Oakland Unified School District Board of Education - Regular Meeting

I'd like to welcome everyone. Loudly. all right oh this seems so loud i'd like to welcome everyone to the august 12th first school board meeting of the 26-27 school year mr sechao can we have roll call to establish quorum please yes on the roll call to establish quorum for today's meetings as stated student director blotch student director tongan director lotta present director williams

Director Hutchinson? Director Behring? Director Thompson?

Present.

Vice President Batchelor? Here. And President Brewhart? Here. Coronel, present.

Thank you. And can we have an interpretation check please, Mr. Hollis?

Yes, I will. For an interpretation announcement, for tonight's meeting, we have two languages for live interpretation. They are Arabic and Spanish. For in-person, we have laptops. Please come see us. We will start with Arabic. I will lower all tennis hands. Please don't raise your hand if you need Arabic interpretation. Ms. Abdi, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Arabic, please.

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. We will start with the translation in Arabic. To listen to the translation, please follow the instructions and the instructions as follows. At the bottom of the screen, search for the circle on the shape of the globe. Click on it, then select the translation word, then select the Arabic language. And if you are using smart devices, at the bottom of the screen, there are three dots. Click on it, then select the translation word, then select the Arabic language. Arabic instruction is now. Great. Thank you, Ms. Abdi. Check, attendees, to see if any hands raised for Arabic interpretation.

Seeing no hands raised, we will not start with Arabic interpretation. We will next go to Spanish. Again, please only raise your hand if you need Spanish interpretation. Ms. Vargas, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Spanish, please.

Of course. Muy buenas tardes. Le damos la bienvenida. Tenemos intérpretes al español ofreciendo el servicio de interpretación. But the service will only be provided if you request it. So please, if you need the service, raise your hand, either in person or virtually, using the Raise Hand icon, the symbol of a little hand at the bottom of your Zoom window. Once again, if you need the interpretation service, please let us know by raising your hand, either in person or virtually. Una vez que activen el servicio, busque el símbolo de un globo terráqueo, púlselo y seleccione Spanish. Si no encuentra este símbolo, busque los puntos suspensivos de More, después Language Interpretation y después Spanish. Muchas gracias y una vez más, bienvenidos y bienvenidas y bienvenides. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Ms. Vargas. Check attendees to see if any hands are ready for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we'll not start with any interpretation at the moment, and we'll check in later during the meeting. Turning back to you, President Brewhart.

Thank you. Tonight in closed session, we will discuss the following matters. Item D126-1630, conference with labor negotiators. Item D2, 25-0791, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. Item D3, 26-1616, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation. Item D4, 26-1704, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. Item D5, 26-1705, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. Under real property matters, we will discuss item D6, 26-1313, conference with real property negotiators. D726-1737, threat to public services or facilities. We will then, when that's completed, we'll reconvene at 5.30. Do we have public comment on closed session items? And I'm going to ask that you really speak to the closed session items at this time. We'll have public comment as soon as we come back.

Yes, Madam President, we have two. Sada Ola Bala and Kerry Kaufman. How much time would you like to allot for a public comment?

Two minutes, please.

In closed session, you will be dealing with the title of potential anticipated litigation around public safety. Under the public safety, I continue to say that you have no ability for an evacuation of certain students from certain schools, Skyline, Call Monk, and Grass Valley in particular. You have on your agenda tonight hiring of individuals for public safety. They have no law enforcement authority. They don't have any ability to intervene in case or enforce They just can observe and report. That is not the kind of law enforcement safety individuals we need. You have also the potential for lawsuits. I don't know what this means, but you are hiring on your agenda a firm for advice related to social media. That's on the agenda tonight. You have a conflict of interest that's being placed in the media by one of your board members that could potentially result in lawsuits because they are a member of a teacher association. You also have anticipated lawsuits based on the fact that you have these devices that you're going to be dealing with, Now, the mandate says that these children can only use, they cannot use the devices in the classroom, but they can use the devices when they're not in the classroom. Someone can choose to sue you because they allow to use those devices when they are at lunch or in a non-teaching environment, and other school districts are doing that. So you are going beyond the scope of where devices are intended not to be used in the classroom. So I would take that under consideration, a possible anticipated litigation based on that fact.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Thank you. On the closed session agenda items, you have CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATIONS. I WANT TO SPEAK TO THAT. I'M THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED ADMINISTRATORS OF OAKLAND SCHOOLS. 12 MONTHS AGO, OUR UNION PRESENTED SUNSHINE DOCUMENTATION TO BARGAIN. IT TOOK THE DISTRICT THREE TO FOUR MONTHS TO GET IT ONTO THE BOARD AGENDA. We've been bargaining for six months, coming on seven months. The district has made zero proposals that include any money. We are the only union that does not have a settled contract. We are the only union that was not given raises in the 25-26 school year last year, and we're the only union who is not scheduled to receive raises this year. This is not acceptable. Our members are receiving significantly less pay than the people that they are supervising, and this needs to be resolved. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other public speakers online?

There are no further registered speakers for this item, Madam President.

Welcome to the first board meeting of the school year, 26-27 school year. Mr. Rakestar, can we have a roll call to establish quorum, please?

Yes, on the roll call. Student Director Block? Present. Student Director Tongan?

Present.

Director Lara? Present. Director Williams? Present, sir. Director Hutchinson? Director Berry?

Present.

Director Thompson. Present. Vice President Batchelor.

Here.

And President Brohard. Here. Form present.

And Mr. Sechak, can we have an interpretation check, please?

Yes, moving to interpretation check. For tonight's meeting, we have two languages for live interpretation. They are Arabic and Spanish. For in-person, we have laptops to your right for interpretation. We'll start with Arabic. I will lower all tennis hands. Please only raise your hand if you need Arabic interpretation. Mr. Turek, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for our Arabic, please.

Thank you. Great. Thank you, Mr. Turek. Check in 10D to see if any hands are raised for Arabic interpretation.

Seeing no hands raised, we will now start with Arabic interpretation. Next, we'll go to Spanish. Again, please only raise your hand if you need Spanish interpretation. Ms. Ovando, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Spanish, please.

Buenas noches. Les damos la bienvenida. Tenemos intérpretes disponibles para proveer interpretación simultánea en español y árabe. Sin embargo, solo se hará cuando se solicite. Por favor, levante la mano en persona o virtualmente si quisiera escuchar en español. Para la mano virtual, presione el símbolo de Raise Hand. Si está en el recinto, se le proveerá una computadora donde podrán escuchar la interpretación en Zoom. Está al lado derecho. Una vez más, favor de levantar la mano. Todavía no lo verán, pero ya que se active el servicio, vaya a los controles en la parte inferior de la pantalla. Busque el icono de interpretación. Es el que tiene un globo terráqueo. Te le click ahí y seleccione Spanish. Entonces, si necesita interpretación al español, favor de levantar la mano. Si no la levanta, no se ofrecerá en esta sección de la agenda. Gracias. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Vondo. Checking attendees to see if any hands raised for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we will not start with Spanish interpretation. And that concludes the interpretation announcement. And I turn it back to you, President Brevard.

Thank you. At tonight's meeting, there are several allotted times where you may make public comments, provided you preregister to speak online before the meeting started, or if you fill out a comment card, which you can find on the table by the entrance, and you can submit those cards at any time. There will be public speaking after a public comment on all non agenda items within the subject matter jurisdiction of the district. Public speaking after the student board members report. After the parent and student advisory committee report. After the one item under unfinished business, the Oakland Unified School District 45 day adopted budget revision. under new business after the application for provisional internship, application for a variable term waiver, and after application for local assignment option. There will also be public speaking after the adoption of the general consent report, the superintendent's report, And that is it. Report out of closed session for August 12, 2026. Under Labor Matters, item D1, number 261630, Conference with Labor Negotiators, the Board gave direction on this matter. motion by president brohard seconded by director thompson with a vote of six zero uh zero abstaining excuse me and one absent the yes votes were president brohard vice president batchelor director barry director lotta director thompson director williams and director hutchinson was absent under legal matters item d two number twenty five dash zero seven nine one conference with legal counsel existing litigation the board approved a settlement in this matter motion by vice president bachelor second by director thompson the vote was six in favor zero abstained, and one absent. Those voted in favor, President Brohard, Vice President Batchelor, Director Berry, Director Lara, Director Thompson, Director Williams, and Director Hutchinson was absent. On item D3, number 26-1616, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation. The board approved a settlement in this matter. The motion by Director Lara, seconded by Director Thompson. Vote in favor, five, abstained, one, and absent, one. The votes in favor were President Brohard, Vice President Batchelor, Director Lotta, Director Thompson, Director Williams, Director Barry abstained, and Director Hutchinson was absent. on item d four number twenty six dash seventeen zero four conference with legal counsel existing litigation the board approved a settlement in this matter motion by director lotta second by director thompson vote in favor five abstain one and absent one the votes in favor were president brohard vice president batchelor Director Lara, Director Thompson, Director Williams, Director Barry abstained, and Director Hutchinson was absent. On item D5, number 26-1705, Conference with Legal Counsel, Existing Litigation, the Board approved a settlement in this matter. Motion by Director Lara, second by Director Thompson, five votes in favor, one abstention, and one absent. The votes in favor, President Brohard, Vice President Batchelor, director lotta director thompson director williams director barry abstained and director hutchinson was absent under real property matters on item d6 number 26-1313 conference with real property negotiators the board gave direction in this matter motion by president brohard second by vice president batchelor with a vote of six in favor and one absent the votes in favor president brohard vice president batchelor director barry director lotta director thompson director williams and director hutchinson was absent under threats to public service or facilities matters on item d7 number 26-1737 threats to public service or facilities the board discussed this matter That is the end of the August 12th, 2026 closed session report out. Are there any modifications to the agenda? Director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. Excuse me, I'd like to pull R46 and R50 from the consent report.

Just to repeat that, R46 and R50, thank you. Are there any other modifications? All right, with that, we will move. There is no adoption of the Pupil Discipline Consent Report. Next, we'll have public comments on all non-agenda items. How many speakers do we have, Mr. Hollis?

Madam President, we have seven speakers.

And are there any speakers online?

um currently all who have registered are in person thank you uh two minutes each please all right uh call all seven those names are corey jeffries carrie kaufman uh excuse me uh those names are corey jeffries carrie kaufman zelon harrison rodney brown sada olagbala Last name Roberts. And Miguel Gonzalez.

If you heard your name, come to the dais, please.

Good evening. My name is Corey Jeffries. Can you hear me?

Testing, testing.

Okay.

Thank you.

My name is Corey Jeffries and I'm here with the Peacemakers. I'm from Oakland, California. I was born and raised. My mother was a school teacher here for over 40 years. My dad was one of the first African American police officers here after they migrated from back east virginia state college and uh... went to cast my high school and worked for alameda county superior court uh... where i retired in two thousand nine and uh... i became a community activist you might say uh... uh... in mentoring programs for kids and and and things of that nature and uh... uh... I live right here in El Cerrito, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask me, but I'm here as an advocate for the Peacemakers, and I'm looking forward to working with some kids here. Well, the Peacemakers is a mentoring organization, and of course, one of the speakers, the founder and CEO, Hank Roberts, is also on the agenda. But I'll give you a little bit of what I've learned from it. I've worked with him for five years at various schools in Contra Costa County School District. We mentor kids and social emotional support. We started peer mediator groups. We help kids do their own conflict resolution with healing circles. We engage parents. We attend the care meetings and go over attendance. We helped to start a chess club and we engage in sports and soccer. Just a plethora of things that go to encouraging kids of all nationalities and cultures. The school that we were at most recently, Mira Vista, I used to call it a United Nations of schools. It went from K to middle school. And we had Mandarin, African American, white, black, Muslim, and African It brought back some memories of a long time ago, how it was when there was a real village and the parents were all engaged with the teachers and things like that. And I really think our organization would be a plus for Oakland Public Schools as well.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. It's okay, just come up.

Good evening, boy. My name is the line Harrison, and I'm also here with the peacemakers. We are organizations that do support youth and mentoring, but I am here doing the parent engagement and I know y'all need some parent engagement. I am a mother of eight. a grandmother of 22 and I am an Oakland native. My grandmother had 13 kids. I had 52 first cousins in East Oakland. So we're a historical black family in East Oakland. So I feel that I'm an expert kind of on that level to say that parent engagement and education is needed. I have five college degrees and seven high school diplomas from my eight children. So I feel that in my native home of East Oakland, I feel having peacemakers, which brings in poly mentoring for the parents, for the students, for the support of whoever the care provider is, is something that Oakland School can benefit from. We can benefit from this because our community is so divided at a lot of issues when it comes to education. This organization helps bring that back together. That's something that's missing in our community. And I'm here to champion this cause of bringing mentors, bringing parent advisory groups together and things that this district can thrive from. Because I know this is a great district and I know this is a great board that wants to care for our community. So I'm done. I'm complete. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

If I may, Madam President, there were two additional speakers for this item, Rosa Vargas and Jack Nelson.

I'd like to say good afternoon, board. I'm Rodney Brown, a peacemaker, a servant in the community of Richmond, California and beyond. I want to thank you all and commend you all for the cell phone initiative. I think that is a wonderful tool that was brought forward in terms of bringing learning back into the classroom and focus and attention. I'll share something with you all that's really unique. I was stricken with a deadly disease called HIV. I'm not talking about the sexually transmitted disease. I'm talking about the hood infected virus. And if you don't clear up the hood infected virus, it turns into AIDS. Addictive Incarceration Death Syndrome. That's I don't care if I go to jail and I don't care if I die. Working with children in our community has been very, very beneficial for me. I am who I serve. And in serving in a population such as I just mentioned, it will show you and explain to you why a numerous and abundance of our children are failing. Why? Lack of mentoring. If I myself had this program, as he just mentioned and the young lady just mentioned, about the peacemakers, there's no telling what I would have been in life. Not that I was a complete failure, but I had to go a different route in order to become successful. This organization should be the poster child of Richmond and Oakland. I duly see it as being something that's going to help, not just for a short period of time, but for longevity in years and decades to come. I duly think that you all, as well as the public, should take heed and notice of this organization, Peacemakers Incorporated. We look forward to serving you and working with you and being a bona fide partner in community with you all. God bless you. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

good evening board also preceding me should be uh... mcgill gonzalez he's actually uh... on zoom but my name is hank roberts uh... rather than to go into a lot of details about how i can relate to people that we serve i'll just say it real quickly i have two parents with a sixth grade education with a phd in love and because of that love all five of us college graduates. So what I learned was that parent engagement has nothing to do with education. Parent engagement is making sure that you're connecting with the school, having relationships with the teachers. And again, my parents was doing that without a lot of education. And I do want to reiterate that I'm also with the NAACP. I serve as the California Hawaii State parent engagement director and vice chair of the NAACP California Hawaii Education Committee in totality. And one of our missions right now, which is imperative, is that we are putting together a playbook that's designed to make sure that parents know their rights. And when you think about rights in education, that's a game changer because most of our parents have no clue as to what their rights are. So what is Peacemakers? Real quickly, Peacemakers is a school day mentoring organization. You all have heard of the PBIS model. The difference is that Peacemakers enhances the PBIS model because we do check-ins on campus. We do check-ins after school. But here's the key. We do check-ins all day because we're on campus all day. And throughout the day, we're doing preventions, not interventions, but preventions. And you'll immediately see a change in the number of suspensions. You'll see a change in the amount of parent engagement. You'll see a change in terms of classroom behavior, because we also are in the classrooms working with those children. But as I get to the end of this, because of time, the real key is that we create that partnership that's transforming even sports. When you see parents engage in sports with their child, the child is an excellent, better athlete or whatever they're doing. How about if we look at that same analogy and create a partnership between a parent, a teacher, and a child? Let's be honest with each other, it's not happening. It's not happening in our public schools. So what does Peacemakers do? We mediate that situation, create the communication between the parent and the teacher, And by doing that, you almost by default enhance the chances of that child succeeding. That's the mission of peacemakers. As you heard them speak, we all have been fingerprinted and we're ready to go. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. He's not online right now.

Real quick, I think you've become too comfortable with this program, restorative justice. And restorative justice, in my opinion, is very limited to the high level of intervention and prevention with some of our students. We have to go beyond restorative justice. I'm concerned with the mental health issues of our students. Dublin's Unified School District just recently, after observing students in that district having severe anxiety, stress-related issues, physical issues related to taking AP, and honors classes. So what they've done this year in 26-27, they're limiting the amount of advanced placement classes to at least four in a year, including honors classes. University of Michigan is dealing with this concept of students under exceptionally amount of stress and anxiety about grades. And so they are implementing for certain classes at University of Michigan You're going to just have pass, fail. On your record, you'll have A, B, C, whatever. But we have to look at the level of anxiety and stress for African American boys. We're at the top or ahead of the list of suicides. And that used to be a non issue for when I was growing up, we always say when there was a suicide, it ain't us cause we don't do that. But now it is a big issue. So I implore you to look at what are the issues going on in all USD that is creating stress, creating anxiety, creating the anticipation of a failure with these young people. Lastly, I don't have too much time. On the consent agenda, look at the method for how schools and children are chosen for programs and services so that we continue to have equity and fairness in how we give contracts, programs, services to schools and students.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening, Board. I'm Kerry Kaufman. I'm the Director of Special Education. I am also the President of the United Administrators of Oakland Schools. I had the joy of going to multiple schools to start the year as part of my job as Director of Special Education. I saw a lot of joy, and I really appreciate it. I want to shout out principals, assistant principals, CSMs, and central office administrators who allowed for all of that joy to occur. Thank you guys so much. I do want to call out that I do appreciate all the work and all of them and all of us are organized and ready to continue to push and fight. Administrators voice have been continued to be dismissed and disregarded throughout the past year. And as you can see from our actions a couple of weeks ago, we will just make our voices louder. We need to listen to administrators because we are talking about what we need to ensure we have safe schools for our students and ensure that we have spaces that allow for strong student learning. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any more speakers?

Hello, my name is Rosa Vargas. I'm an Oaklander. I'm a parent. I'm here to thank the board members that are continuing nonstop fighting for our kids' education here in Oakland. I really honestly think that we need to stop cutting resources directly to our schools that are affecting our kids. I will I would like to to have to encourage the parents to. Get more involved and seek. deeper into the schools. Unfortunately, I had to remove my daughter from public education because the resources were getting removed from her school. And that's a shame. If we want to continue having students in OUSD schools, we need to meet their needs. We need to stop removing the resources that are going to make them successful. Mental health is very important. A lot of these kids come from backgrounds that have a lot of needs, and it's almost impossible to educate a student when they're having mental issues. So we really need to start thinking about that, and that's the only way that we're going to continue keeping our families in OUSD schools. Thank you. Lastly, I want to thank Director Mike Hutchinson for all the support that he's been giving parents and the students of Oakland. Thank you so much.

Thank you. That concludes public speaking. Are there comments? Oh, I'm sorry.

Jack Nelson, an organization, I'm just a volunteer. Stephanie Ong was in the Chronicle the other day. I don't know if that rings a bell for anybody up there, but she put an article about how her son is dyslexic and he wasn't helped here in Oakland, but they're hoping that he could. And boy, that struck a chord because Coach Tapscott and I had a conversation last week and actually last month first and then last week. He would like and I would like McClymonds to getting reading specialists on Saturdays or at some opportune time and I will work for free to get them to get the kids over the fourth grade reading level I think that's just major. We need to do that. And Coach Tapscott and I talked about it, and then I said, you might notice my shoes, 25th silver anniversary of me running with my nephew from Sacramento back to here. This time I'm going to run from Skyline, right before Skyline High, to Tech and on to Mac. Tech needs money too. They need it for their leadership program. And Boy, Martel Price, and I left the letters in the car, but he's fantastic. He met with me in July during his break, and that's really something. And I think we can do this, and I'd like to do this run on October 8th. And I've got two former students from San Leandro that just want to help. They're like me. They just want to help. The good news is, I think we need at least 10,000 at Mac. I've got 6,000 committed already. And for tech, I've got 1,500 committed and it will turn to 3,000 soon. That's good, I'm done. Thank you.

