Oakland Unified School District Board of Education - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the September 9th regular board meeting of the Oakland Unified School Board. Mr. Rickstraw, can we have a roll call to establish quorum, please?

Yes, on the attendance roll call, Student Director Block, Student Director Tunger, Director Lauder? Present. Director Williams?

Present, sir.

Director Hutchinson? Director Baric? President Thompson vice president. Here and president. Yeah.

Thank you Mister said Jeff we have a translation interpretation.

Yes, moving to interpretation. They are Arabic and Spanish. We will start with Arabic. I will lower all tennis hands. Please don't lose your hand if you need Arabic interpretation. Mr. Turek, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Arabic, please. Hold on for one second. We cannot hear you. Let's go to Ms. Abdi. If you can unmute, we'll check with Ms. Abdi.

Arabic instruction is done.

Great, thank you, Ms. Apte. Check attendees to see if you need hands raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we will not start Arabic interpretation. Next, we'll go to Spanish. Again, I will lower all attendees' hands. Please don't raise your hand if you need Spanish interpretation. Mr. Copenhagen, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Spanish, please.

yes uh can you hear me yes we can all right great Para escuchar el servicio, localicen el icono de interpretación en la parte inferior de la ventana. Seleccionenlo y se abrirá una lista de idiomas. Seleccione Spanish para escuchar en español. Si no ven el icono, hagan clic en los tres puntos suspensivos y ahí verán la opción de interpretación. Para saber si hay personas... En este momento que necesitan el servicio, por favor levanten la mano virtual o escriban en el chat que necesitan el servicio. Si no se pide en este momento, no se prestará el servicio durante la primera parte de la agenda. Muchas gracias. Thank you. Mr. Seichau.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Copenhagen. Checking attendees this evening has raised for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we will now start with any interpretation, and I turn it back to you, President Brevard.

Thank you. Tonight in closed session, we'll discuss the following matters. D1 26-1630, conference with labor negotiators. D2, 26-1921, Conference with Legal Counsel, Existing Litigation. D3, 26-1981, Conference with Legal Counsel, Anticipated Litigation. Under Public Employees Performance Evaluation Matters, D4, 26-1829, Public Employees Performance Evaluation, Superintendent of Schools. Under threat to public service or facilities matter D 526 dash 1737 threat to public services or facilities. We will then reconvene to public session at 5.30. Now we have, excuse me, public comment on closed session items. Do we have any public speakers?

Yes, Madam President, we have two. How much time would you like to allot for public comment?

Two minutes.

Right. Those 2 speakers are a son of all of Bala and Kerry Kaufman thank you.

Could there be some clarity on why threat to public services of facilities has to be a public. Close session item. There is no litigation that is related to this is just a discussion on potential issues that might result in some litigation. So I don't understand why this is in closed session and not an open meeting discussion. Secondly, if there are staff members who are reporting anti-blackness in a public statement, no retaliation should be sought on those individuals. I'm asking that, and I've seen some videos on media that identifies you have anti-blackness going on in the school district. I expect that employee will not be retaliated against. Thirdly, if you have also in the media conflict of interest concerns, I hope you will deal with that in a public understanding because if it's a misunderstanding, clarify it. Thirdly, I'm sorry, lastly, AB 506-AB 346 The Board of California Services Related to Volunteers in the Schools Districts of California says that background checks should be allocated or considered depending on the number of hours the individual is working in the school. Most school districts in California require background checks for all volunteers. You choose not to do that. and in doing that you're dealing with the possibility because it says supervised at all times by staff or teachers. That means that you have to remain in the direct presence of an official OUSD staff member or teacher at all times while interacting with students. How can you guarantee that? It also says that you have to document safety and misconduct concerns Related to staff.

I don't want to go over my time Very much concerned about this idea that you don't have background check for volunteers under all circumstances Thank you next speaker, please Good afternoon board Kerry Kaufman president of UA OS I again come to the board meeting demanding that the district bargain in good faith that the district bargained cost items and that the board authorized the district to bargain cost items. Over a year ago, UAOS presented the district with our sunshine document to start bargaining. A year later, nothing is on the table. Today you will be presented with unaudited actuals. Month after month, the district is presenting the board with financial information that continues to show that the district is in better shape than we thought. The district is in better shape than when it settled the SCIU contract. It is better shape than when it settled the OEA contract. It is in better shape than when it settled the BCTC contract. However, the district and the school board continue to refuse to put any money at our bargaining table. You are now going into closed session, and again, bargaining is on the agenda. The time to act is now. Unaudited actuals are out. 45-day interim was presented. The budget was approved with a surplus. There are no more excuses that the board or district can come up with. Put money on the UAOS bargaining table today.

Thank you. Are there any other speakers?

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

Thank you. With that we will reconvene at 5.

Yeah.

Good evening and welcome to the September 9th regular meeting of the Board of Education. Mr. Sechow, can we have a roll call to establish quorum, please?

Yes. On the second roll call to establish quorum, Student Director Block?

Present.

Student Director Tongan? Director Lara?

Present.

Director Williams?

Present, sir.

