there anyways.

Okay.

Yeah. So this one, I don't have a lot of data on it. Each each try it out. We always do. There's always about 75 to 100 girls. They have so much fun. Red cheeks playing hard each different sport. But I think the best thing to see is just the pictures on a lot of these. At first level, it's just girls playing sports. Right. But it's so much more than that because there are daughters, there's moms, there are professional athletes in these pictures who take time out of their day. to come to our little fields and teach these girls how to play the sports they love. And it's just, it's mind-blowing. This young woman up here by the disc golf, she's like a sponsored disc golfer, which I don't know if you know much about Frisbee sports, but it's a really big deal. And she came to teach girls how to play disc golf. Over here, Brian Gardere, everyone knows him around the town. He trains professional athletes. And here he is teaching young girls how to play basketball. The San Francisco Falcons Ultimate Frisbee, they come every year because they just love teaching these programs. It's incredible. And again, everything that we've talked about, everyone is an athlete. Everyone can participate, the youngest up to the oldest. We're going to find a spot for you, and we're going to find a way to find your jam. And we haven't forgot about the adults. Good job, adults. Everyone with the soft hamstrings like myself. Both of these programs started in the summer. Adult softball runs from June 15th to August 13th. It actually just ended last week. And the beach bums were champions. Good job. Good job, beach bums. And you keep winning, too. So maybe you have to make some rules or something like that. Adult basketball is another one that we've pivoted and changed. For in the past, it's kind of been just like a group of guys that want to play basketball together and they kind of sign up for the programs and they get in there and sometimes they pay, sometimes they don't pay. We found some wonderful adults who have wanted to help us facilitate this program. So they're the ones standing at the door, right? Not asking a part-time staff to give me your money, but they're participating. Also, we put it in the activity guide. So if anybody wants to participate, you should definitely sign up. There's full season organizations. There's four seasons opportunities. But there's also a la carte. So you can come one day a week. And then again, the adult basketball program kind of rotates as we get gym space. It's always on Sunday mornings. It's from 8 to 10. Everyone should come and play. And I should stop moving my hands so much. Really one of the themes that we keep talking about here is that sports are so much more than wins and losses. They build confidence, teamwork, flexibility, and we really learn a lot about who we are. We at PRD really look at the entire sports landscape, kindergarten all the way up to high school and even beyond. Our rec basketball referees and scorekeepers, they played rec basketball. They played middle school. Our rec basketball players then go on to play at PMS and PHS. You know, one thing to just talk about is Dylan Casey, who's a great basketball player. But when I first started, he was like a seventh grader who was like awkward out there. You could see he really wanted to. be the best he could, but just a seventh grader, right? And like now he's off to like play college basketball and he worked for us as well too. So that's what we're building. We're building lifelong athletes with confidence and everyone knowing that everyone can be an athlete. And then also, as Sarah mentioned earlier, and I keep saying they come back, right? Kids come back because they want to be a part of our programs. They want to be a part of our sports programs and it's an energy, right? And it's a vibe and it's so incredible to watch. All right, so another part of our job is we throw special events, and I think another important thing to say is I'm going to talk about a lot of special events, but all supervisors divide all of these up. We all work together really well on planning these things, and we also trust each other. So we have a lot of things going on, as you've seen tonight, and we know that each one of us will do everything that they can or let us know how we can be helpful or they can be helpful to make these great for the community. You know, just a quick sidebar, we work when everybody else has fun and we're like totally cool with that. So that just kind of tells you about a recreation employee. All right, so the first ones we're gonna talk about are our 801 once a month. the, it's like 8.01 some month, it's at our facility, 8.01 Magnolia, right down there across from the high school. They are monthly events and the theme is sometimes educational, all the time's fun. Just keep in mind if any of you wanna partake in any of these, we're gonna increase the ticket prices one week before the event. So tell everyone just get your tickets now.

No one has anything going on on Wednesday nights, right?

