Mountain View Whisman School District Board of Education - Regular Meeting

And fundamental SW must be on. What's that? Oh, they did let me be cos. I'm just gonna hit mid. Okay. Yeah. But they have an inter And

live. All right, we are returning from recess. I believe we've resolved our technical difficulties. Translation is available. Do we have trusty Connelly? Um, I'd like to make a motion to move item 9D in front of 9A if that's possible because I think there is a significant amount of public interest in 90D and a lot of people who've been waiting to speak. We also have quick comment from staff.

Maybe quick comment from staff. Our auditor has been waiting for a couple of hours now to do their presentation and then last year we bumped them to the next meeting. They had stayed through an entire meeting and we bumped them just for context. think we will still take the audit report and actually go through how availability wise but I I would I am okay with switching the order but I do think we should do the audit report tonight and actually hear the presentation I don't know practicalities of that sorry I misunderstood what you said report should not take very long he can he can abbreviate it

abbreviate it okay I do want to make sure we get the full information and we consider this because I don't want to rush through these things necessarily Um, what is what is their deadline for to tonight when we should let them release them? I know he will stay as long as needed. I was trying to be mindful of last year that what what occurred. Yeah, I don't

don't want to I will listen. I'll entertain a motion. I am happy to make a motion to extend the meeting later on. Okay. Do we have a motion to move the budget reductions forward and can still do the audit report? I I did make that motion. Okay. Do we have a second? I'll second. [snorts] I'll call a vote now. Um there's no vote. Oh, I second. I seconded. We vote right. [laughter] All right. So all in favor say I.

I. I. Oh.

All in opposed. The motion passes 4 to one. Trustees Connie Reed, Henry, and DeFazio in favor and Trusty Lambert opposed. We will now move on to the budget reductions item. We'll take that first. Um, let me collect myself real quick. Uh this is a discussion item only. Um no action will be taken tonight. Um I'll ask now Superintendent Bear to present the staff report or to hand over the staff report. All right. Good evening. We'll get the presentation up. Um I'm glad we got to this and got everything working. Um so we're going to bring forward to you tonight um a budget reductions update and the the board charged us uh back in November of bringing forward uh 9 plus million dollars worth of um recommendations for them to for you to consider. We brought in in excess of that so you have some um room to make some decisions. Uh I I do want to I know it's been referenced a couple of times. I do want to um uh hold the the study up from Arenda Education as a backdrop here that uh what the the the the the key guiding principles there were fewer priorities, right? implemented deeply. Uh creating coherence in our school district from the school level up to the site or from the classroom level up to the site level up to the district level to really protect core instruction and focus on that and uh really in creating greater coherence uh removing some of those layers of unaligned support. So, um there's a lot involved here. Um but I think keeping

that report in mind for uh serving our students better is really going to be key to all of this. So, let's uh move forward. So, just uh background reminding you, you've seen some of this before, but I think it's important to set the context. um that we have been talking about this since early September, since the school year scar uh since the school year really began. Um go ahead. All of those can be uh accessed for reference. Uh this is from our at the time assessor. Uh congratulations to Nisa Fleger who is elected county assessor. Um I think she'll be installed on Monday the 26th. Um but the assessor Greg Montiverde um highlighted a couple of things, right? Really recognizing that we're not alone in this decline of assessed valuation that there has been um a a significant slowdown, lowest growth rate in a decade. And this is really driven by uh commercial real estate reductions. um they are still going through the um reassessment roles. So we expect these to continue um and the statement from the county assessors that we should expect this for the next several years similar growth. Keep going. Um you remember this graphic I think uh really showing that uh Mountain View was uh really lagging behind. There are actually a couple of call outs in the paragraph about Mountain View um and the the low growth right coming at at the bottom with 0.51% and it states a far fall from its top

position last year at 7.69%. So keep going. uh that it does not help us. It's good to know that we're not alone in this that other school districts, other neighboring districts are experiencing very similar slowdown in this in AV growth. Go ahead. Um and then looking at AV growth and reserves, um we have experienced strong growth over time with that. We have built uh reserves to address situations just as this uh as this one, right? To carry us through um for a period of time so we can make thoughtful decisions. Um keep going. So moving forward, as I said, uh we anticipate several more years of this. Uh we really weathered this storm this year. um not treating it as a as a crisis, but really looking at how we need to rightsize our work here and as I said a moment ago in pairing it with the the report from Arenda Education on how we can better serve our students um thinking at these two things together uh will be important. Um so you've seen this before. Uh this is the as a reminder the blue stacks um indicate our uh level of deficit spending. Um this year we committed to what has turned into $3.7 million worth of deficit spend. Uh next year that balloons to 11.3 million worth of deficit spend. We're spending our reserve down as indicated by the orange

line. Uh expecting a 26.3% reserve level next year. But as you can see uh three years out and we are um well below 10% below 5%. Um and then going into negative and we um stating obvious cannot have that. Okay, next slide. Uh so this this is a slide we added to demonstrate what will happen if we actually do move forward on a $9.5 million reduction for next year. You can see uh what happens to um the deficit spend. It shrinks significantly uh down uh below $7 million in most cases. as a reminder that 27 28 year has a textbook adoption in it. So it does present higher. Um and then the you can see that the uh the draw down on the reserve that orange line flattens out quite a bit. Um, and this is really what we're looking for is a way to uh create what we would call a soft landing uh with the anticipation that that um muted AV growth isn't going to last forever and that it will come back over time. And how can we create a situation where um we're not cratering the the reserve that we're taking care of our deficit spend and AV growth comes back as well. And I will just put out there that as AV growth does come back, I really think we need to as a district be considering um what portion of that growth we're spending on ongoing expense and what portion we are spending on uh expenses

that we don't expect to be forever. Right? Tither may not one year but it may be a a project with a with a contained uh horizon. All right, moving ahead. So, we added quite a number of staff. We've saw we've seen this in our own slides and we you saw the Arenda slides uh through the pandemic uh with one-time dollars that were allocated during that time. Uh much of that staffing included at risk apps, PTS, site coaches, newcomer teachers. You can read the list. um that money has gone that that pandemic pandemic has gone away uh with that one-time money and at the same time our AV growth is shrinking dramatically. So we have that that confluence of uh financial factors. Keep going. This is that hour slide that demonstrates that that royal blue line at the top shows our uh our number of students over time over the last almost 10 years. Um the all of the other lines, the green line, the light blue line, the orange line, and the red line all show our levels of staff and the number of people we have added uh to uh to our school district to serve kids. Keep going. So, and we saw similar from Orenda. Um this is not this is not heartening at all, right? But as we add staff, our performance has actually um remained static and declined, right? And we have to change that. Go ahead.

All right. Um with regard to community feedback, um I went around to uh the schools. We had group meetings at elementary schools. I went to each of the of the middle schools. uh have met with principles and directors. Arenda also collected feedback visiting uh all school sites um in the district office and survey parents, staff members, had specific focus groups, focus group interviews with target um staff members as well as community going. Um we have uh done surveying around Steven Rman moves and we've also surveyed parents uh regarding budget considerations. Keep going. So in terms of what we heard uh in our surveying um these are the key insights. I'm not going to read them word for word for you, but there's really alignment on reducing cost here at the district office. Um, protect classrooms and learning. Um, and technology consultants non-core programs are the most frequently cited reduction areas. This is a table uh showing I'll let you have a look um if you haven't seen it before, but left side parent top three themes, right side staff top three themes. Just wait there a second. Okay. And let him uh in graph form. Uh top areas for budget reductions. Uh parents in the royal blue, staff in the light blue. Um re restating the same um themes.

Okay. So our plan going forward uh after we have that meeting and we have tonight uh we'll again um be reaching out and asking for feedback on what was presented. Um we'll use that information as a data point um to inform the final recommendation. We'll bring that information back to the trustees and also include it in the um the next presentation that's posted uh for on this topic. And so just as a a reminder at the November 20 meeting, the board requested that we bring back options for reductions. Uh and then in December, we asked for a number. Um and you asked for 9 million plus in reductions to have a look at. So we've done that. Go ahead. And with that, we want to walk you through what those recommendations are. So, um, Kathy and Rebecca are going to take care of that. Go ahead. So staff uh came up with various recommendations based on our guiding principles of prioritizing quality instructional time, maintaining flexibility to respond to different site needs to strengthen the role of the principal and classroom teacher to deepen connect to deepen connections to try to reduce duplication and clarify responsibilities and focus limited resources on the highest impact student centered work. staff has compiled a list of reductions uh for options for the board to consider. So this is a highle summary of what we'll talk through tonight. Um ranging from reduction of district office administrators and staff, PE or steam, sk aerys and bt reassignments or red

reductions, elop uh elimination, reduction of tech in grades, excuse me, uh reduction of tech in grades K through three. Uh just as a note here, staffing is represented in the DO reduction. So what you're seeing in that number is just the uh hard cost of like the things that we buy um state preschool elimination and having custodians every other night. Looking at this chart, this is looking at the proposed cuts to the district office, which comes out to a savings of 3.78 million. And I won't read through each one. So, one of the things uh that we uh considered and you saw that we did a survey is the idea of um bringing instruction for either steam or science or PE back to the um elementary teachers. Currently in steam, all elementary uh sites have dedicated steam teachers. Instruction is provided to students two times per week. And while the students are in steam classrooms, teachers either provide small groupoup intervention because half their class goes to steam and half their class stays back or in some cases um the whole class goes to steam and the teachers co-e with another colleague in math. Um this is all the the the difference in how RTI is done is all related to the addition of reading intervention and the impacts on the schedule. Um, for rhythm and moves, um, students in grades 1 through five get PE two times a week for 50 minutes. Um, this fulfills our state requirement for PE, 200 minutes of PE every 10 days. And then it also fulfills the contractual requirements for weekly preparation time for our elementary teachers. So, they are not they do not have to be out at PE. Um we did um survey uh uh teachers in

grades one to five asking their preference um thinking about uh steam or um PE. And we looked at classroom teachers plus steam teachers as a total there were 70 respondents and 58% wanted to eliminate the steam program and actually bring steam back under their purview. When we asked classroom teachers only, there was 58 respondents and 67% would prefer to teach steam as um opposed to PE. And when we asked the steam teachers, of course, they wanted to eliminate rhythm and moose. They're very passionate about the work that they do. Um and then we started we looked at a we looked at our some of our behavior support staff. Um, we looked at our at risks, our school and community engagement facilitators and our behavior texts and looked at all of these positions and trying to find a way to propose a more streamlined model that would preserve essential services and reduce overlap and also allow our principal and teachers to play a more direct role in student behavior, family communication and school community connection. Um our the proposal is that sites would retain AIS services um at their current levels, but we would look at the AIS role and um review it and redefine it a bit in relation to the job description. Um we proposing to um reduce the SCF allocation to mo more closely align with the unduplicated student counts across the district. Scfs are paid out of supplemental funding from the state. So tying those two things together um but not making sure that all sites have SCF services. Um and then [cough and clears throat] currently we have behavior checks that are assigned by site and they provide a variety of roles. The idea would be to reassign them to fulfill student and programmatic IEP needs