Thank you. Director Hutchinson? Absent. Director Berry?

Present.

Director Thompson? Present. Vice President Batchelor?

Here.

And President Brewhart?

Here.

Coral present.

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

Yes. Moving to interpretation announcement. For tonight's meeting, we have two languages for live interpretation. They are Arabic and Spanish. We'll start with Arabic. I will lower all attendance hands. Please don't raise your hand if you need Arabic interpretation. And if any in-person attendees need a translation interpretation laptop, please see tech support to your left underneath the basketball hoop. Ms. Abdi, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Arabic, please.

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. For listening to the translation, please follow the following instructions and instructions. At the bottom of the screen, search for the circle on the shape of the globe, click on it, then choose the translation word and choose the Arabic language. And if you use smart devices, there are three points at the bottom of the screen. Click on it, then choose the translation word and choose the Arabic language. Please listen to the original voice so you can hear us clearly. And if you are in the meeting room and there are devices, you can ask about them so that you can have the translation in the Arabic language. What you correct? Arabic instruction is done.

Great, thank you, Ms. Abdi. Check attendees to see if any hands are raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we will not start Arabic interpretation. Next, we'll go to Spanish. Again, I will lower our attendance hands. Please don't raise your hand if you need Spanish interpretation. Ms. Cardenas, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Spanish, please.

Of course. Buenas tardes. En el momento activaremos el servicio de interpretación simultánea si así lo desea. Para escucharlo, localice el icono de interpretación en la parte inferior de la pantalla. Seleccionelo y abrirá una lista de idiomas. Puedes seleccionar español. Si no ve el icono, haga clic en los tres puntitos suspensivos y ahí verán la opción de interpretación. Debera escuchar al interprete alto y claro. Interpretation for Spanish has been completed for anyone that might need our services. Thank you. Back to you.

Great. Thank you, Ms. Cordenas. Check attendees, if any hands raised for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we'll now start with any interpretation and we'll check again later during the meeting and turn it back to you, President Brewhart.

Thank you. Tonight in closed session, the board discussed the following matters. Under labor matters on item D1, number 26-1630, conference with labor negotiators, the board gave direction on this matter. Motion by Director Lara, second by Vice President Batchelor, approved with a vote of six, abstain to zero, absent one. The yes votes were President Brohard, Vice President Batchelor, Director Berry, Director Lara, Director Thompson, Director Williams, Director Hutchinson was absent. under legal matters on item d2 number 26-1921 conference with legal counsel existing litigation the board gave direction on this matter motion by director lotta second by president brohard was approved with a vote of six in favor no abstentions and one absent The votes in favor were President Brohard, Vice President Batchelor, Director Berry, Director Lara, Director Thompson, Director Williams, Director Hutchinson was absent. On item D3, number 26-1981, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation, the board discussed this matter. Under Public Employee Performance Evaluation Matters on item D4, number 28-1829, Public Employee Performance Evaluation, Superintendent of Schools, the Board did not take up this matter. Under Threats to Public Services or Facilities Matters on item D5, number 26-1737, Threat to Public Services or Facilities, the Board discussed this matter. That is the end of September 9th, 2026, closed session report out. Are there any modifications to the agenda? Director Batchelor?

I'd like to pull item R6 from the agenda.

Director Hutchinson?

Yes, I'd like to pull R47. 47. R47. Thank you.

I would also like to pull item Q, sorry. Excuse me, sorry. Q, I'm sorry, P1. And I'd like to bring that back next time on September 23rd. Yeah, pulling item R6 and R47. And pulling item P1 until September 23rd. Oh, you don't wanna pull it. Okay, it's on the agenda. Sorry, we're not gonna pull item P1. And are there any other modifications?

Excuse me, just a point of clarification. What's happening with P1?

It's on the agenda, yeah. Thank you. Tonight we do have a very packed agenda. I'm going to ask my board directors to, again, if you, again, I don't want to limit conversation, but if somebody has said what you had already wanted to say, if we could move the agenda along so that we can also hear from the public as well. Thank you. We had no adoption of, we had no pupil discipline consent report. We have, next item on the agenda is J, public comment on non-agenda items. And how many speakers do we have?

Yes, Madam President, we have nine speakers.

Two minutes each, please.

Right. I will call the first five. Carol Delton, Sheila Haynes, Jalen Wilson, Asada Olagbala, and Carmelita Reyes.