Thank you. That does conclude public speaking. Next on the agenda, we have the student board report.

Good evening board members, superintendent, OUSD staff and students, families, and community. The All-City Council Union Governing Board is excited to share with you all what we have been up to this summer. On August 4th through 7th, Tuesday through Friday of last week, ACC attended orientation slash onboarding. During those meetings, we built community with each other and covered many topics, such as Robert's Rule, elevator speeches, and getting to know our positions and school board members. We are now going to move into our official welcome. I'm going to pass it to Director Tongan.

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. My name's Amina Ta-Woon. I'm a rising senior at Oakland Technical High School, and I've been a student OUSD since elementary school. I'm really excited and honored to be stepping into this position as one of your student directors. Some things about me, I've been a student OUSD since elementary school. I went to Sankofa for about two years, and then I went to Piedmont Avenue, and then Montero for middle school, and now I'm at Tech, entering my senior year, so I'm very excited for that. I love theater. I've been doing it since my freshman year. It's something that I've really grown to love and something that's helped me grow into my voice. And also journalism. I'm currently serving as the editor-in-chief of our newspaper, and that's something I'm very proud of and excited to step into this new school year. And I also love reading and writing. As we enter this new school year, I just wanted to take the time to acknowledge my peers and fellow students, all 34,000 of you, and I want all the students to know one thing, that I'm here to represent them. not just the students who are already having a seat at the table and not just the students who are already comfortable speaking at meetings or speaking up in front of adults i mean all the students including the students who might feel like their opinions never make it past the classrooms the decisions being made about our schools affect us every single day they affect what our classrooms look like what resources we have how supported we feel the policies we follow and ultimately whether we feel like schools are places where we belong Too often students think that their voices don't carry enough weight to matter, or that speaking up isn't their place. I'm here to tell you that that's not true, and I once felt that way, but here I am being a voice for more than 30,000 of you. Our voices should be a part of decision-making processes from the beginning. That means I want to hear from you. I want to know what's working and what isn't, what you wish adults understood about what being a student means right now, and what changes you think our schools actually need. I also want to be honest. There are things that are out of our control as student directors. We're still students just like you, but we can listen. We can ask questions and we can bring our concerns into rooms where students haven't always been represented. And when we don't have an answer, we can make sure your questions still go asked. I hope that during my time during this position, you never feel like you have to be an expert or have the perfect words to make your voice matter. You are students in this district, and that alone means you have a perspective worth hearing. So please talk to me, come up to me at school, send me a message in my email, or tell me about something that's happening in your classroom or an idea that you think might help make schools better. This position may have my name attached to it, but it represents something much more bigger than me. It represents you. So I'm looking forward to the school year, and I hope you all can stay the same. And thank you. And now I'm going to pass it on to Drew.

Good evening. My name is Drew Block. I'm a freshman at Oakland High School and a dedicated student athlete. I'm a runner, a competitive rower, and a theater kid. I've been in nine musical theater productions, including starring as Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid and Skye Masterson in Guys and Dolls. Performing in these shows made me realize how much I enjoy public speaking. During my first year at Edna Brewer Middle School, I had the opportunity to join the Restorative Justice program. It was my first time participating in a leadership role, and I loved it from the start. Public speaking already came to me naturally due to my acting experience. Being an RJ leader, I worked behind the scenes to contribute to my school community, and this work filled me with joy. I continued with RJ throughout middle school, emceeing for eight OUSD restorative justice conferences and becoming a leader of Brewer's RJ program. This past spring, I had the opportunity to run for the student director position, and I was intrigued. The thought of being able to represent my peers and use my voice to help better our district appeared to me. Maybe it was because of my grandma, who was a dedicated school board member in the Bronx, New York. She was so dedicated that now my dad's elementary school, PS95, is named after her. I was also intrigued by this position because I wanted to find something that would push me to understand different perspectives. I want to better understand how to best inform my work of improving the Oakland community. I'm extremely grateful to be serving as one of the student directors this year. I aspire to be the best representative of the student body as possible by listening to students and community members while we work to strengthen the district. In this position, my goal is to partner with my fellow board and community members to stabilize OUSD while prioritizing increased communication and collaboration with students so that students know what is happening in the district and they feel their voices are heard. Through my academics, sports, and theater communities, I will continue to listen to my peers. I also plan to expand my network for a broader perspective. Let's work together, Oakland. One relationship, one student, one school at a time. Thank you.

Thank you for listening. And to contact us, you can email us from the emails listed on the slides or our meaningful engagement specialist, Adriana Villegas at adrianavillegas.org. And the ACC meeting schedule will be shared with school sites soon by Adriana. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there public comments on the student board report?

Yes, Madam President. There is one, Asada Olokwala.

I'm going to always have something to say about what you can do. I'm going to start off tonight by trying to encourage you to take on the mission of bringing parents more involved with OUSD. You constantly speak, and that's important that you talk about the level of participation of students, but we need a collaborative effort in this district. and people are talking about engaging parents and there's no better resource for engaging parents than their children so let's start off by having bring your parent to a school board meeting night where you pick a night and parents and students are going to come to the meeting to engage in whatever let's have parents involved in understanding what's going on you show your parents the agenda something that get parents more engaged. And you guys have the benefit of doing that because you live with the people we trying to get in more involved with. So would you seriously consider a effort at how we can spend more time on parental involvement? Because this room is empty and they're going to be Pacific issues where people are going to be, but the collaborative overall continuous involvement, of parents and students needs to be more developed. And I'm challenging you to do that. In every meeting, I'm gonna challenge you to do more. People are gonna be patting you on the back, but that's not what you need. You need that as well as the listening of what needs to happen in this school district. And what needs to happen is more involvement. But not just blind involvement, prepared involvement, understanding the issues, being informed enough to participate as well.

Thank you.

If I may, Madam President, there's an additional speaker, Sheila Haines.

There's an additional speaker, Sheila Haines.

Okay, two minutes, please.

I believe they're online, that they can raise their hand to speak. I see a hand raised, allow them to speak. Sheila Haynes, if you can speak, you are off mute, but we cannot hear you. And we still cannot hear you in the room. If you can switch to another device, we may be able to hear you through another device. Sheila Haynes. Madam President, if you'd like to move forward, we can see if she would try a different device.

We'll move forward and then give her another opportunity when she can get online. Board comments? Director Thompson?

Yes, I do want to start by saying that I've really enjoyed both of you. I think both of you are quite eloquent and I appreciate that. That's a good example for others to emulate. But I want to ask one question. I want to also push you a little bit and I want to know if you can find a way for students to address academic concerns and so that it doesn't so that you don't have to rack your brain to come up with ideas. I thought about three particular things, and I'm not saying that you have to do it this way, but these are three examples. Maybe look at A to G requirements that students are dealing with. Maybe look at available AP classes or honors classes that students can take, or just generally the curriculum appropriation. that they would have the opportunity to involve themselves in at each of the high schools. Thank you very much.

More comments? Director Hutchinson?

Yes, thank you. First, welcome to the school board. And hopefully, if you're not fully aware of it now, you'll have a chance during this year to learn about some of the legacy that you're now a part of. In OUSD, we have a real history of extremely strong and powerful student board directors who have really left their mark in their time on the board. And I'm excited to see both of you kind of gain your footing and see how you fit into that legacy going forward. I agree with Ms. Assata's comments about parent involvement and engagement. But I would actually ask you to do the same for students. And so historically here at the school board and in OUSD, some of the most powerful times have been when students have organized themselves, found an issue to advocate for, shown up at a board meeting and made it happen. and as we are facing you'll see later in this meeting a real budget deficit real questions about services i'm sure you've already seen at your school sites how some services have been cut for this year it's really important that we don't just have student voice but we have student engagement and that our students in oakland not only realize the legacy that they're a part of but the power that you really have And so here in this room, if 60 students show up demanding some sort of action, you'll get movement. If it's 300 students that show up, you'll take the place over. that's what we used to do here and it was based on student community parent voice and what we needed to have happen and so hopefully in your role as as advocating for for students being that spokesperson hopefully you'll do a little organizing along with it and really think about um how can we move things forward because ousd is in crisis right now and uh thinking of both of your ages, a large majority of your years in OUSD, if not all of them, have been in crisis or pandemic. And it doesn't have to be this way. So it's up to all of us now, especially with elections this year, to really get involved and get engaged. and hopefully i i want to do my part in making sure both of you know you're coming into this with a clean slate to really figure out um what you might want to do with this position and how can we really move this district forward to have the kind of schools we all want to see and deserve away from here i'll make sure that both of you have my contact information anytime i can help out and be supportive i'm always available and I really, really encourage you all to dig in around the budget and the numbers and to have enough of an understanding where you can be strong advocates for what students want to see happen in our schools and in our district. But besides that, welcome and please fill this place with students and it'll make a difference. Thank you.

Is there any other board comments? Director Batchelor?

Thank you yes I want to also welcome you all to the board I had a great time getting to know you all at the board retreat and getting to hear a little bit about what brings you to this role and what brings you to this work and I just want to give you a shout out Andrew because I think one of the things I'm sorry director Block One of the things that I found really refreshing in our conversation was just how much you really loved Oakland. And you wanted to have everyone know how much you loved all of the opportunities, all of the things that Oakland has. And I think that kind of really positive attitude and that shared love of the city is going to be something that we need to continue in OUSD so that we can again continue to attract students and continue the amazing programs that we have. I think from both of your speeches, just a few things that hit me is just like the call to collectively listen, the call to collectively show leadership on our board and work together, and lastly, the call to take action to support the over 30,000 students in OUSD. and so i just i want to just share that i appreciate those words i appreciate um the um the call to like all of us again like work together with you all to do some of that work this year and along with that i will be meeting with the acc on august 19th to start that conversation with the new acc board but again if there's anything that you all want to work on together or ideas i'm happy to have a conversation about that as well Thank you, and I can't wait to see what you all do in this position.

I will just add, welcome to the board. I look forward to working with you this year. Thank you.

I too just want to thank our student directors for their service already. I had a chance to spend time with you this summer. orientation meetings and I just had a chance to observe your Oh, I just wanna just acknowledge our student directors who have been working already this summer. I had a chance to visit during their orientation and they were truly engaged. They participated in our leadership event for our leaders and their remarks were incredible. I'm gonna make sure that videos of their presentation get shared with all of our leaders and the community. It should be something that we have on our website because they were thoughtful remarks around the issues at hand. I also want to take this opportunity to thank our staff person that works with ACC, Adriana, who has made herself totally available to our students and has been so responsive. We want to acknowledge her because she is so committed to supporting your success. And again, I thank you for participating in the board retreat and all of the activities. You're very much engaged and very helpful in terms of our thinking around next steps. And I look forward to working closely with you.

Thank you.

Next on the agenda.

Madam President? Yes. Sheila Haynes has her hand up again.

Okay, let's try it again.

Allowing them to speak. Sheila Haynes, if you could say a couple of words. You're off mute.

Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, I just want to thank you and welcome to the student board directors. I just want to just ask you to help us and focus on inclusive activities for our students with disabilities. I know the district is in a financial uncertainty, but. I need to ask the district to not take any more music and arts and funding away. It's critical as part of our students' mental health and part of them being educated and for students that have disabilities that they have access to arts and music education. It's also critical as part of our behavior mindset that every student and parent have a culture of respect, that character of love and respect. So we have been fighting for music and arts and also a ban on hate speech because we need to have our students and adults in the most loving spaces. So I ask you student directors to help us to include all of our students, including our disabled students who are learning online to be able to access inclusive activities that they need and help to support.

and thank you for coming to the board and helping to be their voice thank you thank you ms haynes uh with that we will move i know we're a little bit early for psac are your representatives here or okay

I know I'm known for speaking slow, so maybe JD will get here. Hello. Congratulations on getting through the summer, everybody. My name is Matt Glazer. I'm one of the lead delegates for the Parent and Student Advisory Committee, or PSAC. Welcome to the new student directors as well. I just want to go over some things that are on the calendar. Just to make the public aware, we have the PSAC. We have a goal-setting retreat this Saturday. uh... which is on august fifteenth and we're going to be sitting alongside members of other advisory committees uh... and i want to give a special shout out and thank you to superintendent sadler as she is carefully reviewed a lot of the feedback for all of the feedback actually that We presented last June and we will be engaging in a dialogue with the superintendent about that feedback and that shows real engagement. So thank you, Doctor Sadler. We absolutely welcome this important conversation. Our first public meeting of the school year is going to be Wednesday, August 19th. That's next week. We will hold a short organizational meeting at the beginning to review our committee calendar and to confirm our roster of active members. This and all 2627 PSAC meetings will begin at 6 p.m. Thank you, Cynthia. After our meeting, we will join an educational session about the OUSD budget, because there's a lot to get caught up on, and it will be presented by staff, and that session is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. This is open to the public. All the links are on OUSD.org slash calendar. And you can review meeting agendas, documents, and recordings in our folder at OUSD.org slash LCAP. The folder is at the bottom of that page. And it also includes a copy of tonight's presentation, which, oh, look at that. I spoke slowly enough. Hi, JD. I did want to let everybody know to save the dates on a few things. On Wednesday, September 16th, we're actually going to have orientation for members of the school site councils, parent members of the site English language learners subcommittee, and all members of the OUSD community. And it'll be what it means to serve on PSAC and how to join. So if you are interested, please join us for that. On the 23rd of September, We're going to have a roll call of SSC and CELS parent representatives from schools in each electoral district, which is important, and that'll be at 5.30 p.m. And then at six on that same evening, we're going to have SSC and CELS representatives vote to elect members for any vacancies on the PSAC. So we've got a lot coming up. Finally, there has been a lot of mentions of the word engagement already at this school board meeting tonight, which is really great, because I and a couple of the folks up here with me are proud members of the OUSD multi-stakeholder engagement group. And we are an independent, all-volunteer group of OUSD parent leaders, teachers, principals, classified staff, district staff, and community members preparing for the work of reshaping our district. We're building a unified voice that will actually impact decisions, not react to them after the fact. If you want to learn more about this, we have a website at ousd-mseg.org.

And with that, I would like to turn it over to, just in time, JD, for the CAC report.

It's their fault.

I'm, uh, good evening. I'm JD Wallachian. I am the co-chair of the, um, CAC, the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education. And first off, I would like to thank you for voting to adopt the CAC sponsored resolution to promote school stability and belonging for disabled students in OUSD. This is an essential and long awaited policy that protects disabled students. And it ensures that once a disabled student enrolls in a school, they have the choice to attend that school for the entirety of its grade span, just like their non-disabled peers. Our first meeting of the year is Monday, August 17th at 6 p.m. And during the first part of the meeting, about up to 7.20, we're going to have special education staff sharing valuable start of the year information for families, a staffing update, and their wins in the 25-26 school year, and their goals for the 26-27 school year. Starting at around 7.30, CAC members will share our priorities for this year and host a listening session for families. And we will be participating in the goal-setting retreat this Saturday and share our discussion from that at that public meeting. couple other save the dates uh... monday september fourteenth at six p m is a very important meeting for budget development process uh... we are hoping uh... as many people who can attend to attend uh... that's uh... uh... we want to be having uh... important conversations there so please come uh... So that's our main topic, understanding the special education budget. On Monday, October 5th at 6 p.m., pending confirmation with the rest of the committee, we are going to be hosting a CAC School Board Candidates Forum. That's you.

Welcome, everyone, with me to the new year. I'm happy to be here, Cynthia Molina, in support of district advisory committees and overall engagement in our district's plan and budget. And I'm simply here because the two remaining committees meet later in the month and their planning meetings have not yet happened, although they will be participating in the goal-setting retreat on Saturday. So there is a cadence to the committee meetings. They happen regularly in predictable ways, so I'm going to name that. the Parent and Student Advisory Committee on third Wednesdays, encouraging school leaders not to schedule their school site council and other committee meetings on third Wednesdays, because that meeting gathers leaders from school sites.

Excuse me, or the second or fourth Wednesdays? That is true. Because that's school board meetings.

Absolutely.

So let's just leave Wednesdays off everyone's schedule.

Yes, that is actually perfect advice, because special meetings also happen on Wednesdays. Thank you. And Community Advisory Committee for Special Education every second Monday, unless there's a holiday. If there's a holiday, it moves to the next Monday. The District English Language Learner Subcommittee meets on the fourth Thursday of the month. Some exceptions for holidays. And Foster Youth Advisory on the last Tuesday. So if there's a fifth Tuesday, that becomes the Foster Youth Advisory Committee. These calendar of meetings can be found at OUSD.org forward slash LCAP, and also all the links are always in the main district calendar. And knowing that I personally support the mandated advisory committees of OUSD per Ed Code, there are other spaces in which parents organize and engage. So I do hope that we have a more comprehensive presentation about all the work that is happening, whether it's a task force or some other kind of group. And foster youth advisory is the only non-mandated committee that I support. It was based on a very wide listening campaign early in the local control funding formula process because that community of students doesn't have stable representation. And it has been held up. We were the first district in California to form that committee. and it continues. So it's also important work. So thank you for your support of all this and welcome to the new student board directors.

Thank you. Are there any board comments? Thank you. Next on the agenda, I'm sorry. Oh, public comments. Are there public comments on this?

Yes, there are two, Assata Olagbala and Sheila Haynes.

Two minutes each, please.

It's very confusing when you have Proposition 209 that says groups based on race and gender should not get preferential treatment based on race and gender. but we have other group dynamics where those groups can get special treatment. So groups like English language learners and foster students and special ed students as groups, they can get their particular needs addressed. So for African American students, because of Proposition 209, we cannot be put in a group dynamic. We have to ignore by law the needs of african-american students and that's not fair but you are a group that tends to ignore law your sanctuary city that ignores the law you ignore the constitution that says students have to be eighteen to vote so i'm going to implore you ignore Proposition 209 and to start to have African Americans' needs addressed in this district in a substantive way. And don't use the excuse, we can't because of law. Until you have that balance, you said, somebody said we have a unified voice. No, we don't have a unified voice because African American students are being excluded for the concentration. And the concentration of those students, African Americans, are not like any other group because of bias and prejudice, because misinformation about these students, particularly when you're addressing black boys being disciplined differently. being placed in special education. So we got to do something, and that's why I'm here. I'm making it clear, I'm here every meeting, primarily to address the needs of African American students.

Thank you. Ms. Haynes?

I will allow Ms. Haynes to speak.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can hear you, Ms. Haynes.

