Mountain View Whisman School District Board of Education - Regular Meeting

Board of Trustees will come to order. It is 534 PM and we're meeting at the boardroom at 1400 Montecito Avenue, Mountain View, California. The meeting is being broadcast live on YouTube, Zoom, and on mvwst.org. It is being recorded. Now perform roll call on the board. Bill Lambert.

Devon Conley. Anna Reid. Lisa Henry.

Charles DeFazio. All members are present and we have a quorum. Now we will rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Next item of business is the approval of the meeting agenda. Are there any, any requests from superintendent or board members to pull items reorder or move them from discussion action to consent? Seeing none.

We have if I can yes, we have one item item J We're gonna let me double check and make sure it's Jay, right? Jay we're gonna pull the city is still working on Fine-tuning the agreement. So we'll come back next meeting on the consent agenda.

Do you have a motion to approve the agenda?

I move to approve the agenda

City Council Chambers with the removal of item 7J. I second the motion.

I will now take public comment on the approval of the agenda. If any member of the public wishes to speak on this item in person, turn in a speaker card or online, use the raise hand function. I'll see how many speakers we have before allocating time. Seeing none, I'm going to take the vote. All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? The motion passes unanimously. Now we're moving on to special recognition section, the first one, item A, Board of Trustees honoring employees' years of service. Superintendent Behr?

Yes. So I assume most of these people did not show up for the general meeting. um i want to welcome our director of human resources aaron green over and she's going to start the the recognition this is always a great time where we get to recognize um years of service uh those special employees that are uh retiring after their service with mountain view westman and then our teacher employee of the year so it's a great evening aaron go ahead is it on there we go

Good evening. I'm Erin Green, the director of our school district and I'm super proud to be in this position and I love working with all of you and it's been great getting to know you this year. Love seeing all of you here. Next year we definitely need to set a goal to have more staff get-togethers like this and celebrations during the year. So without further ado, we're going to call up the 10-year employees. We'll start with them for the recognition and we'd love for you guys to come over here collect your award or certificate from Miss Kathy and Cindy. And then if you could stay up here if you're a 10 year, so we'll do each year. So if you're 10, stay up here, then Megan will take your picture, Principal Megan, then we'll call it 15, same thing. So if we call you up, stay up here until we get your picture. And are you here for our first award? I love it.

Excellent.

Welcome.

i love it you're ready to go just hang tight here we're going to start with lorena aguilar de castellanos come on up debbie austin is debbie here debbie austin 10 years angela bisbee sabrina chow We'll see. Sabrina from Crittenden. We'll keep going. Megan Chuang. Kaitlyn Chernikoff. Eduardo Contreras. We don't see him.

Eduardo Contreras. We'll celebrate him if he's not here. Miguel Contreras Jr.

Sandrita Esparza Campos. Alexandria Hernandez-Lapinski. Thank you. Michael Hernandez. I don't think I saw him. Isaiah Herrera. Amanda Honhold. Cheyenne Jones. Omar Lorenzana. Leah Luo. Danielle Lyons. Leilani Maharaj. Dalton Mendoza. Maria Olmos-Ahinga. Maria Orzano-Haye. Excellent. Smita Patel. Margaret Poore. Ada Smith. Trang Tran. Lian Truong. Nancy Viaba. Anupama Wadhwa. So these are your 10 years in Mountain View-Wisman committed here. We're going to get a picture of those folks.

You want to be in the picture?

10 years! Whoo! Oh, why don't we have it again? I'm going to call you up again and we'll correct your item. Well, we'll correct that.

No problem, we all growth learners here all right 15 years you ready for this, so I think we only have about nine of you guys, but here we go Teresa Diaz 15 years same drill come on up.

Jamie Ewing. Charles Betterman. There will be a Garcia Hernandez. Is Sylvia here?

Erica Kao.

Maria Lopez. Makika Lin. Larissa Ringer. And Beth Smith.

all right so you guys want to come on over here these are 15 years awesome congrats guys okay um now we're getting guess what year we're at now 20 we're counting by fives

We slight adjustment here.

Ada Smith is actually 20 years. We'll update her items. Come on up, Ada.

One more time. Brandy Appling-Jensen. R. Dotty Bowes. Sandy Buchko. Sean Dector, Gail Dyer, Plancy Haley, Evangeline Aparabornstein, and Jessie Wang. These are 20-year folks. Thank you so much. You guys are amazing. Come on over for the photo. All right, smile and let's give it up for the 20. We have more. Are you ready for 25? Yeah.

Yeah.

OK. See, this is fun. You guys should come to more board meetings. All right. Mary Colon, 25 years. Raul Delgado-Zarbello. Jose Duenas. No luck. Agnes Kaiser. Christina Roscoe. Kaiser, your 25 years, that's it. Awesome. Thanks, ladies.

And finally, this is the last one. So sorry, we're ending this.

This is our third year. So we have four people. We have Maria Susie Jaramillo. Terry Kemper. McConnell. Susan Papson. Alright, are you ready. Let's All right, we're going to get to our, we have retirees now. So now we have seven people retiring. They have dedicated their lives, careers, time to our kids and communities. So we're super honored to recognize you guys tonight. When you come up, we plan to do the same format.

You have your gift and we'd love for you to stand up until the end.

We're going to do, the board has a resolution to pass right before this. So let's do that first and then we can bring each of them up.

So any clarifying questions from members of the board? Do you have a motion to approve this resolution?

I make a motion to approve resolution number 03-052826, resolution of recognition of retiring employees as presented.

I second. All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Now we can continue.

Okay, we're gonna start with Carol Abramson. Come on up, Carol.

She was then doing her final paperwork today.

I don't think we're going to be able to convince you to stay, but Carol has been with Mountain View for 23 years. She spent the majority of her career teaching primary grades at Bubbs School. She is finishing her teaching career as a reading interventionist as part of our district's early literacy team. She's known by her colleagues for her collaborative spirit. Deep commitment to students is one of her hallmarks. she's described as someone who goes above and beyond to ensure students succeed we wish carol an amazing fine field retirement filled with joy new adventures she said today she's ready for the next chapter you'll be greatly missed stay on up here all right next come on up debbie austin are you here no i'm going to read about debbie Debbie has served as our Director of Child Nutrition with dedication, professionalism, and a deep commitment to supporting the health and wellbeing of our students. Through her leadership, she's helped to ensure students had access to nutritious meals each day, including fresh fruit, salad bar options, and many healthy choices. Her kind demeanor and willingness to help never went unnoticed. We wish her the best on her retirement.

Isn't that Nat Baltazar here?

No, I'm going to read briefly about the net as well. The net returned to Mountain View Westman after working here. She's a total of 4 years here. She was 1 of our speech therapists. She returned here this year after having worked with Mountain View Westman 2015 to 2018. we were so glad to have her rejoin the speech team this year. Although we only have the opportunity to work together with her for a short time, her impact on students and staff. was amazing in just one year she brought compassion patience professionalism and encouragement to every interaction we wish her all the best in her next chapter all right this next person has been with us for 22 years irene cuevas are is she not here too i don't think she was coming irene all right i'm going to read briefly about irene she's been with us 22 years She will definitely make sure she gets her gift. Thank you for all of your support and care you provided to our students and for helping them to develop independent skills needed to be successful in classroom and in life. Your patience, dedication and encouragement truly made a meaningful difference to all of our students, staff and community. We wish you all of the best in your next chapter of life. Rex Fuentes, thought I saw Rex. I'm going to read about Rex. If he's outside, bring him in. Rex has served as a bus driver with our students with special needs. He has shown utmost patience, care, and a deep commitment to all student safety and well-being. Through his daily work, he has helped to ensure students are transported safely, greeted with kindness, supported with consistency at the start and end of each day. As he retires, we're grateful to his many contributions. We wish him all of the happiness in life.

Terry Kemper, come back up.

Terry has been with us for 30 years, as you just saw her get her pin, but her leadership, kindness, and dedication have made such a lasting impact on children, families, and staff at our preschools. She's created a warm and welcoming environment where so many children are able to learn, grow, and feel loved. Her passion for early childhood education and the care she showed every day will never be forgotten. Thank you, Terry, for the countless lives you have touched throughout your career, We wish you much happiness and relaxation in your new chapter.

Lastly, come on up. We saw Leslie McClellan. That's our broken toe and all.

Leslie has worked for Mountain View with Smith. She's given her heart and soul to our district for 27 years. She brought patience, wisdom, humor, and heart into our classroom. Our schools are better places because of Leslie. What stands out most is not simply the number of years she served, but the countless moments in those years encouraging a struggling student, celebrating small victories, staying late to help, or listening when it mattered, and showing up every single day with dedication and care. We're so fortunate to have had you at our schools these last few years, and we wish you all of the best in your retirement. And finally, we have Ilva Sablon-Risano. Is Ilva here? I'm going to read about Ilva. Ilva has worked in our district and dedicated the last eight years to the students of Mountain View.

She's been a valued member of the Landels community, serving first as a first grade teacher, later as a kindergarten teacher.

Her collaborative spirit and warm demeanor have fostered strong relationships with colleagues. She's created nurturing environments where students can learn and thrive. We thank her so much for her dedication and wish her all the best in her next chapter. Mr. Bayer is going to come take a picture with our amazing retirees. And thank you again for everything you've done for our students and communities, and we're going to miss you a ton. He's probably telling you not to do what he did.

I don't know.

All right, we have two mo people are nominated. So we have two organizations for our employees. We have our certificated staff, which are represented by MBEA, and then we have our classified staff, which are represented by CSEA. And each year, members from each of the groups nominate other members who they believe to be representative of an employee of the year or teacher of the year. So the really cool thing is teachers nominate each other. So these awards are super special. All of the nominees for each award received recognition at their sites. And then ultimately one person is selected to represent the district. I think they have some participation in our opening ceremonies this fall. So we're going to talk first about the Teacher of the Year. I'm just going to bring her up because I think Megan Chuang caught up. So, Megan Chuang, she's the STEAM teacher at Mauna Loa. She's been named our 2526 Teacher of the Year. She's taught here for 10 years. She's an inspiring educator. His creativity, innovation, and dedication make her truly deserving of this honor. As a STEAM teacher at Mauna Loa, she brings learning to life through engaging hands-on, technology-rich experience that spark curiosity and excitement in her students. She skillfully connects STEAM concepts to real world applications, helping students see themselves as thinkers, problem solvers, learners, and creators. Beyond her dynamic instruction, she collaborates closely with classroom teachers to integrate learning across all content areas. She creates meaningful connections that deepen student understanding. Her classroom reflects a strong commitment to the whole child through the use of responsive classroom strategies. fostering an environment where every student feels capable, calm, included, and ready to learn. Ms. Chong is deeply committed to continuous growth, consistently seeking out new ideas, innovative practices to enhance her teaching, and better serve her students. She even participated in our Aspiring Leaders program this year, and I know she likes to grow because you're taking on a new role next year as well. So her passion collaboration and student-centered approach make a lasting impact on the Mauna Lama community and exemplify the excellence of Mt. Bewisman school district educators. Megan will be representing Mt. Bewisman in the fall at the Santa Clara County Office of Education celebration.

So we want to thank you for everything. Congratulations. Let's get our photo as our principal here.

Megan Gingugia, you want to come up?

Any monoloma people want to come up? Come on up, monoloma people. Come on up. Any more monolomans? Congratulations Megan!

All right. Last award for tonight for adults. Don't worry, we'll get to the kids. Not time to go home. Sarah Donahue, come on up.

Sarah Donahue, clearly a fan favorite.

Sarah Donahue is our library technician at Stevenson school, and she has been named our twenty five, twenty six employee of the year. Sarah has served in our district since two thousand and fifteen. That's correct. She is known for her dedication and creating an amazing life in their program. That's engaging and academically meaningful. she thoughtfully aligns each library lesson with classroom learning she helps students build knowledge while fostering a lifelong love of reading she ensures the library is a welcoming place for all students where they can access resources explore ideas grow as partners in addition to our impact at stevenson sarah is a valued collaborator leader among library staff across the district She regularly shares ideas, resources, and support through weekly library updates and leads monthly collaboration meetings that strengthen our library programs district-wide. Colleagues consistently turn to her for guidance, encouragement, and expertise. Sarah's commitment extends beyond her full of sight and she supports district school and community initiatives and helps create opportunities for families to engage with the library. Her generosity, leadership, and dedication to students and colleagues alike make her truly deserving this recognition. Thank you so much, Sarah.

Come on up. Any Stevenson people wanna come on up? Let's go Stevenson. Come on, don't be shy. We see you back there. Stevenson. don't be shy sure any you pick do you want a library picture first okay we'll do this and then we'll bring the big group smile congratulations sarah come on up wait there's more there's more Ask all congratulations Sarah.

Thank you so much for coming to support your colleagues your friends again we look forward to many more celebrations more throughout the year and just I want to thank you again for everything you do for our students and community all right next.

All right, our next item is special recognition to the mock trial team. Superintendent Baird, do you want to introduce?

Yes, love to. I am pleased to introduce Shay Dillon and the students of Grinnell Middle School. Come on over here, Shay. In its very first season, this remarkable team exceeded all expectations. Advancing the California mock trial junior division finals at UCLA, a testament to the students hard work, dedication and teamwork. We're delighted to welcome the team this evening and celebrate their success. And at this time, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Dillon. So take it away, Shay.