[clears throat] and not place them for sitewide use. So looking at this sitebased BTS would be reassigned from being sightbased to actually assigned to either a student or a program. We would reduce air services from 11 to 9. Um the reduction would come from reducing 2:1 at Castro and 2:1 at Graham. I apologize. um reducing two scuffs from nine to seven, assigning them by upp um and reducing from one and a half at Castro and MRO down to one each. And then five elementary sites would share um some middle school sites and this is not including our Mckin Vento liaison. Um, and then we're also going to increase our number of unpaid counseling interns to continue to provide more support for students, but that is without additional cost. So, this is what it would look like, what we have now, and what how we would excuse me um change it. um Graham Kitten and Castro MRO would continue to have um a full-time um SCF and then we would use uh three scuffs and we could configure that among the other sites in a variety of different ways. Uh next is um discussion about the expanded learning opportunities program. This was established um to provide after school and summer school enrichment programs for trans transitional kindergarten through sixth grade students, unduplicated students. Um and when ELAP first started, it was a requirement from the state. Districts had no choice. Districts, all districts had to participate in the program. And the state has provided funding since the inception of the program, but that funding has changed and has dropped

since the inception of the program. And beginning um this year actually um new legislation allows districts to choose to opt out of the program um due to whatever the district wants, but a lot of it is related to the inability to fully fund it. Next, so the goal of ELAP is to provide unduplicated students with a total of nine hours of care, including the school day for each of the 180 school days. nine hours of care for 30 additional inter session days. So that could be summer over winter break, February break, April break. Um and then we have to maintain student ratios um 10 to1 in TKK and 20 to1 in grades 1 to six. Currently our ELO programming is provided by both our district BTB program which is funded through the ACES grant and by the YMCA. um our current enrollment, you can see we have 566 students enrolled in ELAP and 337 enrolled in BTV. So again, ELAP is not required beginning this year. Um funds are allocated to districts based on unduplicated count of pupils and it uses a two-tiered system. So districts with 75% or more unduplicated pupils are considered tier one and tier 2 districts that um h are have lower than that have variable rates in tier 2. So we are a tier 2 district um and currently do not receive enough funding to meet the program's needs. So we are required if we accept ELO money either as a tier one or tier 2. In tier one, you have to, if you're a tier one district, you have to offer ELO and after school program to every student in your district. When you're a tier 2 district, you're only required to offer it to all unduplicated students. Um, enrollment does fluctuate because it's an offer every year. Who needs it? Who doesn't need it? Who wants it? And I

think there's a lot of flexibility in ELOC. Um, where families may opt in for as many days needed each week, each month, each year. They can come once a week, they can come twice a week, they can come five days a week, they can come twice a month. So I think up until this year, what's made planning for ELO difficult is that funding allocations haven't been finalized until after the governor's budget, which tends to be in June, right? So it makes forecasting a little bit difficult. Um, and we've been able to utilize carryover funds to run ELO for the past few years. We didn't start right away. we were allowed a little bit of flexibility and we waited and planned and started a little later. So that allowed us to amass some extra funds. Um but we are going to fully expend those carryover funds this year. Um leaving over a million dollars in general fund costs. Um and we're looking at a total cost of about 1.6 million each year moving forward. I will note that the um governor did come out saying he wants to more universally fund ELOP. The projection we have seen is um $1,800 per student. We currently receive $1,575 per student. So, if we did receive the $1,800, that would reduce that number um down to about a million dollars of um general fund money from our projection. So if we do opt out, um BTB would still be available for students for afterchool care, but BTB cannot accommodate all and duplicated students in its current form. Currently we have um five schools with ASUS grants um all with different levels of um allocation of students. Um we have applied for additional funding to increase BTB enrollment across the district. We applied for every school and applied to try to get enough funding to cover every unduplicated student. Um,

originally we were told that we were going to hear the answer to that application in January and now the website says February 15th. We checked yesterday. So, moving on to state preschool. And I would like I just want to say you have an updated presentation. We did do some um updating to these slides and we added some additional slides with some options and more information for you which I'll take you through. So currently state preschool we are contracted for part day party year California state preschool. So we serve we preschool serve k serves kids starting at age two years nine months through entry either into transitional kindergarten if a parent chooses or into kindergarten. So, our funding comes from the state to cover the cost of having half day sessions A and PM for 175 days a year. The annual contract amount that we receive from the state to run preschool is $2.1 million. Unfortunately though, with our current preschool configuration, we do not or cannot expend our full state contract each year and the unused portion is either returned or kept by the state. contracted funds that we get can only be used to pay for expenses related to part day state preschool um eligible students, which means that the cost of the second half of all of our extended classes in our afterchool care, right? And any student that's in part or full day that's non preschool, state preschool eligible has to be paid for by the district or paid for by fees that we collect. So, as a result of the decisions, right, we've expanded preschool, we've made full day classes, we've added after

school, we're only we're only able to utilize about 65% of our contract, right? Leaving uh a portion that the district has to cover. Um we do collect fees. We collect fees in approximately $315,000 and it does partially offset the costs for the programs. um our fees are well below market rates. Um and so the estimated cost to continue to run extended day after school care and add non-state preschool eligible children to our program is about $700,000. So the other couple things to think about is our preschool costs will continue just because of normal salary and benefit costs. they will increase and there's some unknown implications of the PK to3 credential. Um we are there's a new credential out by the state that allows teachers to teach uh preschool through grade three. Um and we would have to look at how teachers are compensated. Currently our preschool teachers are not credentialed and they're on a separate salary schedule. Um and so there's potentially costs related to meeting contractual requirements. um our preschool teachers are currently not part of a bargaining unit. So there's unknowns with what are the implications of the new credential. Um if we want to if we realigned preschool with the state contract only offering part day part year or a combination of part day and full day part year with approval from the state could bring the program back to cost neutral. And the next couple of slides will show a couple of those scenarios. So option one is we maintain our current configuration. Um it it we have enough spaces here. You can see where we have full day and half day classrooms and the max enrollment in each of those. Um it means this scenario

maintains spaces for feebased families. So families not eligible for state preschool. They don't meaning they don't meet income requirements. Um and then it preserves part day, extended day and after school care. It um remains keeps class sizes at a at an optimal rate because we do have an influx of three-year-olds now because of transitional kindergarten. We're seeing kids coming in younger and younger. It maintains our current staffing levels. It maintains early intervention and opportunities for collaboration and inclusion with our special ed preschool, which is important. Um and it pro preserves a high quality program. We heard um director Keer today and we saw all the amazing things that are happening in preschool. So option B is part A. So that's returning to alignment with our contract. So that is a would be essentially a costneutral program. We would not have spaces though for feebased families. And all families in our preschool program would have to meet eligibility criteria. income, um, IEP, housing insecurity. There's a whole bunch of criteria for meeting preschool eligibility, but it would eliminate the extended day and the afterchool care options. It would reduce preschool classrooms and staffing. You can see we would not have as many classes. [clears throat] It maintains our spaces to maximize our funding and earn as much of our contract as we can. Um, maintain smaller class sizes to support our younger students. still allows us to have inclusion with our um sped preschool and still allows us to have a high quality program for our vulnerable populations. And then there's one more option. Option C is to ask the state to modify our CSP contract to be part day and full day. So again, if we are staying within our contract, we can could keep the program

cost neutral. Again, we're not going to serve as many students, but we would preserve we would be able to have some full day options, some 8 to classes from 8 to 3. Again, though, in this option, you will we would only be able to serve families meeting eligibility criteria. And when we switch from part day to full day, eligibility criteria now becomes incomebased, move actually becomes income based, but it also becomes need-based. So now families have to show why they need a full day. They for example, so you have a parent, one parent works, one parent uh goes to school three days a week. Well, under the state state preschool criteria, that child would be eligible for three days a week of full day preschool because the assumption is that parent is there to take care of them on the other two days. Lots of lots of um regulation in state preschool. It would eliminate after school care. It maintains the extended day option. Um reduces classrooms and overall staffing. Maintains our spaces to maximize our funding. Um optimizes our classes for our younger kids. Allows us to collaborate with our sped preschool and preserves access to to high quality preschool. So those are just some options for consideration. Another option for consideration is moving to have custodial service every other night. Uh if we switched to having custodial service every other night, the restrooms would be clean and sanitized daily at all school sites as well as the trash being taken out. But classroom vacuuming and surface wipe downs would occur every other day. Common areas such as offices, staff rooms, hightraic spaces would be cleaned on a rotating schedule. Uh, of course, things like spills, health concerns or urgent needs would be immediately addressed

regardless of the schedule. Uh, we would also continue to do periodic deep cleaning uh as scheduled during breaks, weekends, and summer. And then a shift would be for after school programming. We will not have daily custodial support. So, renters would need to bear the cost of custodial service. Right now, when a renter is on campus, if a custodian is there at night, um that's not a charge because it's something that we would clean typically, but because we would not have a custodian on site for that, um we would need to start to charge renters for that custodial service. This would uh reduce our night custodial staff by approximately 50%. Another option to consider is a reduction in technology. So, right now, this is the current status this year. So in TK uh there is no uh classroom tech. In K we have carts in a Chromebook if a parent requests it. First and second we have carts in the classrooms and then every student is assigned a device. And then third grade through 8th grade um we have five learner Chromebooks in the classroom and then every student is assigned a device. as an option we can move to. You'll notice that it's colorcoded and then there's arrows on the right side show showing the amount of technology available to the students. So

interrupt you. We're approaching 10 o'clock. I think we might need to extend the meeting. Yes, I make a motion to extend the meeting until midnight. Second. All right, we'll take the vote. All in favor of extending the meeting until midnight say I. I. Motion all all opposed. The motion passes unanimously. Trustes Lambert, Connley, Reed, Henry, and DeFazio in favor. Thank you. Sorry for the interruption. No worries.

Um, so we would still continue to have no tech in TK. Uh, in uh Kinder, we would have shared carts, Chromebooks if the parent requests it, first through third grade carts in the classroom, and then a Chromebook if a parent requests it. Uh, and then four through eight, we would have five learner Chromebooks. uh same as it was previously in the classroom and then every student would be assigned a device. So this is a table of all the proposed cuts that we've gone over this evening, the number of FTE associated with each cut and then the total cost savings. And on this final slide at the bottom there are two different options. One is uh for reducing rhythm and moves or reducing steam.