Hi, thank you. So I just wanted to, well, first of all, unrelated to this, I would really like to ask a special favor that the dial-in issue with Zoom participants be fixed because I have to rush to a computer just to be heard when I'm It's easier for me, I'm really on the go to join by phone. So I hope that can be fixed. But I just wanted to say that I'm very grateful to work alongside of special leaders of this committee. And I have so much love and gratitude to Ms. Cynthia for just keeping us all grounded. I would like to actually just continue on with what I was stating earlier about our most vulnerable students who actually, like I stated, rely on music and arts education for learning. I want to also actually pay tribute to a 57 year educator that I was actually grateful enough to attend a memorial this past Sunday. At a time when I was in school, music and arts education and the arts was very critical for us. And it's most critical at this time as well that you guys please try to figure out a way to not take any more funding from that education. and continue to just work on restorative practices and keeping our students in the most joyful space. So I ask you to please just think about the needs of our students. And I'm really just don't really know what to expect because of the uncertainty with the budget, but also just mandating love and respect. I ask you to please reconsider my resolution for music and arts education and also banning hate speech because we really, we really have to be in a respectful space with all these cuts that are coming and all these uncertainties with services and help that'll really help our students. My son has suffered so much and still learning online and he needs to be able to rely on something really fast, really soon. These are most critical times. So please get together and help our students and thank you for your help.

Thank you. Are there any other speakers?

There are no further speakers for this item, Madam President.

Thank you again to PSAC, CAC for an informative report and to save the date. Next on the agenda is comments from our bargaining units. Don't mean to look directly at you, but did you want to make one? Okay, all right. All right, thanks. Are there any comments online?

I currently see no collective bargaining unit members with their hands raised on Zoom.

With that, we will move on to unfinished business, which is item P126-1700, Oakland Unified School District, 45-day adopted budget revision, fiscal year 2026-27.

I'm sorry, a little closer, thanks.

And I believe we have a presentation from Ms. Gard? Thank you.

Good evening, board, community, student, directors, superintendent. Thank you for the opportunity to bring forward the 45-day revision with my team. The 45-day revision updates our adopted budget to reflect the state budget act signed in June, and it is due to the county within 45 days of that signing. I'm pleased to turn over to Troy Christmas, who will walk you through the 45 day revise. Troy has earned the trust of our staff and our families over many years, and I'm glad to have him lead you through this work.

So Troy.

All right, great. Good evening, directors. Welcome back to school. Welcome, student directors. Good to see you. We'll be talking with you in the future. As I think Director Hutchinson said, we need you engaged. And so happy to have you. To our parents and community and all those who are watching us online, My name is Troy Christmas. I'm going to get started right away. So as Ms. Gard indicated, the purpose of the 45-day revise update is to make sure that school districts who often adopt their budgets before the state adopts its budget have the opportunity to update their budgets once the state has finally enacted the state budget at the end of June or the beginning of July. And that's what the purpose is. sometimes there's no material changes so if you look back in our history we don't always have a forty five they revise in many times in the recent past we have had changes and so that's what this report is really to do uh... the deadline is miss guard said is forty five days after the state adopts its budget so we're a day ahead of that uh... deadline so that's what we're here to do come on mister clicker give me the clicker i got technical difficulties here I have a Wi-Fi jamming. All right, went backwards, so now can I go forward? Where is the, there we go. More. There we go, all right, thank you. Okay, so I wanted first to place the 45-day revise in the the trajectory in the direction of where our reports are as you know you've got the budget in june that's the primary work in june uh... but finance people often say school districts are operating in three years at the same time and so when we adopted in june we also had a multi-year projection for future years And then the work after June 30th is to take in all the last receipts, all the invoices, the last payroll, and put that activity together so that we get a full understanding of last year, 25-26. That's part of the work. So we're looking back, we're looking forward, and we're looking at the 2026-27 year. And so in August, we do the update on the budget based on the state's Changes in the state's budget. And then we come right back in September to give you the unaudited actions, which is the look back at 2526. 2526 sets the starting balance for this year, 2627. So until 2526 is closed, you don't know really the starting balance for this year. And so they all go together, which is why we're working in multiple years. at the same time and then your first full look at this year's budget in terms of what's actually happening after the first payroll hits and everything else comes at the first interim which is not listed here but is in December. And so that's how these things sort of fit in order. Oh maybe there's a delay, maybe that's what it is. And so here, I want to summarize what the highlights are. At 45-day, we're projecting higher revenue than included in the adopted budget. While this improves our financial position, as you will see, we still need to protect reserves and reduce ongoing deficit spending. So what are the revenue highlights? I'll just highlight two primary ones. Most of you have heard about what's called a Super Cola. So our cost of living adjustment went from 2.87, and in the enacted budget by the state, it was 4.31%, which was an additional $8 million. And I want to flag that that $8 million was unrestricted, and so that becomes important. uh... and then eighty six oh two support special education uh... the twenty five twenty six allotment was nine hundred and seventeen dollars per eighty eight at budget adoption we had raised that to nine hundred and ninety nine dollars per eighty eight and at the state adoption of the budget it was thirteen which uh... roughly twelve million dollars a little bit more than a little bit more than twelve million dollars now going to uh... that particular source while it is restricted it is able to reduce our contribution from restricted to unrestricted so that helps the unrestricted fund balance we can talk more about that in questions if that's not clear And then we had cost considerations. So there are new rules. There are software taxes. There's implementation of paid leave that's mentioned there and sort of delayed. We don't know exactly what that's going to cost. So there are new costs that come along with new revenues, but the net result is we've improved our financial position because the new revenues are higher than the new costs. Yeah. Well, since I'm stuck here, I'll mention one other thing. There are some, you see, ELOP didn't go up much from budget adoption to 45-day, but we also have some opportunities to apply for additional grants. And so those may come in, although we need to apply for them to get those money. Thank you. all right and so this is more than the uh... expanded detail in the summary i just gave which is that uh... the forty five day update shows that the state budget improves already improving condition this is partially due to and over conservative approach or conservative approach when we did our adoptions and we did our adoption we'd heard about the super cola being four point three one but it didn't get put into the budget until we did the forty five day uh... and so That helped us most. And that's what we're going to need to continue to do. We need continued discipline in terms of how we are budgeting. And I'll give you some of the factors that are driving that. We have expected costs from outstanding labor negotiations that need to be considered. We have continued cost growth in certain programs. including special education but not limited to special education uh... we have continued spin down of restricted fund balances so at the june adoption if you go through that multi-year projection you'll see that while we have shored up uh... and have a plan to shore up the unrestricted general fund the restricted general fund is showing deficits on into the future now Part of that is purposeful in that we have balances that are in resources that are to serve children, and so we need to, or students, so we need to spend that money down, but those deficits can't continue indefinitely. And then there's uncertainty about the beginning balances, and that's what I mentioned earlier, that you don't know what the starting balance is for 26-27 until you've closed the books on 25-26. Your ending balance for 25-26, the amount of money that you end in your savings account, at the end of twenty five twenty six is the amount you beginning your savings account at the beginning of twenty six twenty seven we've got some batteries okay i go backwards go forward there might be something in that SOMETHING IN THAT. AND SO HERE, MUCH OF THE SAME INFORMATION, THE PIECE OF NEW INFORMATION I WANT TO SHARE HERE IS THE CENTRAL POINT THAT THE 45-DAY UPDATE IS CONSISTENT WITH BUDGET ADOPTION IN TERMS OF DIRECTION AT THE GENERAL FUND LEVEL. THE PROJECTED 26-27 UNRESTRICTED ENDING FUND BALANCE AS WE KNOW IT AS A 45-DAY IS 53 MILLION AND THE RESTRICTING ENDING BALANCE IS 86 MILLION. And I've got something I want to note on a further slide about that number. And so underneath that are some of the details that go along in changing that revenue. The enrollment, which is a part of revenue. Our ADA, which is a part of calculation of our unrestricted revenue. and the amount that that turned into, which is $8 million additional. You're going to do it for me. That's even better, man. Oh, you're testing. All right, that's fine. That's good. That's good. And so the out-year pattern is clear. OUSD can remain solvent, but only if 26-27 is treated as a stabilization year and not a restoration year. What in the world does a stabilization year versus a restoration year mean? STABILIZATION MEANS WE MADE SOME PRETTY EMERGENCY MEASURES TO GET INTO THIS YEAR, AND OUR UNRESTRICTED FUND BALANCE IS STABILIZED, BUT I'LL REMIND FOLKS THAT THAT $53 MILLION ENDING FUND BALANCE PROJECTION IS INCLUSIVE OF A $30 MILLION REDUCTION OR ADJUSTMENT THAT HAS NOT YET MATERIALIZED AND HAS NOT YET BEEN IMPLEMENTED. and so if you take that off then that number is twenty three which is above your two percent and below your three uh... so that's one part of it uh... and the other thing that a stabilization year means is that you are moving to the place where your ongoing revenue is higher than your ongoing expenses. We're not there. If you look at the combined, we have deficits going forward. Those deficits have shifted from unrestricted, which is relatively stable, to restricted. And we had more money in our restricted savings account. Wonderful. But you can't do deficits forever. That restricted balance is now going down. And we'll have to make changes. so that it doesn't continue to go down, particularly at the rate. So the one thing that I wanted to note on this slide, the main thing I wanted to articulate is, thank you, I have it, but I have like multiple pieces of paper. I don't actually need it for that. Expenditures on the restricted side in this slide are under reported here. We found an error after it was posted. And so they are under reported. And what that means is for the restricted you can see the difference is 37 million deficit. That 37 million deficit will be higher once we report it, once we put the correction in.

It will not- Point of clarification, can you just tell us what the correct number is? We can do the math ourselves. So what is the correction?

Would love to tell you the correct number, What we've decided to do as a team, because we found a correction at such a late time, is to go back and scrub everything and bring it back to you fully with the details.

So that misses the timeline for a 45-day revision. So can you please tell us what the working number is now? We're in charge of the budget and the finances, so I don't know why information is being withheld from us as a board.

What we're doing is making an effort to make sure you get accurate information and given the lateness of determining that there was an error, we don't want to compound that error by giving you another error. And so that's, that's, that's.

So, so which numbers are on here? Are we disregarding as erroneous in this presentation?

Are we at questions? Because I can start questions, but just let me know.

No, but you're presenting this as the document. Now you're telling us that the number is in error. So I just want to be clear what number is in error since it's not going to be corrected. So which number on here is in error so we can be explicit?

I think you should go ahead with your presentation and hold that for a question.

Superintendent Sadler, can we please be told what number is an error? You can't give us a presentation and tell us it's an error and not tell us where the error is. So if you identified it and you don't know what the real answer is, that's fine. Tell us which number, I mean, look, there's only 15 numbers on this chart. Which one is erroneous? So we know. How would you like me to proceed?

Go ahead and answer that.

Sure, so as I said, expenditures in restricted are understated if the expenditures in restricted are understated by math the difference is understated so that the difference will be higher if the difference is higher than the amount that you subtract from your beginning balance is higher and your ending balance would be lower so the place where the error is is in the restricted expenditures and that flows through to all of the others

Thank you, and just any estimate on what kind of size this error is? Are we talking about just 100,000? He's going to continue with his presentation, Director Hutchinson. Or is this an error? 5% of 500 million would produce a $25 million error. So can we just at least have a working figure so we know what we're talking about, please?

Director Hutchinson, I would respectfully ask that we complete the process. And can you make a note of your questions so that we can-

Respectfully, this is the process. You're presenting numbers for the 45 day revision and they're not accurate. So I'm trying to get as clear of an idea as somebody who has fiduciary responsibility. I'm trying to get a good idea of what the numbers are, because we were just told the deficit's bigger than what's listed here, but we're not being given any idea. I just want an estimate so we know what we're talking about.

And at the question and answer section, you can get that estimate. I'd like Director...

Okay, so I don't know how anyone can vote for this when we don't know what the numbers actually are.

Well, we'll have a point to ask questions and make comments. If you could go ahead, please.

Sure. All right, so with that notation, the result is the same. And what do I mean by the result is the same? The result is we have an unrestricted side of the general fund, which is... improved and continues to improve. And on the restricted side, we have a higher deficit than what's reported there, but a deficit spend on the restricted side. And if you go to the next slide, I will... Oh, you got it. Give it back to me. You still got it. Yeah, you drive, man. I'm fine with that. You go ahead and drive. So what that leads to... So this is a... multi-year, or at least a summary of a multi-year projection. And what you'll see in the multi-year projection is that this is combined unrestricted and restricted. It shows deficits in each year, that difference line is negative in each year. Those deficits are primarily restricted. And so to Director Hutchinson's point, The trajectory needs to be changed. The speed at which it needs to be changed won't adjust much based on our understanding of the error that was found. But it does, that trajectory of negative numbers needs to change, and it's primarily on the restricted side of the budget.

And that would mean that the error is reflected in these numbers as well that are carrying forward the expenditures and restricted from this year. So where we see 26, 27 budget and total expenditures and the difference, those numbers are erroneous also based on the erroneous number for restricted expenditures.

I'm going to ask out of respect to the presenter that he be allowed to contribute to finish, I'm sorry, his presentation and that we hold our questions. You can ask those questions when the error, yes. You can ask that question again in the question and answer period. That's great. Can we let Mr. Christmas continue with his presentation, please?

All right. As we indicated, the main difference that you'll see here in 26-27 is the increase in revenue that we have shown on the prior slides, the recognition of that revenue, including the higher LCFF COLA, and also where we had increases in federal, state, and local revenues. And that's where the increases in revenues come from. There were some smaller projected increases in particularly certificated salaries, books and supplies, but total expenditure increases less than the total revenue. And the story that I want, or the point of this from the math that you're seeing here is that you aren't running out of funding, you're not going bankrupt, you're not insolvent, but you have deficit problem that needs to be addressed. All right, you can drive to the next one. All right, so this is sort of summarizing what I was saying there. We project that 25-26 closes with an ending balance that will support our local stabilization and will support the efforts that were ongoing. And so that means for 26-27 that the budget that we've adopted and now we have updated will leave us meeting the three percent if all of that uh... if all of that in terms of both the twenty five twenty six closing as well as the thirty million dollars that we talked about needing adjustment then we would uh... meet our three percent and be slightly above that MULTI-YEAR GAP, I MENTIONED THAT IN TERMS OF WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE RESTRICTED FUNDS AND THAT WE HAVE TO ADJUST THOSE OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS. NOT GOING TO RESTATE. THAT'S PRETTY MUCH WHAT I SAID. I'M NOT GOING TO RESTATE WHAT'S THERE. I THINK YOU GOT THE POINT OF WHERE WE ARE AND WHAT WE NEED TO DO. GO TO THE NEXT ONE. I'M READY FOR YOUR QUESTIONS. GO AHEAD.

So we'll take one round of questions. Director Hutchinson.

Thank you. You know, this isn't acceptable, Superintendent Sadler. You gave us a 45-day revision report with two charts of numbers in it. And now we're told here that the numbers that we were presented and just these two charts of numbers are erroneous. And we're not even told what the real number is or how much of an error it is. So that means the total expenditures listed on here is erroneous if the restricted expenditures are erroneous. That means the total difference is erroneous. So I don't understand what's happening if we can't get proper numbers, even put it for what we are planning on expending in total expenditures. Now this is on top of the bad numbers that were put in the budget in the first place. Where line B10 from the multi-year projection, when it got turned into the proposed budget, the $30 million placeholder disappeared. And then a $30 million plug was added on top of that into the budget. As Mr. Christmas mentioned, there's no addressing the $30 million plug in this presentation at all. The $30 million plug on budget line 4395. And we know that that plug represents 30 million in cuts that never happened. So we know there's not a surplus in the unrestricted, there's a deficit. No matter how many op-eds the board president or vice president put out claiming differently, there's a budget deficit in the unrestricted. And we knew that at budget adoption, which was not acceptable. Now we get these numbers here today, and in this presentation, WE CAN SEE THAT ACTUALLY EXPENDITURES FROM THE ADOPTED BUDGET TO THE 45-DAY REVISION, TOTAL EXPENDITURES BEFORE THE ERROR WERE UP 17 MILLION. HOW HAVE EXPENDITURES GONE UP 17 MILLION IN TWO MONTHS? AND OF THAT 17 MILLION, 8 MILLION IS UNRESTRICTED, WHICH MEANS WE HAVEN'T ADDRESSED THE $30 MILLION PLUG DEFICIT. WE'VE ACTUALLY ADDED 8 MILLION IN EXPENDITURES. We have no fiscal solvency plan, no strategic plan. This is the second year now of having no school board or superintendent work plan. We get a presentation on a 45 day revision, which was not done in consultation with the county or FICMAT. And now we're told the numbers were being presented are erroneous and you can't tell us what the real numbers are or how much of an error it is. What are we doing here? How does this even work like this? And the last thing about on here, besides the fact that we are rating restricted dollars of Measure N, Measure G1, Prop 28, and the charter office. is the numbers are listed here in the revenues and expenditures as total. So I want to know how much revenue and expenditures exist in unrestricted versus how much exists in restricted. I want a firm number on what the contribution currently is from unrestricted to restricted, because that's the only way to determine what's going on. So you need to tell us what that contribution number is. Otherwise, the numbers have changed by almost $2 million compared to the adopted budget. And so just lastly, on the adopted budget, we had unrestricted revenue of $528 million and expenditures of $366 million. When you look on this revision, it says total revenues and sources, $401 million. That's $127 million less. So I assume that's the contribution from the unrestricted to restricted, but when you don't have that document, who knows? So what's the contribution? What's the plan to address the plug? And what is the total amount of restricted spending expenditures that are projected for this year? But I really want to know the contribution number because you know, Mr. Christmas, otherwise this is worthless if you don't include the number that's being transferred from unrestricted to restricted. So can we please have that firm number? Can I please have the number of projected expenditures and restricted? And I want anyone to tell me what the plan is for the $30 million plug that exists within the budget to begin with. Thank you.

All right. I heard a lot of questions in there. I'm certainly not going to be able to answer the detail on each of them. With regard, you have three? Oh, if you can give me one, two, three, then that would really help.

What is the contribution currently from unrestricted to restricted? What is the plan to address the plug and the $30 million in cuts to unrestricted that's already been budgeted? And what is the true number for projected expenditures in the restricted since you told us that that's erroneous?

Great, thank you. So at budget adoption, I'm going to, TALKING RANGES, BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE THE SPECIFIC DOLLARS IN HERE. THAT YOU HAVE WHAT WAS ADOPTED.

I HAVE THE ADOPTED BUDGET RIGHT HERE IF YOU NEED IT.

GREAT, THEN YOU CAN HELP ME. WHAT WAS THE ADOPTED BUDGET NUMBER FOR CONTRIBUTIONS FROM UNRESTRICTED TO RESTRICTED?

147,322,061.71. THAT NUMBER IS DOWN BY ABOUT 13 MILLION. AT THE 45 DAY. SO WE'RE JUST DOING ABOUTS NOW?

I don't have a spreadsheet in front of me with that number for you.

So wait, does anyone here from staff actually have access to the current 40, the budget line items of the 45-day budget revision? Nobody can give a firm number on what the contribution is?

So there is a SACS form that has that level of detail at budget adoption and our statutory first interim second interim and in the case we do third interim most of the time in between then we do updates there's not a full sax form necessarily and so all of that detail is not there so we just do about the whole year without those things i mean come on somebody needs to be able to have a firm number because if you don't know the firm contribution number you couldn't have made this chart

because this says total revenue and sources total expenditures and uses that implies that includes the contribution so there had to have been a number developed and the fact that nobody can tell the number nobody can get on their laptop and get into the form that's hard to believe because of the number has to exist otherwise how is anyone doing this work and deriving these other numbers to begin with

Two things. One, didn't know if you want to have your presentation happen that way. I can go back to my spreadsheet and try to pull up those different items, at least with respect to the contribution, so I can tell you $13 million and exactly how much. I do have access to it, but didn't know we wanted to do that with questions. What we proposed to do was to take questions that we have here and come back and provide all the detail to those questions so that we can go back and provide all that detail.