It is my understanding that before voting on any implementation, expenditure, or policy tied to a voter-approved measure, such as a local bond or partial tax, OUSD board members have a fiduciary and governance responsibility to ensure that their actions strictly honor the intent, the legal, contract and accountability rules authorized by the voters. When you have had in the past a separate agendized item to deal with Measure J, B, and Y, and you now take the position that you no longer are going to separate it and put it in with the consent agenda that you rubber stamp, you are not in compliance with your fiduciary duties. Why did you decide to take that item related to measure J, B and Y as a separate agendized item and put it in with the consent. You have 54 items and tonight you have items related to measure J, B and Y within that with no discussion of how partial tax funding has been done correctly. I implore you to go back to the original way that you had Where you scrutinize the spending of Measure J, B, and Y. You cannot go to the voters if you're going to have this as a method of how you have accountability and transparency related to people's monies that are being put into this school district.

thank you next speaker please uh madam president there are two additional speakers it's jonathan mates muchin and simone delucci thank you good evening my name is carmelita reyes i'm principal at redsdale continuation high school i'm here to speak on behalf of uaos and specifically our school leaders our community school managers our assistant principals and principals we have been without a contract We have not been negotiated with in good faith around salary and compensation. We were the only union that did not get any kind of raise last year. And we are still dramatically underpaid compared to our counterparts in our neighboring school districts. I know this board has prioritized salary increases for virtually every other employee group, including board members. You all had a salary increase, and senior leadership had a salary increase, and I am not negating the need for all of those people to have compensation that is fair, but I am curious as to why there have continued to be delays in bargaining with UAOS. over compensation, thank you.

Thank you, next speaker please.

Good evening everybody. uh... my name is simone deluki i am the restorative community schools manager afric united academy of language uh... i just really before the board votes on anything as you guys are thinking about your negotiations we really hope you listen to us safety matters for administrators i was hurt in week three Making sure students were safe at school. This is something that happens routinely every year to administrators all across the district. Fair workload matters. When the layoffs and the shuffling happened due to budget cuts last year, administrators absorb all of those duties and have to work longer hours. For no additional compensation, there's no step up. and pay for us if we choose to do work after school. We are not allowed extra time overtime like SEIU or OEA members are through the school district contracting with lead agencies. There are lots of practices that don't allow us to have any kind of work-life balance or support, even though we are the ones that buffer our entire school communities from the harsh things that happen every year. We sincerely hope you right some of these wrongs. Fair compensation is a really big deal. We need to live in Oakland too.

Thank you, next speaker please.

Madam President, there are two hands raised on Zoom, Sheila Haynes and Jaylen Wilson.

Let's do the in-person ones, and I believe Carol Delton is also here in person, who might have been online. JT is, yeah, his name was called out too.

good evening jonathan makes motion i'm calling i'm writing about that uh... email that was sent on saturday about oakland reads which is great i love the idea that we're promoting reading in oakland and it's definitely necessary to get all of our young people reading uh... but as i scroll through the resources what i saw was clearly absent was any uh... books uh... about kids for kids who are jewish uh... or uh... probably there are other absent groups but there were five groups that were highlighted in the email and then when you go to the additional resources of books uh... there for example were three books that were considered jewish in the long list of probably a thousand books One of which was about a dyslexic girl that really had nothing to do with her being Jewish. Maybe the teacher who helped her in fifth grade was Jewish. The other book was about, I guess, a Jewish kid that maybe eats too much. And I don't remember off the top of my head what the third book was. But the point here is that there are a lot of good resources, and they're absolutely absent. And if I had a young child in Oakland and I wanted to find books for them about my heritage, I would expect that OUSD and Oakland Reads and the Oakland... I forget what the group is that support Oakland Read, the community foundation would also provide those resources for all groups of people. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Good evening, board. I didn't read the packet, but I would just like to say that just as it's important for my child to learn about other cultures, I feel it's important that Jews and Jewish practices be better known. in Oakland, and those books could be a way toward that. What I wanted to address today was something very positive that I learned about, which is that the committees have apparently each adopted LCAP goals to review on a regular basis. Perhaps I missed it, but I would love to see a report comprehensively of which committees have adopted which goals and how those are going to be tracked. This is exactly the kind of thing with a district working together, not adding to the different metrics but having more engagement with the metrics that are ongoing so that the community can know and also so the district can know and evaluate the progress in a meaningful way. So thank you for that, and I look forward to hearing more about that in a comprehensive manner. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. Are there any other additional in-person speakers?

There are. That is Nicole Anderson, Kellith China, Jack Nelson, and Anecia Rashid.

If you heard your name called, if you could approach the dais.

Thanks. Fair compensation recognizes the value of work we do every day. UAOS members deserve pay that reflects their expertise, our responsibilities, and the work we contribute to OUSD. Our joint study with the district and UAOS identified that members are not paid equitably as compared to their counterparts in other districts. We've already agreed on that, and so we really are urging the district to come to the table so that we can start to negotiate pay. We do the work, we bring value, and we deserve the pay. Thank you.

thank you next speaker please good evening board members my name is anisa rashid i am a long time oakland unified school district employee and also an open unified school district administrator and board member of united administrator of open schools i have two grandchildren that attend these schools one that has moved to high school, and I just want to say I am one of the many administrators in this district that is deeply invested in this school district. The board needs to come to an agreement with its administrators. That is key. If something were to happen to all 384 of us in one day, you all would be up Blip Creek. You need us. Give us a contract. Treat us respectfully. We're educators, we're teachers, we're parents of children in these schools. We're here because we want to be here. We could go to Castro Valley or Mount Diablo or anywhere else and make twice as much money as we make in this district. But I and all of the administrators in front of you are committed to Oakland Unified School District, and we want to be treated fairly. We want a contract. Let's get it done. Let's finish the work that we deserve to have. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi.