We'll try that again. Oh, there we go. Hello, everyone. I am Ms. Dillon. However, based on a text chain of today from my mock trial team, I'm not Mod Dillon, which I'm happy with. Which I am very happy with. I have no problem with that. For those of you that do not know what mock trial is, it is a simulation of a criminal case that is based on a hypothetical case. And the hypothetical case comes from one organization called Teach Democracy. and they put this case together and normally they got the case out to the high schools and in this case for the first time middle schools however in our case we did not get the hypothetical case until six weeks before the tournament and you have to really know this case and i tell you this because i want to emphasize the hard work that these students put in In six weeks, they gave up lunchtime to come to my classroom, they went after school, they gave up huge chunks of their time during winter break, and when we made state finals, also spring break. They worked so hard and their unbelievable brilliance and hard work came through. We won our first tournament on February 22nd at the Santa Clara Department of Education. And that was the defense team that went forward. I'm gonna introduce in just a moment. to win the final round and then went to the state finals and at the state finals it was our prosecution team that ended up in the third round so i am so incredibly proud of this team and before i introduce all of them i have some thank yous the first thank you is to our amazing principal and it was julie it was julie who said to me hey i got this email are you interested and i said yeah let's try it let's give it a shot students were so excited and they wanted to be a part of this and they worked so very hard second i have a huge thank you to someone who became a little bit of the uh co-coach He is an attorney and a member of this board. Mr. Bill Lambert, thank you so much. He worked us over break. He was fantastic. He got his legal expertise. It was really wonderful. Also, I cannot thank the families of the mock trial team enough. The Siegel family for giving up their home to 17 middle school students during break. They were great. Thank you so much. We had such an experience. All the families came to Los Angeles with us. Ms. Thompson and I went down on the bus with all the students and it was kind of a caravan. Some of the families stayed in the same hotel as us. We went to the University or UCLA School of Law. It was absolutely amazing. to give these students this type of experience. We had a wonderful time. And without further ado, I'm going to have to open my computer because I need to make sure that all of you understand who's who and what's what. Because in addition to a defense team, which I'll introduce first, and a prosecution team second, each of the teams has witnesses. And the witnesses are really, really important as well. And I want you to kind of understand who these witnesses are. I'll give you their character name first and then um who they are as a student but let's begin hold on a second i'm actually pulling up team our roster from the state tournament so our outstanding opening argument defense attorney Our amazing closer and cross-examiner, Caleb Chu. Our amazing cross-examiner and ladies and gentlemen, the state champion defense attorney, Olivia Hernandez. Who could not have done it without her two co-defense attorneys. And then every good criminal case has to have a defendant. And boy, did we have a good one. Haley Fongles. Did she kill him or did she not? Jane Kuntz. and witness, and also another state champion, playing Morgan Morrison, Sidney Hoffman. And of course, this case had to have an expert, Dr. Wren Dunn, played by Gail Butchel. And Stephanie, is she here? Okay, that's okay, we're gonna do it anyways. Our other witness, Jean Kronstadt, played by Catalina Garza-Humphro. And of course, no courtroom is complete without a bailiff that knows what he's doing.

Thank you, Andrew Hickers.

And now for the prosecution team. We have our opening argument, Rieger Vandenberg! Outstanding! Our cross-examiner extraordinaire, Violet Schroeder! that's fine direct direct my apologies and our closing argument also receiving a most valuable participant this is an award it's received twice and it's voted on by other students at the tournament And for the prosecution witnesses, we have the state champion playing Rio Sacks the detective, Andy O'Kagan. Playing the most difficult witness, Alden Mitchell, the only sixth grade participant in mock trial by on-farm. And for the prosecution team, our expert witness, Sam Longo, played by Maria . And our final witness, And of course, no team would be complete without a clerk. And it's a really hard job because you have to do all of the timing, everything's timed, you lose points if you go even a few seconds over our wonderful clerk, Ayan Jai Narasimha. Also, one last, one last mention. We could not be here this evening, but we did have the important artist played by Cameron Schroeder. Thank you all very much. We'll be back next year.

All right.

Thank you. Everyone will take a five minute recess for the meeting. Oh, we have a speaker.

Hi. Huge. Thank you to miss Dylan for putting up with our shenanigans for, like, two months.

All right now, we'll take a five minute recess for folks to before we go on to other things. All right, we're back at 616 PM. We're back from recess at 616 PM. We're moving on to item. 3, a, the showcase of literacy, professional learning community facilitators. Super intended barriers introduce director when.

To showcase. Yeah. So, and they're all going to help with this. So, thank you so much for allowing us some time. We're going to share a little bit about our literacy professional learning communities or lit PLCs. I've got some folks here with me. They're going to help present. These are our teacher leaders that are part of our lit PLCs. and so tonight we're our objective is to just provide a really brief overview of our lit plc's what started as a way to support elementary teachers with implementing the shifts in instruction to align the science of reading and to align our instruction with the science of reading and to provide some teacher leadership opportunities has had the wonderful side effects of bringing district teachers together to work on common goals and agreements and to create instructional resources together, priming us for the collaborative work that we will do together next year with the MVWC way. So the folks that I have here with me, I've got Jordan, who's an instructional coach at Theracoff. She also worked with the first grade Lit PLC. We have Becky, who teaches in second grade at Mauna Loma. We have Erica, who's an instructional coach at BUP, and she worked with the kindergarten Lit PLC team. We have Zoe, who's an instructional coach at EMAI. She worked with the third grade team. Liz, who is a teacher at Landels. She worked with the fifth grade team. Kyle, he's an instructional coach at Stevenson. He also worked with the fifth grade team. we have myra who's a teacher at castro um that um was working with the second grade team on floor a teacher at castro working with the kindergarten team blanca a teacher at mistral doing the dual immersion work and working with the third grade team um natalie instructional coach she might be outside with the kids but um she's um worked with the second grade team and then gail a fifth grade teacher that father's also here to support all right so i'm gonna let them present

So our PLCs short for literacy professional learning communities are grade level district wide meetings that happen every four to six weeks. Some of the meetings were part of our district wide professional development days. Some of them were Thursday afternoons as part of our grade level collaborations. The Thursday PLCs were optional. However, we still had many regulars at our meetings.

Our PLCs are focused on literacy, professional development, and teacher collaboration. Together, we have studied the science of reading, cognitive science, writing, and the MPWSD way. We have co-created resources and activities that we share with each other.

We pride ourselves on being peers that support other peers. Our PLCs are facilitated by teams of district instructional coaches and teacher leaders representing all of the school sites and grade levels.

As a district, we started studying the science of reading in the 2023-2024 school year. We knew that we needed to make some adjustments to our literacy instructional practices, and we were looking for a curriculum that was built from the structured literacy framework. When we adopted Amplify CKLA in 2024, we knew that a new curriculum would help support our shift to structured literacy, but it would not be sufficient. We needed additional ongoing professional development. So we started our Lit PLCs with the goal of supporting teachers with teaching through the structured literacy framework in our first year of Amplify CKLA implementation.

Our lit PLCs were grounded in Sparsboro Rope. We spent time learning about both parts of the rope, the systematic explicit phonics instruction and the rigorous language instruction that places text at the center and focuses on meaning making. For example, at one of our kinder lit PLCs, we reviewed sound articulation and spelling strategy while also discussing the vocabulary we wanted to teach students in the upcoming units.

So in the upper grades you got into some very complex text William Shakespeare don't care to studying about the Renaissance, so we worked with our lit plc to unpack these texts. identify the key learning targets and objectives and then practice instructional strategies that will help students make meaning of these texts, such as students student interactions for vocabulary development and strategies for summarizing the text.

This year, we expanded our study of structured literacy to include cognitive science and a writing framework to implement to integrate with amplify. We know that in order for us to bring knowledge and skills in the long term memory. We need to do something with that information to manipulate it, make sense of it. And 1 of the most effective ways to advance our thinking is through writing. However, we also know that writing is one of the most complex things that we do. It involves both transcription fluency and composition skills, but it's constrained by memory and executive functioning. By explicitly teaching writing skills and using a common writing framework, you can reduce some of that cognitive load so that students can effectively make sense of the information and express themselves through writing.

so we chose to use the writing revolution as our organizing framework for writing at our lead plc in october in the kinderly phc the team focused on elaborating our sentence level writing knowing that at that stage it can also be done orally that's important we collaborated on how we are having students write across the curriculum

In third grade, we learned how to use the single paragraph outline to reduce the cognitive load through a common organizer. We also explicitly taught note taking using common annotation symbols, again, for the purpose of reducing the cognitive load so that note taking process becomes more automatic, freeing up cognitive space for making sense of the content.

So a real strength of TWA is that the language and approach to writing is common across the grades and bails from year to year. And out of fifth grade lit PLC, we learned a common approach to summary writing and planning through a multi paragraph outline. And we also collaborated on how we differentiate in our writing instruction so that all of our students will learn in the fifth grade standard.

We held our last round of lip PLCs during the March PD day. It was amazing to see the growth of our teaching communities over the course of the past two years. It's been an investment in facilitating cross-teacher communication and collaboration, and I can say it's really paying off. There's a lot of friendships that have been made across the district and a lot of collaborating being done across schools, something I don't think you've seen since before COVID, so it's been really worth it. During the last split PLC, we zoomed in on the equitable component of the MVWSD way. And make sure that we have high achievement for all learners by planning rigorous activities, scaffolds, language practice, and interactions that connect directly to the objectives. Equitable planning and instruction means that teachers know their content, know their students, and intentionally set conditions so that all students can be successful at the rigor intended by the objectives. We also discussed how the end of year standard is the minimum level of academic achievement all students are expected to reach. The standards are not only for some, but for all, and the standard does not change from student to student, but it also helps us plan with instructional needs in mind as teachers. The teachers also worked with teachers from different sites to develop anticipated proficient responses in writing, and they continued collaborating on their local lessons in their classrooms to make sure they had the lessons and support needed to help all students.

All right, so there are many great things that came out of the PLC work, but I think one of the best and most enduring things that came out of it was that we leaned in on the expertise of our teaching community. Additionally, the collaboration, camaraderie and focus on a common understanding of instruction that our PLC facilitators have helped to create with our elementary teachers has really set us up for the work that we will continue doing next school year with the MVWC Wake. So as you know, Next year, we'll focus in on collaborative teacher work to identify the essential expectations for students at every grade level. Together, TEAS will define the strong foundation of success, the minimum guaranteed expectations for all students supported by rigorous instruction, aligned assessments, and shared clarity across grade levels and schools, the same student-oriented expectations for all MVW CUA students. So it truly has been an honor to work with this team of teacher leaders. We have some of them here, but actually it's a really big team of teachers that we brought together to do this work. So thank you so much for allowing us some time to share about the things that they accomplished.

Thank you. Thank you. And now we will move to public comment for items on the closed session agenda. Any member of the public in person wants to address the board regarding this item, please turn in a speaker card. And if you're online, use the raise hand function. I'll see how many speakers we have and then allocate time accordingly. I have one in person and there are any members on any person, any member of the public online. Okay. One member in person. I'll, I'll create three minutes. First, uh, Mr. Nelson.

Now it's on. Yes, this is about the superintendent's evaluation, which is just about a year after he was hired on a three-year contract, and the third of his contract is over. In particular, the superintendent, I think, did not pay attention in his first year to Some things, we got a very slow start, particularly understaffed student services at Castro, which has the highest chronic absenteeism. If you budget two positions and half of those positions aren't filled until after January, then it is the superintendent's responsibility for not seeing that those student services vitally needed actually have FTE people in them. um second failure to keep and nurture existing site principles um i've written this this was didn't wasn't sent out until this morning so it may be uh repetitious um we now see bear's version of principal churn uh look at the number of new principles that now exist will exist next year and think about if some of those ones could have been uh kept in their positions and entered better second or third failure to recognize as extremely serious the high need student gap increases over the last four years three of them preceded his employment but he's responsible for understanding what the academic gap situation is in this particular district and why it has been one of the 20th worst in the nation over the last decade for elementaries. Failure to hold his highest educational services staff and their consultants to very high integrity standards and data driven competence. I've written on that extensively. Another way of putting it is being so timid in helping 1,000 plus high needs students. It's starting to be his homework, I would say. So in my last 50 seconds, one of the things that we've seen is the superintendent comes from a local, but a very high wealth district. That is his experience. So when he talks about the ceiling, he's talking about this top decile that represents the students at all of his elementary schools when he was a principal up in Los Altos. That is not our district. Our district is not homogeneous. It's very mixed. and because he was a good superintendent at this kind of a district doesn't mean he will be successful and know how to handle these and hopefully these five schools that he sent different handling that's going to end up good but he's used more than a third of his contract thank you mr nelson all right with no further public comment now turn to the closed session at 6 30 p.m

The board has reconvened an open session at 849 PM. No reportable action was taken. We now move to a consent agenda. These items are considered routine and will be acted upon in one motion. Does any board member wish to remove an item for separate consideration? Seeing none. Oh, Trustee Weber.

I just would like to comment on 2 of the items very briefly, uh, item F, operating budget to the Mountain View, um, Residences Corporation. I'd like to, um, you know, thank the, the staff for and I guess the. The board as well for, um. you know, agreeing to put on some kind of financial report that's publicly accessible and updated on a regular basis. Well, thank you for that. And I also would like to I think we're gonna talk about the LCAP climate survey results later when I'll save my comments for that. But I, again, thank the staff for including the Hanover research report. I think that, you know, the district makes decisions based on these contracted reports. And I think it's very good to include them in the agendas of the public and take a look. So thank you very much.

Any further questions or comments? Okay. We will now open public comment on the consent agenda. If any member of the public wishes to speak in person on the consent agenda, please turn in a speaker card. If you want to speak online, use the raise hand function. I will wait to see how many speakers we have. No one in person?

And no one online?

Okay. Do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Oh. Oh, one online. See, we'll give three minutes for commenting on the consent agenda. The only speaker you may go.

Hi, thank you. This is you. I want to make a comment regarding item C on the consent agenda. still don't understand why the district went with uh using lease um lease leaseback agreement um for this outdoor learning project um because as i remember with the bread company they did the window and i believe it was 9 million and then it ended up being 17 or something it went way over And because then the district added stuff that's not even related to the window installment to this thing, which doesn't sound like the right thing to do. And so I'm just concerned with this whole lease-leaseback thing. And then if things go over, you cannot say like, hey, got to stop because things are already in action. So does it mean that we are going to keep on, like we're going to go over? And I also, I thought that the lease-leaseback need to be on a building, but these are not building, these are just garden. So that's confusing to me. And one other thing that no one mentioned is what about the maintenance costs? additional cost of water keeping these plants alive at the 10 school um waters is not cheap it's expensive have you seen your utility bill lately um so that is going to dip into the general fund which is money that's supposed to go toward the education of our student Not for greening trees and stuff. Your mission is to teach, not to keep the building beautiful. You want to build a learning space for the kids to learn. It's like the home and the house kind of deal. and so it just i'm just very disappointed because the month like we still this this bond um that was promised to taxpayer we still haven't had a workshop we still haven't had a cooking kitchen that gets wanted oh the modernized um you know science all these things that actually was put on the ballot for taxpayer to see first and all of a sudden now we're spending 13 like i don't know 10 to 13 million dollars on greenings um so disappointing and I'm just sad to see that you know um general funds money is now it's gonna be going toward additional water instead of paying um you know supporting our kids and helping them learn better helping them being successful and preparing them well for high school thank you thank you uh do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda I make a motion to approve this consent agenda as presented

I second. All those in favor.