My last comments are I strongly disagree. I would expect our staff to be prepared when they present to answer questions about the numbers that come up. And the numbers that I'm asking you are not complicated numbers. And if you have access to it, then what I would expect is somebody takes a minute, there's multiple staff members here, pulls it up on their laptop, and that number can be presented right here publicly to the community. Because I don't know how I'm supposed to vote on anything budget related when I'm not even being provided the numbers. And I don't know how anyone else here is going to vote on anything when they're told that there's errors and people don't know what the number is. That should set off alarms. Why are there even errors in the first place?

I'm sorry, do you want to answer his other two questions? Sure, I heard two other questions.

He wanted details on restricted expenditures. That's the one I said that we expected to come back at unaudited and provide all of the detail. Whatever questions folks want to bring to us, we can take them and bring them back formally so that folks can have it. And then the last one was the plan. I'm going to say something very briefly, and if Ms. Gard wants to add to that. At budget adoption, I believe, we did have a board item on the stabilization plan. And in that, we identified $41 million of action items that we were laying out to get to the $30 million. So a number larger than $30 million to get to And so that was, we're still operating under that, and that's what the intention is.

No, those cuts were reflected in the adopted budget. That's just not true, that's not a separate plan. Those cuts that were made last year were reflected in the adopted budget. The $30 million plug was put on line item. In addition to those cuts that had come forward. Director Hutchinson, I believe other members have questions. That's just not accurate. And I don't know what's going to happen here, but this is unacceptable. And the numbers, your numbers tell a different story than that. And I won't let anyone stand up here and say that something happened that didn't happen. This is the whole problem.

Director Hutchinson, I believe that there are seven other board members that may have questions. Thank you.

But why don't they have the same question about what are the real numbers if there's these errors here? Well, we don't know what their questions are. Well, I know. I don't hear you asking it. This should be your job as the board president and a member of the Budget and Finance Committee to demand that we have accurate numbers before we vote. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars here, and we're being told about in errors.

I would like to hear from our other board colleagues as well. Director Thompson, do you have any questions?

Yes. First, I want to go on record as saying that I was not at the board meetings the last part of June. Therefore, I am not going to be held responsible for a budget that was passed that I did not vote for. I do want that to be on record. The one concern that I have, and I've been thinking about this for weeks, and that is what type of, and I'm reducing the grain size of this now because I think it's important to do so. I spoke to several senior leadership persons and told them I wanted to do this. Reduce the grain size, that is. What types of movement from restricted to unrestricted did we actually make? And I'm asking that question because I don't want us to be put in a litigious situation where someone could come back and take all of our funds because we've done something that was so egregious. So can you help me there? Can you just give me an example of what we did from restricted to unrestricted? Just an example.

Sure. So what we've... DONE AS THE PART OF THE STRATEGY THAT'S RELATED TO SHIFTS IS WE HAVE IDENTIFIED UNRESTRICTED EXPENSES THAT ARE CURRENTLY BEING PAID FOR OR BUDGETED TO BE PAID FOR FROM UNRESTRICTED RESOURCES, IDENTIFY WHAT A RESTRICTED RESOURCE MIGHT BE. AND SO, FOR EXAMPLE, IN SPECIAL EDUCATION WE MET WITH THEM RECENTLY AND THERE ARE MUCH OF THEIR BUDGET IS DIRECT SERVICES TO STUDENTS AND NEEDS TO BE PAID OUT OF THOSE FUNDS. BUT THEY HAVE SOME SERVICES, AND NOT JUST SERVICES, BUT SOME OVERHEAD AND STAFFING THAT IS NOT DIRECT SERVICES TO STUDENTS, WHICH WE CAN TAKE OUT OF THE CONTRIBUTION, WHICH IS ESSENTIALLY UNRESTRICTED, AND MOVE TO AN APPROPRIATE RESTRICTED RESOURCE. AND SO IN EACH OF THE CASES WHERE WE'RE MOVING THINGS TO RESTRICTED RESOURCES, THERE ARE MULTIPLE STEPS which include the people who are managing those resources in the district, understanding what the allowability rules are, and then consultation with both our auditors and the county.

Dr. Lotta?

Yeah, thank you very much for the presentation, and I think the understanding that there will be multiple you know that the next update with the kind of the most accurate numbers that we have will be with unaudited actuals um and i think just for the i mean i think like we know it's in september but do you my first question is just for clarification for the public is when do you anticipate having that come to board for Um, for review so that people can see that and then comment on it. And then I think my, well, maybe, you know, my answering that question first, then I'll get to my second one.

I think that the commitment was to take all of the questions plus the concern that was raised today and to make sure that we have that in a written document that would be presented along with, or at least available along with the unaudited actuals. We didn't internally talk about a separate timeline before that. So it would be the same. publishing timeline.

I'm just wondering, just for clarification, would that be the second meeting in September?

Yes, it's before September 15th. I think it's September 10th this year.

So that'd be the first meeting in September, the second Wednesday.

It has to be before September 15th, so I think it's September 10th.

Is it the 9th? it's the ninth ninth okay i'm wrong by a day um okay so then we'll get those updates on september 9th and then um and then i think for you know i think for tonight i think just to clarify for the public and certainly like you know as the chair of the budget and finance committee this we're not actually voting on this correct it's an acceptance as written in the agenda so there's not a um it's not a voting item And I do think obviously we've got additional upcoming. So the next, I think as you said in budget and finance, the next kind of most full picture of our financial position is around first interim, because then we'll have not just the closing of the books, but we'll have the start and first payrolls kind of all wrapped up. in the first interim presentation. I'm just wondering what are some of the biggest assumptions between now and December when we get first interim that we should be tracking?

You say assumptions?

yeah so for example like we for i'll just use a example which is like federal revenue we don't know accurately until i think october first um so i just think it would be helpful if you have you know there's a few other things that you all understand are either not included in the 45-day revise that will materially change the first interim um that we should, you know, that I think people should be aware of.

Currently there is no, there's been no change in the federal revenue, so it was booked as it normally would be. Yes, we get, their fiscal year is different than ours, and so in October we'll get more detail. Depending on what happens there, that could materially impact this 26-27, the 26-27 budget. The other big thing, which we've already noted, is how we end in 25-26 sets the starting position for 26-27. That's the other thing that we are aware of. As you mentioned, when we do a compensation increase, it's an estimate that we send to the county. That's the estimate that you see in the AB-1200. When first payroll hits, that estimate turns into reality. And so when the first big payroll, not the first payroll, the first payroll is in July, but the first big payroll hits once all the teachers are back, then you see how good your estimate was.

sure i just want to thank you very much for the presentation um and you know i know it's a work in progress um so thank you for sharing that we look forward to seeing what you have uh coming up in the next month i think that when is the budget committee meeting first thursday of every month six to eight in the committee room first thursday so that would be the first introduction to make sure that all the numbers are aligned and ready to go and then we'll move it to the board work so i i understand you know how you're doing your due diligence thank you very much and i just want to continue to support you as you move forward um we have you know part of the report that i really like seeing is that Our revenues have risen higher than our expenses, and so we've got to stay on that trajectory, continue to move forward. I know there are some other expenses that haven't been added in, but I think we're moving in the right direction. I think what we also continue to talk about is that You know, I think we've done a decent job moving forward because of the fact that at one time we received $285 million in COVID funds. And trying to reduce our spending and get on the right path has taken us a while. And we're closer than ever, actually, which is finding a balanced budget. So I'm really excited that we're very close to... getting it to the place that we need to be. So I just want to thank you for your work. Look forward to first Thursday to see what those new numbers look like. And then I can start asking you questions. All the other stuff is hypothetical. You're just coming up with some hypothetical and it's really hard unless you really have the actual numbers. So thank you for being honest and sharing that. And we just look forward to seeing you on the first Thursday again. Thank you very much.

Hi, thank you for the presentation. I have three quick comments before I get to my question. The first is in response to what Director Williams said, and I hope that you'll clarify. So I guess this is a question, but not the question I intended to ask, just responding. He mentioned revenues increasing faster than expenditures, and I think part of The conversation that we were having or attempting to have earlier and board comments was about that. Like I noticed that expenditures fell 23 million and I don't is that part of what is being will be corrected when we see the updated data and just clarify is the observation that director Williams made is that accurate because I'm not reading it that way. And so I think that that would be important for all of us.

Sure. So what I was Trying to articulate, and I think I said it two different ways, that our overall picture is revenues are less than expenditures. From budget adoption to 45-day, our revenues are higher. The change in revenues is higher than the change in expenses. And that should remain the same when we give updated numbers. But expenses are still higher. And since I got the mic, I'm going to piggyback on something you said, Director Williams, about the $285 million. That $285 million in part was buying us time to get our financial house in order. And we didn't fully do it. And these shifts from unrestricted to restricted are buying us a little more time. But we still have to deal with what Director Hutchinson said, is that expenditures are higher than revenue.

My second comment, I plan to accept 45-day revision. I care even more about the unaudited actuals. So I want to understand what I'm looking at today. That is the intent of my questions. And related, I do think because what we see today isn't an accurate picture, and I don't understand how updating one value has a cascading effect on anything else. So maybe you can address that because that'll help me understand how significant that is. And then I do believe that because we're accepting something today, I would feel more comfortable if instead of us receiving an update in a month from today, it was as soon as possible, as soon as feasible, whenever that is. And I'm assuming that because it was due today, that it could be faster than the second meeting in September. I think he said the second. The first meeting in September, okay. Thank you. And then to my question, because I think those are all my comments. On slide nine, there is this language, reconciliation of expected costs. And I wanted to know... whether we have an estimate for what costs aren't currently factored in. And without it, if we don't have that number, whether you're able to comment on where it's trending. Because I'm assuming that that will impact the ending balance in some way. And so I just want to know how vulnerable it is.

Sure. The primary piece here is the unaudited actual so that you know what happened in twenty five twenty six of the you know where your starting point is for twenty six twenty seven uh... and so that's the point in which you've reconciled all of those costs uh... and you put them in and then the other piece that's mentioned there that we talked a little bit about was uh... having first payroll done understanding that the estimate we put in did the compensation increase is showing up exactly the same or close enough to the same It's never, I think that there's this idea that a budget is fixed. If I create a salary increase and all of you are first-year teachers and you all leave and become, and we hire fifth-year teachers, the budget's wrong because the fifth-year teacher gets paid more than the first-year teacher. So there are things that are beyond our control. We set the terms and then people move around. Some people show up and get hired. Other people don't. People get hired delayed. That's a salary savings when you expect to hire somebody in July, but you don't hire them until September. That July to September piece, you get to bank that. I mean, it is a very live document, any budget. And so what we recorded as a 45-day will be different in terms of operating on 46-day. The point is not to have it be materially different and not track it. That's the primary point. And then there was a question in one of your comments about how one number cascades and impacts another number. Our general fund is split between unrestricted and restricted. And by and large, except for the contribution that Director Hutchinson mentioned, they operate separately. So a change in an expenditure line in restricted is not changing what's going on in unrestricted. But if you have a change in expenditures in restricted, then the difference between revenue and expenditures has now changed because expenditures have changed. So if your rent is $500 and you make $1,000, if your rent goes to $700, you only have $300 left as opposed to $500 left. And so that cascades through. I hope that helps.

It does. It does make me wonder to what extent the numbers that we care about, like the beginning and the end fund balance, will change when we see them. But we'll get there.

thank you so i just wanted to highlight a few things and then i'll get to some of my questions but again from this document it does look like our fiscal picture is better than it was before with our ending fund balances improving by 22.9 million the projected deficit again is smaller than we are projecting and the cola we were projecting a 2.87 assumption for a cola but it actually is 4.31 so that is almost double We've received, again, additional special education funding from the state that looks about to be $12 million more for OUSD. And then again, there's additional resources in the block grant of $18.5 million. And lastly, I think most importantly, we remain locally governed versus otherwise. The two questions that I have is from your understanding and vantage point, what drove the increase in $22.9 million in improvements in our budget? And then what does the additional $8 million in LCFF funding actually mean for our schools?

I'm going to do the accounting in terms of the math of it. How we choose to use that additional $8 million is a decision that we'll have to make. I will just point out, as has been indicated in this meeting, is that our budget includes $30 million of yet-to-be-implemented reductions. And so without those, we would need... Without those reductions, we would not be at the 3% that we're trying to be at. So I don't know if the decision would be to spend $8 million on something when we're trying to reduce $30 million over here. So that's not my decision. I'm accounting for the math of it. And then was there a separate question?

Yeah, the improvement of the $22.9 million. Sure. So let me go to this slide.

so overall you have a increase in revenue of 35 million roughly and so our expenditures in increased by about 13 and that left us with the 22 and that's that's essentially where that comes from so if you took all and because this is combined right so if you take the unrestricted increases that we talked about and the restricted increases that we talked about. It's about 35 million.

Thank you. Student Director Block.

No questions at this point.

Student Director Tongan.

Yeah, I have one question since we're like entering our student director position and like learning about the budget and whatnot. My question is like what is defined as restricted and unrestricted when discussing like the budget?

Great question. It used to be really, really clear. In general, unrestricted means what it sounds like, which is that these resources are unrestricted or flexible in how you can use them. Restricted used to mean or still does mean that the use of those resources is restricted by whoever gave it to you so if you we get money from sales force corporation or their their grant grant issuing uh... body they restrict how we can use that money we get title one money it's restricted in terms of how we can use it and so in general Restricted has rules that whoever gave the money requires you to follow. And unrestricted is more use it in the best interest of students. And you can use it broadly. in broad strokes. There have been changes in the law that some of the unrestricted money is not as flexible as it used to be. And for example, we got a block grant and the block grant money comes in as unrestricted, but they tell you you can do whatever you want with it, or not whatever you want, but the allowable uses are very broad. And so there's been some change, but in general, it's what you would think for unrestricted versus restricted.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for your presentation I do have a couple of questions and one is one I'm sorry that I'm asked a lot which is explaining the 30 million dollar deficit and you know I was gonna ask here it's like and also how do we see How do we see dealing with that over time? Because I understand it's not over one year, but what does that look like over a multi-year?

I'm going to have a clarifying, but that's okay.

Okay, you go ahead and clarify.

When you say $30 million deficit, so what we're showing right now, and I'm talking unrestricted only, so let's stay with unrestricted, is that we're showing, I don't like using the word surplus, but that's the technical term, We're showing a $53 million surplus in unrestricted. That $53 million surplus includes an expectation that we're going to implement $30 million in reductions. If you chose not to do that, even though we've chosen to do it and we're in the process of implementing, if you chose not to do that, then that unrestricted surplus would be 23 million. The unrestricted balance would be 23 million. That 23 million would be more than 2% and less than 3%. responsibility that we're working toward is to make sure that we are above three percent and so we're moving forward with that work to make sure that we do that thank you and can you give an idea of what moving forward in that work looks like at this point sure so as i mentioned at budget adoption we identified areas that added up to forty one point i think it's forty one point five million dollars in areas to look at implementing with the understanding that you don't get all of that money. It doesn't always come in exactly at the amount that you would want. And so we'd be moving forward with that. And so it's the reductions in spending that were there. It's the shifts that were there, all that. We're moving forward with all those things.

Thank you. And then my last question is, I really appreciated your really stressing that budgets are moving documents, that as we again look at our unaudited actuals and we look at our first interim. Can you explain, I guess, how maybe it's the same question director lotta had kind of what we can expect what we would look at um i know we've talked about getting updates on on expenditures and revenues um throughout the you know different in our board meetings can you explain what kinds of things we might expect to see moving in those actuals and in the first dinner what would you see i know you mentioned like payroll oh no i think i think

When I'm looking at a financial statement, I'm looking for variances. I'm looking for what changed by how much and does it matter. That's what I'm looking for. So when you get the first interim and the unaudited actuals, they will be in the SACS format with much more detail. And when you get that much more detail, what we'll be looking at is, is this in line with what we thought? Is it not in line with what we thought? If it's not in line with what we thought, how far off is it? Is it off in the positive direction or is it off in a negative direction? Same thing at first interim and probably, you know, more important because you can do something about first interim. Close of the books is close. But at first interim, We have an expectation of what our salary compensation costs are going to be. Are we under that? Are we above it? Where are we in relation to that? And alongside that, the budget balancing solutions that we've talked about in that $30 million, are they showing up? How far have we moved? Are they showing up in reductions? And to what extent, right? Because you're looking for material change. That's how I would look at both of those.

Okay, my last comment then is I think it would really be helpful when we get those to get that narrative piece that really does look at those trends, maybe looks at previous years, you know, again, so that we can see as a board where we're, what the trends in spending are, what the trends in revenue are, where we need to look as we do budget adoption in the fall, in the spring, sorry. Thank you. A point of clarification.

I'm going to have a second round. Okay, we can go second.

Second round. I'm going to start with Director Berry.

So these are questions that I'm just stating in part for documentation for the record but I think will be if you're able to respond to them between now and unaudited actuals that is the intent so that whatever we the discussion we have on that day can be incredibly generative. So the first is how much of the changes that we see today at the 45 day, but that we'll see at the unaudited actuals are going to be contributions to one time shifts versus structural shifts that will benefit us beyond this year. Can we have the targets or estimated savings for each strategy added to the stabilization document? And can we see those numbers organized unrestricted versus restricted side by side? And then I also asked this question at the Budget and Finance Committee meeting, but what direction do you need from us in order to move forward with implementing the stabilization plan we approved in June? Related to that, what are the barriers? How can we help?

I didn't hear a question that we could answer. Now I heard. the details that you wanted to have, and I heard you ask before that it be as soon as possible, or what could we get sooner than unaudited so that that conversation could be generative. I'm gonna have to talk with the team to be specific about that, but did take note of all those.

Director Williams.

Thank you. Just a question of trying to better understand our contributions over the last multiple years. I think there's a narrative there as well that we haven't fully told the story of how our costs have increased. I think it's at $147 million, somewhere around there, which is more than 26, 27%. You know, let me see, 500 million, 20 plus percent. And so I think there's a narrative there that we haven't really been able to educate the community on and how we are managing that and the challenges we face and, you know, how we... You know how it has an impact on how we move forward so hopefully you can. Think about that. I mean, it has increased over the last. You know, multiple years, but also we're under pressure from the federal government. and it's not really clear when those monies are coming in as well and so that will have a future impact on us as we move forward so i just think that there are conversations there or narratives there that we need to be preemptive at times you know because i think that you know where yes there's millions of dollars here but we're not you know hundreds of millions of dollars going to be transferred and we have to really be able to educate the community and how we're doing that that's all thank you

yeah i um i wanted to um maybe ask a clarifying question about the um 30 million dollar um reduction target for the current year because when we look at the unrestricted balance ending somewhere over you know 53 million and change And you have mentioned that if we did not implement the $30 million, then our unrestricted balance goes to $23 million, which is over 2%, but it's under the board policy of 3%. Am I correct in remembering that the 3% is around $29 million? Correct. So then the difference then between what would be 2% and what would be 3% would be roughly $6 million. Correct. So I'm just, and I agree with keeping the 30 million. So I just want to stipulate that. I'm not trying to suggest that we reduce it, but I'm wondering if you can, if there's a couple of reasons why the team is moving forward with the $30 million, given that our revenue picture has improved with the adoption. of the state budget. So, you know, for example, and I think this came up at Budget and Finance, but I just wanted to clarify that, right, there might be some people in the community that think, well, I'm looking at, even if you don't do those $30 million, you'd still be, maybe you only need to do six. So why aren't you planning to do just six? Why are you moving forward with 30 in the plan?

current we are following the last direction of the board so when if when and if that direction shifts then we will shift how our planning goes so that that's that's what we're moving forward with and while reducing it to a different number might be something that might be mathematically possible. We're aware of other expenses that are on the horizon, not necessarily totaling $30 million, but more than the six, that we all would need to take in consideration in terms of making that kind of adjustment.

yeah i think that's i mean i guess that's sort of the question i was getting at and is that we know that there's you know like for example like we already heard from uaos like we have at least one labor you know we have one bargaining unit that is bargaining right now that we don't have any um we haven't um settled that yet so we know that that would be for example an anticipated cost and so would be one reason why i like i said i don't think we should give direction to change the number but i just wanted to i guess i just mostly wanted to clarify that everybody had been hearing oh the state budget is so great the state budget is so great it's so much more money and then we don't actually you know to sort of underline the reason why we as a board aren't changing our direction and that staff isn't suggesting we change direction either at this time right there's a combination of like certainly we could we could come back and say you know like adjust you know adopt some new edits to the stabilization plan But we're not doing that tonight. And staff is also not recommending that because of multiple anticipated expenses. I think probably, you know, again, the one that I'll say is that there's, you know, labor agreements that haven't been settled yet.