Hi, good evening, everyone. I'm the coordinator of instructional technology at OUSD. I know a lot of you personally. I'm also a four-time OUSD parent, and I'm the husband of an OUSD teacher. I support instructional technology for the entire district, and there's so much instructional technology now. And due to staffing cuts, I'm doing that job alone this year. Since July 20th, I've worked 51 of the past 52 days. This past Saturday was my first day off. And despite that, teachers, staff, and students are still experiencing long delays in getting support. I'm not an isolated case. administrators across the district are taking on work that used to be shared by others and especially during the start of the school year when timely support matters the most we understand that OUSD had to make cuts and we are not here to relitigate that what we take issue with is how these decisions are made no one asked me what losing my support person would mean for the district and mean for me. No one had a conversation about how we might maintain essential staff and student support while still saving money. I hate wasting money. We know that funding positions requires money, but good faith communication and partnership do not cost anything. We're asking OUSD leadership to consult with union leadership before eliminating a support role. Give us a seat at the table when workload impacts are being weighed. Collaborate with us before decisions are made, not after, so we can find solutions collaboratively that actually take care of our students and our staff and the people doing this work. Thank you.

Thank you. And the next speaker, please.

This is a prepared statement that my attorney, Andre Hill, asked me to do. My name is Jack Nelson. I have now raised almost $300,000 in donations with $80,000 plus going to Oakland schools, all done over the past 36 years. Currently, I've raised $10,700 for Mac and Tech. But I do have a problem. The district swept up 11,000 of my funds last year. 6,000 intended for the new tech theater and 5,000 for tech sports were taken in June. In August of 2025, John Sasaki had engineered that money away from Fremont where it was never used. It has been a problem since 2022. I am willing to compromise. 5,000 should go back to tech sports immediately. This money was not a one-time donation and should be returned to tech. No excuses or badgering of tech administrators is going to be tolerated. You got me? You got me? You better. You have until Friday, 9-11, at 6 p.m., to return that money to tech. I will have to seek other ways to gain satisfaction, including litigation, media coverage, or both. I hope you understand this. I am 71 years old, and the above is a form of elder abuse. You better take me seriously, because I will hammer you.

Next speaker, please.

Madam President, speakers online, start with Sheila Haynes.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you, Ms. Haynes.

Okay. So while the district continues to face financial challenges, we continue to ask for no more cuts to arts education. And while I understand that the Prop 28 budget numbers come out next month, there's still carryover money that's being spent, as stated by the former VAPA director. Are students who have been severely impacted and those with disabilities really need this education for their overall development? with exceptional ways of learning and expression and supporting their mental health. We keep hearing about restorative practice. But not only that, as outlined in my resolution, we highlight the importance of restorative practices through the arts while banning all derogatory words in our schools. That part doesn't cost any money. No child or adult should have to endure abusive language. We are really in a time where our children, parents, and the communities where we live is affected by violence, starting with verbal altercations. So it's time to turn the page. It's time to turn the rage. Reinforce the love for each other daily. It's critically needed daily. It's time for Oakland to set the tone for the world to follow that you can talk in a way without using derogatory language and speak with intelligence because all of this other noise is just irrelevant. The words that we speak, they must uplift, value life. Life is a gift and show and reinforce the respect that our children need. It doesn't allow them a chance at a positive upbringing with this ongoing lack of respect that's tolerated at our schools. There's too many children that come from abusive households where this language is used daily. But when they go to school, it's critical that they have that reinforcement of respect. We don't know what type of environment that these children come from. So we ask the board to just stand by your obligations to keep our children safe, keep our community safe, and uplift our youths because they're counting on the schools as their last resort in some cases to get better so thank you for your time thank you miss haynes next speaker please yes next speaker is jalen wilson hello can you guys hear me yes we can hear you

Hi, okay, hi everybody. My name is Jaylen Wilson. I'm a library technician. I just wanna urge our board members to pass the MOU that solidifies a library technician number two classification, which also includes compensation for library techs who have received their master's in library and information science. These additional programs, whether it be through like the DVC program or getting your master's or any other sort of additional professional development, these things give us the skillsets that we need to run effective library programs. And as we shift into this campaign of making Oakland a reading town, I hope you consider the professionalization that's required to make that a reality and the money and time that librarians put into growing in our field so that we can serve readers of all ages. And separately, let's make sure that we are including OUSD librarians in the literacy conversations because we are in the school libraries every single day connecting students with books, and yet we are somehow forgotten when it's time to do that work on a larger scale. So let's not reinvent the wheel. Reach out. Come to one of our monthly librarian PDs. We were just at Monterra today being librarians. talking about reading, what strategies we're using. And it sounds like from what I hear from some of our community members, we need better reading resources and the librarians most certainly have that. So come to our meetings, come talk to us. We are ready to work with you all. And I appreciate you for your time. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other speakers, Mr. Hollis?

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

Thank you. We'll now move on to item L, which is the student board report.