So for next steps okay

that's fine. Um, so what we're looking for tonight, right, and this is just uh just discussion tonight, is what in additional information does the board need in order to uh give direction. Um, and that will inform the final recommendations we bring to you um on January 29th. Um, so those are made by the 29th, just as a reminder because we have um uh requirements need to be followed, legal requirements that need to be followed. Um it takes some time to implement. So that achie

Okay, thank you for the thank you for the report. Are there any qu clarifying questions from the board for staff? I I assume there will. So, I'll try to be orderly and let's do one question at a time so everyone can get their questions out and then we'll do rotations through. Uh, Trusty Henry, that was gonna be my first question, but it wasn't going to count as a question how we wanted to do because I know we all have lots of questions, but yeah, one at a time and rotate. Um, so my first one is um with rhythm and moves um currently fulfills the contractual requirement for weekly prep time. So, what contractual changes would be necessary if we chose to

we would we would utilize the steam um if we eliminated rhythm and moves and had teachers teach PE, we would utilize the steam time for teachers to have contractual um uh prep time and follow up if you did not receive it. And what would that mean for RTI time? It would have to be reconfigured because that would be non duty. It would be prep time for teachers. So the RTI program couldn't exist in the same way it does now. [clears throat] Trusty Lambert, you wish to take these just sort of at random here.

These are clarifying questions for staff if you have things that have not been answered in the presentation and then we'll do public comment and then discussion as we weigh our options. But get as much information as you can that you don't think was in the presentation yet. Trusty Lambert, I'll just make some structure to this. I'll follow up with the steam and rhythm move section here. So, um, how will these uh teachers have prep time or will they have an sufficient prep time?

Yes, they will have prep time if if we keep if we keep rhythm and moves that that'll be their prep time during PE. They won't be teaching PE. [cough] If we if we eliminate PE, eliminate rhythm and moves, teachers will teach PE and their prep time will come during steam time. So, let me just [clears throat] clarify that. I mean, we're not li eliminating these programs, right? We're we're having the teachers um regular teachers teach some of these programs. Is that correct? for having teachers pick up a subject area either PE or science

I think that's important to state right that we're not eliminating these programs we have to teach them we're just different teachers will be teaching them um so can um regular classroom teachers are they trained to do PE and steam we would have to provide professional development we'd have to buy curriculum we'd have to buy equipment all of those those looks like we're only talking about I one of these pages maybe four four uh we're saving four teachers in this four teachers I don't know I forget that question I'm confused with something else

okay um okay I'll allow we can go to another or still clarify the next trustee can go I will re come back to other questions later. Trusty colleague, do you have a question? Um, if the steam program I mean both of these options steam or rhythm and moves basically mean ending RTI and my understanding is that the literacy intervention program however will continue. Correct. That is we have not recommended that for a reduction.

Okay. because the literacy intervention program has mostly been aimed at lower grades and I don't feel like we've seen data on the outcomes of that yet. Um the you know schools have spent a lot of time building these labs basically um and building up science resources. What will happen with uh those facilities, those materials, that space? How will all of that um be used?

I think those those are things up for consideration. I mean, there's we could we could continue to keep the science rooms open so that teachers could bring their kids into those rooms to do hands-on activities. Um, so that they're not taking up classroom space. They could be teaching in the classroom and teaching in the lab. I mean, there's there's lots of possibilities there. Reed,

I'd like to get a um cost-saving estimate on um freezing the management salary schedule um even temporarily. And if the trajectory of our line um changes even in the course of half a year to a year um doing maybe considering something like um a retroactive pay for that pay scale, but um I'd like to see some numbers on freezing management.

Yeah, I'd like to add the confidential staff to that request as well. I'll tolerate that that was not phrased as a question. Um, so my my I'll start with my more optimistic side of questions. So, um, one thing I've poured over a bunch of our like budget reports and things and one thing I noted was that there's the in the first interim report there's the call out of routine repair and maintenance fund requires a 3% contribution and we contribute above that 3.51%. Um, I kind I'm wondering doing the math on that I think that was like 4.6 million and then back fitting it that 0.51% is about 675,000. um if I'm doing the math right and you can correct me um but uh how much of that is urgent and would is actually required to be funding that and would that be something we could temporar is that something that we have considered temporarily maybe going down to the statutory at least while we're in this situation. So for our routine uh required maintenance the set aside we actually spread it across our maintenance staff and our custodial staff were actually doing that routine maintenance throughout their daily work. So it's funding staffing um and not projects right now.

Just to clarify there's we would not we would have reducing that would fundamentally change some of the programs we have and the operations that we need to to keep going. That's yes reducing that if you took it away we'd be laying people off. Okay. So the the contributions that we're doing are in and out and we don't store any we don't run. Okay. Trusty Conley. Trusty Henry hasn't gone yet.

Oh yes. Trusty Henry will continue the rotation. Thank you. Um on the um topic of the at risk scaffh behavior um technicians um one of the um on page 31 of the slides um one of the the pieces of the streamlined model is that this streamlining it would allow the school principal and teachers to play a more direct role in the uh student behavior, family communication, school community connection. Um, so I was wondering if I think it's probably a superintendent question, but talk a little bit about what that means.

Yeah, it would be it would put some of the responsibility um specifically around student behavior of students sent out of the classroom uh in the in the in the lo in the control of the principal um rather than going directly to an ARIS uh for example. Um, and we're not with regard to the scaffs, it's not um, uh, eliminating from any school, but it's reallocating based on UPP count. Um, so that some schools wouldn't have coverage every single day and in that situation, there would have to be some uh, coordination with the school principal.

Trusty. Yeah, I have a question about ELOP and a question about preschool. Um, with so it looks like we might only have to spend a thous a million on ELOP instead of 1.66 million if the governor's budget holds. We have to get all the way through the May revise and budget trailer bills and things. But, um, let's say hypothetically we kept ELOP this year because state funding is uncertain. We're not sure what's going to happen. Um, could we do a concerted push in the coming year to expand the BTB enrollment and move as many students out of ELOP as possible into BTB so that we in future we're we're kind of starting to to gradually transition out of that program um rather than like a hard stop.

So BTB is funded through AC's grant, right? And so we only have the ASUS grant at a certain certain number of our schools. And with each grant, we're only funded for a certain number of kids. So if we wanted to move kids out of ELAP into BTB, we could, but we would then have to have a contribution to that to cover the cost. And we've applied though to expand that. We have applied. So if that I mean unfortunately, we're not going to we may not know when we have to make this decision, right? Um which is not how I like to make decisions. Um, if I guess what I'm asking then is if the ASUS comes through and expands the BTB options, can we then move as many ELAP students over into BTB as possible?

Absolutely. So, we decrease our overall ELOP carry um for next year even even if it's not eliminated. Good. Yes.

Okay. And then um just speaking in terms of data for future meetings um you know I asked in the trustee questions that were submitted for disagregated data on preschool. Unfortunately the link uh I'm not allowed to access the file to read it. Um so I appreciate that the data was provided but we aren't able to access it. Um and uh similarly um I asked about if we have updated performance data and I know it was a short turnaround to try and get uh performance data for students coming out of our um preschool program. Um if we could have that before the next meeting that would be wonderful. Um, and just generally speaking, we haven't had an overall update on the preschool program um, since the spring of 2024. Um, so if it's possible just to get kind of the written report update that we would normally get, I'm thinking about all of the different, you know, we saw it some in the presentation tonight, all of the different outside agencies that our preschool program is coordinating with, for example. That's something that would probably be in an update um as well.

Thank you, Trusty Lambert. Yeah, concerning the preschool program too is how was the um how did we be uh begin subsidizing this program and what was the objective uh of that and and and remind me then how much we are spending on that.

So, uh we're projected to spend about $700,000 um to offset costs. Um we were uh asked to find a way to offer extended day classrooms to move away. We used to offer just um amm classes and there was a need expressed to offer um full day classes for families. And then how did it the district then come to sort of bear some of the cost of that? Because it doesn't fit in our contract.

Excuse me. It doesn't we cannot claim the cost for students in a full day class under our preschool contract because we're not contracted for that.

Is that is does that mean there's an opportunity to sort of remove the subsidy? Yes. Yeah.

One of the options there's several options that we presented that we could we could two options we could do to do that. Yes. Okay, thank you. [clears throat] We can do next. Um, continuing my optimistic side of this. Um, we've uh have we how how far have we explored the revenue like diversifying our revenue side of this ahead of cuts? I know that for example I was I had the pleasure of attending the city's reorganizational meeting and one of the things that um the outgoing mayor had in their remarks was specifically around how val how much the city values affordable child care options and thing um is that have we explored any sort of I think alignment with our core competencies with the city right I know recent in the past we've for example I know we don't want to reis visit joint use agreements, but we do we did take on maintenance costs for that that the city was previously doing. Are there mutually beneficial arrangements we can come with which would offset some of those those costs? I don't know anyone that so I don't think those those conversations have not taken place, right? because they just they just recently granted before I was here but within the last 5 years changed their agreements that they're no longer providing that that maintenance work and that tree work and so forth or not maintenance but uh landscaping and tree. Um so that's that's very recent. We could certainly ask if they want to revisit that. Um

I don't think we would have that in time for Jan January but um I think the general question of we're experts in right child education and they are have we we have very good people on staff maintaining these things but they do a lot more trees things and I think other any other revenue side things that could offset some of these costs or lower our expenses in that site might be useful. I I wonder how much we've explored that. So follow following the the the line of thinking then that that we would then um realize the revenue would be realized through maintenance and operations layoffs potentially. I think these are all Yeah. Okay.

These are all things that we will have to decide how these are structured, right? And we have to go we would have to go through our pri priorities of the community and the staff and everything to make some of these tough decisions. They're all trade-offs. I don't um I just want to have as many options on the table as we can. Um, Trusty Henry,

um, going back to the, um, Aerys, SCF, and BT topic, um, I just wanted to for the the so a total of elimination of two SCF positions. um one of the two halves from Castro Mistral and then one of the kind of the other there currently the other seven schools have four total but six of those schools already have a half and then the has one full. So then the would be grouped with the six. Correct. Um has there been so currently six of them have a half. Um I was curious if there were has been what the the discussion would be of uh the possibilities of how they would be shared now that those would be shared across seven. Um and then also just maybe part of that would be just how they're current how the the ones that are already shared how that sharing works. So yes, I mean there's a lot of possibilities. They could um the three scaffs could work together and work with all the sites. The other option is we could go back to uh a model that we had um before where our higher our our schools with the lower unduplicated counts, Bub MI and Stevenson shared one and then the other schools would each have a half. So that's one option. pre- pandemic. So in that example, those three schools would go from a half to a third

and two of those schools already have a half. Then it would be just as using those as an example. Okay. Thank you, Trusty Lambert. Sure. I'll ask about the uh janitorial services. Do we have an example of many school districts who do have every other day janitorial service. And does this actually work? It's what we implemented in the Los Alto school district. Yes, it can work.