What we've talked about this internally as a team and sort of where our team has been with it is that it's premature until you have unaudited actuals. You're making assumptions about your starting position before you know, and you'll know it within a month.

uh... and so uh... maybe there would be an interest in visiting it but not before have that that information dr thompson uh... not necessarily a question at all but uh... it's just my appreciation uh... that you were candid uh... as you presented the budget uh... and you actually outlined some things and so i just uh... for example like the lcff and the cola being able to because we saw an increase there i appreciate that looking and the reason why i asked that question about restricted and unrestricted is because sometimes i think some of us get kind of confused about using unrestricted money, I mean using restricted money for unrestricted purposes, you know, and so that's why I kind of asked that. So I just really appreciate your being very candid about where things are. I appreciate that you were not reticent when it came to talking about the thirty million dollars. um so i i appreciate that okay i just want you to know that even out of the way i might have asked the question earlier i want you to know i appreciate you thank you very much thank you thank you director hutchinson

thank you um i'm pretty disappointed and it's uh disappointing that uh mr christmas has two supervisors here and neither one of them has said a word about any of this and they've kind of thrown you up here to do this um I just want to remind everyone about what happened a year ago in the 45 day revision. Lisa Grant Dawson, our CBO at the time, and Superintendent Sadler sent out messages to the community warning that we were overspending by $4 million a month and it was a crisis that needed to be corrected. it was never corrected last year and actually Lisa Grant Dawson was forced out and we ended last school year by overspending roughly sixty five million dollars above the adopted budget now this year the same thing is happening So this idea that the numbers change through the year, what doesn't change is what the adopted budget was. That is a static number and that is the number that the board approved. And even here in the adopted budget, it had as a total general fund expenditures of 881.9 million. But then in this 45 day revision paper, it says for budget, that the number was 885.9 million. It's a difference of $4 million. Now that number shouldn't change. That number just shouldn't change. But it's indicative of the errors that we have all through this. Now two other points, when we're talking about this $30 million plug. Now first off, you don't approve a budget and say within that budget though, we say we need to cut $30 million from the budget. That's just not how you create a budget. And that's what this plug means. so to say that the board approved a list of 41 million dollars in cuts is not true if the board would have approved those cuts it would already be reflected in the budget because we're talking about this year's budget that has the 30 million dollar plug and there was no plan approved by the board to cut more this year it hasn't been discussed there is no plan for it And people just talk like, oh, well, actually at budget adoption, the talk was, oh, we will address it in the fall. That was exactly what was said. There's no plan, and that $41 million, those were adjustments that were already made going into this budget and on last year's budget. And the lack of understanding that I hear just expressed in the questions and the comments is shocking to me. but again people are trying to cover themselves because we've had a number of people say that for the first time the district passed a budget with a surplus when the truth is this is the first time we passed a budget with a deficit because by definition the term surplus and deficit only refers to unrestricted and that's what we look like and the fact that there's a thirty million dollar plug in the budget shows you that there's a deficit in the unrestricted That's what the numbers show. And just lastly, for anyone to stand up here in the 45th largest city in the country with a billion dollar combined budget and say, well, we don't know that number or we can't give it to you. We found an error. It's about 13 million. To me, those should all be fireable offenses. I don't know why supervisors haven't stepped up to say anything, but this is unacceptable when we're talking about tens of and hundreds of millions of dollars, and we can't get a straight answer. And let's just be clear, by definition of city charter and board bylaws, there are seven people with fiduciary responsibility, the seven directors. So there's no staff coming up with an idea or them telling us what they're doing. This is our job and this has failed. Failed. You don't even have the same number for the budget from document to document. And I gotta say, if you all were in like a middle school class I was teaching, I'd fail you on this kind of work. And I'd fail whoever was supervising you that allowed you to turn this in. Incomplete F.

Yes, I wanted to ask Mr. Christmas, could you review, because I have been looking at other budgets from previous years, can you discuss the deficit piece, because my understanding is that there have been deficits in previous budgets adopted by this board in the past, so can you review that for the public and for the board?

Sure, so I've been monitoring the district budget since 2004, and in that time we have passed many budgets that have deficits. And it's not a problem if you have savings. The problem with deficits is when you don't have savings. So what happened to us, for example, in 2016-17 when we ended the year at a reserve of 3 point, I think it was $4 million, right? you can't have a deficit going into that year because you won't meet your two percent if you go into the year like we did uh... in twenty four twenty five it was with a hundred eighteen million dollars in unrestricted we had a pretty large deficit and we ended the year with only fifty five million unrestricted but you had a deficit so the deficit is telling you in a given year how much revenue is less than expenditures and so if revenue is less than expenditures by a hundred dollars but you got five hundred dollars in your bank AND THAT $500 AFTER YOU SUBTRACT THE 100 IS 400, AND THAT 400 MEETS YOUR 3% OR YOUR 2% OR WHATEVER ELSE, FINANCIALLY, YOU ARE FINE. WHAT WE'VE BEEN SAYING FOR QUITE SOME TIME IS YOU CAN'T HAVE A TRAJECTORY OF DEFICITS BECAUSE THAT SAVINGS WILL EVENTUALLY GET DEPLETED. YOU CAN'T GO ON THAT WAY FOREVER. AND SO, YES, WE'VE HAD MANY BUDGETS. AND THE OTHER THING THAT I THINK could be helpful is that we tend to mix when we're talking about unrestricted or restricted or combined. And so we can have a unrestricted surplus and a restricted deficit. But the reason over the last several years we've focused on unrestricted is because that's where our reserve is. That's the backstop for any spending that we need to cover. And so we focused on the unrestricted general fund.

Student board directors? Director Block?

No comment at this time.

Director Tongan? No questions.

Just a similar, not closing statement, but just like a wrap-up comment that I want you to make to help us understand this particular assignment within the context or the flow of other information, data, statutory deadlines that are forthcoming. and why there are some of us on the dais and I'll speak for myself who are comfortable with the information that we have now knowing that there is more information coming and the more serious thing which I'll state is the unaudited actuals and the expectation is that errors like we are experiencing or seeing today won't be before us in September?

Sure. So as I stated at the outset, the 45 day and the attention behind the 45 day is an update based on the state's budget adoption. It is not a revisiting of your adopted budget. It's not a point where you're managing from your budget. It's not a check in on how you're moving forward with the budget like an interim would be. It is intended to be The state took an action after you took your adoption. What is that doing? How has that changed what your budget is? That's what it's for. And so it is in summary detail. It is not in a SACS format with all of that detail because of that purpose. In terms of errors, I hate errors. uh... it is not comfortable to come before you and say there's an error in documents that i've reviewed that's not comfortable but i've been here long enough to know that's not the first time there's ever been an error in a document that's been put forth and we have already internally talked about what we need to do to make sure that does not happen again but yes it it it does as it relates to what we're going to do for unaudited or or the updates even more important that we go through our steps of sort of scrubbing the information in even greater diligence before we provide anything else. And that's what we wanted the opportunity to do, both for unaudited and for the first interim as we go forward. Unaudited is looking backward. It's looking backward at 25-26. It's critically important for two reasons. It sets the starting point for 26-27. When we say we expect 26-27 to end with $140 million or $53 million and unrestricted, it's based on a starting balance. well closing of the books is going to tell you what that starting balance really is as opposed to the projection that we have that's the one reason it's important the other reason it's important if you close the books from twenty five twenty six and you see you expected an expenditure to be a hundred dollars but it came in at a hundred twenty You have to ask yourself, is that impacting 26-27? Is there something I need to adjust in 26-27 because 25-26 came in high? And so that's an important point to start adjusting how we're planning for the year at unaudited. And then once you see how 26-27 is going forward is another important point at first interim.

I realize that Director Berry had another round. If people have another round of, if you have a new question that you'd like to ask Is it a new question? That's the guiding thing. Director Hutchinson.

Thank you. I think there's a lot of problems with the explanations that you've been given to things. I think one of the real issues that we face now, especially as a board, is a lack of a common understanding of what some of the terms mean and really just how the yearly budget process works. And so I think it's a really important informing factor in all of this. that last year, where we're waiting for unaudited actuals, At the third interim, we were shown that we overspent by over $60 million above our adopted budget. And by definition, that means last year we overspent by $60 million. In a budget year when we were supposed to be making severe spending cuts, both during the year and for the future year, we overspent. That was the message that you sent out, Superintendent Sadler, a year ago. Warning everyone that the district was overspending by $4 million a month. When we look at the end of the year, the fact that that number grew to 65 million, that means it went up from $4 million a month. And we continue to overspend at a faster rate as the year went on. The most troubling thing to me about the 45 day revision. beyond the fact that on your own document it has total revenue and total expenses. It doesn't disaggregate it by restricted and unrestricted. And on the page that it does, we don't know the contribution to be able to actually figure out what those numbers are. But even more than that, the 45 day revision shows that expenditures now by projection have gone up by $17 million above what was adopted two months ago with the adopted budget. That means there was no school board action, there were no new things added that would cause expenditures to go up by $17 million. And so at a time when we're supposed to be making cuts to address the plug and the hole, at a time where we should be holding all extra money we get till we have a real plan and we get out of this, we see that for some unknown reason, again this year, expenditures have already exploded by an extra $17 million. And if this continues the pattern of last year, it's going to continue to go up. And so there's been no actions taken over the last two months, month and a half, to justify why now we are projected to expend more, and the expenditures have gone up in both the unrestricted and the restricted. That means there's a real failure someplace. Superintendent Sadler, that increase in expenditures has not been authorized by the board. That is overspending, and it's the overspending that you also allowed last year. This is the problem. Not only are we not addressing our financial crisis, we're still continuing to spend more and more and make the crisis that much worse. That's what these numbers show, and this level of work is unacceptable for senior staff in OUSD.

So I wanted to, uh, I'm taking a question that I heard in there that I wanted to clarify. And Mr. Hutchinson may remember this cause he was here when, uh, Mr. Grant, Ms. Grant Dawson talked about it and we've had it happen even before there are certain, um, restricted revenues that when we add them to the revenue line, we have to add a corresponding expense. They don't allow you to add the revenue to the revenue line and not have a corresponding expense. I know that's been explained to the world. I don't know how many times, but I know it's been explained before. And so some of what you see is related to that. Secondly, as I said before, your expenses can change based on who's hired and who's not hired. It can change. So it does change. It is a living document. And then lastly, to Director Hutchinson's point, Director Hutchinson's point, we should be concerned about it. And we've indicated in response to Director Berry's question and the embedded question in others that we can and we will provide that level of detail so that you can look and see and we can report and summarize what is driving those changes. But they can happen without any decision to take on new expenses. It's part of

having the budget reflect what for example would have been respectfully mister christmas and superintendent sadler expenditures can't increase without a vote from the board of education who has fiduciary responsibility so to come back with a document that shows more expenditures that we didn't vote on that's not accept acceptable it doesn't just happen aboard vote is required is required And so it is not a function of we got more revenue so expenditures went up because there was no board vote. And we're not adding on jobs because that would require a board vote as well. And so again, for projected expenditures to go up in just these two months without a school board vote is unexplained and unacceptable, especially at a time when we're in financial crisis. And the more people try to throw out a shuck and jive pony show to try to prove the point just means that there's something even worse going on. And so if nobody else is concerned that expenditures are more than the budget that I also didn't vote for because it was so problematic, that makes me concerned and the person who ultimately has responsibility for this is you superintendent sadler so i would love an explanation of why expenditures went up and just lastly this idea that we'll wait to get an answer if you were able to make this document then you have the numbers and access to them someplace on a laptop to be able to email them to us right now so we shouldn't have to wait if you had to develop these numbers to develop this document in the first place and if you need a disclaimer to say there might be an inaccuracy that's fine but I expect to have the information that I need that I'm responsible for and you can't sit here and tell me oh we'll get it to you in a couple of weeks and the fact that my colleagues on the board are accepting of that also shows what problem we have right now because they are admitting they don't know and it's not a priority to know to inform the decisions going forward thank you

respectfully it's probably not the time now but it would help our team if we could have a shared understanding about uh... processes procedures responsibilities et cetera so we're operating with the understanding that the board has about how these things are supposed to flow uh... and you know we can do that at what what time I'm not suggesting that we do anything about that right now. No, that's a good point.

I think, yeah, we owe that to the team. But right now, I would like to, is there a motion to accept the 45? We're going to do public comment. I need to know if there's a motion to accept the 45-day.

Motion to accept the 45-day revise. Second.

We're now going to public comment.

Yes, Madam President, there are five speakers for this item.

Okay, two minutes each. Are there any speakers online?

There will be, yes.

Okay, all right, thank you.

First speaker is Carol Delton, and Asada Olagbala, Sheila Haynes, Jack Nelson, and Leanna Powell.

If you heard your name, if you would step up to the microphone.

I appreciate hearing from most of you on what your concerns are. That's important. Under California law, school districts must adopt a balanced budget where revenue meets expenditures or prove they can meet financial obligations using valid reserves. You have adopted a budget that reflects a future cut component. It's recommended that you could, you can do that, but it's recommending that you do the cuts as soon as possible, at least by the fall. The question is, could you have done it within the 45 days? produce the recommended cuts for approval by the board before school starts because it looks like we're going to start school and we might have to cut services, staff, or resources and could we have done better? i'm concerned about the document that says federal revenue is not yet clear so under the federal revenue that we expected to have we're dealing with uh... english learner title three funds student support and academic grants education for homeless children and youth migrant education and adult literacy grants for professional development and we have no discussion on if we don't get the money what's going to happen so we just talking about the funds that come from the state you've had no discussions on the funds that come from the federal government i'm also concerned if uh... do you have any restricted partial tax monies that have been used to deal with your expenses that should come from The general fund because this conversation out in the public that you've misused measure S. Measure H and measure and I think it is you with the meeting last night and lastly has that state engaged in any general fund mismanagement. Not the state the district. Has the district engage in any illegal or inappropriate spending because it's out there. That's the conversation you got to clear that up. general public is having that conversation around mismanagement uh... around illegal use of money uh... at some point clarify that thank you next speaker please there are two speakers online uh... i start with them bush or she

Go ahead. Hello. I'm Liana Powell. I'm a parent of two children in elementary school, and I have a couple of questions. One, well, I have a couple of statements, too. I was here June 24th, and... I asked questions about, to all of you, if y'all could explain from your own understanding about the budget. Nobody chose to speak. Since then, there have been two more meetings, one on August 3rd and today. And today, it's still hard to understand exactly what the budget numbers are that we're talking about. As a parent, I got up at 5 a.m. this morning to drop my husband off at work and after I did that I got my kids up extra early so I can go volunteer at my kids school today because my school is in a crisis right now with our school community and they are short staff and everybody is at capacity. Me and my husband joke and call it our free job that we cannot quit. I'm concerned about what the actual numbers are in terms of the deficit. Is it $30 million? Is it $22 million? Is it $37 million? Is it $53 million? And how is that gonna impact our students and our educators? I spent four hours today at my kids' school supporting their teachers because they are all short staff. They don't have support. How is this going to land on our children? I understand that you guys want to go back and talk about this later, but what is the reason? How is school gonna be by Christmas? What's happening? How is this gonna land on our children at school? How are things projected to change based on the budget negotiations that are happening for teacher salaries? You have an idea of that. Are you intentionally not explaining this because there are elections happening soon? This is why it's hard to trust current leadership. It is not clear what is happening. And I'm over here. just in case, because when people spend all this time supporting their kids and their schools and they come to these meetings and we can't even get eye contact, we can't even get you to pay attention to what we're saying, when we have our children in the schools that you choose to represent, it is disrespectful. I want to remind everybody that there is an election coming up and this is how you're choosing to handle it.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

I'm going to cheat a little bit, but you get a minute 30 breather here. The budget. September 26th, I had a meeting with Casey Adams today. It's September 26th. That's a Saturday at 1.30 p.m. we'd like to have the John Beam Fardella dedication. And there's no reason not to. I'll tell you why. The stuff that's supposed to come on the field for the new lighting is supposed to happen in October. And you guys are notoriously late. That's good. Be late. Let the field be ready for their one home game of the year versus Alameda. And Preston Thomas indicated that you would not have anything on the field before October 1st. The game will be at 1.30 after a brief dedication to Beam and Fardella. And we'll have some speakers there. I'm not going to speak, but Casey will be one of them and a couple others. Uh, no politicians. I'm sorry. We're not going to do that. How about, uh, last superintendent Sadler? I hope you can, you can make sure these things happen. How about since a guy known as me is paying for this sign, uh, and I need it done before October cause I don't want him to raise the last bit on me. How about, uh, the district puts forward three or 400 bucks for refreshments. I don't think that's too much to ask, but let me know. And it would be nice for the Alameda people to see, too, that we do things first class. That's all.

Thank you. Are there any more in-person speakers? Online, please.

Online speakers, start with Sheila Haynes. I will allow them to speak.

Hi, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can, Ms. Haynes. Hi, thank you. So this budget situation, it's really just so confusing and hard to understand and very unclear. I know you all have a very difficult position to help balance everything, but my online student hasn't been able to receive much of anything for over six years now. Many other students who had trauma a decade ago, They're going through the same thing, just suffering with lack of services. And the time is ticking for them to all get better. I heard something mentioned a little while ago about Prop 28. So I'm hoping that the district has a plan to fully fund the arts. I hope that you're not planning on cutting more funding. I mentioned earlier, my teacher had 57 years of education, Miss Russ. We just honored her this past Sunday. And at a time when I was a youth and I was developing my writing skills and into music, she was one of many educators who was most inspiring. She was a true symbol of a teacher leading with the most loving and compassionate way. And we were the first hip hop group in a high school, the Live Lyricist Society. We didn't use negative language. We have to get back to a culture of respect. Language is also an art and must be positive. And as I remind you, over a million has already been taken through a block grant with cuts to staffing and lack of services. And with lack of help to support our students, I continue to worry about funding. Our students, they have to be safe and feel loved. And it's very critical for our students with disabilities to be able to rely on these services. For the ones who have lost years of education, we need help and urgently. So my hope is that students can, my student can transaction back to an in-person learning facility through a music program. I hope that they can. But at the very least, please ban all derogatory words in our schools because it's hurtful and it keeps our students and even adults in a sad mental state when abusive words are used towards them. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. Are there any other online speakers?

Yes, Carol Dilton.

Go ahead, please.