Aye.

All opposed? The motion passes unanimously. We now move on to section communications. Any employee organizations? District committees? All right, seeing none.

My apologies, my apologies, I attended the district advisory committee as well as the district English language. Advisory committee, so the doc and the and both groups 1 over the cap and also at the it was wonderful. There was every school site talked about the different things that they'd accomplish for multilingual learners that year and different initiatives. They'd. Um, so it was a really lovely event in the past. Sometimes it's been in person, um, this year it was online. I'm hoping in the future we can go back to being in person for that last 1, but it was a busy time. So I understand. And I want to thank all the members of those committees for their, um, consistent work across the year as well as their, um. You know, engagement with things like the cap and other district initiatives.

Thank you. I also attended the district advisory committee.

All right, any further committees and we'll move on to the superintendents report.

Just unlike at the time, I think I'll hold mine and I'll send it to you in the week. All right.

Um, I'll now open public comment on communications. If any member of the public wishes to speak on the reports given, um, turn in a speaker card in person or use the raise hand function. If you are online. Seeing none now move on to. The Community comments. This is this time we open the Florida Community comments on items not appearing on tonight's agenda, please remember that the brown act prohibits the board from discussing or taking action on any item not listed on the posted agenda. trustees or staff members briefly respond to clarify facts or may direct superintendent to agenda as a matter for future meeting allocate time after seeing how many speakers, we have if you're in person turn in a speaker card and if you're online use the raise hand function. I have one speaker in person and no one online, so I'll give three minutes. Our first speaker is Mr. Nelson.

Thank you. This is about evidence-based decision making. In particular, I want to talk about the high needs Hispanic math proficiency trends. These are information that you should, I hope, have blasted in your brain, but I will blast it more if you haven't. The trends over the last four years for the Hispanic, which are interesting because rather than unduplicated, they may be duplicated because many of these students have two high needs. One, they're English learners and two, they're from economically disadvantaged families. Those things put together make them have much harder time in school. And what we can see, and this is just a blow up from what what the systems survey showed is that over the last 4 years mountain view goes down. And the California average goes up. So what you can see here is the trend lines. And actually, those are just drawn in, but if you do numerically, you find they have very small R squares, which means the linear fit works very well. 1, of course, because California probably has close to a 1Million Hispanic students. And Mountain View-Wisman has over probably 900 that are being actually measured. This is the common core thing. But what's really interesting, if you use, look at the ratios. In other words, use what California's increase is as the baseline of what we're looking at. If California has been able to recover from the pandemic with this student group, why the heck hasn't Mountain View? And the ratio normalizes that essentially you take 1 and divide it by the other and you find the ratio and right after the pandemic. We were at 1.2, in other words, we were higher than the state average for Hispanic students and their proficiency in math, but then it started to drop. and very quickly by 2023 the ratio was getting below 1.0 in other words we were worse than the state average in math and then farther it unfortunately just continues down this is one of the kinds of things proportions that needs to be taught in math and should be shown in our The other thing is, what is the floor? If you're looking at students who are two or three years behind, who are way below the floor, you see where the California average is going down, Mountain View Westman has a lot more scatter, but it's going up. We're having four more students that are two or three years behind. Where's the equity?

Charles, your time is, we are now moving on to, uh, discussion and action item. 10, a, um, 1st item is expanded learning opportunities, program, update and contract for 202627, uh, director presenting.

Thank you. I'm going to go quickly, I think, through a lot of the pieces of the presentation. You'll notice that some of this is repeated from presentations past. Okay. Of course, this aligns with our strategic plan, our background information. Of course, MVWSD Plus is our after school program funded by ACES and ELOP, operated by Beyond the Bell and our partners at YMCA. Um, you know, it's funded by, um, has some general requirements we've talked about before. Um, or is our main provider for a lot and, um, very similar to aces there are requirements for. The educational enrichment, um, activities and, um, program times and then when we have those additional 30 days beyond the school year. did we operate. Our enrollment, we've shared a few times before throughout the year. I just want to highlight that Castro and Mistral have by far our largest enrollment in the district in our after school programs. Changes from last year, I want to highlight, we have one ELOC provider this year rather than two. If you remember last year, we had two providers in addition to our Beyond the Bell program. This year YMCA has expanded significantly. And to be fair, there have been some bumps along the way. There have been Tremendous increases to staff with the YMCA training for staff has had to trickle in as new staff has trickled into and navigating space at our most impacted sites I think has been a big challenge for the year. Additionally, we started 28 great to have those art classes for our children, but it became a little bit challenging to change schedules in all of our after school programs to fit those classes in. not that that's a bad thing just one of those little bumps along the way so steps we've taken this year we've created some common expectations we have monthly site visits not only with our leadership teams but also with our region 5 leadership we've had judy crates doing some coaching and mentoring with the staff and we have weekly meetings to review progress and any concerns Additionally, YMCA has also been making adjustments to staffing along the way and making adjustments based on feedback that we've received. We did provide an after school program survey to our parents in BTB and in our ELOP YMCA. in April. And I'm not going to read the questions, but we did ask parents to share with us how much they agreed or disagreed with each of these following statements. Parents were also asked to share some open-ended statements about what they liked about the program and what areas of improvement they saw. There were a total of 145 responses, and these were in English and in Spanish, and pretty even split between the two languages and responses. We had 56 participants who were in VTB, 87 who were in YMCA, and two who just weren't quite sure about the program, just that they were participating, which was great. You can see when we look at the overall picture of general satisfaction, parents primarily agree or strongly agree with all of the statements, which is great. If we look just at BTB, we have, and I don't have to go through each of these, but you can see how each of those statements lines up. And then again, for YMCA, you can see the breakdown of how parents responded to each of those questions there. And thank you in the board questions, we did break it down further by program and by site as well. So you can see that too. Um, some of the feedback we received from families, um, in their open responses were, you know, staff are wonderful and really care about students. Communication is good. It's a great program for working parents. Parents are happy for kids to have time to finish homework and again. Commented on staff caring about children. We also heard that we need more homework support, improved communication. Parents want more snacks with fruit. We heard that loud and clearly. More fun activities and additional staff development around helping kids with special needs in particular was called out. Parents want fewer staff changes and more academic support, like tutoring. So moving forward with all of that information, You know, as we really look at all of this feedback, we're interested in working together a little differently in the upcoming year and really implementing a positive universal program for students. Might ask what in the world here is a universal program? It is recommended by the California Department of Education to really ensure that all children have access to quality after school programs. We combine our resources, meaning we'll combine our funding from ACES and ELOP to really provide a program that's consistent for all children, regardless of where they go. So moving forward in the next year, we would like to have a program where children will still be enrolled into Ymca or Vtb. But regardless of which program they're enrolled into, they're going to have a really similar experience, because we're really going to be consistent with who's invited to programs, what our academic enrichment looks like in each of those programs. Expectations will be very similar in both of those programs, and so will the professional development and planning. In order to help us through this, our YMCA partners and our staff visited folks over in Morgan Hill because they do run our universal program. So we wanted to learn from them how they were managing that program and what steps they took to get there. It was a really helpful conversation. And so we have been working on developing a universal comprehensive program as well. So our program plan development includes, you know, our program invitations, our attendance and early release procedures to get those aligned between programs, collaboration and really developing procedures for homework and enrichment and social emotional learning activities as well. doing some collaborative training and expectations and having consistent ratios and snacks. Snacks keep coming back up. Once we've developed all of these shared expectations, we need a way to monitor the progress. And so we're looking at developing a joint rubric and then really identifying and tracking key performance metrics throughout the year. Providing targeted coaching and training based on what we see, you know, with those with those rubrics, and then really establishing those clear expectations and timings for any improvements that are needed. And we've been working quite a bit on some universal program plan agreements, and these are a list of 16 things that we've agreed that we want to see really consistently, um, whether it's. In BTB or YMCA, and I'm not going to go through all of them. Um, but I want to highlight, uh, number 6, joint staff training on agreed upon topics. Um, that are collaboratively planned and presented. We want to have some after school site lead collaboration that will be built into the schedule so that our BTB staff and YMCA staff are planning lessons together so that kids will have that consistency. Our program components and schedules will be aligned with each other and our progress monitoring and quality checks that we just saw on the last slide will be something that we do in both programs together. So, you know, our universal program, or not universal, our ELAP program plan, sorry, was approved in the spring of last year, and the components of that plan are still in place. Our universal plan agreements that we just looked at on that last page have been developed collaboratively between the district and YMCA administration. and then summer work is going to include developing all those common documents and training and procedures to make all of those universal agreements happen and i'm going to switch gears on you for a quick second and go back to kessler sports as we talk about after school um agreements you will remember i presented information about rickessor sports i'm not going to go through this slide it's just the information that was presented to you but when i shared that with you we hadn't yet provided the parent survey survey results came back very minimally um we sent the survey to all of the schools that were running programs we only had 33 people respond of those only 24 actually had children participating in the program um and so our you know our data is pretty um pretty tiny parent results um you know really indicated that a lot of people just wanted their kids to learn sport some people needed that after school program hour in between um but only 36 percent of those you know small number who who participated um most participants responded really positively about the program but when asked if families would recommend the program um not because there was any problem with it but results were really um were really mixed and so given the very small participation and um the responses in the survey we're going to recommend that we not continue that program next year moving forward okay now i'm going to jump back into the budget i should have mentioned this at the beginning but i've provided you an updated budget page and we've uploaded a an updated presentation on the website um and this is just a revised um budget. The bottom line amounts haven't changed at all. We just wanted a cleaner and more precise need to present our budget, too. Okay. So if we're looking at our estimated budget and our revenue, and then comparing that to our expenditures for the next year, You will notice that we will be approximately $200,000 over our revenue next year. We do have additional ACES funding coming in, but we do have additional expenses with cost increases for staff as well. And I know we see contracted services with YMCA and Rogue Health, and then we see summer programs that also includes a contract with YMCA and Rogue Health. We see them in two places. The top is the regular school year, and that summer program would also be what we're funding for those two contracts, okay? We just separate them out for ourselves. We just wanted to make sure that that was clear. You'll notice on that slide also that moving forward, we won't probably have any carry over in years to come. And so we'll eat into the general fund more as the years continue down the road. Okay, so, um. Budget adjustments were made at the beginning of the year. We anticipated a $2 million budget for our ELOP. And program costs for YMCU were much less than initially projected. There were fewer students that participated in the program than were initially eligible. maybe not so much at certain schools there were a lot of students who participated at mistral but not quite so many in other places throughout the district and so there was a lot of um a lot less cost in the program than would have been and then there was a lot of collaborative work with our partners at ymc to review enrollment every two weeks and fill those open spaces which then eliminates that expense for us for seats not taken and eliminates for the YMCA having staff who didn't need to be there. So really working together to fill those spaces has been important. And then of course, Castro and Lestral received that additional ACES funding. And so that $194,000 increase will really support the additional programming that will come from BTB over at those sites. So considerations, we did have a request for proposals last year. YMCA was our selected provider. We've doubled in size this year, and there's been a lot of work to manage all of the pieces that go along with increasing that much. Throughout the year, our teams have really been working closely together to address concerns and improve program. Starting over with a new provider would likely lead to similar new program concerns and challenges. But continuing the collaborative work and the focus on program alignment and improvement should really allow for some really good planned open success, especially as we move into a universal program. A new RFP could be considered in the spring of next year if necessary as well. So next steps for us, we're going to keep working on that universal plan and all the pieces to go along with it. We'll keep registering our students for summer program, which is coming up so quickly, and start registering students for the new school year. We're asking tonight that we approve our YMCA contract so that we can keep working on all the good plans moving forward. And then we'll provide updates to the board in the fall regarding all of our progress at university.

Thank you. Can you clarify questions from the board?

Yes, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. And then I think some of our partners are here tonight. Thank you for staying so late with us. You know, when I've heard feedback from parents about the YMCA, it's been from parents in the paid program of the YMCA. Did we survey those families as well, or did the YMCA conduct surveys as well?

So, for the purpose of this presentation, I was focused only on, um, and I know that does survey, um, their paid program staff, um, individually. And if you'd like us to provide information about that in the future, we're happy to do that.

That would be great. Um, and similarly, when we talk about a universal program plan, um, does that extend beyond or is it just and B. T. B.

For the universal plan, it would be primarily. And those would be the focus areas of having the similar components the whole way through.

Okay, then I, I may ask again later at the end of the well, so this is. My challenge is, I think the families who are participating in in. have access to a program that's free for them. And they may not feel as comfortable expressing concerns, although some have. The parents who are paying for the program and in the same classrooms, some of those have expressed concerns. And when I look at the universal program plan agreements, I think that would address many of the concerns I've heard. Will that carry out across both groups of students, both paid and unpaid?

It would, because if they're in the same classroom, right, we'll be having the same components in the classroom, the same activities in the classroom, same expectations in the classroom and the same training and expectations for staff. Okay, I think it would help address all of those concerns that we've been hearing.

Thank you. I okay. Thank you very much.

Any further questions trustee labor.

I have two questions. One, there seem to be about 20% dissatisfaction rate in the programs, and not to focus on the negative, but to look for improvements. Do you understand why? What were people dissatisfied about?

Right, so this was why we wanted those open ended questions to see, you know, why what people wanted to see improvements in most of them had to do with, or I'm going to say a lot of them had to do with homework. Um, they really wanted their children to have more homework help. and get some tutoring so that they could understand the homework components more. Some of them were just unhappy with snacks, to be quite frank. Snacks came up quite frequently that they wanted healthier and more nutritious fruit, fresh fruit snacks in program. And some of them were about communication. Those were the primary things that the people who were not satisfied brought up as areas of concern. And that's why you'll see those are some of the primary things that we're talking about in our universal.

Were those the students responses or the parents?

Those were parents responses.

Probably that probably explains the homework.

Yes, indeed.