It can work, right? I mean, it's you want it every night, but it is a way to realize some savings. I have another question.

Okay, go ahead. Um, you've made it um, you know, optional. uh you recommend um one plan is to make it optional for grades one, two and like K one to three to have Chromebooks. Uh why thought that uh why why for those why why can Chromebooks be optional for those grades?

Uh part of it is because they would be on a cart and so the Chromebooks would still be in the classroom. The kids would have access to them when they needed them. So it would be a cart. Um whereas right now they have a specific Chromebook assigned to them and then they they take it take it home. Um another piece is also because of our curriculum and then so we could we could we could change Chromebooks completely right now. Um we purchase print material curriculum for all of our elementarymentaries and then we also provide allow or have access students can access the curriculum digitally either on their own personal device at home or on a district device. At middle school a lot more of the curriculum is done through the Chromebook. Um we could we could change that and purchase textbooks in social Eureka maths not a problem. social studies and science, we would have to purchase one textbook per student. Our language arts curriculum right now is is mostly fully online. It's definitely ready to be we're ready to go through a new adoption and we would have to have students would have to have access to a Chromebook to to access that until we make a change,

but not necessarily grades K through three. Not no just for the other grades that

correct for them to do the homework at home. We we buy the print materials so that we they can take the print materials home at grades um K to five. Having the Chromebook is just a nice option and we tend not to it's just an option for them to have. So we we purchase the print material so at great in in elementary school I think that gives clarifies things. Yes. Yes. And I think this will be my last question for now because I I want to hear from the public as well. Um looking at kind of the the proposed reorganization of at risk Skef and BT and um behavior texts. Um, is it possible to adjust these a little bit in different ways? Um, I think my we're going to have to make cuts. We all know we're going to have to make cuts, but my concern is about um one keeping it away from direct classroom instruction as much much as possible, but also equity and like where are our highest needs, most vulnerable students. Um and so I assume the reason for example that we have two areas at Castro and at Graham is because we have a high concentration of vulnerable students at those sites. Um, and for example, why we have one full-time scaff as opposed to many of the other elementary schools is because there's a high concentration of need at that site. Is that correct? Okay. Um, and so I I would like more information about

um, and it's kind of been alluded to, how we would be supporting students based on the unduplicated counts at their school sites. Um, so a little bit more information about how this is going to get broken down and played out. Um, especially with the SCFs. Um, but even just looking at uh Castro and Graham, um, you know, [clears throat] does it really make sense to take areas from there as opposed to taking them to one of our schools that is, um, perhaps doesn't have as many vulnerable students and isn't having the same level of behavioral disruptions. Um, so that that that piece is, I think, important for us to know. And in light of all this, we hired full-time counselors this last year and they aren't on this list at all. So, we do have behavioral supports that are happening with a full-time staff person that we haven't had full-time until this year. Correct. Right.

Okay. Thank you,

Christie Reed. Um, on the flip side of we're looking at lots of cuts, um, on the bringing in money side, um, I'm wondering, I know that the Al Camino Healthc Care District has recently um, come upon um, a little bit more in their budget that they have room for taking more grants. I'm wondering if we have reached out to them for any type of um assistance for some of our our programs. I know that they funded um the school nurses and other things for us currently and in the past and if we could reach out to them to help um fund some of these things that are on the cut list. I know that that was actually already in progress. Um, Tero was reaching out because of the additional funding. We can go next. Uh so as I look at this into in one of my trusty questions um I'd like to get a sense of how we anticipate monitoring some of these changes that we're making right because we're making changes making changes we're tasked with making changes with limited information about what the impacts will be and so there's uncertainty about this so there's two sides of that one is I mean I think this was around the custodial changes. How do we know if that's going how do we know if that's going sideways? Like we implement this, we don't think it will adversely affect it, but what are our indicators that we're going to have? And I think that applies across the board to all of the the cuts we decide to make. Um, and then the flip side of that is how regularly are we

getting updates from the assessor on AV? Again, my optimism um if they, you know, appeals dry up, there's less exposure that we have to that or or commercial starts rebounding. And when we can trigger a revisiting of some of the cuts we're making now and bring that back, like what's our do we have a plan for that? We can certainly revisit that, but the guidance from the assessor was that we should expect several more years of the same. Thank you.

We Yeah. Uh going back to uh preschool about um how many kids participate in the uh half day program and how many in the full day program? Uh right now we have um off the top of my head not looking at the number 71 students in half day. We have 135 total. So that other parts in full day and um director Keer has provided you access to her document so you can see the enrollment.

I think I was thinking about one of your questions. Um Charles, how do we know they're working? Right. We have some pretty clear data from the Arenda study and I'll specifically point to the behavior um support that the more behavior support we have the more incidences we have. So it's something we can certainly monitor uh one of those. One of the proposals here is to increase the number of unpaid counselors or interns. Uh what role will they play? And tell something about who these interns are.

They're going to be um students that are looking to get their hours right to fulfill a variety of different licenses. So they'll be working with kids. It's similar to when we had CHAC. Cha had a lot of had interns, right? So, we would add interns to our cadre of already licensed counselors. Thank you. you read.

Um I'm looking back on the the graph on um page 12 and I'm seeing um with the recommendation of the 9.5 million in reductions and with our lease revenue, uh we're seeing with these cuts, we do have a slight increase in reserve level for next year before it starts to dip. Um, I'm wondering what this orange line would look like if we did partial and split the the cost savings between this year and next year, what that trajectory would look like outward. So, it's not as big of a cut for this year. that we're splitting, not trying to cut and try to put a lot on our staff all in one year if we can save some of it for the next year. So, if we're saying, "Hey staff, we're um kind of asking you to do all this stuff because all these other positions are being cut. If we could split that, what does that look like for our line of trajectory? Trusty L.

Yeah, I'm afraid a question. Um you explain as the uh um the tosses I think get reassigned and where where those openings will come from. Well, it'll be a variety of things. Um it'll be natural attrition. It'll be um new classes opening. It'll be um teachers that um are not coming back to the district, a whole variety of

and you do not anticipate them pushing out uh teachers who are, you know, currently working.

No, we're the the the the response to that question is we do not anticipate laying off any teachers. We we have no anticipate sounds like maybe we have no plans to lay off any teachers. That's that's not in that's not in what we're recommending. Right. Thank you. Any further questions? All right. I think in the interest of receiving public comment, we'll move on to that portion of of this item. So, appreciate everyone's patience with us. Let me give me a moment to get back to All right,

I will in person gather a comment card. I will need to count this. And online, please use the raise hand function. Trying to see how many is that all of the inerson cards and then how many sorry I'm trying to find how many online we have or online. Can you write down the names for me and then I'll be able to call them because I cannot find my Zoom window. All right. Uh this was how many is this? We have 11 inerson comments and four online. Now there are six. I'm closing online collection because I've counted the cards. So 17. So that puts me at about one minute per person. Um, in the interests of being respectful of everyone's time, um, I have to do that with the consent of the board. If we have a

um I I would also like to note that if someone needs translation, they get double. Anyone on here needs translation, you'll get two minutes rather than one. But are we okay with that as the time aotment? I try to be fair within the 20 minutes that we have. So we will start with uh in person. So first first we have Ling. I shuffled. So

all right. Well, seems like um we have some tough decisions ahead of us and I don't you guys okay so one of the things I noticed is when you lope [clears throat]

um teacher cuts with DO cuts. It doesn't um uh doesn't build trust. But I want to note that three NVWSD administrator roles are the highest paid in California and another three are in the top uh five highest. Okay. And if you look at our administration performance, it's rated a C++. So when it comes to what we pay for, we're not really getting what we're paid for. and I hope we can look into making changes there so that um

Thank you for your comment. It's very brief. I'm sorry, but if you have further comments, you can send them over email. I appreciate it. I need to be fair to everyone.

Yes, I will call up the next person. Thank you for the suggestion, but please in public do not shout do not shout to the board. Um, next up is Anna S and then after that I will have I believe this is Nyung and then after that will be Miss Chellik. Those are the next three cards. Thank you so much. Hi, I'm uh wanted to speak on behalf of ELOP students at Mistral. So there are 226 unduplicated students at Mistral. It's the highest of all the elementary schools. 164 are in ELOP. None of them are eligible for Beyond the Bell because Beyond the Bell does not exist at Mistral. And so I just really encourage you not to eliminate ELOT funding unless the Beyond the Bell expansion is guaranteed um that it was such a hardship for our families uh before the ELO program was introduced. The other question I have is about the janitorial funding for afterchool programs. I kind of wondered what that would mean and what the implication would mean for the various afterchool programs that PTAs often bring to campus. Right now there is sort of the sense that um the district has very high rental fees which me can often discourage programs from coming onto campus. Um it's one of the reasons I think that we see more programs at perhaps the schools that perhaps could afford the programs more than some of the other schools. So that's just something I'd like to ask about. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. as stated next will be young. After that, Miss Chelik.

Hi. Um, thank you again. Um, so I just want to reiterate it like with the deal staff moving to school site in different roles. Will their salary be adjusted to align with the new roles? um preschool it's I was looking at the the you know the cost like what people are paying it's currently isn't if it isn't income based and need based if we're offering such a huge discount it should be like that I mean Santa Cl uh Santa Clara Unifi has preschool they're offering half day at 1,400 we're offering half day at 650 and some like for people within Castro Um, some of them are like in the zone are free. So, so like and they're paying their director less. We're paying our director a lot more. Number one, and state of California. Um, and so like our revenue and our expense are in reverse. So, no wonder we're in deficit and then that doesn't help the family. We have to shut down preschool.

Thank Thank you for your comment, Miss Chelik. You are up. And then after that is Eric Pon followed by Lillian Good and then science teacher. M trullik.

Uh thank you. I've got more detailed comments in writing, but I just want to focus on uh three four things. One, I support funding the steam teachers cut the outside PE contractor rhythm and moves. Why? Because children learn reading, writing, and math by moving their bodies. Classroom teachers can integrate reading and math lessons into PE. For example, kids can do the number of jumping jacks based on rolling giant dice. They can count giant steps on a cartisian grid and learn to graph X and Y. They can skip and chant letter sounds in the directions of writing giant letters outlined on the payment with cones and ropes, etc. Two, cut the technology budgets for laptops and educational software for K through third graders. Human to human learning is much more impactful than screen learning. Three, make preschool pay for itself. charge all non socioeconomically disadvantaged families the full cost including the Castro boundary families who live in Shoreline West with average home prices of 2.1 million.

Thank you for your comment. All right and um please continue to support science of reading. Thank you.