Good evening, board directors, OUSD staff and students, parents, and community members. Happy start of September. Last Wednesday, the second of September, ACC, Governing Board members met and we met with Directors Lotta and Director Brohard. Additionally, today we had another Governing Board meeting where we met with Amanda and Aruna and they gave us a presentation on results from bullying and inclusion from last year and they talked about the programs and that they are continuing and launching the best buddies program and the unified sports program additionally we met with someone who talked us through measure n and h misuse of funds and the acc governing board members came to the unanimous conclusion that we support the 3.5 million dollars being restored last wednesday at around 5 pm me and director tong goon sent out a survey to all high school students asking for their opinions on the new phone policy i'm going to talk you through some of the things that we got through that survey so as of this afternoon we got 419 responses 28.7 percent of responses from tech 21.7% of responses from Oakland High, and 17.1% of responses from Skyline. 43.3% of students reported that they put their phone in the Yonder pouch, while 28% reported that they do not put their phone in the Yonder pouch, and 26.7% reported that they sometimes put their phone in their Yonder pouch. And my personal estimate is that the students who would take the time to fill out the survey are more likely to follow this policy. Additionally, we asked if there were enough magnets at the sites that have yonder pouches. 58.7% of people from tech said that there were not enough yonder magnets at their sites. 80% of people who responded to the forum from a climons said that there were not enough magnets. 50% of people who did the survey from casamon said there were not enough magnets forty five point five percent of people who did the survey from oakland high reported that there were not enough magnets uh... thirty seven point three percent of people who did the survey from skyline reported that there were not enough yonder magnets uh... while most students acknowledged that the phone policy has improved school culture there are still some concerns there are safety concerns regarding students contacting their parents during emergencies and lockdowns. And a handful of students suggested that we give every staff member a yonder magnet so that students can unlock their yonder pouch and text their parents or guardians that they are okay during these emergencies. Additionally, safety concerns were raised about off-campus lunch as students cannot use their phone-based payment methods, or if something dangerous arises, they cannot contact authorities or school staff. Additionally, students reported that it was difficult with transportation with their phones being locked up because the long lines at the magnet stations frequently made students be tardy to class and marked tardy to class even though they were on school at time. Additionally, during dismissal, the lines can make students miss their bus or alternative modes of transportation. Although Skyline did delay their buses to accommodate for it, I'm asking other school sites that are experiencing a delay with school dismissals to follow suit with buses that are school related. Additionally, locking these personal devices can make students unable to complete dual enrollment assignments due to them needing their personal email. It makes it harder to remind people that they have a club during lunch or after school. It makes it more difficult for leadership students or journalism students to complete their work. and students report that they have difficulty with talking with their parents and peers regarding after school activities. Upcoming events, we have our first middle school meeting, we ended up postponing it, and as a result, our first meeting will be held October 13th, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Westlake Middle School. We have our first high school meeting slash overnight retreat on September 25th through 27th. Special election, and on that we will hold the special election for the two LCAP director positions. Students. You can register for youth vote now. Here are some steps that you can do. So first you can check to see if your home address is in District 2, 4, or 6 to see if you are eligible to vote. To be eligible to vote, you must be a United States citizen and a resident of California. You must be 16 or older by November 3rd, 2026. You must not be in prison for the conviction of a felony and not be deemed by an appropriate court to be mentally incompetent. Skyline is having a candidate form for District 6. Community members can join September 22nd and the Skyline Auditorium at 6 to 7 p.m. Additionally, Monday, October 5th, during the CAC Special Education Meeting, you can join to learn more about the candidates from Districts 2, 4, and 6 on Zoom from 6 to 8 p.m. Thank you.

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

Yes, Madam President, there are two. Sheila Haynes and Asada Olakbala.

Okay, two minutes each, please. We'll take Ms. Asada first.

I continue to disapprove of the ability of 16-year-olders to vote. If you are capable of voting, why is it that you cannot buy or use alcohol, you cannot serve on any legal jury, you cannot enter into a legal binding contract, such as buying a car or a house, you cannot sue in court on your own without a special adult representation, you cannot marry, you cannot work in hazardous positions, you cannot hold a provisional teen license unless you have adult supervision you need consent for certain medical care if you're not able to do all those things because you're being sixteen what qualifies you at sixteen to have the capacity to vote when all these other areas you don't have that capacity then how are you leading young people by saying at 16 in the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of California says you have to be 18. You've taken no legal recourse to change the Constitution. Along with that, you are a choice district. Students will be voting for directors that are not related to the schools that they go to, necessarily, could happen that way. then there is no process that is identified, that verifies that these people have actual citizenship capacity or any other requirements to be able to vote. I have to meet requirements that they don't have to in order to vote. So I continue to say this process should have never been put in place.

Thank you. Ms. Haynes?