Um next question um looks like next year you're looking at uh if uh costs remain the same you're looking at a million dollar roughly shortfall um what are what are the plans to address that if

Right, so we currently still have applications for additional funding with aces and we're still hopeful that we will see a little bit more revenue from aces to help supplement that. And we'll continue to see what other areas, we can work on to address some of those. Some of those budget issues in the future, thank you.

um. My, my questions are probably somewhat predictable. Now, um, we have, this is a one year term, right for this contract, but it's got like a renewal for additional years. What are we thinking through now? That we would want to see a year from now, if we decide to renew it, like, you'll bring it back and say, like, what are you, what, what outcomes and kind of how are we making that decision? Whether or not to renew if we choose to. To do that.

I think, you know, looking at when we talked about the quality metrics, um, I think we would be really be using that data and very specific, um. Data that we can present to you and share with you, um, not only parent surveys, but also monthly check ins on program. Um, and seeing that we have good quality, um.

activities happening good quality outcomes for children happening um through all of those metrics that we're we're looking at as we go in and check in on programs thank you any further questions all right I'll now turn open public comment for this item if any member of the public wishes to speak on this item I'll try to speaker card in person or use the raise hand function online I'll see how many speakers we have before I allocate time known in person and one person online. I'll give three minutes. First speaker is Nguyen.

Hello, thank you for the presentations. I was looking at the data and I added up. So it looks like our Montmorency student population as of November 2025 was 4,638 students. So only 356 students are in this program, which is 7.6% of the student population of the whole district. And the cost is almost $3 million a year. So 2997732. So if you divided that by the number of the student taking advantage of this, that's $8,420 per student for this afterschool program. But if you're looking at the school budget or the student that, you know, for six hours of the school time that the district is required to teach and serve, we're spending around 24,000 per students. So this is more than one third of the cost of our students. of the entire population of 4,638 students. To me, that sounds like a lot of money for a very small group of students. So that's just my math. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll now return to the board for discussion. Did those costs match?

We have between ACES and ELAC, we have a little over 900 students participating in programs throughout the district.

Thank you. So, I appreciate all of the work that has gone into this and, um. The universal program plan agreements as well. I think this is a tricky situation in the sense that 1st of all staffing for after school programs is incredibly hard to provide. We've experienced that ourselves with beyond the bell, but, um. You know, just it's an ongoing issue in in many districts around us as well, because these are not high paying jobs. They're not full time jobs. And yet we want to find people who really engage with our children and enjoy working with and supporting children. And so I think that anytime there's a broad expansion staffing up, and then making sure everyone is trained and in sync is a real challenge. Because of some of those challenges, quality seemed uneven this year when I heard from parents in the community. Some people really loved their programs, some people had a harder time. I think this is a tricky thing because we're contracting with the YMCA, and yet they also are an after-school provider for paid clients, and those populations then interweave. what is reassuring to me in this is that because those are shared classrooms the support and training and expectations for staff and the parts of this universal program Plan agreement will impact both student populations, those who are paying and those who are not paying. Um, and I think that that will ensure more consistent quality district wide. So everyone has a very positive experience. And the thing that came back to me again and again was, um. families really want their children to have strong relationships with the aftercare providers and the adults who are with them in the room. Even if those are young adults, even if those are like college students or recent graduates, they really want their child to be interacting with a person and not kind of on their own. And so I'm hopeful, but that's something that as a trustee, I also really care about. What is the quality of the interaction? Is someone on their cell phone or are they engaging with the students? I probably should have asked this as a question too. Can you speak a little bit more to, I don't see that directly addressed here, but I think it's gonna be in some of the training. Can you speak a little bit more or even the YMCA representatives to how staff will build relationships with students.

Okay, so we have a few different trainings. We have our core trainings and then we have our YPQI. One of them is relationship building, but we actually train at the start of all of our different programs. So we're ramping up in summer. And so we really focus on what does it mean to see, hear, appreciate? What does that look like? What does that feel like? So really taking it back to the basics. First thing is learning their name and going from there. So we do have intentional trainings to make sure that that's what we're doing. As we grew, we had a lot of new staff, but now we also have a lot of staff returning. So we're feeling very good about where we are. But yes, training is definitely key. And we do have training, not only within our region, but globally with the Y of Silicon Valley. So we just trained 700 people for summer training. We have about, I would say, 100 of that is our staff for Mountain View.

Thank you.

Further discussion? Trustee Reed?

um i wanted to say that my children attended that training uh the leadership training and it was great to me that after attending that leadership training and getting their aed and first aid and cpr certification that they were encouraged to continue on that way there is that continuity in you've been trained in our system we want you to continue working with that system and growing your skills and being placed not just in summer programs but also moving in from summer programs to those after school programs. So there's that bit of trying to retain people who already know what they're doing.

Yeah, I think for me, I think I'm eager to see as Trustee Connolly raised what our kind of holistic view of the program satisfaction is across lots of different families. I think generally this is going to be useful for us in deciding when this comes back how it's doing for us. I'm really excited for the universal program and aligning it with all of our core work that we're Already kicking off with way and putting all that together, I think will really, really help us. But, um, I do want to make sure that we're. Delivering a satisfying service for all of our families here. So. This is an action item, right? Yes. Any other any further discussion or do we have a motion?

I move that the Board of Trustees approve the YMCA contract as presented.

I'll second.

All those in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Not move on to item ten B, resolution for the intentional use of education technology. Superintendent Behr, present.

So this is brought forward for the board's consideration as it says, regarding intentional use of education technology. It's presented in a Uh, draft format, um, it can either be, um, and it's listed as discussion action.

Clarifying questions from the board.

Yes, so what is, uh, the purpose of this resolution? I guess I see a lot of, you know, it's a high level aspirational statement, but the, are we going to be talking about the details of how to, you know, define what best practices are, implement them, look at computer use at home, computer use in the classroom, not even computer in the classroom, it's just not only just computers, but yeah, video. So what are the plans for this?

Yeah. So this is, um, you're right. It is a high level. Um, this is, uh, definitely going to be part of our strategic plan work as we go forward. I would, we have a head over study being completed. We have a survey out right now, uh, to parents that wraps up today, tomorrow, tomorrow. Um, that will certainly inform that, uh, anticipate we'll have a study session, but this is all, This all needs to work into our strategic planning, um. And not as a standalone, um, initiative.

And so the purpose of this tonight is to just. It sort of emphasize our interest in that is a priority to our district.

Okay, thank you for the questions. All right, I'll now turn to public comment on this item. Any member of the public in person wishing to speak, turn in a speaker card and online use the raise hand function. I'll wait to see how many speakers we have before allocating time.

President DeFazio, may I make a motion to extend the meeting until 11.45 PM?

Yes, you may.

So done.

I'll second.

City Council Chambers, All those in favor. City Council Chambers, All opposed motion passes with trustee reading voting negative. City Council Chambers, All right, now I will continue public comment. City Council Chambers, Any member of the public online wishing to speak, use the raise hand function in person, use a speaker card.

City Council Chambers, Seeing no one online and no one in person.

I'll now return to the board for discussion and potential action. Trustee Reed?

I was very surprised to see this on the agenda, considering right before seeing it on the agenda, I was sent a reminder to fill out the technology survey. To me, it seems a little bit putting the cart in front of the horse in that we don't have all the information from that survey. And I also felt taking my board hat off and being a parent, Why do I need to fill the survey out when there's already an adoption on the agenda for a technology resolution? It's so general that it's like, yes, these things are true. But to me, it doesn't seem like. this discussion time and the staff time spent on creating this seemed fruitful for what it is. There isn't anything in there that hasn't been discussed, but there's also no detail in there that makes this a substantial resolution adoption. But also in light of recent chatter online on various forums, it feels a little bit reactionary versus proactive. And it also feels like let's do something to do something to be the first to do something versus we're already in the process of discussing these things. We've already voted on some of these items to be included in upcoming work that we're doing. So it doesn't, the placement and the timing to me doesn't make sense.

Thank you trustee Henry.

I will just follow up to say that I agree that there's, there's nothing in this that I object to. I think it. Reflects what I think where I think we already were going. I think all of us have at different points over the last 6 months talked about wanting to do a study session on technology use. So, in that way, I was also sort of surprised to see it when it was also the same day. I'd filled out my survey, but I can support this resolution and there's nothing that I object to in it. I appreciate the changes. We've already made things like reducing the Chromebooks and K through 3. Our district. tried to eliminate all use of i-ready lessons in 2024 and some have hung on um brought back at parent request um but we'll be have a clear we already have a clear plan to move away from that so i appreciate that um so i am really looking forward to when we do have all the information um to be able to schedule that study session and are able to consider the role of tech In our strategic planning process, including the, you know, the specific products, you know, the staff is already assembling a list of what is used in costs and things like that. Language wise, the only thing I'll you could adjust if you want to is now that mobile. I think one of the whereas this refers to that we are will soon be adopting mobile communications devices policy and that was adopted on consent. So that could be changed if we want to. I do think they're probably there are some a lot of things that sites want to do and can do and that relate to tech. Um, that that won't have to come to us, um, even or can, you know, already we've adopted the mobile communications devices policy that now sites will be having to enforce, um, which is a big thing. Um. Possibly, and so they may want to consider, um. You know, how the devices fit into those breaks and lunches and things. Um, but all that to long windedly say that I can support this resolution tonight. I. Most look forward to really digging in, um, to this topic in a study session, likely early fall. Um, thank you.

I think. So one of the challenges that we're in right now is there is a great deal of parental concern about technology usage. And the board also has aspirations for how we should be using technology intentionally in our schools. And at the same time, as Trustee Reid pointed out, We're in the middle of gathering. We've taken some actions already. We're in the middle of gathering data to be able to make further decisions in the future. But I also think there's value and highlighting for the community and 1, coherent document, the steps we have already taken and where this work is going to sit as we move forward. And so I see this resolution as a communication piece. It's summarizing a lot of the actions that we've taken. but also in the strategic plan it's stipulating that screen time usage by grade level and student need will be addressed so there will be some guidelines concrete guidelines around that the process for evaluating a proven software and tools for student use we've talked about having a list of non-approved or a list of already approved apps and what that process would look like that should be part of that how we're dealing with devices, who's getting them, which we have addressed some that we will dig into more, and then annual reporting. I agree that These are things that the board is already heading toward. I think what we have been missing is a coherent communication piece for the public and a kind of a clear list of what we want to make sure we're including in the strategic plan or what's already being planned. Our staff has been doing a huge amount of work on this. And so this documents a lot of what they've already taken on and and it also points to things that staff are already looking at, including in the strategic plan. So. I see it more as a communication piece. Um, and I think it's a good time to do this because there's a lot of public interest. We've been seeing resolutions like this adopted elsewhere in the state and it's, um, creating, um. It's creating public interest in a topic that parents already had concern about. But I think if we don't communicate what we're doing more clearly as a board and what our goals are, I think that leaves parents feeling like we aren't doing anything. We can say we're going to have a study session, but if we aren't doing something that's kind of a more concrete list like this, I think that that leaves people kind of hanging on where we want to go.

Well I've listened to this conversation and I think I've changed my mind after everyone has spoken. I'm not going to support this resolution. And the main reason is I think it's such a high level overview it's pretty much meaningless. Parents who have paid attention well even if they haven't they know about these things already. I also think it overall It puts technology use in a very negative light. And I think with any technology, there are true benefits and there are dangers to it. And we should not be focused on all of the negative things that technology can't do. I think we should be positive and our school district should use technology to the advantage and to the education of our students and make sure that we do it properly. And this high-level statement doesn't really do anything. I wish we would spend the time getting this report, working through it, developing concrete plans. And this, in a way, puts things before Uh, we need to see those 1st, before we make our public statement about these things.

My feelings, thank you trust elaborate. Um. Yeah, for me, I think the core bit, I think of this is. Is I work on the with the policy committee on normal device usage policy, and I appreciate all the staff time that goes into it lining up the pieces that we have that are kind of an independent work stream right now in various ways and making sure that that gets fed into the strategic plan. So that it's not an. Additional thing that we're doing that will distract from that, but we're focusing those. Things we're collecting the direction we've been giving to staff over the previous several meetings and saying, this is a constrained version of what we expect to see going in here. And it's gonna be the start of that conversation. Um, going going through, um. I think ultimately, right? Like, we need to get the survey responses. We need to get the. The, um, on it that we're doing internally and. hand that off to the experts to to kind of tell us how you know given what we expect for for usage of technology in the classroom and for helping students like what is the best approach here trustee reed um very often every meeting we have discussions and staff

Synthesize our discussions and create priorities and then create action items based on our discussion without us having to create a resolution for that. I would feel more comfortable if the resolution had the details on it from the research that's being done, which we are going to be seeing the results of and. august uh to me this seems incomplete and it seems like something we would have to revisit and revise and then re-approve so to me that just creates extra work and effort where it could just be done the once completely i get the communication piece. We want to communicate with our community what we have done and what we plan to do. But I also feel like, as Bill just stated, people who have been paying attention have noticed these things, know these items, know what we've passed, know the direction that we're heading. And I don't necessarily feel that the resolution does anything more to solidify that for our community any more than an email would or a bulletin that says, these are our priorities.

No, I mean, I completely hear that. I think, again, this goes back to the challenge of there are lots of things that I would like to put in here that don't make sense until we have more data. But I also think the next step isn't revising a resolution. This is a commitment to the work moving forward. And as President DeFazio outlined, it's a um it's highlighting things to make sure they're part of the strategic planning process um the next step i think once we get through a study session once we get data back once the street the strategic planning process has gone through what we would eventually do is adopt a policy probably this is not a policy this is a promise to do the work to the public and highlighting for our district as we move forward in strategic planning of the important components around technology that we want to be included in that strategic planning.

Trustee Henry.

So, I will also, as trustee Reed said, we have a lot of things we plan to look at in the strategic plan, and we don't intend to do resolutions on all of them. Um, I know this came, you know, soon after adopted their resolution of the same name. This is a much less prescriptive resolution than what they adopted. Um, they adopted theirs after, you know, many, many months of, you know. On site listening sessions, things like that. Um. So I can support this resolution, but I also, as Trustee Meade said, I think that it reflects things. So to the extent that it is useful to pull together what we were planning to do anyway, I'm fine with it, but I'm fine.