Next we have Eric Pod then Lillian Good. You'll be after that and then science teacher. Good evening, President Nefasio and trustees. My name is Eric Bone, the resident of Mountain View. I hope not to take long. Um, I'm the reason I'm here today is to implore you to not do any cuts to the daycare program that many families and as we heard earlier today, teachers benefit from. I think it's a huge disservice to be even able to consider this, especially knowing that this is a tough decision that y'all will are making uh later on in the following weeks to come. But just imagine how much more difficult it is for a family to decide whether they're able to go to work or they have to stay home in order to take their kids and still have to face the consequences of whether or not they'll be able to pay their rent. So I'm here standing in solidarities with families and staff who will be impacted by this and I hope you make the right decision in the days to come. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment and I apologize for the mispronunciation of your name. Um Miss Good.

Hello. I came tonight to make an impassioned plea to maintain steam and RTI, but instead I've been struck by the multiple programs that people have talked about that have been important to their families and to teachers. The district office has not adequately explained the consequences of these cuts. They've not explained how they'll adjust to still provide for the needs of students and teachers. For example, how will RTI be reconfigured? No statement there. How much is it going to cost to buy a curriculum for Steam? How much would it cost to buy new equipment for PE? None of these things have been answered. At the 11th hour, preschool, more options have come to potentially save it and to be costneutral. How many other programs might there really be other options for that we can look into this? Given with the historical repeated excessive overestimation of the deficits, we should not be cutting important programs now. We should pause. We can cut technology. We can reduce district office support staff, optimize efficiency, re-evaluate programs, but not cut staff at school sites, including teachers on special assignments.

Thank you. Uh, science teacher, you are next, followed by Douglas Lang, Paula Perez, and Mario Quest. After that, science teacher.

Thank you. As my name suggests, I am a very concerned science teacher. Um, I think that the district or the board members should um take strong consideration. Uh, I I understand the the teachers feel important uh that they they voted that the P program should be uh cut, but instead um I think you all should think about the importance about the science program being cut instead. Uh it's very important that we have highly qualified u already science teachers teaching science uh because I know that at the middle school level um it it accelerates uh and so I think it's really important that um you'll take that in consideration which one you're going to cut if uh if you do have to cut one of them. Thanks. Thank you for your comment Douglas Lang.

Good evening board and superintendent bear. Um, I know these decisions are difficult. Um, and as a teacher at Graham, even seeing Harrises or SCFs or custodial staff cut is kind of hard to bear. Um, I know we these cuts are hard no matter where we look. But I do want to point out, trustee Reed, thank you for your ideas that you are bringing forward of how we can go about doing this without cutting personnel. And that's just what I want to re reiterate and I want to concur with you. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Leg. Next, uh Paula Perez. Think we will need translation for this. So, you have two minutes. Fore! Foreign! Foreign!

Thank you for your comment. Thank you. I think we will need now the time for translation.

Good afternoon. My name is Paula Perez. I'm the mother of four children and three of them attend preschool in this district. Today I'm here as a leader with parent voices. I'm here as a mother from the Mountain View community who is deeply concerned about the proposal to eliminate preschool. Eliminating state preschool is not just another budget adjustment. It is a decision that impacts the very beginning of our children's ed educational journey. Preschool is the foundation of our children's educational, social, and emotional development. For many families like mine, this preschool was the only option to ensure that our children arrive in kindergarten prepared, confident, and with real tools to learn. I also want to say something very honestly, and it's not fair that as parents, we have to fight over and over again, something our children already deserve. Last year, we were here present advocating so that preschool would not be eliminated, and here we are again. This should not be the constant struggle. Instead, we're here being asked that preschool, which is essential, not be taken away. We should be working together to strengthen and expand it, not make it disappear. Today, I ask you not to vote for the closure of preschools. Think of the children who are not yet able to speak. Think of the working families who have not other options. This is not just the issue of numbers. It is an issue of justice, equity, and community responsibility.

Thank you. And apologies if I I was this is my first time fielding public comment. Uh so we'll have one minute for for um the initial comment and then the translation will get another minute for. So I apologize for the my confusion here. Um next we have Mario and then Liliana Kamacho and then a blank card. Voices. Excellenc.

Thank you, dear members of the Mountain View Westman School District Board. My name is Marlo Questa. I live in Mountain View and my four children benefited from attending this district's per preschool system. I urge that changes to the school budget not be made at the cost of our students education. I also call on you to listen to the voices of the children, their learning stories, and if possible to the stories of our families and to consider continuing academic excellence without closing any educational centers. Thank you. Kamacho. Yeah.

Good evening. My name is Liliana Kamacho. I am a mom of four, a longtime Mountain View resident. I'm also an organizer with Paramo Santa Clara with many parent leaders here at Mountain View. My ask today is that both preschool and the ELO programs not to be touched in any budget cuts. These programs are essential for families. preschools gives our youngest children a strong start in their education and the ELO provides a safe structural place for our school age children's after school. Both allow parents to work knowing that their childrens are safe and supported. It's very disappointing and heartbreaking to see preschool programs being discussed for cuts again. On November 16th uh 2023, preschool was discussed and there was a real chance it could be kept. parents came together and spoke up and shared their stories because of that. The decision was to expand the uh preschool program and not to cut it and that gave families hopes. In two days, we gathered 339 petitions response in protecting our preschool parents shared stories about how these preschools helped their families and some share that their kids attended these preschools years ago and still remember how important they were. Programs matter to our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Um, I have a blank card that I don't need. Okay. So, I'll I'll use the one that has the name Stephen Nelson on it. Or is this the Oh, blank card is how however you want to be identified. Uh, it is not you. Steen Nelson. It is not you. You're not the blank card. Mr. Nelson, you're not the blank card. There's a person who had the blank card. Oh, how do you know that? I have a card from Steven Nelson. Oh, okay. And I'm Steven Nelson. No, but I'm recognizing as the president, I'm recognizing the blank card. Thank you.

Hi, I second the comments of Ling regarding fair and equitable cuts and cuts based on dollars and performance. Along those lines, uh we're looking at janitorial cuts to the schools, but I haven't heard what happens with janitorial at the DO. With regard to preschool, uh in June, I asked for the $2 million preschool contract to be pulled from consent for details on the contract, and here we are. The numbers are not uh comprehensive. They do not include, for instance, the facilities costs. For instance, in October, there was a $385,000 construction change order for the preschools. Um, I would like to know what are the janitorial costs? What are the electric uh and utility costs? These are not included in the $695,000 presented before you tonight. Um, what what might we make if we rented out those facilities to other preschools? I'm not saying preschools are bad. I think preschools are great, but there are trade-offs for our TK through 8 education. Thank you.

Thank you. And while it is optional to fill out a name, it helps us avoid confusion. Um, M Mr. Nelson,

thank you. How do you highlight that you have a commitment to underserved students? Is that a platform that you ran on to get elected in this community? How do you show that in actuality you are deeply committed to issues of equity? I think you give direction to the staff to leave the money resources where the recent system study and the teaching staff survey shows importance. One primary idea, do not reduce any pupil services FTEES at Castro and Mistrol. None. Also, this also matches staff survey stop top theme number one. Preserve student supports beyond classrooms counselors unquote, etc. One of the things about RTI, it didn't work. It was one of these things that was found in the that added to this weak program design for weak system alignment. What can be done about keeping RTI sciences?

Thank you. Now we'll move to the online speakers. Uh I will start with the first speaker I see is Anant R. I believe you have one minute. Hi. Um, yeah, my name is Anant. Um, well, that's my ID on Zoom. I'm a parent in the Mountain View Wisman School District. Uh, I just wanted to sort of comment to double down on Trusty Anna's comment about whether we should whether we have sufficiently explored staggered cuts across several years. I think I think it's a pretty good idea because it'll make it easier for us to be nimble. Let's say if our revenue gets higher than anticipated in the in the coming years for whatever reason, then I think that's that's a place where we don't want to make too deep a cut and then come back from it. It also wasn't very clear to me, maybe it was clear to the others whether the steam budget cuts are going to be through attrition or they're going to be realized through like actual layoffs. So they're going to be layoffs and again we'll probably have like firing and hiring cycles if we don't sort of like at least think through staggering the cuts. So those are a couple of things that I just basically wanted to like throw into the discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Um I saw an additional hand go up online while I was talking. Um in the interest of full public comment, I will take this one additional one, but I will not take any more after that. You can send us an email to respond um because I allocated time based on how many speakers I saw we had. Um I will move on to Janette.

Hi again. Thank you. Um I am a M View resident uh I with two uh kids at the uh currently at the district. Um I I want to advocate for uh the preschool program. um my kids benefited from from it and um I believe strongly that this is the pathway where kids will not fall behind um farther down as there is already a a big gap in between um uh the disadvantaged students. Um so please uh I I um ask for that to be kept and not touch also um the steam program um where I I believe that the kids have a lot of benefits from it again um where uh the the children will um not have uh as much as what they they currently have right now. Thank you.

Thank you. Next is Mohan.

Yes, thank you, President DeFazio. So, it's easier for us to theorize about cutting such and such program or a different program, but I wanted to know what the kids think. So, I asked the one kid I could, my daughter who's in fifth grade at BUB, and I asked her, um, would it how would it affect your steam education if we didn't have a dedicated steam teacher? And she said, "Dad, it would definitely be worse." And I asked her, um, in in what ways? And she actually wrote down a list for me. She said, "We don't have room in our class in our regular classroom for steam supplies. We can't get as messy there. There's no time for RTI for um our regular classroom teacher, and we can't do as fun projects because we need to save uh the time to clean up the regular classroom." So, she definitely said things are going to be worse if we do that for them. She was very unhappy about it. Finally, she told me, "Dad, please tell the people who are thinking about this. It's a really dumb idea." So, don't take my word for it. Talk to the kids. Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, we want to make sure everyone feels Let's Let's keep our interruptions to a minimum. I appreciate, but uh, we want to make everyone feel open and welcome even if they have conflicting opinions. But, um, so next is Haley Burton. Hello, my name is Haley Burton and I am the steam teacher at Theoff Elementary School. I just wanted to clarify for the public and the board Trusty Lambert's question about what would happen with TOSAs going back into the classrooms. While we may not anticipate layoffs of tenure teachers, there will be higher numbers of first and second year teachers being released from their contracts to make space for the TOSAs returning to the classroom. So, just to be clear, current teachers will be losing their jobs with these cuts and that's important to keep in mind as you're making your decisions. Thank you. Thank you. Next uh speaker is Capacito. Yes, good evening everyone and my name is Sandra and a part of the group cafes the hostia and currently we are serving not regular families like everybody already mentioned I mean I'm not saying oh we all kind of have a different needs what we are serving is now those days serving the homeless or pretty much the mckin vento uh helping with my group so those families amilies. This year we giving around 300 something gift cards. So and the average of the kids has through one year old to three year old.