All right, our first one in September, or our first one is August. Puzzlepalooza kind of speaks for itself. It will be, it's already sold out. So even if it were increased cost, no one else can get in there. But our next one is our nerd night, Mothophilia. You can go to the next slide. Mothophilia is hosted by Alan Fish, who did our Hawk Talk back in March. He's charismatic and engaging, a storyteller, and he just keeps you captivated. One of the best parts about the Moth Talk is that they're going to set up like a blanket and a light outside at night, and then they're all going to go talk about moths, and then come back to that blanket and light, and there's going to be a bunch of moths on it. And so they'll see it in action floating around like when you do the hand puppets, the shadow puppets. Alan shares more than 20 years of his loves for moths, and the group will walk to Piedmont Park and come to see the light, which is all of those moths behind the curtain. Our October event is Paint the Town, and this is like a sip and paint. It's a step-by-step creative opportunity. Create your own unique piece of art, and it is guided. That's, again, another really fun one where everyone shows up their picture, and it's all a little bit different. In October, oh, that's our October one, excuse me. And then November, we have Drag Queen Bingo. It is a 21-plus event. Miss Sweet Nothing will lead participants in several rounds of bingo. She will also host an intermission show and then get right back to the bingo. There's going to be great music, a ton of laughs, prizes, and this event will sell out. So get your tickets now. And plus, we're going to jack up the price on you that last week registration. And again, that's because we got to bring contractors in. I make a joke about it. But it's important to sign up early so our contractors know what to prepare as we get closer to that event. All right. Food Truck Friday. Again, something else that was brought up in the comments. So this is a beautiful example of recreation and kind of what we do. July is a late month for starting a movie. You got to start a movie when it gets dark, right? So how do we take the energy of something that happens monthly at the rec, right? And use it another direction, the recreation jujitsu, as I like to call it. So we know how to run food trucks. So we brought a bunch of food trucks to Piedmont Park thinking, of course, and between our conversations, like, gosh, I hope somebody comes. You know, the food trucks get really mad at us if they come all the way out here and they make too much food and not enough people come. Well, that wasn't the problem. The problem was too many people, right, for the food trucks. We want all the people we want in the parks. But so many people came out. I think like 800 or something. Our lovely DJ Kev, who, if anyone doesn't know, works for Schoolmates and is like... The coolest person to be around and he like hangs out with your kids. It's awesome. So we had DJ Kev there spinning on the one and twos and the party just didn't stop because we didn't kick anybody out and they continued to eat and have a good time and just hang out with their neighbors into the evening. Luckily, there's not a lot of light out there. So everyone eventually had to go home. Our next one is this Friday, and we're going to pair both of those things I just talked about, right? We're going to have a movie in the park, which is Flow. It's like a cel-shaded animation-style movie about cats and animals. No talking. It's just animal sounds and animals talking to each other. So, come on, it's 85 minutes. So if you want a dialogue, you only have to sit through no dialogue for 85 minutes. And just a quick sidebar on these two, because I just looked down at my notes. Again, we make jokes about this, but there's a lot of truth in them. We always joke, don't be good at stuff, right? Because then you've got to do it more and more and more. And you know what? We were pretty darn good at that food truck event. And so now we're going to do another one with Movie in the Park. Our next movie after, oh, and Chicken Go, Shamal Burgers and More, Lola's Spanish Cuisine, Yummy Barbecue, Bay Area Halal Eats, and More Life Ice are the trucks that will be there on Friday. And if anyone's curious, there are more trucks than last time. So we hear you. We know no one likes to wait in lines. So we have two more extra trucks and they're going to be all crammed in right there on Highland. Our next movie in the park is on September 25th and it's Elio, an adorable movie. Actually, my son loves that movie. And it's also New Families Night. Again, an opportunity to come and meet the people who are around us. And you never know who you're going to run into at these events. Probably somebody down at basketball, right? Somebody you ran into at camp drop-off. Probably somebody you were hanging out on those Adirondack chairs at the pool. Come visit New Families Night. It's a great opportunity to meet lots of people. And then our last one of the year is going to be October 16th, and we're going to do the blend again. We're going to do the food trucks and the movie in the park. The movie in the park is Wonka. And, oh, this one's sponsored by Dress Best for Less. The September one by the Scouts, the August 21st one by Julia Gardner and Sarah Abel, and the July 17th one was sponsored by us. So just a last couple notes about these, just kind of wrapping up everything that we have talked about is, you know, love is in the details. I get up here and kinda just, you know, kinda going all over the place and talking really loud at you, but these are calculated decisions that we are making to ensure that everyone has fun. To ensure that kids get an opportunity to unplug. You know, making sure that kids are safe in the pool, but also have stuff that they do in the pool. I said it earlier, but we work really hard to make sure everyone has fun, and we take it super seriously, but fun is fun, and you gotta make sure that it's fun. We go through all of the details for food trucks, right? We get the right permits. We get the right garbage. We go through afterwards picking up garbage out of the park because, again, we really care about it, and it's important to have opportunities for everybody to have around. And also, it's just a vibe, right? It's a place to go to get to know people and get to know the people who you work with. And we work so hard to continue that going on every day. We're on the clock when Piedmont plays, and that's just how we like it. And we always say within the rec, magic is our mojo. And that's what we're going to keep doing.