And for context, this was something that arose out of, you know, it's noted in the trustee questions, this came at a board member request. This began months ago before LAU. This is not, oh, let's take what LAUSD did and suddenly do something. This is, the board had been talking about it i was really interested in working on it i talked with president defazio it's something that he is concerned about as well and knows the board and staff are doing work around it and had already been in discussion and work for weeks before la usd dropped but the um LAUSD trustees have full staffs for individual trustees. So when it comes to writing a resolution, this borrows pieces from that because there was already a lot of work that was put into it. And so it's a framework to reference. it was frankly incredibly convenient to have that drop just as we were in the drafting process. And so there was something that we could borrow from, but then adapt and make appropriate for our school district. President DeFazio, I am curious, I can make a motion or do you want this to come back at a later date or how would you like to proceed?

That's up to the board.

Okay, I will make a motion to approve resolution number 0, 1 dash 0, 5, 2, 8, 2, 6, the intentional use of education technology.

I'll 2nd trust elaborate.

Uh, we do need to take public comment. Thank you.

Apologies. Um, before voting, we'll take public comment on this item. I thought I'd gone through that. I apologize. Um.

Yeah, the people I expected.

Oh, yeah, so I did take public.

We did take public comment and there was no comment.

All right, uh, then I seconded. All those in favor. All right. All opposed. motion passes with trustees Lambert and trustee Reed and the voting nay. We will now move on to 10 C local control accountability plan federal addendum. Director Chang, you present this item.

Good evening trustees tonight. I'm presenting the annual cap federal intend them for discussion. This effort is, of course, always aligned to our strategic plan. I'm primarily in the areas listed here. So, the federal addendum to the cap is the plan for how our district utilizes the federal money allocated to us each year. It describes key initiatives such as support for our Title I school, professional development for our teachers, and enhancements for the experience of our traditionally underserved student populations. There are four main titles under which we receive federal money, one through four, and this slide provides a broad description of the purpose of each. Zooming in on title 1 monies, these are funds that we utilize for efforts, such as maintaining educator equity across school sites, parent and family engagement, specifically the salaries of additional staff, such as the additional at risk intervention supervisor and newcomer teacher for Castro school. Title 1 also goes towards funding our McKinney-Vento services. We have 2 liaisons in our district who work directly with the parents and schools to ensure that our MCVs have access to all the resources and rights to which they're entitled by law, such as priority access to after school programs. Title 1 money has also been used in the past to support the transitions between preschool and elementary, elementary and middle and middle to high school. Title 2 is primarily about our staff's professional growth. We use this funding to support teachers with coaches, our SCEFs, and our at-risk intervention supervisors with regular PD. We monitor these efforts through annual surveys. Title III is used for services to support our multilingual learners. It's used mainly on teacher professional development, the salary of one of our newcomer positions, supplemental curriculum and resources, et cetera. For Title IV, we use it for a specific set of computer science course materials and training for teachers to deliver the programming for some of our middle school electives. Just going on straight into next steps. After this presentation and discussion, I will come back in a couple of weeks to ask for approval of the LCAP federal addendum at the next board meeting. And we'll continue the implementation of programs as outlined in the next academic year. And then in the following spring, we'll update the addendum again and come to you and present this as part of the LCAP process. Thank you.

and clarifying questions from the board. Now open public comment for this item. Any member of the public and person wishing to speak, turn in a speaker card. Anyone online, please use the raise hand function. I'll wait to see how many speakers we have. Seeing no one in person and no one online, I'll now return to the board for discussion.

Thank you for the presentation, and I appreciate the update on how the funds are being provided for the public. I think it's just a discussion item, though. There's no action here.

It's just a discussion. I usually preface that on these. All right. With that, thank you, Dr. Cheng.

I could just since he's here comment, just a, thank you to, uh, Mr Chang for his work this year, filling in as the interim Graham principal as well as, uh. Picking up some extra things that we need along the way. Um, so just want to express my gratitude.

Thank you. We'll now move to item. The California dashboard, local indicators. This is a discussion item only, so no action will be taken. Associate Superintendent Bauer, you'll present.

Thank you. On the dashboard, the state and local indicators. Just a little overview on the dashboard is the state's accountability system so that we can monitor how districts and schools are performing under our accountability system. Um, there's state indicators on the dashboard. These are populated, um, through our, um, through compounds and the state, um, populates all of these on the dashboard. And then there's local indicators that we'd have to do a self reflection on, including basic services, conditions of learning at implementation of state standards, parent engagement, school, climate and broad course of study. So, we have to rate our progress annually as met not met or not met for 2 years report to you in conjunction with the cap and then update the dashboard no later than July of 2026. So, looking at district performance or reflection, basic services, this is measuring progress and meeting William settlement requirements at all of our sites. It talks about credentialing so you can see here our total teaching full time equivalent teachers or teachers with clear credentials. Our teachers considered out of field or ineffective, inexperienced, our intern teachers and our teachers without clear complete credentials. Some of these categories overlap. Um, you can see that we had no students with access to their own copies of standards aligned instructional materials. We did a resolution after our Williams visits in the fall.

And then you can see, um, based on our fit reports, how our facilities are in terms of good repair, deficient repair or extreme deficient repair.

State priority 2 is implementation of state academic standards. We're rating our progress in providing professional learning to teachers to the adopted academic standards and our curriculum frameworks. And so we've actually lowered our rating here. We had given ourselves a higher rating in years past, but just based on the report and knowing that we are going to embark on brand new professional development, really related to standards. We're putting ourselves back at initial implementation. And looking here rating our progress in making instructional materials that are aligned to academic standards. Well, we know that we do have adopted aligned instructional materials and I think aligned is the key word. We, we, we know they're aligned, but they may not address the standards perfectly. And then looking at our policies or programs to support staff and identifying areas where they can improve delivering instruction. Again, we moved our ratings down in language arts and mathematics in anticipation of we're going to learn a lot in our professional development that's coming up. We've done a lot of training, you've heard from the PLC, you've heard the PLC group, the work that we've done, but there's definitely areas of improvement and making sure that we are really addressing the standard and the rigor of the standard. reading our progress in implementing additional standards, health, PE, visual, performing arts, or language, and only giving ourselves a three in career technical ed. We definitely don't have a robust career technical ed program at middle school. We have some things and some options for kids in electives, but it's definitely an area we can continue to improve upon. Looking at engaging in activities with teachers and school administrators, identifying professional learning needs of groups of teachers or staff as a whole. We definitely know where we need to go, developing those essential standards and our assessments aligned to the rigor of SBAC. Identifying professional learning needs of teachers, moving ourselves back to a three, along with providing support because we are going to learn next year about what exactly our teachers need. Parent engagement is the next state priority indicator using the self reflection tool. So we're using a lot of our survey percentages here. In terms of building relationships, these are parent perceptions of the district's ability to create welcoming environments. to learn about family strengths, cultures, and languages, and developing opportunities for two-way communication. And the majority of the perceptions are fairly high, where parents agree that we're doing a good job here. And looking at partnerships for student outcomes definitely some work for us to continue to do and providing professional learning and support to staff to improve the school's capacity to partner with families. And supporting our families to understand and exercise their legal rights and advocate for their own students and all students. And then input through decision-making, parents still feeling there's a lower percentage that they don't have a say in decision-making at their child's school, but definitely supporting and seeing some increases in perceptions about opportunities to provide input on policies and programs and providing opportunities to have families, teachers, principals, and district administrators work together to design family engagement activities. School climate, we have to administer a local climate survey at least every other year. We use our LCAP survey as that. We had 2,113 student responses this year for students in grades four to eight. So just some highlights. And what we're seeing is student perceptions in a lot of areas increasing in a positive direction. Feelings about students feeling safe at school was a notable increase, as well as even though My School is Clean is still low, we did finally start to see some improvement in that area. And I think some of that is based on the focus groups that Dr. Westover's team is dying to try to figure out how to address student concerns. And then looking as well as some other pieces where we've seen some increases in students feeling that teachers encourage them on a regular basis. Still some work around students respecting teachers and staff and students getting along with each other and respecting their differences. And I think while we're seeing slow improvements, we have to remember we're only in year one of our initial CEL curriculum. And so hopefully we're going to continue to see that trend move forward. I did disaggregate the data. I wanted to see if there was any things by grade level. Just looking at different questions. But definitely seeing some big changes in student perceptions in different grade levels, which is good to see. Still that area of students getting along and respecting each other is a pretty consistent trend across our little higher in our elementaries but definitely lower in our middle schools and then here i broke it out by english learners and um sed or socioeconomically disadvantaged students just to see if we were seeing the same sort of positives we definitely saw a negative in where our english learners feeling that um students from cultural backgrounds become friends we saw a decrease in that But in most other areas, we've seen nice increases similar to what we've seen in the all student group. So broad course of study, measuring our progress in the extent to which students have access to and enrolled in a broad course of adopted courses of study. For EDCO, these are the things that we must assess. And then, and these are that these are how we then assess those items and code class schedules, we look at things we provide we look at power school, we look at our elective catalog. And we do feel like students had to go on course of study and across across the board. there's always room for improvement at home. These are just some highlights from the parent survey about perceptions of parents on ideas or thoughts around broad cancer study, range of enrichment activities, 83% agree or strongly agree. My child has access to a broad range of subjects at school, 86%. And then students as well feeling um that their the perceptions are fairly high that students feel like they have enough textbooks that they provide a good education they get access to music art and other languages again broken out by grade level to see if there is any um kind of outliers definitely seeing a lot of positive perceptions increasing across the board We will continue to offer a broad course of study next year. I think what we are looking at though in our elementary schools is definitely the results of the system study and talking about that Christmas tree effect and really having to start revisiting our elementary schedules to maximize those instruction blocks. We want to make sure kids have access to all the good stuff, the art, the music. living classroom, all of those things, but we also have to make sure those instructional blocks are sufficient and extended enough so that kids get access to core instruction. So we're gonna work on that in elementary. And then middle schools convening a committee to look at different options for a middle school schedule with the goal of recommending a new schedule for implementation next year in 27-28. And so next steps are going to bring these back to you for approval without cap on June 11 and then. I will upload those to the dashboard and just know the dashboard and test scores are going to be released in tandem on October 15 this fall state has been moving. That release date and so it's now going to be October 15 so after that will present an overview of the dashboard. So that i'm happy to answer any questions.

City Council Chambers, Thank you. City Council Chambers, clarifying questions from trustees. City Council Chambers, All right, I will open public comment on this item and remember the public, we should speak in person turn in a speaker card if you're online use the raise hand function and then I will allocate time depending on how many speakers, we have. one card in person and no one online. So we'll have three minutes. Our first speaker is Mr. Nelson.

Good evening. I'm standing on a solid floor, which is one of the things that the system survey talked about is that I think we have priority to implementation of academic standards. It doesn't really mean we're trying, we're working with teachers, giving them professional development. It means you're actually meeting standard. Meeting level three, met standard. So we'll get above that. But one of the things that this district, and particularly the educational services department, has not been focusing on is that meeting standard. Otherwise we wouldn't have 50% of our kids below the basement. they're not at the floor they're not at the basement they're at the sub base that's what being two or three years behind in math means that's the metric we're so far below the floor for hispanic kids and also for the lcap high needs kids which are the sd kids about a quarter of the pupils in this school district Henry DeFazio, what kind of equity is that? The surveys, one of the problems is there seems to be no understanding in this district when we do surveys that when you have bias in the survey, it is clearly introduced when we have such a disparity in schools when the ratios of how many percent of surveys come in is so different between like Mistral and Castro. from Mai and Stevenson. You bias the results of this in an extreme way when you don't compensate for that. Now, I don't know why we don't ask the people who process the surveys to start applying corrections to those. But anybody who's doing polling corrections, it's like knows that surveys are biased by non-response. If you can't get the responses up the same, then you put in a correction factor. That makes most of the survey stuff from the parents really not very good data. It's data that can be biased by the principal or PTA to say, please get in all your survey results. Please get in all your survey results. So it's bullshit. When you see these surveys, they are very biased. And that's the word I use.

Yes. We have families that watch this, so please refrain from profanity. I can't stop you, but I would request that you do.

Too bad.

All right, moving on. This is a discussion item. Is there any further board discussion?

Yes. Yes. Even before Mr. Nelson made his comments. I noticed, I forget exactly where, but I noticed the response rates for the English language learner parents, SED parents is really pretty low. You know, when we have 40, roughly 40% of our kids in this category in our district. You know, to do these very important surveys is to represent our district accurately. To the state even seems really imperative that we have these parents, um. Participate in the surveys and that. of the many things we address in our school district, um, that seems to be just sort of a fundamental threshold that, that we need to solve is to get the parents at least responding to surveys, caring about, I'm sure they care about their kids. I'm sure about the education, but, you know, to, to actually work, it takes everybody to work together to educate our kids and, and, At a very minimum, we all need to respond to these kind of surveys. So I, I would really. I think about that deeply and try to come up with with ways we can solve that problem. Okay, this has been, it's nothing new. It's been going on as long as I've been involved in the school district and it's a frustration to board members community members. Um. Part of our strategic plan that's coming up, part of our priorities is really, really trying to focus on that. Maybe even giving, you know, not waiting until the end of the year to have them ask LCAPs. Let's give everybody surveys in between to the parents and then, you know, make it a competition or whatever it takes, right? Try to be creative. Thank you.

Yes, I agree with my colleague that this is a real challenge and we would like to see more of our parents, especially our students who are really struggling. Our multilingual learners, our Hispanic and Latino learner families participating in higher numbers in the survey. Are we providing paper copies and like meetings? Principal coffee is that type of thing? Do we ever provide? I know this is the challenge with we want it to be completely neutral data from a 3rd party. So that's why we don't administer the survey directly ourselves. and Hanover does the processing, do we do anything to try and bridge that gap?

So in the past, before Hanover moved to its newer platform, we used to be able to do paper surveys. So we would give out paper surveys. We'd have parents fill them out, and then district office staff would enter them. We've also tried to have nights where we'd say, come to the school. We'll support you to fill out the survey. We'll do food. We'd have the SCFs hold those. We've tried a variety of things, and I think we'll just have to just continue to try different things. I did share per a board member request. I did share a chart. With you that I linked in later today that has the actual numbers of responses by. Group so you can see it and definitely if you think about. Um, to your point, definitely our numbers for, especially our, our. In proportion, our students who are English learners, those are, those are the most concerning numbers. I think when I look at our parents of students with free and reduced lunch. This year, we had a total of 321 parents. 249 Hispanic Latino parents respond, 335 white parents respond. So the numbers are a little bit more similar there, but our English learner numbers are definitely not high.