So can you imagine like two 200 something kids will not have the benefit for the preschool. That is for me in my opinion. Please board trust be considerate and thinking about before cutting this budget because not only is it's going to be more suffer for this family who lives on the street. Thank you. Have a great night. Next is Diana B.

Hi, thank you for taking my call. My name is Diana Brazowski and I'm a student a parent in the district and I've been a public school teacher for over 15 years. Um I would like to speak on behalf of our SCF at the coffette. Um she is important, valued and um has made a huge impact in our entire school community. She does her job with um love, joy, kindness, and compassion and helps all of our students and families be seen and heard. We ask you to please keep her at their call full-time to support the varying needs of the diverse community. Um, also I'm asking that you re-evaluate the proposed cuts to night custodians. Um, by cutting the custodians part-time, we run the risk of more widespread sickness across the school. If our staff and students are sick, um, and they're out more often than not due to unclean facilities, um, we lose funding as well as precious learning time. Please don't let us um, forget the lessons that we learned from the pandemic. Um, we know that the decisions ahead of you are tough and we just want to remember um and remind you to not take things for granted. Thank you.

Our last online commenter is Blake Hoffstead. I appreciate your patience. I know you I I the queuing you had your hand up very early. I appreciate you waiting, but thank you. It's your turn.

Yeah, thank you. No worries. Um, appreciate you all for being here. Um Blake hops that organizing director with parent voices California were strongly against any reduction in preschool services but the district should absolutely explore modifying its contract to provide full day care um which we know better meets families needs. One thing to consider is that income eligibility has expanded really significantly. Uh 10 years ago a family of four would not qualify for state preschool if they made $4,000 a month. That same family can now make $9,000 and qualify for publicly funded care. So, it's possible that the district is subsidizing families who would qualify for fully funded care from the state. Um, no families who are currently receiving care should lose care. Um, another consideration is that the 2020 state budget agreement included a commitment to expand childcare spaces by $200,000 rolled out over several years. 44,000 spaces are supposed to be added to the budget this year based on that agreement. They were not in the governor's January budget proposal, but we encouraged the district to use its political capital to pressure the legislature to add those slots so that the district could um even expand its contract with the state. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Thank you everyone who came out and online who commented. Um these are tough decisions ahead of us, but I really appreciate everyone who's coming here to make their voices heard. Um, so now we'll floor is closed to public comment and I'll return to the board for discussion. I think maybe we can structure this by I think there are some more difficult choices than others. I think we might have rel relative to the priorities we've identified and things. So maybe we can begin the discussion around direction to staff for things that there may be initial consensus on and then we can move on to but it's an it's a proposal. I think it may make it more efficient and then preserve time for us to have more elaborate discussions. But it

was my understanding we were just asking questions and getting information and not making decisions tonight. But we will direct staff to be preparing recommendations and we can things we are aligned on may be easier versus things we need more detailed information to come to a conclusion. Asking for information is different than making recommend. Yeah, we will not be have we will not be taking any action tonight, but it will I I think our discussion will influence the recommendations that come back. Right. So, Trusty Conley, do you want to start? You have your

Thank you. Um and thank you to everyone who came to comment in public. I know you all were here for a long time. Um and the we had an extensive amount of community comment that was also written in about this issue. We also um received the petition as well uh with over 300 signatures. Um so I'm going to come back to my focus is um still on how are we within these cuts preserving classroom instruction, high-quality classroom instruction, and how are we meeting the needs of our most vulnerable students and not making cuts directly to them. Those are often the voices that aren't here to be able to advocate. Um, and so, um, first up, I have no interest in changing preschool. Um, I don't support doing that. I think, um, there is a wealth of research. There is years and years and years of research about how preschool access, including not just TK, but three and fours that don't qualify for TK yet, um has a tremendous impact on children, not just on how they do academically, but overall life outcomes down the road. Um and our preschool program also, um it's very hard to find child care. I am um experiencing this myself with my own three-year-old. I have not gone to the district preschools. I um I think that uh that needs to be open to other people in the community. Um but it is incredibly difficult and we know for our teachers, I've heard directly from teachers um for years now who have children in our preschool program and it makes it possible for them to work in our community. And so I think that's also incredibly important that um the big ask from us years ago was to expand it to full day because that actually made it feasible who were working for people who are working to be able to

continue their jobs. Um the other thing that I would like to hold off on cutting um is ELOP. um again our most vulnerable students um who are engaged in that program and yet we don't have a place for them to go right now if we eliminate that program. But I am interested in looking at if we can get more Beyond the Bell funding, moving as many students over into that program and maybe phasing it out over time. Um but those are my two hard nos right off the bat. Um, and then I'd like to hear from the rest of the board.

Who would like to go next? I know you all want to discuss this. So, I'm going to call on someone. Vice President Henry.

Um, I was going to start on my what I think might be my easier end. Um, which I am um I'm supportive of reductions in technology and I'm wondering if we can even go a little further with that. um potentially um going more to even um uh particularly knowing that we have for the on the elementary side um have access to printed um curriculum. Um no, but also knowing that kids have different needs and for some of them the online version of the the curriculum might be might be useful. But whether we um uh could even do shared carts on grade levels or at least at some of the schools that have um you know some of the larger schools that have three or four second grades or something whether we could do a smaller number of shared carts and in some way reduce this. I was curious though how this uh the reduction in Chromebooks um relates to thinking back to our inventory discussion um how many we actually buy each year and how how how much it would actually reduce to go next year shared carts versus um how that plays into it. how um how often we buy them and and whether that actually it's more of a over a years cost or savings. Um but that's one area that I um I now that I think having them you said having them available um but it's supportive of looking if we can reduce that a little bit more um might might be I'm actually comfortable with the change in custodial um services um

it would be I think in theor in general my my approach to this is some of is the things that feel easier to me are the things that if things change in the future are easier to change back. Um, and I understand that's real people who have that we'd be producing. I'm not ignoring that. Um, but it is the type of thing that could even be added back in a a midyear or something at some point a year and a half from now or something if we got to a point as opposed to a classroom level. Um I would like also just I'll let other people go but as I'm looking at these things in general um the things that are kind of at top of my mind are one you know whether it's something that can be rehearsed if we realize things are are better than we thought it or at some point in the future when they are better. Um, and looking at some of the things that, you know, we just got the Arenda report a couple weeks ago, so I think we're not ready to completely make, you know, we have a a long process of making the changes based on that. But if there are things that resonated based on that that we know um can actually they they do both things of improving outcomes or not at least um potentially improving outcomes for kids and relationships on campus and save money. Um those are things that are easier for me to do. Um, my harder things are going to be things like Steam, but I'll let other people

I want to go ahead back off of um those comments in the reduction shared cards. Um but that would also include um a potential reduction in amount of money being spent on software if we're um focusing on curriculum that is available uh for them in their hands. Um what other doing a software audit? What software are we currently do we currently have contracts with that could be reduced or eliminated if we're reducing the amount of tech particularly in the lower grades.

Let's give everyone a chance to have some comments first. Trusty Lambert.

So preschool preschool programs and after school programs are very important to the kids. No question about that. Um I think the real question is uh is these start becoming social services and our school district um is in the business of educating kids and this is what we really need to focus on. What I would really suggest is that these preschool and after school programs are something a community should provide um together. And so I would encourage um the staff to come up with some ideas of how we could collaborate with um other community organizations, the city, okay, uh for example, to uh help provide these services and and help provide funding for these um yeah, just I they're important programs. We need to focus on our core business of doing education and uh I don't want to see them go, but um I also don't want to see the school district be the only one responsible for this. I will start with my the the structure for how I've been thinking through this. Um, right. So, given the community feedback we've received and the staff surveys and whatnot, I was I kind of bucket these out into relative priorities that have been expressed to us, right? So, that the priority one was direct instructional, priority two was sightbased support and maybe my interpretation is different from other folks, but sitebased support and then central administration there. So, I think according to those priorities, and I know these are the the thing that I struggle with is all of the like there's no free lunch for all of these. These

are all people. These are all things that I'm um people's lives and there's kids affected and I'm trying to to balance that. And so, I we do have to have some discipline to make tough decisions over these these times. So at least within the things that I feel most confident in with the information that I have um today um per the trustee question I think the like the core doo which was I think about 2.2 million in that uh breakdown of central administration portion of that and maybe my interpretation is wrong there custodial of about 1.08 8 and then the technology of.32. Those are the ones I'm like most confident that we have the information we need to make the decision coming forward. Um, SCF ARSBT reorganization I the falls in the sitebased support level, but that feels more of a I want to make sure that we are the changes we're making are there to support the the sites that have the highest unduplicated pupil counts. Um, and making sure that that's we're not having a drastic reduction in the supports we have and see things backslide there. Um, if if we can come back with more information and get some assessment of how that that lines up, that feels like something that I have sufficient information for. So, starting with the stack ranked kind of higher um clear priorities to me, those those feel about right to me at least for a starting point of discussion here. Trusty Conley,

I'm I'm relatively aligned with that. Um, and I think the other thing that jumped out for me um was Trustee Reed's question about the impact of um possibly pausing the raises on administrative salaries. Basically, our non-certificated, nonclassified staff, although some of our administrators are certificated. Um, but I think we have been a topheavy district. Um, and it is challenging to roll things backwards. I leave that to a certain extent that is at the superintendent's discretion around how to organize the office with board input and push back. Um but it might be that pausing um the increase in those salaries could offset I don't know how much but it could have an impact on how we're looking at this budget. Um I'm fine with the district office cuts that's proposed. Um I'm fine with the technology cuts although if we can find other wiggle room there. I think we're penny pitching a little. like I don't know how much we'll get out of it, but I think we can get some. Um the custodian is not ideal, but it also feels like if we find more money in the budget, um we might be able to hire back more staff in that capacity. Um I I was curious about custodial at the district office. I assume that will also cut back to every other night as well. Okay, thank you. Um and I agree. I I would like to know more about how I've seen um just to give context to the public um we've been having meetings individually with the superintendent and staff as well and there are charts all

over the superintendent's office about how to figure out staffing and um and so I know that there have been just a huge number of hours and conversations and research arch into how to manage this. Um but having a better understanding of um the need at each school site in terms of unduplicated compared to kind of the sk aerys breakdown would be helpful for me in decision making which I kind of talked about earlier but I think it aligns with what Charles is saying as well. Lambert.