I will allow her to speak.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, thank you. So thank you, student directors, for your report. And thank you, actually, for mentioning Measure N and H, because the mentioning of Measure N and H misuse of funding is really concerning. I've been wondering, like, what happened with that money? I had asked at that Q&A, and we're still waiting on answers for that. It is really concerning for me personally because my student has been learning online for more than six years and they'll critically need the support at the adult level to try and gain skills needing to be as independent as much as possible. And I also have concerns about what your report covers about the cell phone policy in regards to students with IEPs. I had read something about exceptions to the rules for students with IEPs. So I hope that the policy has been amended or will be amended to best support the needs of these most vulnerable students. I also appreciate one of your priorities, as always, being around inclusion for SPED students, because my hope is that even online students be allowed the opportunity that all in-person students can engage in. And for me, as I say, always specifically around the arts. I would love for my student to be able to transition to an in-person site through the arts. And I'm just... I have real concern because there's just no safe in-person site right now. So I'm hoping with all of the changes to come that there will be a safe place soon. These are real critical times for students to get better and gain skills they never had or regain skills that have been lost. So I thank you for your ongoing support to all students and while continuing to include SPED children. Thank you for your support. Okay, thanks.

Thank you. Are there board comments on the student report? Okay. Director Hutchinson?

Yes, thank you. Thank you for the report. I think it was really thorough. Constructive criticism, I would love to see the results of the survey also in the hard copy of the report, and so So I don't have to take notes while you're speaking, but so there's actually something to go back in and reference, but I thought it was great. And I think it really helps highlight how much is missed from policy when students aren't engaged proactively ahead of time. And I just want to do, I want to make sure I heard correctly that the All City Council voted to recommend restoring the money that had been taken from Measure N and Measure H. Great I would love to see that in the hard copy and I would I would like to really encourage the all city council first I think that's it's great that you all did that and took that position. I would love to see you all now turn that into more advocacy as well and so it's it's a great first step in putting that on the record. Let's start working and pushing people especially since. besides the actual oversight committee, to my knowledge now, all city council is the first organization to actually weigh in on how our restricted dollars are being used or misused. And so please stay on that. And it would be great to see some of these ideas that come forward really turn into an advocacy plan so we can really change how things are being done. Thank you.

Thank you. Director Thompson?

Yes, I'll make this real quick. Thank you very much. It was a very well delivered report, and I really appreciate that. There's a lot of controversy in the academic community over qualitative and qualitative reporting of findings. I really appreciated the fact that you were able to actually give us numbers so that it's quantifiable. of what people are thinking, and so I really appreciate that. My last point, though, is I do want to still encourage you, if you can, to find some kind of way to have the academic conversation with ACC about student success.

Thank you, any other board comments? Director Behr.

This is really quick and I mentioned this the last time you shared feedback from students regarding the implementation of the cell phone policy but I'm really curious about any progress you all have made connecting with the facilities team to share your feedback and then to brainstorm any subsequent action we can make as a system to improve the policy.

I've been waiting on responses on this form. Why there was nothing in the hard copy is because the vote took place today about measure N and H, and the resources that I used to bring this data, I additionally did today. Sorry, forgot your question.

You don't have to answer it now, but just curious about the progress you all have been able to make connecting with facilities to share feedback and discuss next steps.

One of the questions on the survey was what next steps would you recommend taking, and so I've been waiting on responses for that, and now that I have that, this next little bit I'll work to do that. Thank you.

Any other questions? Okay, thank you. Moving on item M PSAC.

I believe there's a presentation tonight We will hear the report from the foster youth Advisory Committee first

Hi there, I'm Patty Juergens from the Foster Youth Advisory Committee. Next slide. The Foster Youth Advisory Committee invites you to learn about the rights of foster youth. We gathered on August 25th to learn about these rights in a lot of detail. We are assigning this content for required learning for our OUSD community. Next slide. There's a scan code for the presentation and the recording. Join us at our next meeting. on september twenty ninth at five thirty p m thank you hi jt makes motion one of the delegates for peace act

More than ever, we must join in the work of the PSAC. The PSAC creates a common table where members and other participants discuss the needs of students across our schools. We bring everyone together to get information, share ideas, and learn from each other's perspectives. PSAC helps us as a unified school district for the benefit of all students. PSAC connects the district level planning tools to school site planning We ground conversations about the budget with real-life experiences of school communities. We discuss how to best use our resources to meet the goals we have set for students in the Local Control Accountability Plan, or LCAP. As we get ready to draft the 26-27 budget and the new three-year LCAP, we invite you to join us. Wednesday, September 16th, orientation about the Parent and Suse Advisory Committee for all SSC and CELS members and OUSD community. Wednesday the 23rd at 5.30 p.m. is the roll call of the SSC and CELS parent representatives from all the schools. This will be during the school board meeting special orders of the day, and we will have PSAC elections. This will be over Zoom.

Hello, everyone. I wanted to take a moment to talk about the superintendent's response to PSAC's recommendations. Oh, I'm Matt Glazer, lead delegate to PSAC. Thank you. Sometimes I don't remember. We want to thank Dr. Sadler. Our August 15th goal-setting retreat was a direct and collaborative dialogue with the superintendent for our committee. She responded in detail to the recommendations made by all committees last June and And she also explained how she and her team would follow up with recommendations with very specific steps, so we really appreciate that, and how they would continue to demonstrate and communicate what has been done. And those responses are all public. They can be read at these URLs. They're also in the OUSD slash LCAP folder, OUSD.org slash LCAP. And then finally, we have an in-person community meeting tomorrow with a message, the multi-stakeholder engagement group. Tomorrow it's going to be from 5.30 to 8 at West Oakland Middle School in the cafeteria. Oh, in the library. Right now, it's going to be in the library. We'll see tomorrow. We invite you to a conversation about these following questions. What basic staff positions exist in OUSD schools based on their grade span? What do you think about this definition of basic staffing for our schools? This is the next step in our series of conversations to help us shape the future of our district. There will be childcare, dinner, and interpretation in Spanish and Arabic, mom, too? not mom, but Arabic, will be provided. Please confirm that you will attend so that we can have enough support. Go to ousd-mseg.org or send us a message at engage at that exact same address or 510-698-9035. Thank you for your kind attention.