Thank you. I think that's where that paper copy really matters or a translated copy or, yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, I think to the point of my colleagues, making sure we get good response rates so we can really understand what's going on, I think is probably one of the more important components of doing these surveys. And I think, you know, perhaps as we go out and examine vendors for ways in which if they're administering it, that they can help us get the higher response rates, I think would be a useful thing to think through, Trustee Reid.

I agree. In the trustee questions, there was the information about previous practices of Um, teaming with the steps and having family nights and matching it with registration. It would be great to see something like QR codes for these surveys and local stores where we know these families go to and local restaurants so that they have access in the places where they already are. Um, and then maybe having a little blurbs about, um. Families consume media differently, whether it's a short thirty second video that explains this is what this is. Please take this follow this link. Um, something that shows the importance of why we need this data from them, but really trying to be creative as to how we meet people where they are versus expecting them to come to us.

Any further comments? Trustee Reid?

temporary and probe staff that are flipped to permanent or complete induction. I'd like to see celebration of that. That's something that I think should be celebrated when a staff gets permanent status or completes their induction program. Just like we have all these, this celebration we had today, it can be included in that. And that was just one more level of We recognize the extra effort that you're putting in and thank you.

I think in some years we have had a celebration of staff who just achieved tenure. Is that correct? It's usually in the fall at the beginning of the year. Yeah, it's done in the fall.

And then actually last week we had our new teacher colloquium. So we invited all of the new teachers. They all came to Graham, had treats, celebrated the fact that they had finished their first year or their second year of induction, shared their work. And we did have a celebration there for them.

be great for for us to see that also like a showcase of what's all the latest greatest from the newest crew where you can invite us absolutely yeah i think it's really important for us to recognize a lot of these milestones in students staff everyone in our district i think it's really important for building that culture together so great thank you trustee lambert one other thing i'd like to emphasize i uh

I saw there was a lot of low scores on the staff perception and interaction with the board, with the senior staff. And, you know, clearly that's not good. And I really hope we put a lot of emphasis on that going forward, to understand exactly what's going on and to solve, you know, reverse those scores. I think this is going to really, these are numbers, right? And so we need to generate the action items after this and strategic plan and response to the irregular report will address that. But, you know, I think we want very concrete strategies to deal with these things.

Yeah, I will just say there's a great deal of repair work that's been going on over the last 18 months.

And I think that I'd like to see the, you know, I feel silly sort of mentioning this, but restrooms that aren't clean just comes up annually.

Right.

So, so whatever it is, we're, we gotta, we gotta change the whole outlook there.

Well, actually the restrooms, um, question we added this year, we separated it from my school is clean because we wanted to get a better sense. So. Yeah, we have to, we have, we have some work to do there.

This is a little frightening when we've had to, uh, let go half of our, uh, of, uh, of the janitor janitorial staffs.

Uh, I know I've, I've in the, in past reviews of the survey data, I think I've mentioned that my school is clean as one of the lower scoring. So it's good to see that directionally heading in the right heading the right way. So I appreciate the, the work that has gone into that. Um, I'm also optimistic. I think about some of our upcoming professional development being more satisfying for staff and building that out. So I'm looking forward to that. I know that's been a challenging question as well. All right any further discussion.

All right.

With that, thank you. We'll now move to item 10E, public hearing for 2026-27 local control accountability plan and 2025-26 annual update. Do we need to open?

So you're going to hammer and you're going to say the opening and the time.

All right. Ready? I'll open the public hearing at 1019 p.m.

Okay, so, uh, just going through, uh, just reminding everyone that our cap is aligned to our old strategic plan. Um, strategic plan, 2027, um, that really created the bones of our, our current cap. Just a reminder, we have to develop 3 year plans that explain our goals and strategies for improving achievement for students. They have to address the 8 state priorities. We have the federal addendum, which you heard from director chain earlier. And then we must approve all of these pieces by July 1 of each year. These are the 8 straight priorities that are attached to different goals in our services for foster youth and instruction of expelled students are for county offices only. So this just kind of outlines the timeline for development in the spring. Um, we spend time in the fall looking at, um, some of our larger metrics in our cap, like cast scores. I already scores. Um, and those types of pieces are also part of the development of the plan. So input from educational partners, we've talked quite a bit about this. It is a process. Um, we also have to present the our annual update. Um, to our parent advisory committee, our, our English learner parent advisory committee. Student advisory groups for review and comment, and then we respond in writing to all those comments. Um, and post them. We're also using the results of our climate survey and the results of the system study to inform some revisions to existing actions this year in our. So it's just an overview again of the survey. You have a full report on the consent agenda. Our student and staff response numbers have been fairly consistent over time. It's our parent numbers that are tending to decrease as well as I mentioned, our percentage of students, parents who have students that are learning English definitely are lower than all of the other groups. Our system study, we all know we conducted that in the fall. They identified the four root causes that are collectively creating our low ceiling, symbolic data systems, weak program design, Christmas tree effect, and weak system alignment. And there are new or revised actions based on either LCAP survey results or findings from the system study. So all the action steps in the LCAP are refined and build upon work done in 2526 for the most part. There are some significant revisions that we did make, mostly from the Arenda study. And anything added based on community input that we get that I either received during advisory times or we hear tonight, if we make any changes from tonight before adoption, we'll highlight those at the June 11th meeting. So, a new action we added was for professional development and core instruction, and this is based on the horrendous study. So, spending the year training our teachers, elementary teachers and middle school math and teachers, and the development of essential standards form of formative assessments aligned to the rigor of aspect and data reflection processes. We revised our response to instruction. We kept that program this year. One of the shifts we're working on is to try to focus the either the instruction that's happening during those small groups to make sure it's based on core. So whether we're extending core and we're enriching and extending for kids that need a challenge or we're making sure we're scaffolding so kids reach those core standards so that's work that we were doing we've expanded the early literacy team to eight teachers this is due to the fact that we reduce instructional coaches who were doing some of the reading intervention so by expanding by two it allows all of our elementary sites to continue to have reading intervention As I mentioned, we'll be convening the middle school schedule committee. We're continuing our work with mathematics, curriculum, adoption and programming. We're also working really closely with the middle schools to ensure that the students who are eligible for accelerated math are provided the opportunity. I think I outlined that in the questions for the board. Counseling continuing and continuing to provide support in our wellness center. We're actually adding a mental health specialist. So last year we added 1 and we contracted with 1 and this year we're adding a 2nd to fill the intensive needs that we have in the district. We're increasing our use of interns. In terms of employee retention and support, we'll be starting a teacher residency program for interested employees that want to get their teaching credential. It's in collaboration with the Santa Clara County Office of Education. And then she also started the aspiring leaders program this year where educators came who have leadership potential or want to go into leadership met. over the course of the year, did a book study and started learning. Technology devices. We've heard we are going to no longer be issuing one-to-one devices to kindergarten through third grade students. They'll still have access in the classroom, continuing to work on the technology review. And the Wellness Center For the Wellness Center at Castro, the actual MLU expires on June 30th, but we do have some rollover funding that we are going to use to hire a licensed practitioner, and they will backfill with interns, and then they'll also continue to have their full-time counselor. So we're going to continue that Wellness Center moving forward, even though we don't have that partnership. So goals and actions, again, all of our goals were really directly aligned to our old strategic plan, except for goal six, which was specific to the needs of Castro students. There are metrics for each goal. Some metrics are selected by us. A lot of metrics are required by the California Department of Ed, and the appendix shows all those metrics. Just some highlights. We've talked about some of these things. One of the things we are switching, our targeted student support funding is going to be used next year really to support engagement activities focused on the needs of our families of English learners, foster youth, and low-income students. You improved the new data platform that we'll be rolling out next year, continuing to have required elements like designated ELD, integrated ELD, continuing our newcomer teachers continuing our supports for students with disabilities adding an additional learning center at landels and continuing our work with early literacy and our math adoption full two talks about social emotional health and behavior this is where you find the at-risk supervisors our work addressing chronic absenteeism and our work addressing suspension rates Also our character strong and social emotional learning curriculum and our counselors. Goal three is about your work around inclusive and welcoming culture. It's where our SCEFs are actually set for SCEFs where equity work, which has been scaled back, but still that work around a better together program, the district equity advisory committee and professional development and then parent university. School floor, as I mentioned, effective and engaged employees, retaining them. That's our partnership with the new teacher project where we supported 36 teachers this year, and then the aspiring leaders program, and then the new residential teacher program. Goal five is equitable distribution of resources. So school cleanliness, continuing that work, trying to continue to make things better, continuing those simple small groups and focus groups so that we hear what's happening. We will say we conducted the student advisory and we talked about cleanliness with our middle school advisory. So I have a whole list of things about cleanliness and bathrooms that I can share with Dr. Westover. technology devices, again, new Chromebooks to students entering fourth grade, and then just continuing the one-to-one in kinder through third. And then goal six is all about Castro School. We're dedicating 40% of that literacy team to providing support there. Those are our most at-risk kids. They have two at-risk supervisors. They have one and a half school and community engagement facilitators, a dedicated newcomer teacher. Like I mentioned, continuing to staff the wellness center, having the additional counselor, and then having Playworks. So increased or improved services, we have to dedicate a percentage of our budget to what they call supplemental funding for unduplicated students. It's about $3.7 million. We're spending about $5 million. We've identified the work of our coaches, our response to instruction program, the targeted student support program, and our school and community engagement facilitators. That's that. So next steps, respond in writing to comments and questions from tonight. Update the LCAP with any actions based on community partner input, and then present on June 11 for approval by you. And then it goes to the county for final approval. So with that, I'll stop sharing.

Thank you. We'll do the standard procedure of clarifying questions from the board. All right, very clarifying questions from the board. All right, now open public comment for this item. Remember the public in person wishing to speak, turn in a speaker card please. Anyone online use the raise hand function. Now we'll allocate time accordingly.

Seeing no one online and three cards in person.

I'll keep three minutes. I'll start with Ms. Good. Thanks.

I'll first start off by saying I fully support giving resources to Castro. I think that is needed. However, I'm bothered by the fact that in the slide presentations, what is stated flies in the face of what was recently voted on by the board in the budget cuts that were enacted just this spring. just this spring, you voted to reduce the number of SCEFs and the number of heiresses at Castro. So Castro in the coming year isn't planning on having two SCEFs and 1.5 heiresses. The slides that you presented in March or April showed it as one and one, that there would be reduction there. So I'm bothered by the fact that we don't even seem to be paying attention to what has been voted on.

Can I clarify that? That was recommended. The board did not approve that.

Okay.

Thank you. Next, Mr Nelson, you have three minutes.

Um, let me say that comment. Thank you board, particularly trustee read who led the discussion that we don't need to cut 9Million dollars and we shouldn't cut those ones to start. Please listen to your teachers. You wonder what are the teachers are upset? Is the teachers say we want more of this kind of thing and the staff comes back the senior staff and says, we want to cut that exactly what you asked in your survey. So I've sent in some written questions. I assume there'll be written answers. I made clear what my written question is. documents that i sent um one of the things you should realize is accountability plan is mainly based on the 3.7 million um it's for high need students particularly uh the third that are um sed economically disadvantaged and the quarter that are english language learners um our Chief Business Officer has tried to show how these are aligned and help these align with the UPP numbers. But that's the unduplicated. Really, when you look at many of the Hispanics who are having problems, it's They're duplicated. They have 2 problems. They're English language learners, and they're coming from families that don't have near the amount of money that you have Charles that don't have near the amount of money that you have trustee Henry. That's what's meant by. You guys are not showing. Is this how act blue? Done school boards. They don't worry about equity issues. So look at how these problems, these monies are spent. When this $3.7 million, it gets done for response to instruction or response to intervention, whatever it is, or Steve, it's unclear what that is because that's all mixed up. It has been mixed up in this one, this LCAP, in the last LCAP. It's a jump. What is it? And it's a useless waste of money if it isn't making any difference for these high needs kids that this LCAP is supposed to be for. Accountability is for the high needs kids. It's not for the kids at the four highest schools. Most of those kids are not any of the high needs kids. So money that's spent there is money that can't be spent on places like Castro. And the staff is disconnected from this idea, which is why we have somebody come up and say, how come you're not going to spend money the way the teachers of that? Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson. Our last speaker is Nguyen. Three minutes.

Hi. Thank you for the presentations. I'm really excited that you guys are including the resident teachers this year. That was great. Free service and great teachers. And so thank you for finally taking advantage of that. And I'm also excited about the training for the teachers. But my concern is the quality of the training provided by the teachers. From my experience, I have eight years of being in the classroom, helping the kids and seeing things firsthand. The first and foremost thing is classroom management. So the teacher doesn't have any classroom management. kids are not going to learn so i am not sure what kind of um what kind of um pd that the district provides you hope that you show with that i hope um there's that but then i don't need to buy them pd but continuous coaching i would help and then you know i'm a huge proponent of the science the size of our reading and you've heard me screaming about letters ratings l-e-t-r-s for many many years now um so i really hope that the district will look into it so i actually went to my friend and asked her for the details of it um so this is she works in pleasanton and they did this back in 2021 and 2022 and so this is what she told me so um They did a workshop, it was a two year commitment, they get paid 10 hours for the textbook portion and six hours for the in-person workshops. The 10 hour post, 10 hour textbook unit study, six hour per day for in-person workshop. So, and then they meet four times a year, one in October, one in December, one in February, and one in April. And that's the same thing with YouTube. And she was telling me how the teachers are so excited about this stuff and just learning these things. And it just, the collaboration of teachers and how they do it over there is they pay the teachers for that time. So 16 hours, which is, I mean, if you estimate $40 per hour, that's 640 per unit. And then that's 25, 60 per year. So that's five grand. Maybe, can you try try that at Castro on this trial because i'm looking at the state test means it breaks my heart and I really hope we can help our students, many countries start with the one where he was going to need help the most. So that is just another piece for us.

Thank you. Discussion from the board. Seeing none, I'll now close the public hearing at 10.37 p.m. And I will now move on to item 10F, and I will open the public hearing on 2026-2027 budget adoption at 10.37 p.m.