Good evening, everyone. I see the clock, but it's not going. So now I see it and I know that you hear me. Welcome to another year. I hope this will be the last budget cycle that we need to be talking about cuts and adjustments. As far as the unaudited actuals go, I was very glad to hear that there will be variants from the June budget, as well as assumptions going forward included in that packet, because I think that's very important for the public to understand truly where we are in the budget picture. Now, last year, it was very hard to understand the numbers at the unaudited actuals because there was nothing of the changes from the 45-day revise were incorporated. So, if there's some way that the district can do that, that would be very helpful for the public. As far as future budget adjustments go, my understanding from the June meeting and a very detailed fiscal plan was that there are items that the board voted on last year. And in fact, that previous boards voted on that weren't yet incorporated. So I'm also hoping that that can be made public soon of the progress. I'm looking forward to, as a member of the outsourcing task force, fewer contracts so that it will be easier to close the year. and using the short-term funding that we have to reduce ongoing funding. Finally, the parcel tax question has come up time and again, so I hope that someone can answer tonight what's been included about that. It was a lot of digging that I found to find out that the previous CBO included those parcel tax balances to balance the budget. and then took them out. So I'm hoping that that has not been renewed as a strategy, but I think everyone should get some clarification on that since it's been lifted up several times. However, those committees do not pay their fair share of district expense in terms of running and supporting them and i'm also hoping that they start to do so as time goes on so that that the staff who spend their nights um working on those committees can can also be compensated thank you thank you are there any more speakers there are no further registered speakers for this item uh mr rickster can we have a roll call and vote please

Sorry is it possible to address the question on personal tax that is built in race.

Are you prepared I was thinking that would be a future discussion OK. I do think we need to have that discussion and he said tonight just so you're aware I know yeah and I thought that and I thought let's really prepare for that. Mister extra can we have a call about please.

On the roll call to adopt the motion or not on the 45-day revision as stated in the agenda, student directors are absent. Director Lara? Yes. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson?

No.

Director Berry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Abstain.

Vice President Batchelor Yes President Brohard Yes Motion is adopted Thank you Moving on to new business item Q126-1613 application for provisional internment permit I'm wondering if we can take items Q1 and Q2 and Q3 together and report them out separately Motion to take all three items up together and record them separately Second

Motion is incomplete.

Approve. Yes, thank you. Director Thompson you back in the second.

Is there any public comment items Q 1, 2, and 3.

Yes, madam president of work to not dash one is the side of all the ballot in in Leanna Powell and for Q dot dash 2 in 3 is the side of all the Bob.

Give them a missus out of 4 minutes. 2 minutes for each item and this Powell 2 minutes.

Madam president, if you have one you need item Q 1, 2, 3.

I was looking at the large number of multi-subject teachers who are being approved tonight, and that's 12. According to this education department's guidelines, these teachers are able to teach core academic subjects which is math, reading, science, and history to the same group of students in a single self-contained classroom. But you have them identified as capable of teaching K through fifth grade. Usually when I would have reviewed in New Orleans, the pacific assignment is identified like this is going to be a fifth grade teacher a fourth grade teacher and you're not doing that i don't know why you're not because you have to according to state guidelines identify the self-contained classroom they're going to be teaching in i found it very interesting that in order for them to qualified under this uh... provisional internship permit that they have to take a course in the u.s. constitution completed at a college-level course and an examination on the U.S. Constitution. I don't know if you're all fulfilling the obligation for that. And then they have to be fingerprinted and background clearance checked. Now, you know, anytime you do fingerprinting, that's the FBI is going to get that information. And you have some kind of guidelines where you don't let your volunteers go through background checks. Now, related to Q2, Melrose. Several bilingual Spanish teachers and I think it's great whatever these children need in terms of teaching. That you're working to get there and it looks like that's happening with the the fulfillment of the Melrose because that school is 68 to 72% Hispanic Latino students. But I'm concerned about the K through 12 grade social worker caseload. Before you approve it, you need to see what the caseload for any social worker, for the psychologist that's on here, it says K through 12. Is this a psychologist going to do K through 12, or is it a specific group? I just need you to be more clear on what these teachers are going to be doing, rather than this broad spectrum of identification. of their assignment and and you might think that's petty but no it's not we need we need focus in merit in where and who is going to be doing the work and who they're going to be doing the work with thank you for the time uh jeff dylan do you want to answer the question about the the credentials and the and then miss powell will hear you after the answer

Yes, in many cases at the time of hire, we know that they're going to teach at, say, a K-5 school, but we may not know what course they're assigned to, so we put K-5 just for the approval. And then in terms of school psychologists, they could be assigned to anywhere from K-12, which is why we put K-12. So the team that assigns them may assign them to an elementary or a middle or a high school, and that in theory could change throughout the year depending on the needs. Thank you.

Thank you. Miss Powell.

Honestly, I did not come here to speak tonight. I came here to listen and learn. Unfortunately, every time I come here, my temperature rises. sitting and listening and watching how things are handled, I get upset. And so I don't even feel like it would be in my best interest to speak at this moment. I'm just tired of not talking about how this is going to impact my children. And I wonder who actually really cares about kids. Because we don't talk about that. We cannot get past this budget stuff so that we can talk about kids' outcomes. We cannot figure out what is the final number so that we can figure out what we can actually do. And it feels intentional that this is confusing or not understandable to the average person, nor do we have anybody coming into our community when a camera is not present to ask us or to explain to us what's going on. Do you care about kids in Oakland? Do you care? I don't expect you to say anything, but you are showing us.

Are there any speakers online?

Yes, Madam President. There was an additional speaker, Carol Delton. She is online and has her hand raised.

Okay, go ahead, please.

Thank you for calling on me. I would like to highlight item Q3. This represents a number of speech-language pathologists who are coming on to staff in the district. And there's a special waiver for credential for people who've mostly had their education out of the state of California. It's typical in the graduate programs in California that completing the credential requirements is part of the master's program, but for those coming in from out of state who have experience and who have similar education and credentials, that's needed. And previously, those people have only been hired in OUSD through agencies. and each of those people represents a minimum of a forty thousand dollar savings to the district who would otherwise need to be contracting for these services so i'm very very pleased to see them uh i hope to continue to see less contracting and more employing uh in the future We also know that our speech pathologists in OUSD tend to stay here and make it a career. So that also will cut down on recruitment costs. Thank you.

Thank you for pointing that out. Superintendent? Yeah.

At this juncture I wanted to make a comment I think it'd be appropriate to bring this up at this point in terms of our I wanted to give the board an update Later in my report, but I think it's appropriate for you to hear this now. I'm really pleased to announce Okay

Oh wait, okay. Are there any board comments? Okay, Mr. Rakester, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

Yes, on the roll call to adopt Q1, 2, and 3 together and to record them separately. Student directors are absent. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Berry?

Yes.

director hudgenson yes director williams yes sir director lotta yes vice president bachelor yes president burhart yes uh motions adopted uh for the items taken concurrently concurrently okay thank you moving on to item r which is the adoption of the consent report minus r46 and r50 is there a motion to adopt

So moved. Second. And is there public comment on this item?

Yes, we have Asada Olegbala.

Two minutes, please.

President, I'd like to have comment on the pooled items 46 and 50.

We'll do those separately after we adopt them.

Yes, ma'am, I understand. Yes.

Okay.

Okay. On the agenda tonight, we have two items that deal with turf replacement, Cesar Chavez and Oakland High. I just want to remind you that McClimans High School still has not had the turf replacement. They will not have for this school football season no scoreboard and no sound system. Can somebody identify where are they home games, Mr. Williams, scheduled to be played? At Mac? Have mercy. I also want to remind you that the Inspector of Records on the item of McClymonds, I read the detailed Inspector of Records duties, and I think it pursues a lot of identification if there are any toxic air or groundwater or soil issues at McClymonds to be dealt with. uh... fremont modernization i think it was a poor decision to continue to grow fremont high school when other schools issues haven't been dealt with uh... cop as well as coliseum college prep poor decision to increase the bottle classrooms there i do hope that we will have uh... sometime extension There's something on there about the time extension of 365 days for consultants. I thought you might want to know what that's about because, Mr. Williams, you talk about hiring these contracts for consultants. We need to cut down that. We're extending 365 days. What's that about? We have defibrillation training. Every high school by state law is supposed to have a defibrillator at that school, and staff and administrators are supposed to be trained on how to use that instrument. We have the Regional Center of the East Bay providing pay for internship. I'm dealing with the Regional Center of the East Bay with another group because they have a history of not timely paying parents or vendors. so you need to understand that uh... we have can i finish i have two more things please uh... we have uh... guaranteed health food environment we have a lot of health issues going on with contamination of food and that's because we've lowered the standards at the federal level for inspection so we need to put the emphasis on making sure we have healthy food in our schools and lastly We have $300,000 from the Alameda County Office of Education for newcomers, immigrants, and families. I think that's good. We need to make some identification at what point we're going to concentrate on our African-American students as well.

Thank you. Are there any other speakers?

There are no further speakers for this item.

Are there any board comments? Go ahead, Director Berry.

I think this is probably one of the most manageable number of items I've seen in the Jenkinson report, but anticipating that things change quickly as the year progresses, I'm wondering if it's possible to see something like a budget to actuals for the areas of spending where we tend to overspend. So like I saw the six or so special education items for instance, and the question I was asking myself, are these planned expenses or unanticipated expenses and yeah how does it impact what we've budgeted for just so we can do a better job of measuring tracking that uh director hutchinson

Yes, thank you. And Director Berry, we're supposed to already have that in everything that's provided. By board bylaw, there's supposed to be a fiscal impact analysis that details those very things. And unfortunately, that has not been provided to us for a very long time. And so we shouldn't even have to ask for this. Staff and the board president are required by the board bylaws to make that information available when they put together the consent report. And this is why I stopped voting for consent reports last year in April. Because I saw that nobody was checking and making sure they were done the right way. And that many of them didn't have a fiscal impact analysis attached. in june at the board meetings in june i wound up pulling a large number of items from the consent report because again they didn't have any fiscal impact analysis and when asked directly the superintendent made a comment saying that they had already been budgeted for and everyone just accepted that and went with it my question is as we saw from the 45-day revision where expenditures have gone up by 17 million dollars above the adopted budget is it because of the items in the consent report is it because of the items that were approved in the consent report in june and again we don't get any information tracking this saying not just how much things cost but where fund it's coming from if it's already been budgeted And if it hasn't already been budgeted, what budget changes need to happen in order to accommodate it? The fact that it didn't happen all last year during the school year of 25-26, that's how we overspent by $65 million, is by approving consent report after consent report, but making no trade offs, no adjustments, and not even being concerned about the number. Tonight, everyone accepts a 45 day revision that again shows expenditures are going up, and the board just accepts it. By the board accepting it, those numbers have now become the new operating numbers for our budget. That was giving approval to the superintendent and staff to increase expenditures by 17 million. At a time when we know, well, we approved the adopted budget in June. That is the law of the land for what can be spent. By us approving the 45 day revision, we are approving a revision to the budget. That is required by law, that acknowledgement. So tonight the board just acknowledged increasing expenditures to the number that was on the document, which is 17 million higher than what we just approved in June. This is how it works? And the fact that nobody has stood up for sound fiscal financial management and said, we can't do this without identifying how to pay for it, that's been the problem all along and that didn't happen before the last 18 months. And lastly, when we talk about issues for student outcomes and the families that we serve, if we don't have a stable budget and strong financial management, we can't provide any of the services that we need to provide. And that's what's going on right now. So I won't be voting for this consent report. And those things that you asked for are actually required by board bylaw. And if they don't exist, it requires a unanimous vote by the board for that contract or that resolution to pass.

Thank you, Director Hutchinson. Vice President Batchelor.

I'd like to highlight a few things within our consent as they deal with transitional kindergarten in East Oakland. So there's many items, R5, R6, R12, R24, 28, 36 39 and 44 which are all items again to revamp the facilities for transitional kindergarten supporting fruitvale carlby monk as well as mlk child development center madison park and elmhurst and others and east oakland pride and lockwood steam i'm very excited about this investment that we've made in transitional kindergarten and continue to monitor the progress that folks are making within that area Um. and then the cool i have a couple of questions about a certain contracts i didn't see those answered before the meeting so i have a question on r48 which is the social media legal services again just wanting to understand a little bit more about potential anticipated litigation that we might be thinking about when hiring that law firm r7 which is assessor chavez turf field would love to understand why there is an 8% increase with that project and what again is that based on and then the last one R40 which is the Alameda County Probation Department and camp have we looked at what the outcomes are from the camp and then how many students are served the demographics of students and whether or not restorative justice practices align with this type of program but superintendent i don't know if there's staff that can answer some of those questions or if we can take them offline so item 48 i'm going to ask council to respond to

Sure. And I will need to take the bulk of this response. I apologize for not getting it to you in advance offline. Many school districts, we are one of many school districts who are involved in a social media litigation that's been ongoing for several years. And so this law firm is leading that effort and working with many of those school districts.

You need to repeat that? Okay.

I'm sorry, I think I was away from the mic. Sorry, Ms. Olabala. I was just sharing that there has been ongoing litigation with many school districts related to social media, inappropriate controls by various social media sites and things. This law firm is one of the firms that are representing many school districts in that effort, and it's not just OUSD, it's a combined effort.

I would like to address the comment about understanding the fiscal impact I do believe that these as I read the memos to these items on the consent report tonight there was a fiscal impact addressed I did after one of the meetings in June where it was pointed out around some discussion around funding sources I did actually look at all the funding sources that were in the consent report this time and I believe that those were thorough I think if I'm not mistaken I think one in interpreting what you're asking director Barry is something I think we've asked before is that we get an update of where we are in that spending so I think that's one thing you know in the past years of being on the board that as we spend more in one particular area how close are we to the limit that in the budget item um and where do we need to adjust when we overspend so i think that um i know that you've addressed excuse me you've addressed that as well um uh director guard that um you would be willing to give us that information so like that would be helpful to me thank you um mr rakesh can we have a roll call on the vote please

yes on the motion to adopt the general consent report minus r dot dash 46 and r dot dash 50. our student directors are absent director williams yes sir director hutchinson abstain director barry yes director thompson yes

director lauder yes vice president bachelor yes and president brouhaha yes the general consent report is adopted as stated the next item that we'll take up is item r46 26-1655 services agreement 2026-27 street academy foundation street academy and i believe director hutchinson this was an item that you pulled

We have to have a motion on the floor before any debate or discussion.

Thank you. Is there a motion to adopt this item.

It's so moved I. Motion that we adopt item 46 are 46.

Thank you. Thank you director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. The two items that I pulled tonight are not a reflection on either Street Academy or Elite Security, but I have real concerns. And the reason why I pulled these two is combined, these two items that I pulled total well over $2 million. And so for this one, R46, When it has funding source listed on the agenda, the funding source it has listed is central concentration. Despite what President Brohard just said, when you click on the memo, there is no fiscal impact analysis along with this one. So I want to know for this nearly $800,000, when it just says central concentration, has this already been budgeted for in this year's budget? Is this additional dollars being pulled from the central concentration? And if so, what is the impact going to be on the other projected spending from that fund? So again, it's almost $800,000. There's nothing listed here to give a detail, and all it says is central concentration. So has this been budgeted, and where can we see this if it has been in the actual budget? If not, why are we approving nearly $800,000 at a time when we have budget deficits without identifying where these funds are going to come from?

Thank you. Superintendent?

I'm going to ask staff to respond to this. I think we have... I think our director, Han, should be online and other staff who can give the specifics on this from Street Academy Foundation.

Yes, thank you, Superintendent. One moment while board staff promotes Han Feng and Vanessa Cifuentes.

Good evening, everyone.

Hi, good evening.

Good evening. Good evening, community. I am Vanessa C. Fuentes, Deputy Chief of Postsecondary Readiness. And with me this evening also is Han Feng, Deputy High School Network Superintendent over Alternative Schools and Programs. Speaking specifically to the first question raised by Director Hutchinson. Director Hutchinson, so the board memo is accurate. The resources allocated to fund the Street Academy contract for this 26-27 school year are central concentration funds. In our budget system escape, those are resource $4, and those dollars have been accounted for and are currently allocated and being held Pending approval by the board for this specific contract.

Thank you. And so I would again, respectfully request a superintendent Sadler and president Brohard. That this is exactly the kind of information that needs to be listed on the agenda. So we know. So, if this is already been budgeted, there should be a notation and I would say the appropriate place for that notation. is on the memo where there should be a fiscal impact analysis. And all you would need to do for the fiscal impact analysis then is say it has already been budgeted for the 26-27 school year from this fund. But without that information and with it just saying central concentration. then I don't know how the community can track things, and it's not a good way to do business. And so again, in the future, that's how I would request things are listed. And the second thing that's just really important is, I looked publicly, I don't have a copy of the full budget line by line, which I should have as a school board director, and it should be posted someplace publicly. So that's the other thing that I really need, and it needs to be posted on the district website, is the complete budget with the individual line items, because then with that, you can take the resource code and the funding source and go back and cross-reference it. Without us having that information, we have to take it just on faith.

Thank you. Other board colleagues have questions, comments? Let's do public comment on this agenda item. Ms. Asada, you want to do public comment on R46, Street Academy?

Based on what Mr. Hutchinson has said, I think the sustainability plan should in the future have where you have funding source Identify not only the source, but identify that funds are available within the budget. All funds are being used in a in a in a sustainable way, something that goes beyond just saying the source of the funding, but guaranteed that the money is there in some form of language. So I think that's what Mr. Hutchinson's issue is. And and with the. Effort to make sustainability more viable. This is an opportunity to say that. Uh, with future identification information.

Thank you, Mrs Ada, Mr. Extra. You had a comment before taking the vote.

yes the way that the an agenda item is set up in the budget is designed to it may not be as detailed as being requested by a couple board members who have spoken on the issues tonight But the information on the agenda is to indicate that the item is budgeted and what the resource code is for it. Now the resource code definition, which I will probably ask Ms. Gard to verify whether or not we have the most updated list, is listed on the board's website under the agenda preparation schedule. so there are two items there the schedules by which items are to be developed and made available uh to the board office and for preparation to the board there's also above that you will see a resource code list uh which will identify the codes that are listed on the agenda the second thing is that uh the prior practice is and we'll have to talk to the board and superintendent about this is that we don't put items on the agenda that are not funded and the funding source is supposed to be in this particular instance on item 46 and has been verified as central concentration these kinds of notations were set up in the agenda management system when the board went bankrupt in 2003 and it's designed not to have items on the agenda not budgeted so this is supposed to be a verification and if and the board staff can't go into the financial system and verify that the requisition is accurate and that the resource code is listed then our prior instructions were not to put it on the board's agenda So we need some updated instructions and see whether or not you want to honor the mechanism that was put in place when the district went bankrupt in 203 just to prevent this type of thing from reoccurring. It basically is what systems do you want to have in place and controls and how well do you want them enforced? With that, I am ready to call the roll on the item if the board is ready and public comment is concluded.

Yes, please go ahead.

oh you said yes okay all right i was waiting for the other shoe to drop i guess it's me i guess it's me okay on the adoption of our dash dash 46 uh the student directors are absent director lotta yes director williams yes sir director hutchinson abstain director uh barry yes Director Thompson. Yes. Vice President Batchelor. Yes. And President Brohard. Yes. Okay. Motion's adopted.

Thank you. Now we're at R50, which is elite security. Director Hutchinson. Oh, is there a motion?

I move to adopt the contract for elite security. Second. Great. Director Hutchinson.