Any comments?

I have one question. You said something earlier that I wanted to follow up on about the AD at the middle school. Is that?

a city employee or a district employee? I should have been clear on that. She's a city employee, and when she's not a dean for the middle school, she's doing all of the other stuff that we do. You'll see her at the pool.

I thought maybe somebody had taken one of the recommendations from the task force, but it didn't happen.

She's a coordinator. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right. Now we're moving on. Anything else? Great. Announcements, old business, and consideration of future agenda items.

I had the pleasure this afternoon of hosting the Piedmont Seniors Group at the U.S. Court of Appeals Courthouse in San Francisco. One of my, one of the things I do is give tours of that wonderful 1905 building and we got to, we had 15 folks wandered around for an hour, met a federal judge, got to look at the beautiful architecture. That program is a great rec department program that's been going on for a long time under Janet Epstein. They went to San Francisco City Hall first and got a tour there, had a really nice lunch, and then came to me in their food, the beginnings of the food coma, and I hopefully kept it lively enough. But it was a fun event, and I think they enjoyed it. So thank you.

Thanks, John. Anyone else? We didn't really have a meeting after the 4th of July parade. I know we talked about the planning, but I just wanted to say super kudos to John. He really helped modernize and make the planning the Fourth of July planning committee really efficient. And I know that you mentioned that Sarah at the last meeting, but John had like a chart for everything and we have templates. Eva's not here, but Eva was fantastic and she got little badges for everybody to wear. And I think everything went really well and it came together And I think one of the things also you had talked about was that there was some new ideas and new people coming along and there were, we were short having a judge for the podium and then we ended up getting a high school student, I think for the first time. So that was really great because there's, gee, there's a lot of kids at that 4th of July parade, so why not have a kid be one of the judges? And so thanks to Sarah for participating, and John is taking that over next year for... Cathy, who was excellent but is stepping down after so many years. And I also wanted to say, just the group, they work so hard. And it was just amazing to see how they put it all together. Roland does the list and gets the cars. There's just really so much detail and thought that goes into it from a whole group of people. And it's one of those, you know, you always heard like what happens when you have a committee, you make a camel or something. But this is like a committee that was really well oiled and functioning and came together really well. So I look forward to being on that and working with them too.

It's a great group, and I hope that we have a parade next year. No, that's just me. Me not having, not, no. It's going to be wonderful next year, and we will have a great time.

Is there a date set yet?

That question comes up more often than you would want to know, Chris. July 4th. It will be a Sunday, and so that means the parade will start later.

Later?

Instead of 11, on Sundays, the tradition has been to start at noon. Oh. Charge.

Okay. That's so you can have more pancakes, I think. Pancakes for lunch. Great. Anyone else?

All right.

Let's call it adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.