Yeah. I also sort of feel compelled to make a comment about this um PE versus steam uh dichotomy. Um know from experience that um it's really good to have separate classrooms for steam education and dedicated teachers. Takes a lot of time for preparation, a lot of time to clean up and to have steam done in a classroom. Um yeah I I just I think it's very very difficult. So you know looking at this where you have you know um well I think the dedicated teachers for steam are and dedicated classrooms at the same time is really important to have a quality uh steam education. Henry,

um just to follow up on steam um and PE um I will say that I you know we heard um from the aenda report um that I think one of the areas that we will need to examine and potentially and and likely reconfigure is that RTI model and the small groups and um that piece of it. I would like though to to be doing that um affirmatively as part of of that review of what we can do to best improve the program and the results for our kids, not as a right now budgetary change. Um it ultimately may have a likely would have a change in the budget. Um, but those are two that I very much hesitate to make a a change to right now that would um by a budgetary change eliminate RTI if it turns out that the choice was made to eliminate RTI or completely reconfigure it um as a educational decision. Um that is different to me. I um there's one of the schools that's had um science um that pilot was the first to pilots uh science happens to be that my kids went to that one. Um and um and so that was is we are coming up on on 10 years of of a dedicated steam program at that school with um I also acknowledge that that is a very resource school that's had um but it has had site money and PTA money going into scheme supplies um a lot of things that um have really set up those classrooms um that it would be um I

would not want to make a hard turn away from that. Um, and for the other schools, um, even for the other schools, it's we're coming, you know, it's been since 2019 and 2020, um, that they've been at that model with, um, teachers who have, um, been dedicated to learning NGS, NGSO standards. And um the other piece of that for me even with PE is that I know that we have put um a new um ELA curriculum, a new SEAL curriculum um already on our elementary school teachers and I hesitate to add science to new subjects to them which I know in the the trustee questions that says that teachers who were hired before 2008 um have taught PE, but that's that's a pretty experienced teacher. Um know we have some very experienced teachers who have not um taught PE. Um and I know that we're going to be asking a lot of them with the changes that we want to make um to look at grade level standards and all the things that are going to come out of the Arenda study. So th that makes me very hesitant to put PE and science um back on the elementary school teachers as a budgetary disease. Trusty L, do you still have a No. Okay. Um, I'll jump in because I think this the the RTI discussion and the restructuring kind of crystallizes a little bit of what I've been working through in this right because we have we're having two se two separate but related discussions at once. one is around the the budget realities and I think in that context right um historically right we have had growing

revenue we've had our revenue increasing lot more money to spend and our job as a school district is not to hoard money we are we have a reserve to cushion this time we have now so we can make thoughtful decision thoughtful decisions that are still painful but we need to be um you know fiscally managed well um when the so we increasing expenditures with the revenue growing. That is what our job is. Um as revenue has fallen off, we do need to reduce that. And I think the disconnect here is again with the horrendous study and the program realignment that we've been working through is as we were spending that money, we were not seeing the outcomes that we wanted for that money, right? And that is ultimately our responsibility as a board to make sure going forward that we don't get that Christmas tree effect because when there's more revenue, it is very easy to say yes to new things. And it's hard hard to turn them down afterwards. But that in this case was someone else's job, our job, right? And we have to h I think going forward we need to make sure that we're having that discipline as we after we weather this and when we do the program realignment to make sure that we're not adding new things without making sure we're whatever time frame whatever milestones are coming up we're getting the results that we want out of them and that we need and tweaking our programs as necessary. So I think making the and the audit later we'll discuss how our controls are good so far and um but I do want to say make sure that we make the important decisions now because they will be less painful than delaying them as much as possible. Right? I think this was something that came up in my in our CSBA finance work was at the longer you delay these types of structural readjustments to make sure you're sustainable. The deeper your cuts will have to be in those out years. And so doing them now even though they are

affecting people they're affecting people's jobs. They're adjusting this is just the reality of the revenues that we're bringing in and the recommendations from the assessor are going to be that we have to do that. I think philosophically making sure that we're aligning these two systems together going forward and I think this is part of the hard decisions that we have to make. Um but I just President Henry your comments brought that to mind when you're talking about restructuring. There's going to be some amount of your um re restructuring the programs and program alignment which we'll have ongoing discussions about after these these changes per percolate forward. Um but I'll I've rambled a little too much so I'll let someone else talk. Um

program alignment and fiscal responsibility that finance um class I think was really helpful in highlighting the if you continue down the road it becomes harder and harder to change course. Um something that was said earlier um by superintendent Bayer on ongoing expenses versus one-time funds. Um, we came across a lot of money when we went from u basic aid to community funded or from LCFF to community funded and um there was a lot of we can add these things to our Christmas tree. uh but they were ongoing things versus things that could be one time or could be easily uh shifted if budgetary constraints came about. Um something that comes to mind are um I think I I was looking at tossas um site based toas for different um core subjects uh where something like a um honoring more teacher leaders and using a stipened method and um working that way where a we have money, we can stipen. If we don't have money, we don't have the stipend. Um, which makes it a little bit more flexible versus having that, oh, now we have all these positions that we are on the chopping block. We've put ourselves in this position. Um, so making decisions that are thinking about what are ongoing expenses that are absolutely necessary versus what are things we can shift the

system to be more flexible in the future if we continue to have these um uh budget um budget issues as we go along, which we will. It'll es and flows. Um, but that just makes it a little bit easier. It also the who gets hired to be a TOSA, the best of the best. Um, so you're pulling the best of the best from classrooms to and the idea is for them to coach others, but where is our data on how is that actually reaching the students? How is um having all the tossas to support the teachers impacting student learning? Um and if it's not, then we need to revisit the program and think about other ways to provide staff opportunities to take on leadership positions and compensate them for such and allow them that time to collaborate with their peers and to help each other grow. but do it in a more fiscally responsible manner.

Trusty Holly.

Yeah, thank you. Um, I mean, I think when we go back to the Arinda report, the alignment of instruction within the elementary schools and the middle schools were key in the Arinda report. Um, and so in part because we have the literacy intervention program and have now expanded it districtwide, I am agnostic about ending RTI. It it is not supporting students in the way that we had hoped it would. Now, there was a period where it was showing great growth. I remember when it was piloted at Castro and there was a remarkable impact and then it kind of plateaued. Um and the aenda report pointed to RTI not being an effective strategy right now. Um whether it is PE that rhythm and moves that contract that is removed or it's steam um I'm still up in the air on. And I think part of me is, you know, I want to preserve um teaching positions. And from what we've been told, there are no anticipated layoffs um if the tosses and the if the steam teachers who are tosses come back into the classroom. So we preserve our teaching core without having I'm worried about next year having to lay off teachers because we didn't make the cuts we needed to make this year. Right? Those are some of the trade-offs we have to look at. At the same time, could we have a science coordinator for the elementary schools who helped the I mean we're going to have to do professional development in some format around science anyways if we do that. Could there be a science coordinator position that is helping schools manage their labs and how staff use that? Not that I

want to add more district administrators. [laughter] Maybe that's a tossa. Um, but you know, are there I think what you're hearing from the board is there's a lot of things before us, but we can't quite envision how some of them are going to play out if that makes sense. And um, so that's one of them. Something that was brought up in the Arinda report and um I have uh talked about with our superintendent is the middle school schedule was brought up as being um not a positive thing for our middle school students and we've been down that road before. It was not a popular road and I think a lot of that was how it was rolled out and how the discussion took place. Um, in our strategic plan, I think we're looking at long-term moving away from an eight period schedule. That was a very clear recommendation. If that could save us money, I'd like to move forward on that, but I know a twoe turnaround on that is probably impractical. Um, but when it when it comes to steam and PE, I was a classroom teacher. I taught both of those things and I loved it. And teaching literacy through science, teaching math through science is such a joy for our teachers. Like it can be really really wonderful and enriching in a classroom to have that as how you're teaching literacy and math. Um but teachers really need support to be able to do that. That's we're talking more about project- based learning which I firmly support whenever we could do it. Um, so maybe it's maybe that's another way to look at it is that um rather than having steam be a pullout, we're moving back to um supporting our teachers with project- based learning in the classroom and that it's scienceoriented. I'm just floating these ideas. I don't I don't have a firm stance on either of these things on on

rhythm and moves or steam yet, but I I do think um it makes sense to lift one of them um off of the budget. Um yeah, I think to to jump in, I think I I started the philosophical interlude and I think thank you all for indul indulging me in it. Um to bring it back to more concrete to make sure that we're making progress on this. So I think as we as I started I think if my math was right on those first things contingent on more analysis for the unduplicated pupils I think that got us to around five by my count on budget which is I don't know what the consensus is but I think those felt from comments to be relatively uncontroversial. Um the f the things that I think I would need more information that would help me kind of structure some of this is I think if we could get some as as you come back with the recommendations some of the prioritization that I mentioned around things that are direct instructional things that are sitebased supports things that are central administration and how where those lines are that I think a breakdown of the proposals would help us phrase the next difficult conversation that we have in in two weeks. Um I would like to see deeper analysis of the um potentially floating some of the the the um partday preschool the the not the subsidies that we provide for the ex extra portion that we provide. help what that would look like if we go various waves of market rate for the the the folks that are not uh in the actual like grant portion of the the program. Um just to see if we can make that more sustainable without cutting the program entirely, right? How would that affect enrollment? How would it do that? I think that would help me make the decision. I I I don't know any interest in cutting and I don't think anyone has

interest in completely eliminating the program, but I think that might give us some ability to to understand how that will play out. Um, look at my notes. Um, there's a minor thing I would like just a little more analysis of the the um not the the revenue side. So, the I think I phrased the city partnership potentially as revenue side. The other things I'm thinking of are like our field usage and rates and like how we could get more folks able to use those and whether we're at utilization just where that would look like. That's not urgent. I don't think that needs to come here, but that might just say civic centers act.

I would like I would like to just explore that. I've heard civic center act. I've looked at it. I'd like to just see a little more more detail of that so we can make decisions around that. Um continue to check my notes. uh Steam versus PE. Generally, I feel like if push comes to shove, I would prefer the dedicated Steam teachers and rhythm moves because I think in similar to how we discussed changes that are easier to roll back if we decide to roll them back, starting a contract with rhythm and moves again if things improve or if we not we decide would be something we could do versus changing the the dedicated steam. And then we're going to do program realignment and things might change there. But that's a little we get more flexibility that way. Um that's I think just my my gut on that. All right. I'll I'll pause.

Um I like the way you phrase that with the flexibility of the rhythm and moves. That's a contract versus having to reorgas. Um I also like I would like to see the reduction option highlights based on those uh priorities President DeFazio um stated earlier and uh also the it looks like a cost savings but I'm I'd like more information on as we move or potentially move TOSAs back into classrooms. What is the um what is the cost going to look like for that? Because there will be cost in professional development. I don't know how long um some of the TOSAs have been out of the classroom, but um in some districts you might have TOSAs that have been out for a decade and going from being a TOSA to uh back in the classroom might require a lot of additional support. So, what are uh those supports going to to cost to see if there's um if that savings really is the savings that we're we're looking at?