All right, good evening, trustees. I also have Nadia Pongo, who is the director of fiscal with me to present this evening. We are going to move fairly quickly. So if there's a slide you want me to slow down, it's a little bit late. So I assume most of this you're familiar with, but I'll move through it. So, we always connect things back to our strategic plan. In addition to our board policy that was adopted in 2025, trying to stay within the 17 to 20% range in that 3rd year out. This is a look at our budget process. We stole this from our budget advisory committee. So it talks about how we develop the budget. So we're closing out a budget year. It's the same time as that. We are developing the budget. So tonight we are. uh doing our budget adoption hearing for next year while giving you an update on where we think we're going to land for the year this is a new slide that we haven't had before this really talks about why school district budgets are incredibly challenging So on the top, we have the California state budget timeline. The governor just provided his May revise. So I'll go through some highlights from his May revise. But we know that in May, that's just what the governor thinks he might want to do. And then the legislator has to duke it out and decide what are we actually going to do. We don't get final confirmation until when we say final confirmation, it means how are we actually implementing these things? Probably until about July, where our school district budget timeline, we are doing budget development. In April, May, and then in June is when you're actually approving our budget for the next year. So we don't have any of the information from the state on what to include in our budget. So there's a misalignment in time, which is why always during 1st, interim, there's always big shifts. If you were not to see a shift between budget adoption and 1st, interim, something is wrong. So that kind of shows the difference in why district budgets are challenging. An added layer on top of that is also our AV projections because we don't get an LCFF specific amount per student. We are dependent on AV growth, which is wonderful because it's more than we would have received from the LCFF amount, but it's constantly changing. Every month we're getting updates. Also, most recently that we've talked about previously is those reassessments that are coming in. So our income is constantly changing as well. These are a few highlights from the May revise that I'll go into more detail later. Increases to ELOP funding, various other funds, most of which are one-time grants. It also includes a 14-week paid pregnancy disability leave. And I'll move on.

Good evening trustees. I'll go over the estimated actuals, uh, in major changes from 2nd intro. Um, I want to go over every single item here. Uh, we tried to do a table with, um, major changes the green increase the general fund. Red decreases general fund and gray is neutral. We have to account for, for example, on behalf or other items that are books, but don't have a direct impact in operation expenditures or cash flow for Montemayor-Wisman School District.

I'm just really quickly wanted to point out at the top, the Google lease and miscellaneous rental revenue are at least with Google has ended and we are still working through the wind down of that. So, um, this is this was truly unanticipated revenue coming into the district.

Here we have in this slide restricted and unrestricted programs. We are projecting that net increase of 1.4Million and the year with 59.9Million with a reserve level of 36.6%. We also like to take the opportunity to share with you the balances in the estimated budget for the current year for other balance for other programs in addition to the general fund.

So, moving on to kind of revenue projections, this is looking where the bulk of our funds are coming from. So the bulk of our funds come from and local funding, which is our growth smaller amount from the state and federal. Looking at our forecasted expenditures again, the bulk of it going towards salaries and benefits and then other other areas. Then jumping into our multi year projection, so we'll 1st, start by looking at our required a 3 year projection, but we want to really pay attention to our 6 year because it gives us our, our trends for the 6 years out a multi year projection. We need to make sure that we use it as a planning tool and it's based on what we know today. So, going back to 1 of the initial size between the state. And the school, the school district's budget, we can only go based on what we know now, not what's going to happen in June or July and it's an estimate of future years. It shows the direction of our budget in general. It's not a guarantee or final forecast. Things are going to change revenue assumptions that are going to change and new information is going to cause this to change. We should really be using our to identify early trends to adjust for problems before they grow and to plan for sustainability. Looking at our assumptions, so next year, we have a last year of our multi year agreement with a 4% salary on schedule for years 27 and 28. there are no salary increases. So I want to point out that this is not the salary increases are not in our budget, but it is not realistic to expect that we will not have to have some type of raise. Or something given to our unit members in the 2728 and 2829 year. So those pieces are not in in what's shown here looking at the assessed value. You'll notice that our assessed value this time is not rounded. We have a 1.92% 3.26%. Um, this is coming from, uh, we contracted with HDL to provide projections. This is the same group that use that the city of Mountain View has used. And they have a fairly good track record of projecting where growth is going to be within about a half a percent. So we took recommendations and then we dropped them by half a percent, which is not very much. It's about 400,000 dollars to give us a little bit of a buffer. Then our CalSTRS and CalPERS rate, we don't set those. Our parcel tax, our CPI, which is based on school services, and then our shoreline revenue, you'll notice that it has dropped to 6.3%, and this is from information coming from the City. This chart should look familiar, but you'll notice that we've added in May. So we're at 2.1% as opposed to our historic high since 2021 of 12.6%. Then we look at the final AV growth and projection. So we are projecting the 3.3 in the out years and then this year at 1.9.

So this table reflects the major changes from the current year to going into the new year. We'll go over every single item, but we will continue to do a contribution to a special education to cover salaries and benefits, as well as any service that we need to provide, including contracted services. And as previously mentioned, the revenue from shoreline. about 1.4 million revenue decrease. Here we have the projection for the 26-27 value year by program restricted and unrestricted for the general fund projecting a net deficit spending of 8.6 million. And just like Dr. Wistover mentioned, this does not reflect any potential changes from The budget proposal for may revise. So, at this point in time, this is what we have. We are projecting a finish in the year with 51.3Million in a reserve level of 32.37%. We are sharing the projected budget for other funds, including food services, child nutrition or post-employment, as well as our developer fees.

Something that we can point out for preschool, you'll notice that the contribution from the general fund has increased for preschool. This is because there's no longer hold harmless language. So previous for the past few years, the state has said, we will hold you harmless and you still get your contract amount. But now that language we're not seeing. So that's why we're seeing the increased contribution for next year.

That's correct. And we are required by the state to provide a multi-year projection for three years. This is using the assumptions that we had previously mentioned. In the revenue side, we are not including any revenues for the Google lease. And we are also reflecting the lease agreement, the updated lease agreement with the German school. In the year 26-27, we're including the 4% salary increase with a stepping column. And in the years 27, 28, 28 and 29, we are only projected a stepping column and no additional increases at this point. In year 27, 28, we're also including the textbook adoption to happen as well as some investment and professional development. So, when the 3rd year out, we can see the 18.2% reserve levels. We also have included a 6 year, multi year projection. Dr. Westover would like to elaborate a little bit more about this.

So, I'm going to skip forward to the graph and talk a little bit more about the 6 year. So this shows our 6 year in graphical format. When you see the shaded red area, that's the cumulative reserve spend down. So, after 6 years, if we continue on our current path, we will have spent down our reserves by 58.18Million. The red bars at the bottom here represent the deficit spend each year that we are doing. And then the orange line is our reserve level and the blue line is the minimum reserve level level set by the board that they would like to maintain. Some things that we could point out over the years is in these last 2 years, most of our employees, if they were to stay with us. So, remember, this is just information we have now they've reached the end of step in column, but that could shift if we get newer employees in. This runs through some of the highlights that we talked about previously. This is a chart looking at special education, special education cost increases have really been a driver of our budget recently. Um, and just year over year, we're seeing increased in costs to service our students. So, I'll talk a little bit about the governors may revise. So, some general themes he's putting funding into education, which is a good thing shoring up existing programs without creating new ones and providing significant 1 time discretionary funds. He's also proposing the parade. Paid pregnancy disability leave, which I'll talk about in a slide specifically and its potential impact on our district. It is very much sounding like right now that that is going to move through, but how it's going to be funded. There's discussions about maybe it might not be done through the it might be done in a different way. Um, it also provides a historic increase to special education. Um, this is really big for us because we do receive these funds. And continues his plan to. Under to under appropriate the profit 98 minimum guarantee and this is something that. Has been talked about quite a bit because there is not a legal. I will back up from that a little bit because I'll go do it a rabbit hole. Um, so the statutory Cola, this shows how it's changed over time. There are 8 data points to creating the statutory Cola and enacted budget. There were only 4 data points known at the governor's budget. There was 6 and now we have all 8. so our statutory Cola is 2.87%. Cola really does not impact our budget very much because the majority of our funding comes from property taxes. He's also suggesting a an additional investment. So, giving us an augmented cola in years past this augmented cola has not been attached to anything. The cola really does not actually pay for all of the increases at school districts experience. So, when there's been extra funding, sometimes that they have provided extra cola to help cover those extra those costs that are not fully covered by cola. However, this is the 1st time that that extra amount has been attached to. another mandate, which is the paid pregnancy leave. So the paid pregnancy disability leave would qualify anyone due to pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, termination of pregnancy, or recovery from those conditions. The leave does not require a minimum number of hours worked or length of service to qualify. The leave duration is a full paid maximum 14 weeks. It can be taken before or after childbirth if the employee is disabled by pregnancy or other related medical conditions. um the length of the leave of the absence is determined by the employee and their physician um what is unique about this leave is that is leave taken under this uh provision is fully paid and does not come out of any other paid leave that the employee has and it runs consecutively with other state and federal leaves of absence regulations and laws So, what does this mean for our district? So, those 14 weeks would be that cost would be absorbed by the district. So, over the past 3 years, we've had an average of 21.3 pregnancies a year. If all of those individuals took the paid pregnancy disability leave, it would cost the district approximately 622,000 a year. Um, to back up to this a little bit, um, earlier, I mentioned that it's. The governor proposed funding it through the by giving an additional cola. There's also discussion now that they are thinking about maybe it's going to be something like a reimbursement. The district would say, hey, we had this many individuals take. Paid pregnancy disability, even we'd submit for reimbursement, but it's still in the early stages of discussions. and basic aid districts like us are saying, hey, this is hard for us because there's no funding attached to it. The Student Support and Professional Development Block Grant. So this funding is proposed to be $936 per ADA, which is quite a sum of money for us. That's about $4 million. Allowable use right now is truly discretionary. So they list some different items that we can spend this funding on. We have had discretionary block grants like this in the past. A lot of times what happens with the discretionary block grants is we have a lot of different things that we need to do and the districts say, hey, we need money for that. Oh, that's a discretionary block grant. So everything falls into that category. Um, there's quite a bit of caution around this right now, because the legislature is discussing. Well, maybe we don't want to give it out for. Maybe we want to provide more money towards districts that have higher counts, which for us wouldn't be as hopeful because we would get less money. Um, they're also discussing restricting the use of at least some of the funds. So saying it has to go to this and creating more of a categorical program. And this is one of those things where we definitely don't want to count our chickens before they hatch. The special education base rate increase. This is very impactful for us. Overall, it's about 1 million additional every year for special education. So this piece right here. The other ones are slightly smaller, helpful, but the most impactful is that ongoing base rate funding. The expanded learning opportunities program, so this looks like this is also moving forward, holding onto that 1,800 per pupil amount for UPP. In years past, the base amount was more around 1,200, and this year in the 25, 26 year, they added extra because individuals did not use all the money from the previous year. So it kind of creates a swing in funding where it makes it difficult for districts to project. So, the governor has said, hey, we're going to do 1800 and that's going to be the base rate that you're not going to swing back down the next year, which is helpful for us for planning. State preschool, the 1 that really impacts us here is allowing providers to claim attendance for excused absences, including medical and educational appointments. Previously this, this was not allowed also highlighting again that there is no language around hold harmless, which will impact our program. Wanted to talk a little bit about current expensive education, so we will bring the final percentage for you to an audited actuals. When we see you at the beginning of next school year for an extensive education is a calculation that we do that is used to measure the percentage of expenditures for the direct classroom cost of teaching students. So, in elementary district, that number is set at 60%. When we look at over the years, what has happened? So, in the 2012 2013 year, we had about 79% of districts meeting it, but we move forward to the 2425 year. Only 55% of districts are meeting that target. Part of the reason this is happening is because districts are spending money in different ways because that calculation was created. quite a while ago when schools looked very different where you had your principal secretary and your teachers this is looking at how the percentages have changed over time based on if the district is elementary high or unified so if you look at that last bar in the 24-25 year at the dark blue bar those are elementary districts so in the 24-25 year Fifty seven point five percent of elementary districts did not need the because we're providing counseling. We have at risks. So anything that changes that denominator, it makes that denominator larger in comparison to the number of classroom teachers on top is what causes a district to miss that percentage. Then we wanted to show what if everything kind of comes our way with the governor's proposal, what would our six year look like? So this is 1.5Million yearly ongoing for sped an additional 332 K for funding and 4.1Million one time block grant. Right now we've allocated it for textbooks, which is a one time use. Um, and with the rest of it restricted being remaining for other 1 time expenses, maybe PD or something of that nature. And this is looking at that 6 year. You'll notice that it quite it helps our reserve level in the 6 year out. We're only at 10% as opposed to that negative amount still showing that the trajectory we need to somehow. Ensure that our revenue and expenses are meeting, but it's definitely a very different outlook.

I'm gonna, on this slide, just encourage us to think about the red bars that are below the line, that's our deficit spend, right? To be thinking about those as ongoing funding, right? And that orange line, the reserve level, that's one-time funding. Right once that's gone it's gone the reserve spending. We can spend the reserve against the deficit spend, which is what we're essentially doing each year. That's why it's dropping. But that can't go on forever right so and although this i'll remind you, although this includes all of the All of the upsides, I think from the governor's budget, which would be fantastic. Uh, it also doesn't include a salary increase increase for our teachers and staff. Um, anytime after 2627.

I think something that I'll also just point out just in case, um, that 4Million. We're not going to be seeing it in the reserve level change because it's in the restricted side of how we spend funds. So, if somebody is doing some math. So some different considerations for the future, uh, the district is stable today, but the trend is not sustainable. So we, we are financially stable with 32.37% reserves. Um, but the reserves are going to decline and disappear over time. So the action needed is we need to align our spending with our revenue.

Sure, right.

Yep.

I know when we had, um. when we had done our budget discussions in the spring. winter and spring of this year, we were taking direction from the Santa Clara County Assessor's Office that we should expect this kind of subdued AV growth to extend, like you said, for a couple more years. Yes. Right? As we're working with HDL, that consultant who looks at this, and as Rebecca said already, also works with the City, they are projecting that reduced growth. We should expect less than 4% for years one through five on this particular chart, right? So it's not improving. If five years is soon, anytime soon.