Hi, I'm going to read the report for the District English Language Learner Subcommittee. I'm very excited that the leads of this committee will be at tomorrow's in-person meeting, so they could not be here today. So these are highlights from the first meeting of the District English Language Learner Subcommittee. They got to know the staff that coordinates support for English learners. They learned about rights under OUSD's sanctuary policy and how the policy works in practice. And they learned about rights to language interpretation. They also learned about site English language learner subcommittees. This is a formal group of parents and others at a school that gives advice about how to best meet the needs of students who cannot yet speak, understand, read, and write well in English. Schools with 21 or more English learners are required by law to have this committee. There's some important reminders from the committee. parents and guardians of English learners are the ones who elect the parent members of the CITE English Language Learners Subcommittee. Schools must invite all parents and guardians of English learners to a meeting where they can learn about the committee and elect who will serve them as members. Only the members of CITE English Language Learners Subcommittee can choose to have the school site council take over their responsibilities. After they are elected, only the members of the committee can vote for that to happen. And this was the finding of an audit for our district, so I will name that we will not be compliant if this is not the case. And we are concerned. We ask OUSD staff, and this is the voice of the committee that I'm reading. We are concerned. We ask OUSD staff to make clear what interpretation we will have in our public meetings. Parents who speak Spanish, Arabic, and MAM always attend our meetings. Our meetings include information that the law requires we provide to families of English learners. Some parents left our August meeting because some languages were not supported. Our meetings are a service for all families of English learners and for all the staff that supports them. And join them at their meeting on Thursday, September 24th. Links on the OUSD website calendar. And this meeting happens every fourth Thursday of the month.

Hello, I am J.D. Woloshin. I'm the co-chair of the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education, or the CAC. Some highlights from our August meeting, which unfortunately was not recorded. Usually you can go back and review our whole meeting, but sadly not for August 2026. But the presentation slides are still available to review. At our first meeting, we provided essential start-of-the-year information to families and offered individualized support. We heard about special education hiring and staffing. We learned about the wins and goals of the special education department. And we listened to the hopes and dreams of families for the new school year. At the start of the school year we celebrate one no classroom teacher vacancies, two no vacancies for related services staff, three the lowest number of vacancies for support staff in many years, and four the lowest number of vacancies for resource specialists in many years. So please join us. We're encouraging everybody to join us for September 14th for various important meeting where we will review and discuss different types of special education spending related costs and what that spending has provided to students. And a greater understanding of this spending will help us build a budget that truly supports the diverse disability-related needs of students. We are also holding a school board candidates meeting forum on Monday, October 5th. That's from 6 o'clock to 8.30. It's via Zoom. The link will be at the calendar. All but two candidates have confirmed that they will be there, so we are looking forward to... hearing how they will support the disability community. And that's all for us. That's it, thank you.

Thank you. Are there any public comments on the Peace Act report?

Yes, Madam President, there is one, Assata Olagbala.

Two minutes, please.

So it is required by law that you pay attention to certain groups. And I'm not saying it's good that that's happening, that you support special education students, that you support foster care English language learners. That's great. But when I go sit in a room when everybody's support is being discussed, their needs are being discussed, their services are being provided, their families are getting support. And my reason for sitting in the room and why I sit in this room is for the concerns of African American students. And there exists no platform for the needs of African American students legally to be addressed. So what am I supposed to do when I'm sitting looking at everybody at the table and we're still trying to get there? When will that be addressed? Proposition 209. But we can address the needs of other groups. When is somebody going to bring this up at some legislature? And here it is. Proposition 209 has been brought to the voters three times to end it, and three times the people of California had said, no, keep it in place. So the only conclusion I have, and it's nothing against what is going on to support all these other groups. This is a racist country and California is a part of that racism. Anytime you got an administrative staff member saying anti-blackness is going on related to Latino students, not respecting black teachers. And it's so in depth that black teachers have left the district. Something is wrong, and nobody's addressing it. I'll keep talking about it, but talking about it, I don't have the power. Somebody's got to address it to the people who have the power. Y'all talk about Donald Trump and what they're doing to eliminate DEI. At least it existed. It has never existed in this school district to address the needs of African-American children.

Thank you. Are there any other public speakers on this?

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

Thank you. Are there any board comments? Thank you, PSAC, for, again, another affirmative report. Look forward to the CAC forum and the PSAC meeting on the 60th. Next on the agenda, oops. I'm sorry, comments from bargaining units. Are there any comments from bargaining units?