Uh I have a question. President DeFazio, you carved out from the district office budgeting the district office those eight point. Yeah, I was just going based on the trusty question where it asked about the breakdown between the the specific central administration. Was that is my interpretation of that correct or No, no, no. I Well, no. I I think that's fine. I I wanted to circle back to those toes. I think those are teacher coaches and then also they've been doing some of the RTI. Is that correct? that are out of education services

or instructional coaches. Yeah, I think I think for that I would probably need that's a place where I think I would need more information which I think was unressed which is what are the site level impacts of that component of it. Right.

Yeah. the so so I I've been in education a long time now and at one point when I was doing education policy research I was on a study that for a year we were studying um principles across the country and we were shadowing them and gathering all this data on their job roles and um and maybe I'm oldfashioned but I really see principles as our primary educational leaders at a school site and I think the Orenda report really pointed to that very very clearly that we need to be better training and supporting our principles in being the educational leader and the teacher coach as opposed to having an outside teacher coach. So I am okay with that reassignment. Um knowing also that some those are some of our best teachers who will have an incredible impact on the students that they serve directly in a classroom as long as we are training and supporting our principles to be educational leaders at the site. Um, so that's one of those things where the the strategic plan, I mean, I know you can't just like wave a magic wand, Superintendent Bear, and like present us with a final strategic plan now, but I but for me, the trade-off there is that support for principles, which we're already going to we're planning to do to rehouse that work with the principles, but we're also keeping counselors. we're keeping many if not all of the scaffs and and aeryses. And so that um that provides a lot of behavioral support um versus the principal being the educational leader. And I just want to be careful with the behavioral support because as the Arenda report very

clearly pointed out that our reactive approach to dealing with behavior is not remedying the situation. It's actually creating more incidents. And I wanted to piggyback on that in that we are adding all those interns which is a more proactive approach to um kind of balance some of that um the the reactive um policies and staff that have been hired.

Yeah. And it's it's not it's not a magic wand. It's going to take time, effort, training, energy, all of those things. But we have to get to we have to get back to a more proactive approach to behavior and see that it's a core function of of instruction. Oh, go ahead.

Um yes. Um I think that's what makes me comfortable with um the proposed changes and the um the skys and BT category um as long as it is uh done in conjunction with the support for the principles um and the classroom teachers um uh I guess even further reason that I don't want to then make them all teach science um because adding even more things um that they're going to need to work through. Um because if and I I one of the things that definitely stood out to me in the Arenda presentation was hearing seeing that uptick in the number of reports of behavioral things in power school. And I just don't think that actually corresponds to there being 8,000 things happening in the classroom that should have that would have uh that needed to be documented. Um I'm sure I'm not the only person who has that childhood fear of things going on my permanent record. Um just the more that you think of things as a thing that needs to be written down um I think is not the right approach. uh very much in favor of a intervention and prevention um model which I think um I'd say with the the aerises that I see the middle school level I I definitely see that's what they're doing and I think the the idea of of looking at the AIS um job description and that role um as part of this proposal is really important. Um you realize I don't think I've said um much of anything about the preschool. Um I was grateful to see the additional information options in the presentation and really appreciate that. Um I very much value um early childhood education and particularly when it can

serve I think we do have a role in providing early childhood education. Um particularly when it serves the students when we can best set up um some of the students who um we can put on a trajectory uh to do to come into our school district and be prepared and um who might not otherwise have that preparation. Um, so would be curious this returns to learn more about option C um, of the options and I thought I in looking at the conversation about preschool from a couple years ago that modifying the contract required providing additional days of service, but it seems like maybe in this scenario that's not an issue.

We we would have we have to petition. we have to petition to ask for a change in our contract. Um when we went back uh when we asked about it previously, they seem to mean goal to wanting us to or allowing us to change our contract how it worked for us. They they don't want it um districts to get rid of preschool. So they'll be

I think um that just uh I think that that also that brought to mind something that I've been I've been I've been thinking through with the preschool program and the TKS, right? Like on the direct balance sheet. It looks like a cost, but I do think that there is value to us as a district and potentially savings down the road for kids that are onboarded into school earlier and we start the early childhood education earlier and actually get them used to school, get them education starting off, there's less remediation we need to do to bring in kids that are older that are just starting out at school. And I do feel like there is a return in in maintaining that. And so it's that it's hard to capture here, but I would like to see that and I'll try to keep us on track.

Yes.

Yes. I will do one last comment because I there's one program I did not address here um which is ELOP. I think um I want to discuss elop where I think the thing that I the the the the change there feels like we still have uncertainty and some amount of time on where if the governor's budget goes through we can make if the recommendation comes in later we can make a recommendation to perform cuts there contingent on like funding falling through and then if it comes through we can maintain the program but that's something that I've would like to see maybe as the option later. It's not a decision yet, but I think that's something where it's we have some some flexibility on that. Trusty,

have one last thing to say on preschool. So, when we had the discussion about preschool in um the fall of 2023 and the spring of 2024, um part of it was looking at um the trade-off between the half day and then extended day. And um it sounded like, and correct me if I'm wrong, uh director Miss Bower, um but um we were not always able to fill our half-day slots um that were state funded because for many of the families who qualify, and we heard this from the families who came to speak to us, it's not feasible for them. They need a full day placement for their child because they have to go to work. And um and so that is part of why then we were looking at we would get the same amount of funding but we could go to full day year round get the same amount of funding but serve fewer children or we could stick with half day and then supplement from our own budget to make it longer. We'd be able to serve more children overall. And what we heard very loud and clear from the community at that time, from parents, was that they could not participate in the program if it wasn't a fuller day. Um, and so I'm I understand the desire to try and make preschool more costneutral. In the grand scheme of things, the $700,000 that we're putting into it is small compared to the totality of what we're looking at and compared to other things in our budget. Um, and I think we um, you know, we need I'm I'm worried that this this board with its new configuration, you all have never had a preschool update. You've never had a full report on the preschool program. Um, and this might have been your first time hearing directly from parents in the community about our preschool program. Um, and so I'm I'm just very worried about trying to tinker with it to save

tens of thousands of dollars and then um not having it actually work for the families who need it.

Thank you. Are we Should we move on? I do you have all the information you need? All right. Nothing unressed. I mean this is uh it is important for us to have these in-depth conversations and I appreciate everyone's discussing together and trying to come to this the actions are not here but I know we'll get more information next time. So closing that item we will now move on to the um the name of this is 20 2024 2025 audit report um item 9A Dr. Westover, please present and hand off.

Good evening. Uh we also have Nadia Pongo who is online to uh be with us tonight if there's any questions that come up about the audit and Kyle Montgomery who was our auditor who's here to present.

All right. Thank you, Rebecca. I'll go ahead and take over now. um going to plan on going ahead and um showing my screen uh for a brief slide deck that I prepared. Just give me a moment to get that set up. All right, everyone can see the slides now? Yeah.

Give me a quick thumbs up. Yep. Okay, great. All right. So, I'm here to discuss the results of the annual independent audit uh for the year ended June 30, 2025. Uh since it is getting pretty late, I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. Uh when we get to the end, if you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. Um so, I'm Kyle Montgomery. I'm a CPA, a partner here with Christy White down in San Diego, and I am the lead partner on this audit engagement. Um so, a summary of audit opinions. There are three audit opinions included in this report. Um the first is the report on the audit of the financial statements. Um and so um the objective of the financial portion of the audit um is to determine whether the financial statements have been fairly presented um in all material respects um as of that financial statement date of June 30, 2025. So that's the objective there for the financial statement audit. And that report is outlined in detail on page one of the audit report. The second opinion provided is the report on compliance for each major federal program. And so the objective of the federal compliance single audit is to determine whether district uh complied um with all direct and material compliance requirements uh as outlined in the OM uh compliance supplement that is issued annually uh for federal programs. And that report is outlined in detail on page 70 of the audit report. Uh lastly, we have the report on state compliance. U that report [clears throat and cough] is outlined in detail on page 73. And what we're doing there um as far as the objective goes is to determine whether the district um complied with the applicable requirements prescribed in the K12 state audit guide. uh that's

issued annually um by the education audit appeals panel. And so on page 77 of the audit report, we have the summary of auditor's results. This is sort of the one snapshot page that provides an overview of what was the outcome of the audit. Um it outlines the three categories, you know, financial statements, federal awards, and state awards. So on this page, you'll see that each one of the audit opinions provided was unmodified. So an unmodified opinion for financial statements, federal awards, and state awards with respect to each one of those audit objectives that we just went over. An unmodified opinion is um sort of the best outcome that can or the best opinion that can be provided as the result of an audit. Um so good news there. uh we did not have any um findings or question cost uh to report um in any of these areas uh for this year's audit. And then one other thing we do um we are required to do in our Gazsby um audit reports is an update on prior year audit findings. Um but the good news there is that there no there were no findings to revisit from the 2324 report. Um that page is outlined on 81 but again um no findings to follow up on from the prior year. Um so really not much um to discuss there. That takes us to the end of the slides. Um so you know overall the audit went really smoothly this year. Um the team with Rebecca and AIA did a great job getting us everything we need as they always do and always a pleasure to work with. can't say enough nice things about them um and how much we appreciate the hard work that they put into you know

facilitating the audit. Um with that that kind of takes me to the end of my presentation. Um happy to take any questions um that you guys might have on um the audit opinions or any of the contents of the report. Just um let me know.

Thank you for the report and thank you for staying with us this late hour. I'm glad we didn't make you come out for another meeting. Um, we will now questions from trustees. Anyone have questions for the presenters? No. Okay. We will now move on to public comment on item 9A. If any members of the public in person wish to address the board regarding this item, 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. Seeing none in person and no hands raised right now. I will close public comment. I will move on to board discussion and action because we have an action to approve the this right. So, Trusty Henry,

um I'll just say a quick thank you for answering the questions in the questions from trustees about the audit. Um, I I appreciate the format of the audit because it's a format of financial statements that makes more sense to me and it then helps me learn about the the other types of uh financial reports that you provide. Um, so thank you to everybody.

Yeah. And in general, I appreciate right this is part of the overall process of budget hailing, but this tells us that we are working with accurate numbers for our future planning and things are as they stated and we have kind of a good starting point for where we are or have been recently and makes us able to do effective planning for the future in these tough conversations. Uh, Trusty Lambert, I move that the board accept the audit as presented. I'll second motion by Trusty Lambert, seconded by Vice President Henry. We'll have a vote. Uh all in favor say I. I.

I. All opposed. Motion passes unanimously. The trusty Lambert Connley Reed Henry and DeFazio in favor. That concludes this item. I think what did we not? We did all we moved all the other items around. So I think we just Is there any further business? Hearing none and having reached the end of the agenda, the meeting is adjourned at 11:42 p.m.