So actually kind of in that same vein, the growth in cost from the 2627 year to the 2728 year is about 3.1Million, and we remove the textbook adoption from that number. AV growth needed to cover the increase in expenditures is 4.05%, and we're anticipating 3.26%. So our AV growth is not even covering our increase in cost. to be budget neutral we would need an AV of 11.79 which is highly unlikely the district so and then we've already talked a little bit about how we've used we're starting to use HDL to help us project so that 11.79 really just is not coming in the next few years

And again, to be clear there, or maybe that next slide covers it. I don't remember. Sorry. When we talked about that natural growth of 4%, right, that we need 4% AV growth, that's just to cover step and column movement, the fact that PG&E prices are going to go up, paper costs more, all of the natural increases, health benefits.

So, a step in column from the 2627 year to the 2728 year is 1.8Million. AV cannot keep up with our current spending and will not be able to provide a COLA or a raise to any of our staff currently. For context, 1% AV growth increase generates about 763,000, while a 1% salary and statutory benefit increase costs about 871,000. So, even if we assume that 100% of the growth went to salaries, as opposed to ongoing cost, which we know that that's not that's not possible because we'll have other ongoing costs. So, right sizing our budget, we'll need to right size our budget. So expenditures equal revenue. The goal is not to simply reduce spending, but to protect programs and services that most directly support student success. The district should prioritize the use of 1 time funds for 1 time costs and avoid using reserves to support ongoing commitments. the district doesn't want to hold large reserves and it's currently choosing to spend the reserves on ongoing expenses as opposed to one-time expenditures so it's it would it's this juxtaposition of we have a high reserve level we don't need to have that high of a reserve level and we should be spending it down but we should not be spending it down on ongoing costs so we're stable today but it's not sustainable So next steps will come back to you for on June 11th for board action and adoption of the education protection account, the L cap, but in the budget and the budget overview for parents. So we'll continue to monitor for changes occurring during the summer. Any questions?

Thank you. And clarifying questions from the board. Trustee Conley.

I'll just note that the board did two by twos to not two by twos, but meetings with the two trustees at most in a meeting to discuss the budget beforehand. So we have had really significant in depth discussion about the budget before the meeting as well.

I think maybe just one question to be brief. You mentioned right-sizing the budget. When should we expect for that to come back in the coming year, right? Because we're going to have to have some discussions about taking out of that structural deficit that I think we're continuing to choose to do for the time being, but we do need to make those decisions the earlier the better in general.

I would guess we'll start talking about this in September.

Thank you. All right. Any further questions? Seeing none, I'll now open public comment on this item. Any member of the public wishing to speak in person, please turn in a speaker card. If you're online, please use the raise hand function. I'll wait to see how many speakers we have before I allocate time. One member of the public online and three cards in person. So I will allocate. Let's refer to my table one moment. I'll take three minutes per speaker. I'll start with Nguyen for speaker.

Hi, thank you for the presentations. I guess my question is, I know the AP growth projection looked dismal, but would the advancement of AI with like chat GPT be in my view? I don't know if that's gonna, how would they be somehow because malvi was like half you know business and half residential and also there's a lot of plans on building all of these new housings so i i hope that you know that will help our number but i do agree with um superintendent bear that we need to stop the deficit spending because it doesn't help our students and i And I hope we look again into the breakdown of admin and managerial and the teachers, you know, for district of size do we need. You know this money. And there's the physical option that we talked about charging for because the mean that and there's the email. The number I quoted earlier, I was on you know that 356 that was on the page seven in the presentation terror, so I don't know I don't know where that night comes from, but just all these things so i'm just. Just my particular.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Ms. Good. You have three minutes.

Thanks again. Earlier this year, the board voted to cut the budget for next year by $7 million because of projected deficit of $8.5 million for this year, right, and then ongoing deficits in subsequent years. These are cuts that limit the services that our students need. These are cuts that eliminated the jobs for people who are valued and oftentimes long-term employees. And this projected deficit was not a reality. We haven't done deficit spending. Our reserve has grown. Now, we've heard that it's hard to predict the budgets, and I recognize that. But again and again, we're reactionary. The board is reactionary. The district is reactionary based upon data that just isn't true. Last year, at this time, in presenting this year's current budget hearing, you estimated, after Westover estimated, an ending budget of this year of $43,563,000. Instead, what we have is an estimated ending budget of $59,932,000 that's a difference of $16,369,000 in one year. what we predict versus what comes out in reality is not that closely aligned and so saying that we need to cut the deficit spend i just don't believe it yet we have the healthy reserves they're there to get us through hard times hard times that we have not yet witnessed we heard in the beginning of the year henry said henry that you've heard the sky is falling and at this time you really believe that it is but instead we're up estimated up by 1.6 million dollars We heard again and again, Mr. Baer, that we're weathering the storm by riding on our reserves. There was no storm, not this year. Could there be next year? Yes, there could. But every year for eight years, we've estimated the deficit. It hasn't been realized. Our reserve has gone up from $24 million in 2020 to $59 million in 2026. We need to stop catastrophizing about what's happening and be thoughtful, but the idea that we're talking just $7 million that we haven't even seen what that happened. Our reserves have gone up by $1.6 million and we're already talking about cutting more next year when we're never giving it a chance to see what happens. This is hurting our students. So please can we pause and see what happens.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Mr. Nelson. You have three minutes.

Yes, Mr. Nelson, the former member of the school board who, along with Christopher Chang, who was a former trustee, pushed to have this forward policy particularly set so that we wouldn't be in this kind of situation perpetually, holding many more times than the legal necessity of three percent as our reserves and yeah over the last eight years that unfortunately our uh reserves have been held and have been losing purchasing power because the county treasurer does not pay The amount that inflation open inflation is so we're it's a good thing that you're spending. You'll be spending down the reserves, but as she's mentioned 8 years in a row, the projections have been wrong. And this is a problem. Part of it is it really balls me when underspending happens for student services for high need students. That's one of the reasons why there's extra money left over. I really wish the superintendents and the human resources and the people who are responsible for these positions that are student facing positions actually fill them. And then we wouldn't have so much reserves. So this is a sky is falling. The sky is falling. It's not true. It's poppycock again. They should look up what poppycock means, and then maybe they'll try to shut them down for using that one. Yeah, it's fresh BS. That's what poppycock is. So listen to Anna Reed. She is a teacher. She's in the District Cupertino that had some problems like this nine months ago, and they figured out how to solve it. And it's just part of what needs to be done. If you keep on getting from Jeff now that the sky is falling, Just don't believe them, because the sky isn't falling, and the numbers show that the sky isn't falling. You should be spending down this deficit slowly, or the reserves, so you actually use it for student education. That's the kind of thing that Anne Reed has been talking about. She was the first one to speak up about saying, no, I don't think we need this cut $9 million. And she was right. and she'll be right next year when the same thing comes up. So you've got to get the wonderful chief business officer to get her to work at what the board policy is. The goal is to try to get to 20 to 17%. 17% is already 15% of the legal minimum. Thank you. You're welcome because you won't pay any attention.

I need to allocate time fairly to everyone. Thank you. All right, now we're back to the board for discussion.

Oh, one on line.

I'm sorry. Thank you. Mr. Schrenney, you have three minutes.

Thanks for not forgetting me. I don't have a rebuttal to anything I just heard. I have a poem. But fair warning, it ends on a plan. I call this poem The Math. It's late. Great work, a gold star night. We budgeted with all our might. But underneath the back and forth, the deficit keeps climbing north. In three years' time, the gaps are strained. In six, there's nothing left to drain. The lines not bending won't pretend, the runway has a visible end. So let's agree before the night, the bunny's short and the timeline's tight. But three years warned and six foreseen, is time enough to intervene? Thank you.

Thank you. Now we'll return to the board for discussion, for further discussion. I'm looking forward to seeing in the future kind of just like all of our programs look that we're gonna have to be second but I think this is a wraps up our public hearing at 11 15 p.m. I will now open the public hearing for the budget overview for parents at 11 16 p.m.

I'll go over the public The budget overview for parents provides a high level description of the revenue expenditures and expenditures in budget plan for students in high needs. This chart here is about our revenue, our district revenue, and the different sources that we receive our revenue. As you can see here, it also shows the state, federal, and local revenue. The 74% is the local control funding formula for our district. LCFF means property tax. At 90Million dollars, 3.7 is generated from the enrollment for, um, duplicated students. Um. 2 hours already indicated this number and what that means for our district is we at least need to spend 3.7Million on students with high needs. Um, we spend, we're planning to spend at least 5Million dollars in the year 202627. this um slide is for uh expenditures uh or or projected um expenditures for the 2627 is 129.5 million of those expenditures 13.5 million is our services and actions linked to the lcff for the lcaps And this represents the expenditures that we projected at budget adoption a year ago for the current year on students with high needs. We had projected 7 million and at estimated actuals we're projecting the actual expenditure will be 6.8. So that's a decrease of around $167,000 that is mainly due to one FD or a teacher coach, and also for TSSP budgeted expenditures that the sites were not able to use. And even though we're spending less than projected, the district continues to make strong investments to support students with high needs. This include response to instruction, the program for early literacy, MTSS, teachers coaching, and designated ELD programs to support all of our students with high needs. And this concludes the hearing for budget overview for parents.

Thank you. Any clarifying questions from the board? I'll now open this for public comment. Any member of the public in person wishing to speak on this item can turn in a speaker card or online use the raise hand function. I'll wait to see how many speakers we have. I see no one in person wishing to speak and no one online. I'll now return to the board for discussion. Seeing none, I will now close the public hearing at 1119 PM. I will I will open our public hearing for education protection account requirements at 1119 PM.

Good evening trustees. This is the public hearing for the EPA account. There's a resolution attached as well as a plan for how the district is going to spend those funds.

Thank you clarify questions from the board. Seeing none, I'll now open public comment on this item. Any member of the public wishing to speak in person, turn in a speaker card or online, use the raise hand function. I'll wait to see how many speakers we have before allocating time. Seeing none, I will now return to the board for discussion. Seeing no discussion, I will now close the public hearing at 1120 p.m. Includes our public hearings for the evening.

Now, we will turn to item ten.

I, uh, discussion and action, uh, California, Latino school boards association conference superintendent bear.

Yes, this is an opportunity for the, uh, the board to discuss, uh, considering sending out a board member or a district representative or both to the California Latino school board association, which happens to be local this year at the end of September or August.

Clarify questions for the board.

Well, I hope everything's okay out there. Our alarm system is going off. I believe we used to be, I thought we still were as a school district, a member of the California Latino School Boards Association. Um, because if so, the, the member rate is seven hundred and ninety five dollars instead of the nine hundred and forty five dollars. Um, I know we're also members of a, the Asian Pacific Islander school member. Board association just elaborate.

Is there any representative of the district who wants to attend this that you're aware of? Superintendent Behr?

I would I would have to identify someone, but yes, certainly.

And you recommend someone should attend?

Well, yes, I think it would be. I do think it would be a good idea, but I'll just point out that it is a school boards association event.

Just can we send a superintendent? I thought we could send sure. Okay. Okay. Or or cabinet can we send a cabinet member? Okay. All right. Thank you.

Could be a cabinet member as well.

City Council Chambers, For the questions from trustees. City Council Chambers, With that with that all open public comment on this item, remember the public wishing to speak on this item in person, please turn a speaker covered or online use the raise hand function, I will wait to see how many speakers, we have before allocating time. City Council Chambers, Seeing no one in person and no one online, I will now return to the board for discussion possible action.

I strongly support sending someone from our district 1 of the large. Well, really the focus of the unity conference, when you look at it historically, it's often a focus on multilingual learners and. and the Latino population. And those are students in our district who we know we need to support better. So this is a great place to build our capacity, learn new things, connect, hear about what other districts are doing across the state with success with those student populations. So I really hope we can find someone to go and I support sending someone.

Vice President Henry?

Um, I would say I also support, uh, sending someone either 1 person or a trustee and a staff member. Um, I think that from, uh. The 4th budget piece, um, I believe that. All or most of us have, um. uh completed masters in governance which is one of the bigger things that has come out of that budget over the last year um i think you have one class left um so that should have some room um in that particular budget to allow for this um i think it's in our also in our policies or bylaws that i think and i think it's important for these types of professional development for the board right to

Potentially agenda is either a report out or or something that's sort of, you know, we can make sure we're making the most of it and sharing that knowledge with the rest of the board after after if we choose to have someone go after they return. I think that's a good practice for us to have general.

Do we need an action item? Yes, my apologies. Um. I do, I do support sending, um, at least 1%. I'm open to possibly to that. It would be a staff and a trustee. I don't know where other trustees fall on that. Um, but I'm happy to make a motion and then if we need to amend it, or it doesn't work, then that's fine. Um, I make a motion that the board. send two representatives, at least one being a staff member, to attend the California Latino School Boards Association Unity Conference in San Jose from August 27th through 30th, 2026. I'll second that.

All those in favor, aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Now we'll move on to item 10J, active transportation plan. Superintendent Behr?

Yes. as it says the city is updating its active transportation plan and the board wanted opportunity to as you discussed last meeting to send correspondence to the city and so um charles and devon both met and uh crafted i was with them as well but crafted a uh um a letter and it's here for your consideration um we do i mean we we do technically have time to wait until June 11th meeting, but that's cutting it close because the transportation committee does consider the draft on the 16th of June. And I think it's better for them to give them some time to actually consider and process whatever we have, whatever we're sending.

Thank you. A clarified questions from the board. Seeing none public comment on this item, any member of the public in person, which you speak on this item, please turn the speaker card or anyone. A lot and use the raise hand function and I'll wait to see how many speakers we have before allocating time. Wishing to speak on this item, I'll return to the board for discussion and action.

I move that the Board of Trustees approves the district's comment letter to the City of Mountain View Council Transportation Committee regarding the active transportation plan.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Concludes the discussion and action section of our meeting. We'll now move on to item 11, board updates. Any member of the board wish to update? Okay. 12 items for future agendas to request items for future agendas.

Just that we have an opportunity, possibly at June 11 to discuss what we want on the agenda for our board retreat, which should be in August, and we need to set a date for that.

Thank you, thank you. And I will just preview that a significant portion of that will be a strategic planning.

All right, any other items. Right next item is item 13 future board meeting dates. Our next regularly scheduled board meeting is June 11, 2026. Now, seeing no further business on the agenda, we will adjourn at 1129 PM. The next meeting, as I said, is June 11.