Thank you. There's the same issue with this one as well. This is a $1.4 million contract. This is one of those things where in normal times, I'm sure SEIU 1021 would be here to speak on this because hiring an outside security force for $1.4 million when we do have unionized staff in house that often provide these services as we can see tonight. It's something that in normal times in OUSD would have been met with a large protest. I also have real questions about if this was already budgeted for ahead of time. And on this item on the agenda, it says the funding source is from AB 1840. Now AB 1840 was a state assembly bill which provided extra funding, quote unquote extra, extra funding to OUSD for three years while we were in state receivership. We have not received any AB 1840 dollars over the last two years. So where is this money coming from? Why hasn't AB 1840 been spent already before like we thought it was? Where is the accounting of this fund? And how does, Assembly Bill 1840 was listed as the funding source for a number of items on the consent report in June as well. So where is this new found money coming from? Where is this 1.4 million coming from? And where is a fiscal impact analysis to tell us what were the other things we were planning to spend this $1.4 million on before there was this change here? Because again, as we are in a financial crisis and as we are struggling to maintain our core services, I don't understand why $1.4 million is going to be voted in this sort of way. So does anyone have an accounting of AB 1840 or any message on, since we're not receiving new dollars from that fund, why this is still being listed as a source?

Superintendent, do you have staff that are ready to answer that question?

I'm gonna ask staff to speak to this. Our deputy superintendent, Tara Gard, and Jeanine Lindsey, our general counsel.

Good evening, Board. So this has Director Hutchinson, you brought this up prior. There is a balance in AB 1840. We actually used AB 1840 from what I've seen for elite security previously. And I'll be happy to provide the funds that have come in and when they did and then what was used in the past years prior to me being here in this role. but there is a balance and we'd be able to pay for elite security out of that balance.

So thank you. So hopefully since those documents exist, I can expect to have an email with those documents by tomorrow because the last six months of promises of answering questions and providing information, I still don't have it. So I would like to have the full detailed line item budget and I would also like an accounting of AB 1840.

And I'll do that as soon as I can. And I'm not going to tell you that it'll be done tomorrow. I'd like to be able to go to sleep tonight and then do the work, which includes the unaudited actuals with the team. But I will certainly prioritize getting that done. And I'll let you know. I'll update the board. since it's a board ask of when we can get that.

So Superintendent Sadler, I asked months ago for certain questions to be answered. You promised me yourself that I would have answers to those 17 questions. I never received them. So if these funds do exist and this document exists, all it takes is for three minutes for somebody to forward it to my email. So I would again respectfully request, since none of my questions or concerns have been answered for six months, that there's some timeline on when I can expect this. And please don't tell me about an unaudited actual that's not due yet and that you're gonna prioritize that first. I'm asking as a school board director who has fiduciary responsibility to please provide the budget documents that should be informing our decisions.

Thank you, Ms. Gard. Thank you. Can we take a roll call on this item? Ms. Lindsay, did you want to add anything?

no i think she answered all the questions um i think everyone understands the specific purpose we did have executive director of safety also on unless there was questions about the specific scope of work but thank you um mr rickshaw can you take this i'm happy to take the vote uh all board staff members are here asking who is the seconder of the motion director allada all right thank you very much student directors are absent

Oh, I apologize, Mrs. Sata. Go ahead. Public comment on this item. And anyone else who'd like to speak on this item?

Under the description of the security that would be provided, we're talking about non-law enforcement individuals. So these individuals are private citizens. They are not allowed to make general arrests, search people, or bags without... consent explicit consent and we have that going on we have these uh... culture keepers at sporting events going through uh... students bags and participants at the events and they don't have the legal right to do that you also have uh... that the law requires that they cannot use unreasonable force or excessive force You have to create some type of understanding of when law enforcement will be brought in to certain safety issues that happen at schools. And I don't think you've clearly identified that. But these are individuals who have very limited capacities. And in the case of, hopefully it'll never happen, but there's a possibility of mass shootings going on at schools all over this country. What are the capacities of these individuals to intervene in that type of situation? Uh, in the case of safety where we have an earthquake or we have a high risk fire or anything, how do these people provide for, are they a part of the, that equation? So you say here that they're gonna be safe passages to campuses. I don't understand what that means. So does their scope of work go beyond the campus, off the campus, or is it only on the campus? I think you can only mandate on the campus. Thank you for the time.

Thank you Mr. Rickshaw go ahead and take a roll call on this item Okay on the motion to adopt R-50 student directors are absent Director Berry Yes Director Thompson Yes Director Lara Yes Director Williams Yes sir Director Hutchinson Abstain Vice President Batchelor Yes And President Brohard Yes Motion is adopted.

Moving on to our next item, which is the superintendent's report, item S.

Good evening, board members, members of the audience that are here tonight and that are at home watching. This is our third day of school. I'm very excited about the opening of school, and I do want to focus on many positive things that occurred. Starting with, I want to acknowledge our talent, our human resources department for their work around hiring teachers. I want to announce tonight, and I've started this to acknowledge this earlier, when we were talking about teaching positions. And I'm happy to report today that we have over 99% of our teaching positions filled. And this is the first time in my experience in the district, we think we only have about eight openings and I'd really like our chief of talent, Jeff Dillon, to take a bow along with his staff. This is a big deal because what we do is school. I also want to say that I do attend our new employee orientation, and it's really been exciting for me to actually meet our new employees from all areas, food services, paras, but many of them are Oakland natives, our former students. who are coming to work in what I call the OUSD family and I take the time to talk to them about what their goals are and so many of them who started out as paras are studying to be teachers we have food service workers who are studying to be paras and it is quite frankly and I want to say this to Mrs. Saba it is wonderful to see how diverse the group of people are that we are hiring and it is a special time i have never been i've been here a long time and i'll ever have never heard of a 99 um employment of teachers and this is a critical part of what we do which is school so um board members i'm really thrilled to report that to you i'm excited about it and i'm i'm thrilled i also have i'm in the schools a lot and it's really been exciting to actually see some of the you know the people who've been hired as i visited schools on monday and yesterday and they say hello they're enthusiastic they're excited about working for oakland unified school district Monday, the first day of school, was absolutely incredible. I want to thank all the board members for being a part of our visit to the schools. We also had a team that joined me. I was visiting the eight schools, seven of our districts, all in all of our districts, all of your districts. But Dr. Sandra Aguilera was with me, and we were joined by John Sasaki. We also had several guests who were partners in this visit, Kia Stewart and Imani Johnson from the Golden State Warriors Foundation, and they have been excellent partners. Actually, they hosted a recruitment fair for employees, and it was specifically for Oakland and San Francisco Unified. So we have had partners around getting local people involved in working in our district. So I really want to acknowledge their participation and following through and being part of visiting and seeing their work come alive. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Kimberly Mayfield Lynch, who is the dean of St. Mary's College and former OUSD teacher and vice mayor, who visited our school sites as well, who's been involved in helping bringing teachers, local Oaklanders, to work in our schools. And then our senior leadership team was also a part of our visit at the sites. And again, I mentioned board members were with us on Monday, going into classrooms, talking to all of our staff. And part of my procedure as I visit schools is I always go in and check, first of all, I check the entryway. How do you get into the school? Is it safe? You know, people to respond to the buzzers. Then I go and check in with our uh... admin staff who are actually our first responders in terms of supporting our students uh... we also have in many of our schools we have crossing guards that are provided by the city of oakland and uh... i actually know many of them by name because these are people who are very supportive and participate in uh... the safety of our schooling and also acknowledge our children on a regular basis so these are part of the team as well as visiting the classrooms, and we actually sat in on instruction at the site. And it was really powerful to see how engaged our students were. It's really one of the highlights of my career is just to see students learning on the first day and excited about being in school. We started out at McClymonds, okay, and I want to say Director Van Cedric Williams was there. We had community members who were helping. We had a chance to observe firsthand students handing over their cell phones and putting them into the Yonder packets, pockets or whatever they're called pouches thank you and it was great to see all the different reactions but as they did that they were also picking up their class schedules this is what school is about is getting excited about being at school students came right in followed through with that part of our tour was to see that mcclymonds is actually we broke ground and construction is happening And so the press were there and followed us as we looked around the school. There was a lot of planning. I went Friday, the Friday before the opening of school myself, to walk through and see what was happening with the construction and the plan for the entry to school. We're also using this as a learning opportunity for the students. So there is going to be a weekly communication to our principals there that will be shared with families around what they're actually doing. So this week they were doing grounding work Preparing for new electricity which now the students will know like, you know when electricity happens It doesn't just you know, the plugs are put in the wall or whatever. There's a lot that has to be underground There's a lot of work that has to be done in preparation for that so I'm looking forward to it being a learning opportunity as well as it's an exciting moment to see the development and the changes at McClymonds and And by the way, there has been purchased a scoreboard, a movable scoreboard that we can take to different sites while everything's being done on the field and everything. So there will be a scoreboard at McClymonds for the football season. and that's something that we pushed, we tested it out last year during the football season and that's something we have so when we have, if there happens to be a problem at another site the scoreboard can be moved to different locations so I want everybody to be aware of that and so we were able to observe the full process of the cell phone collection as well as instruction in the classroom We talked about attendance, we talked about focus, and I'm really excited about our leaders there, who are seasoned leaders, Darrell Avant and Kevin Taylor, who, I mean, they are so excited about partnering with the community and the students, and so I think the Warriors are on track there, and I'm talking about our Oakland Unified School District Warriors are on track to be successful. So again, so we started out at McClymon's Then we went up to Santa Fe, which is where a wonderful program that supports our special ed students, adult students, and I'm telling you, I was super impressed and excited about that. We had two student ambassadors, and that program actually partners with the Peralta Community Colleges. So Peralta hasn't started yet, so they were having class at santa fe uh... to start off their adult ed process and we went into classrooms and it was just awesome to see how engaged the students were uh... it was very exciting to see the support the uh... the programming that they're having so learning was happening day one it wasn't like just going over procedures and just kind of hanging out chilling on the teaching was happening in every classroom we went into. I was also very excited to see on campus their independent living. The goal is for these adults to be able to live independently, have a job, be able to function. And just going into the independent room, which used to be a staff room, I know the school really well, but it was amazing. They had a whole area where the students learned how to make their bed, how to hang their clothes, how to organize, they had a washer and dryer, they had a whole kitchen processor. The things that you need to know, they work on developing menus, independent living. The things that we used to have in home ec and other programs for all students, it is really incredible how well run that is. The principal is doing a great job. I'm really excited about having that service for special ed students. Then we left there, went over to Sankofa, which I'm really pleased with the leadership there has already made an impact. She's a seasoned leader. I'm excited about the leadership change there we needed to do some work and I'm really pleased that that's happening for those students in that community and as you know Sankofa has a rich history and I'm excited about monitoring the success of the new leadership working with staff Oh, by the way, when I go to school sites, I always check in with the custodians and acknowledge them. Ashanti, who's been the custodian there, is just awesome. Every school that we went to just looked magnificent, and I know that there were many people who worked really hard across the district to make sure things are in place for our students. uh so then after that we went to sequoia uh in district four and um we're able to see again another seasoned principal who has a strong reputation for literacy and academic outcomes for students has Very well known in terms of her work. Actually, she's published. People actually look at, use her systems. I'm very familiar with her. I'm so glad we have her back in Oakland working at our site. And again, we visited, you know, that school's over 100 years old, and we had a chance to see a new library that they're developing there. And again, visited classrooms. Instruction was incredible. Again, instruction happening on the first day. was awesome um and then uh we left there and went to district five and um visited upa but garfield excuse me i'm gonna come back to garfield okay I'll say OOPA, I went to OOPA and of course that is a middle school which has really done well. They have increased their enrollment. I believe they have a waiting list. And it's just because of the model of how they are working with students. Again, the leadership there has been just really exciting in terms of what they're doing with students. And it was just really thrilling to hear their community service manager talk about how she works with her students. We had a chance to sit down and talk to her about how she engages students and deals with some of the things that we talked about earlier today, trauma and a lot of the issues that many of the students are experiencing. Again, another exciting moment to see it really happening for students. Now I want to circle back around to District 2, where we visited Garfield, which, again, another phenomenal leader who's worked at the school site as a TSA and as an assistant principal, is now principal. And it was so evident that she had everything in order in terms of It's a big school in terms of meeting all the needs. We visited special ed again there, early childhood, and we got a chance to see what the vision, we talked about the vision of the rebuilding of the whole school, which will be including early childhood and a brand new building. garfield has been a challenge for years and it's located in a very dense area for students and so i'm really excited about the building of the new school we're going to be doing some groundbreaking on there we also will be working with the city around some issues that we need to deal with to support the building of the school again another exciting moment and strong leadership By the way, at all of our school sites have our principals and leaders, we have 100% of our leaders at all of our schools. Again, that's not always been the case. So again, I wanna then circle back to District Six, and where we visited Greenleaf. Again, that's a new facility. Those of you who've been around a long time, this is a former Whittier School. It is now a, I would say, a TK-8 school. And again, excellent programming. We visited classrooms again there, and it was very interesting to see how staff was working with the students and students were learning about how to go class to class and getting assignments done and just learning the rules and any of you worked in middle schools know that you had to be really clear about what the rules are what the systems are and what the expectations are I was watching the teaching and I saw good teaching at all the schools happening So again, another exciting experience. And this particular leader, she even had a sandwich board when a dismissal occurred that she put on, which had for the drivers, you know, when people, parents are picking up to just remind them to slow down. Uh, you know, all of the rules related to that. And she had that on the front and the back of her. I mean, it's like literally using your body out there as a principal to lead that, but that's what it's about, you know, seeing what needs to happen to support the schools running it, just, and making sure it gets done. Then we went to, um, director Thompson's district seven to Madison park middle and high school. And boy, what a gym in East Oakland. It's a brand new facility. I don't know if a lot of people have seen it. It is awesome. And if you know the old Madison, it is just fantastic. And to see again, The students excited about learning. We sat in on a science lesson that I didn't want to leave. The teacher was so engaging. And the students, they were engaged. I'm sure the board members are gonna talk about, from their perspective, what their experience was like. But again, I was looking at the teaching and looking at the leadership and looking at how they maintain the school. And I'm really pleased with what I was able to see from that experience. So I wanted to just prioritize that as the highlight for today. There will be more in-depth, we have videos and pictures. Leadership staff will be visiting other schools regularly through the year. That's something I started last year. We visited McClymonds and Castlemont as a team, and that's my expectation to continue that for the rest of the year. So again, I want to acknowledge our leadership at the sites, our principals, assistant principals, and all of our staff for helping to open school and just making a difference and setting a tone with the students. So I'm just really proud to make that a priority of my presentation this evening. Continue with more good news going forward.

Are there any board comments? Director Batchelor.

Thank you I as well am very excited about this 99% teacher positions filled in the district I know that some of my schools have really struggled over the years to keep educators and I'm glad that we're able to like fill those positions And I was also really excited to be a part of the new teacher training that happened before school with our new teachers as well as our second year teachers. The excitement in the room was palpable and the diversity in the room was also really amazing. A lot of folks, again this was their second career, a lot of folks were from Oakland, it was just really bilingual staff, it was just really beautiful to see. before school started as well i attended the monk open house that happened the saturday before and the tk teachers were unpacking all of their boxes and we're just really excited about what that school year is going to look like especially in those tk classrooms that are newly painted and look very nice and so it's really exciting to see what other improvements are happening on that campus so that we can maintain the school site for all of our students but yeah just a few highlights about green leaf you know we visited miss gibson's tk classroom and those students were so excited to engage they were so excited to be with legos and you know there was a dinosaur that was wreaking havoc at one point but they were just they were all just very excited to be there and very excited to just be in school they felt like big kids now and then seeing that seventh grade ELD class just really again continues to show how much we're supporting continuing to support our multi-lingual students and growing their expertise in English at Urban Promise Academy I mean what else can I say it was just an amazing experience to be in the pug counseling room and just hear about all the different ways that they're supporting the whole child and really working with families to engage them in their child's education but also to support the families as well and I want to give a shout out to Ms. Glendy she's been amazing I've worked with her in the past to get information out specifically around immigration and tenants rights to families and she's been really on it to make sure that folks get that information And then again, as I told my board colleague, Director Thompson, about MPA, he's been keeping it from me, but it's a beautiful campus, and I was so amazed to see those high-tech computers and the photography classroom, and to see Tiffany McDermott, one of our OUSD parents, who is also an after-school provider, dealing with the challenges that come with the first day of school, but just keeping a smile on her face and making sure that every single student that was coming to her felt like they were welcomed i will also say in national night out i was able to meet many tk families that are going to fruitvale and monk and they were very excited their tk students were just chomping at the bit to see who is my teacher and who are my friends that are going to be in that class but i did also meet some parents who had no idea of our tk classrooms and so i think there still needs to be that investment that we've talked about in the enrollment department to make sure that we're getting the message out specifically about transitional kindergarten and lastly during national night out i also met some parents who were dissatisfied with their kids school in the neighboring school districts so making sure that i handed out information about the amazing programs in my district because again they just happen to be in my district so burkhalter oak frick and Sojourner Truth I do think that for Sojourner Truth I have talked to a lot of families who have students that are either doing intensive training in like ballet or sports and whatnot and I think we should be focused on part of the recruitment should be focused on getting information out to those families because I don't think that again folks know about Sojourner Truth as that type of a program And I think it would be really helpful to get that word out. There's also other school districts that have mentioned to me that they have worked with their independent study programs with homeschooled families to continue to support their education as well and supplement that. So wondering if that's also another avenue for potential growth for Sojourner Truth. Thank you for all of the fun time that we had at our schools.

Did you take public comment.

Just want to echo how amazing First Day of School Energy was, and I appreciate the opportunity to experience just a glimpse of that, particularly at Urban Promise Academy. And I left feeling really grounded, particularly because of what Ms. Bayardo shared about their focus and their prioritization of belonging and safety as fundamental to education. Shout out to that whole entire building for the work that you're doing there. And I'm excited to make my rounds this month and next to experience the back to school energy. I also wanted to shout out part of your update that. was about the fafsa performance of ousd finishing third in the state competition that they do every year i used to work on that when i was in the mayor's office we were not third so it's really exciting to see how much progress that we've made and that's incredibly important because our kids can't go to college without that so shout out to the team the high school network for all of the great work that you're doing director williams

Yeah, I just wanted to thank Dr. Sadler for coming out to McClimates. I definitely will continue to lift up Dr. Sadler because when she first came on board, she made a commitment to West Oakland, made a commitment to get things right. She has taught there, she has been raised there, and it is part of her constitution. her belief, her identity, and I just really appreciate the following through. You have made more moves in one year than it has been five years previously of begging, so I just really want to thank you very much for moving that forward. you know i i think for all of our schools in west oakland we finally are attacking the hot asphalt you know and having some landscaping added to prescott we've had landscaping added to martin luther king and we're in the process of adding landscaping to a hoover elementary and see the excitement all the young folks now that they actually have a Playground to have some fun in it's just fantastic and lastly to just fall back on the climates You know I see a lot of promise there, a lot of history there. Community is intertwined with the school, which is just amazing. And I just really, again, appreciate your belief in the folks who are doing the work. I appreciate your belief in talking to the custodians, talking to the culture keepers, talking to the security, talking to the students talking to the the teachers and the administrators we need someone that's willing to do that type of work to really engage and know how important this is a relationship business and being able to build those relationships at the school site will definitely have great rewards and lastly Jeff, thank you. You came into the position and you really delivered once already. Look forward to some other things, but my belief and what I've told and teacher and learning committee is that When I came aboard, we were having hundreds of turnovers a year in our district. And it's really hard to maintain literacy for our kids if there's not any continuity in the classroom. Way too easy to put them on a computer and have them gamify a software for reading. much better to develop educators to be crafts people in their field and understand how to read and teach our students to read. So this is a first step. I really believe in us looking at the impacts on how our literacy is going to turn out over the next couple years if we continue to support these new teachers um that over time it will build up the literacy that we would been expecting to see for the last eight years so thank you for starting that off this is a starting point i look forward to working with you to continue to support that work as well with our national board you're doing a great job with that as well thank you

i'll keep my comments short i just want to appreciate dr sadler and the team for going to visit the young adult program at santa fe i think for many students in that program who you know their 18 to 22 year olds who had previously been in self-contained programs and there's the fact that one we as a district um do take seriously their transition to adulthood as something that's very unique and important here in oakland but i think it's something that um often the leadership of the district um hasn't given enough shine to and so i just want to you know it was we had Brooklyn is somebody who's been featured multiple times in our media as a student who uses adaptive equipment and then is also a translator for other students who are using either with the audio devices or the other adaptive communication tools. So I just wanted to appreciate that you have, and I think probably this is as a former special education teacher, have taken the time to visit multiple different self-contained programs and kind of the, you know, not only from starting at our ECE and pre-Ks, but all the way up to, you know, our oldest learners in the young adult program. So appreciate that and I'll pass it on.

Yes, Dr. Stadler, first of all, thank you very kindly for your report. I really appreciate that. And transitioning now to Madison Park Academy. I'm so excited that we had three board members who were able to actually be there and see. And I have to be honest, it's a gem. It's a gem in Oakland. And For those who haven't had a chance to get to Madison Park Academy, I would really suggest that you try to find some time and maybe go to Madison and you'll see some of the great innovative things that are happening at that school site for the kids. You hear me talk many times about how I want to make sure that kids can compete with other kids. Well, you have to have the facility that's available for you. And guess what? We have some top notch things. at Madison Park Academy, and our kids are creating some wonderful things. Right now, if you don't mind my saying, no one had a chance to go to the computer room and actually see some of the things that they can design. Well, later on this year, just give them a chance because the teacher will do projects with them. But later on this year, if you go there, I promise you, you'll see things that are just gonna blow your mind. They'll blow you away. The kids are actually creating these things. Just like someone was saying, the science class, you know, actually getting that thing from under that, yeah, it was wonderful. So I wanted to stay there also. I really wanted to stay there and watch the kids and see how they performed. They did a wonderful job. And I have to say, I'm really excited about what we do in Oakland. And this is for everyone to know. The vice principal at Madison Park Academy is one of my former students. So I just want you to know that Oakland is actually producing some wonderful, wonderful kids. He's an African-American man, and I'm excited that he decided to, I didn't know he was gonna go into education, but I'm excited he went into education. And so I'm just really excited about what we're doing in Oakland. We're doing the whole thing. And I know many times things come up and you kind of go, oh, I'm so tired of this. Well, guess what? We're doing things that are working. So I just encourage everyone to keep trying and keep doing as much as they possibly can. Dr. Sadler, if you don't mind my saying, and I'm gonna go there, okay? And I know this is the beginning of the school year, But what I would like to see is really anything that deals with academics, even if it's a little bit of growth, that's really okay because I understand that it takes a lot to actually move kids along and it takes multiple years to actually move them to where you want them to be. So if we can do that, I would really appreciate it. Thank you very much for everything.

Thank you. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a different world in a different city than some of my colleagues up here. But maybe it's just I'm a native and I take this very, very seriously. superintendent sadler i have to say i'm extremely disappointed you know when when we first spoke a number of times when you first became the interim superintendent this was not my understanding of your promises of how you were going to do this job you know today we heard about our finances and the real problems and questions and erroneous numbers not one word in your report not one statement to the community not one guarantee to a school board that we'd actually get the information Not one mentioned tonight about what our enrollment numbers look like to begin this year. There's no superintendent work plan, there's no strategic plan, there's no fiscal solvency plan, and this talk of some plan to fill the $30 million plug, we haven't seen that either. Not a word of any of that. In my opinion, this was one of the worst starts and one of the most tragic starts to a school year we've had as a district. between the first ever work action by our principals and vice principals because of what's going on, and then the tragedy that happened on the Parker campus. And for the school that we visited in my district on the first day, Sequoia Elementary, Sequoia Elementary, even though they have well over 400 students, they don't have a TSA this year. Their community school manager was only given to them at 0.5. Thankfully, the PTA helped raise some money to bring that back up to a 0.8. The covering on the windows to do heat remediation, the resolution that came from that campus. There were windows that the workers missed and it didn't get done. And that's just one school and these problems are happening every place where it's really unexcusable. And people can sit up here and try to blow smoke and make it seem like everything is beautiful. It's not. We know that it's not. And just by the performance that happens at this meeting, when you allow your staff to present erroneous information, when you don't speak up like you just did around your superintendent's report around the other items, when we don't have the needed leadership, when the leadership we have put out statements in the media saying our financial situation is all okay. And like when the money runs out, the money runs out. This isn't rocket science. We all know. So some of the other things we don't have, we don't have a CBO. We don't have a chief of staff. I haven't seen a flow chart in your time as superintendent of what staff we have and where they're placed. Nobody let me know who's being network superintendents for the schools that I represent or even about the changes in principals that happened. And so if this is what people think is acceptable, then we all need to really work on raising the bar. I don't think it's acceptable at all, what's gone on, what's been allowed to go on. I know the communities I serve and that I grew up with and that I've lived with my whole life do not find this acceptable. And just what we see out here, the first meeting of the year, and there's no energy here, no people turning anyone out, we don't even have the union showing up besides UAOS, this is severely broken, severely broken. And again, the money is running out, we're overspending, the clock is ticking, and when it runs out, it runs out, and in this case, Insolvency means not being able to meet payroll, which means being forced to take a loan if somebody will give it to us, which means back in state receivership again, even though we just left it. And the work to leave receivership was not done under this leadership. This superintendent came in on the first day, we regained local control and look where we are now. If we can't raise the bar, then I hope people just move out of the way and thank goodness it's an election year and there is a chance.

I'm going to take us back again having been a teacher in the district for 27 years I was never motivated by being beaten down by information that was inaccurate but what I saw on my first day my first visit was to Met West I was invited to come there and I came and one of the things I really like about Met West is that I always end up having discussions about books and literacy with students which I have a grandson who's in high school and he rarely talks about books so it's encouraging to see kids talking about it I walked in and one of my former students who I did not recognize because last time I saw him he was 12 years old and now he's 18 and you know we got talking about books and there was another girl sitting around the corner and she was reading a book on dark romances which I'm kind of a sucker for romance novels but we ended up being in a conversation with these students about romance novels and with the vice principal Mr. Bachicha and that's often how my meetings last year went with met with the students and then an administrator and we ended up talking about literacy and one of the things that came up and also I think it was also at Greenleaf was this book talk which is a TikTok thing on books and people act out a scene from a book and kids decide if they want to read the book or not so it was an interesting talk about teenage literacy which is something that I taught middle school kids and younger kids how to read, so that was really fun. Then I did join the other people at Sankofa and ran into another former OEA colleague, who is now teaching their TK class. So that was cool. Got a chance to talk with her for a minute. And again, that school was lovely to be in. It was probably the best bulletin boards I've seen. But I think, again, that excitement of learning, and I think that... is what keeps those of us in the profession going it is that excitement of our students learning it is the excitement that we bring to it i remember talking at the um the new teachers dinner they do at neato's and i was talking to a student who or a teacher who was going to mcclymonds and she got talking about environmental science and she had studied this in China but I said that's what students need to see is your passion for this if you had said I was 17 and I'm going to take a science class I probably would have gone yeah okay but somebody who comes in talking about field work they had done in China and their passion for it and I think that's that's what i really saw on that first day is that passion for watching kids learn and the passion that as educators we feel in learning so um it was really it was an incredible day in madison park i had only been to the old madison park when i worked at brookfield Was like oh my god, and I wanted to take that guy's history class on on chocolate I was like just sign me up. I want to finish the class with you so again and the passion that he felt and that's That's what gets us through difficult times is the passion we feel for our students learning and the passion we feel as we as solve those learning issues with our students as we really get to know that student as a reader we say ah I know the book that you can read I'm gonna help you read it you know it's it is a very moving thing I went on to going to UPA I had taught the principal's two sons so again seeing what Tiara's done at UPA it is a very welcoming You just feel like you're home when you go to that school. And the pugs, I would have added some chihuahuas, but I realized she was not a chihuahua person. But she's a dog person, so that was cool. But again, talking to both of the community schools managers who provided services to their students and how well they knew their students. And again, that passion for knowing students, not even just like helping them, but it was like they knew them. I think the last thing I want to mention, too, was I did go to the National Night Out in the San Antonio Park area, and we drove around with boxes of donuts, which I ended up with a bunch in my car, because not everybody eats donuts like we do, but I think the excitement about Garfield and again to me garfield serves a very large community it's a very it is a very diverse school but it's also the first school that people see coming off the freeway and when you drive down 23rd and you see that new school it says oh sorry time it says um sorry it says yes i want to send my kid to oakland unified and i'll end with that thank you Public comment on the superintendent's report.

Yes, Madam President, we have three speakers. This is Carol Delton, Asada Olokbala, and Diane Lee.

Okay, two minutes each. And since I went over, Mrs. Sutter, if you go over, no problem.

Madam Superintendent, when I woke up Monday morning and turned on the news on Channel 2 and saw my climbers, It was really an uplifting opportunity for me to say this district is trying to have not McClymonds special, but just being included. And I feel that you are working towards that. And thanks for the information about the scoreboard. And I just want to uplift that our football team is for their first game is going to Hawaii to play. heard that. That's very special. I am looking forward to the enrollment numbers so we can get a true picture because as I've said in the past we have 20 schools with less than 300 students and at some point we really need to seriously look at those 81 schools and whether we need to continue to maintain them. I'm constantly looking at school districts and what they're doing to improve their districts. And I just want to mention one school district, the LA school district, three months ago approved a reduction in the classroom use of screen time. And I think that's a good move. And for each grade level, they have specified the number of minutes per day that can be used on screen time. and they want to return to teaching traditions where we have pen and paper assignments and reading and writing back as a higher priority. And I think that's a very good move because these children are glued to these screens and we're saying that these devices and we can help reduce that. Santa Clara is concentrating on the issue of one out of every five students in the United States is overweight. So they're looking at their nutrition program in Santa Clara as well as their activities. And I fell in love with soccer during the World Cup. I enjoyed it so much. And I just want to encourage... I was talking about football and basketball, but I think soccer needs to be uplifted a whole lot. I really enjoyed the World Cup. It was fun. So lastly, I just think... that teaching and learning has a vast amount of variety. And so the last thing I want to say is not to try to put everything under one umbrella, to look at the diversity that's going on and encourage diversity and the teaching and learning scope. Because if we make everybody teach the same way, that's a big mistake.

Thank you. Are there any other public speakers?

I do see Carol Dilton online.

All right. Go ahead, Carol.

Thank you so much for the update. I appreciate hearing about schools around the district because I live in District 1 and I spend most of my time between District 1 and District 3 and don't really know that much about what's going on in the other areas except for as regards special ed. um you know that said i'll be the third voice to say i wish we had heard about the enrollment numbers um i know that's a concern at the budget and finance committee and it's a major concern with our district overall i also want to lift up a concern that came up in the outsourcing task force and that concerns OUSD's history of using homegrown software. And as time has gone on, I've learned more about that. I learned that IFAS, the fiscal system that preceded OUSD's use of escape, was homegrown and had a lot of problems. For many years I saw that OUSD's IEP and 504 system was not consistent with the rest of the state. I experienced that both as a parent and as a professional in an adjoining district when we received students who moved into our district from Oakland. And I've also heard about it with the contracting software. So I'm hoping that some of the new funds, the one-time funds that are coming in, can really be devoted to modernizing the way that OUSD takes care of its systems and does its business. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other comments?

I want to acknowledge that in my district there was tragedy since a couple weeks ago. That community, it hasn't been the first time that they have experienced tragedy. fact when i showed up there the families that live directly across the street uh... said that the bullet holes are still in the walls from previous shootings uh... i want to acknowledge that in the middle school while they're doing the best that they can and they have retained 96% of their teacher staff from the previous year where they had longtime substitutes. They have been adopted by a fraternity which gives me hope for that school but they have lost a lot of the programs that they have at Frick and This fraternity has adopted this school, what is it? Five Beta Sigma has adopted Frick and is wanting to do mentorship there to support where they have lost programs like AAMA, the Latino Male Achievement. They lost, I think, five or six programs. They have added like a dental to their school clinic, but they also have teachers there that really care and that live in the community. And they did the best that they could without being fully staffed to have some kind of community engagement. It would have been great to have some directors come and support that event that they held with just a skeleton crew. uh... at my school it would have been great to have at burke halter it would've been great to have some directors show up or uh... in the absence of our principal uh... because of it tragedy that has you know not even a tragedy but just you know a crisis that my school is facing and they have been without the principal there for of the week and you know, while everything is exciting and amazing, I want to acknowledge that there is just some real challenges in District 6 in East Oakland specifically. around you know like our first day of school our kids are still walking through a lot of blight on their way to school and maybe we can you know get together and clean up so that they can have a positive you know walk to school and not see cars and and needles and bullets and and all the things that we see that are are not beautiful at school makes me sad uh and Maybe we can have some folks cheering on family members and asking family members to support because the last few times I've been here, I don't know if I've seen any other parents in the audience, but folks don't know what's going on, and I fear that it's going to hit families and students like a ton of bricks when we actually are feeling what's happening with the budget deficit. So if we could begin to be honest, if we could begin to just ask our parents to Would you come if you have an extra hour in a week, if you have an extra couple of hours, come and support your school, get fingerprinted so that you can volunteer because we actually do need support in our schools. Everything is not great, exciting, or amazing. Just saying.

Thank you.

With that, I have already given my president's report. There's a written copy, but I took more than my time, so I will not do that. I don't know if there are any other board directors that have additional, you might have taken your, no, no, go ahead.

Thank you. So, yes, I want to acknowledge the tragic events that happened on July 31st at Roots Community Health Clinic, sorry, not Roots Community Health Clinic, Parker Community Resource Center, where Roots Community Health Clinic was also located. i have been working with that school community to navigate how to have what are the conversations we need to have with the educators there what are the conversations that need to happen with community and i believe there will be a healing circle on august 16th but again i want to go beyond healing and taking action around what are some of the actionable things that we can do um so i'll be working with the superintendent on what that looks like for us got some great information from supervisor miley around some additional funds that we could be receiving through the county to support with additional safety measures on our school sites so I'll be reaching out to him again and then you know having conversations with our state representatives as well as we can as we look to seek more funding for all of our schools to have the Department of Violence Prevention staff come back into those school sites to support our high school programs and now also the program that's happening at Parker I will also be at Sojourner Truth's back to school night which is tomorrow and hopefully we'll be able to visit the early childhood program at Rudsdale as well so for folks that may not know we have a few of our teen parents attending Redsdale and they are able to drop off their baby kiddo in an early childhood site which is right on site so it's very exciting to be able to have both students attending our schools I will also be attending the healing circle on August 16th meeting with ACC on August 19th and then I want to remind everybody that our first facilities meeting is going to happen on August 20th so please come out to chat with us about our facilities work and we will be talking about some of the heat mitigation work that we've been doing and some of the other work that we've been doing over the summer and I would be remiss to say that I didn't have a great time at Mac's you know groundbreaking over the summer CCPA's groundbreaking over the summer and MLA's groundbreaking over the summer and I can't wait to plan Garfield's groundbreaking when that happens so yeah just look forward to all of the different ways that we're supporting our students and families and staff throughout the district

30 seconds welcome back and I have office hours this Saturday and next Saturday 9 to 11 a.m. at hasta muerte and district 5 but open to anyone across the district This I I will be posting this on Instagram and I was told putting it on a story is not helpful because it disappears. So I will be posting it because that is different. I'm going to get better at this. Alright, I see some thumbs up. Appreciate y'all OK. Dr Williams.

nope have nothing to say welcome back students staff welcome back community parents tomorrow morning saturday i mean saturday wednesday prescott usually have parents out greeting our students and community oh i was there this morning i missed it okay that's it that's what that is

okay uh director lana um i also just want to make a quick plug for sunday is oakland pride and so the ousd contingent will be meeting at at 10 30 for the 11 a.m parade start at 21st and franklin so i'll see you there and director bachelor

This will be really quick. There was a backpack giveaway in East Oakland and we had a number of schools that were there, kids that were there, families that were there. We had booths set up all over. We were at the sports center. if you guys have ever seen the Sports Center before. We were there and we were on the grounds and we had, I mean, it was wonderful. It was absolutely fantastic. Like Vice President Batchelor, I will be at ACC also on the 19th to sort of, to, of course, introduce ourselves and make sure that we know what's going on. And for those who, Wanna know? This is. What we received at Madison Park on yeah, and so I think it's really, really nice and so I want you guys to see this. Also, this is what we received. Yes, yeah, there we go. Yeah, OK, and and that's my report. Thank you very much.

All right, I believe we have, oh, did you want to make one comment?

Okay. I just wanted to, I know there was a comment about a concern about leadership at Burkhalter, and I definitely know the principal very well, and I'm very much aware of what's going on with her, and I want to thank our parents and staff there. Our stellar staff, she's one of our top leaders and so we have our central office staff have been there supporting the school but i know having parents there that are familiar to the students have really made a difference because she's such a loving leader and i know that they're missing her but we need to support her during this time so i'm very much aware I do want to emphasize that we are aware of and I'm intimately aware of many of the challenges that we're facing that our families are facing within the community we are constantly thinking about how we can support our schools our leaders individual students and thinking about how we invest in that that's something I think about 24 7 and I really want you know parents who have acknowledging that there's a lot that we are really proud of there's a lot of good things that are going on that we're really proud of but at the same time there's things that we need to work on to make a difference for every child and that's why you'll see that the places I go I visit schools regularly and so i will be lifting up a lot of the things that we're doing so thank you for just reminding us that we need to tell the other part of the story of the work that we're doing in addition to the highlights it's just pretty special that we're starting school this week and it is a uplifting time to start school our enrollment the first enrollment count was yesterday and then we'll have another enrollment count on Friday so by the next board meeting we will see all the movement that needs to happen in some cases we may need to add staff and other cases we may need to move staff so that has to do with how many students actually show up at our school sites so we're monitoring that every day but we have specific days where we do the counts so our first count for enrollment was yesterday And I do want to mention, you talked about Frick. Again, Frick is on the move. I'm looking at their scores. And by the way, I look at absences and scores regularly. And so I make calls on that. I call our staff. We're doing a lot in that area. but I wanna say Frick is on the move. And yeah, so, but I just, I want you to know your superintendent knows what's going on there and I can see the changes just in a year. And there's been a lot of intense things that have happened within the community and even around the school premises. So I'm really proud of our staff who go the extra mile and that our families that partner with the schools to help make a difference. So I just wanted to leave on that note, just thanking the community for their support because part of getting school ready, opening school, there were a lot of volunteers, families, parents, grandparents, just people who just care about the work that we're doing. So we want people to stay positive and keep doing the work that's needed in order for us to accomplish all that we all want to happen for every child. Thank you.

Thank you. And with that, we'll move on to item V, which is introduction of new legislative matters. And we do have a resolution, the 126-1706, responsible use of one-to-one student devices. First reading, I'm gonna recommend that this goes to teaching and learning. That's, okay, all right. And with that, we are going to close in honor of Kimari McLemore, the young student who was shot and killed at Parker on July 31st. Hope we can have a moment of silence. That we are adjourned.