Good evening, Board. My name is Kerry Kaufman, President of the United Administrators of Oakland Schools. What you have heard today, time after time, are the concerns of our members, their experiences, and the demands our members have made, as well as the district's unwillingness to move. Today, I want to talk about what we're fighting for. Safety is a top concern for our members. Regularly, administrators are getting injured or threatened, and there have been inadequate supports for our members. there's been no communication sent out to our members about safety concerns that have come up in the past couple of weeks at school sites including the murder outside of parker and the stabbing at castlemont our members are regularly required to intervene with students behaviors without adequate training or support which only leads to liability issues it also leads to members being injured our sites continue to be understaffed when it comes to ensuring safe learning environments for our students, and working environments for our staff. Every day, our schools are understaffed and under-supported to address the needs that occur every day, as well as some of the acute crises that we have to support. Workload has been an especially frustrating topic this school year with the significant cuts in staff that were made by the district without a plan or a vision. Departments were stripped of staff, but the work has not stopped. Workload decisions made by the district seem out of touch with staffing decisions made by the same district. We switched to a new district computer security system right before gutting tech services. We moved to an educational technology system right after we stripped education technology department. We removed crucial central support that sites rely on for curricular support in our coordinators, for administrative support in our network team, and all over central office. These cuts have directly impacted students with slower responses to support teachers, slower access to students for crucial curriculum, slower response time to support principals, and the list goes on. As the district continues to not have a vision for the work, the work piles up and the workforce assigned to complete the work shrinks. Compensation has also been something that has come up as a major concern for our members. As I mentioned before, UAOS and OUSD staff engaged in a joint study on compensation. I presented this to the board and shared the findings. The bottom line is that our wages are not competitive and some of our pay is the lowest in the region. While other unions have settled contract, the district refuses to engage in salary negotiations with us. Apparently this information has not compelled board leadership and district leadership to make any movement. So I wanted to bring back this conversation again. Inflation in the past couple of years have been the highest many of us have experienced in our lives. Our wages have stagnated. While other unions and other positions, even when salary increases are not secured in bargaining, move up on salary steps, UAOS members do not. Over 80% of our members are at the end of their salary schedule. They see no raises, and their income does not reach as far as it used to. The highest an assistant principal can earn in middle schools on an hourly basis is less than what a teacher on step fourteen would earn this does not it does not matter how many years assistant principal taught how many years the AP was an administrator there is no room for extended contracts so an assistant principal works outside of their contract there's no compensation for it more and more our community school managers are coming with more credentials more certifications more experiences yet their pay is not competitive for the skills and work they are providing. The highest a CSM can earn on an hourly basis is comparable to a first year teacher with 90 post-grad credits. That is the highest a CSM can earn. Finally, principals. The hourly rate of an elementary principal at the end of the schedule is almost the same as the hourly rate of a teacher at the end of their schedule. almost identical. We see this time and time again in departments and in divisions where supervisors are earning less than their staff. It is demoralizing. The district is not creating financial incentives to recruit and retain administrators. The district must come to the table, the district must bargain financial items, and they must do it now. Thank you.

Thank you, SEIU.

Hi, good evening. So I'm here to speak on behalf of SEIU just to highlight the delays in our impact bargaining process. We have been going through this for months. It's now the second month of the school year. Our members are impacted by this. Their livelihoods are put at a halt while they wait to hear back Maybe they get to come back, maybe they don't. But again, it's the second month of the school year. And some people are just giving up and they're like, I can't wait to hear if I'm going to hear back from OUSD or not. And so they'll leave. And I know we want to keep all of our staff. We want consistent staff members at our school sites and our school communities. So I do want to emphasize this. You know, it's been a long process going back and forth with labor relations, waiting for you know, substantial scheduling timeframes. Sometimes we're off a couple of hours here and there. I don't remember what it was like in the summer. I feel like we got what, like one meeting in June or something. So it's just it's it's it's not OK. Again, we have our members in their lives are at stake and their livelihoods are at stake. I also want to highlight what one of our members spoke to earlier which is the MOU which we had recently signed and we hope that this gets passed for our library tech position number two being created so that way you know we stand by what we are in this education sector and give those benefits to our members who are furthering their education in favor of our students and our school communities. So we hope that when this comes to the board, hopefully at our next board meeting, that that gets passed so we can go ahead and honor all of our library technicians who have furthered their education to support our students and our school communities. Is there anything else at all? All right, good, okay. Thank you, that's all for today. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other labor partners?

Currently, I see no labor partners online on Zoom.

With that, we will move to item P1, unfinished business. Item 26-1779, affirming board direction, career technical education, transitional aged youth hub, CTE hub, 1025 2nd Avenue, introduced by Director Patrice Berry. Is there a motion to adopt this?

I motion to adopt this memo.

I'll second it.

Point of clarification, what are we adopting if it's a memo? There's no resolution here. There's no whereas or therefore clause, it's a memo. And respectfully, the last paragraph of the memo starts with I. So we're adopting a memo written in the first person? And so I'm not sure what is there to approve that language that's legal to hold everyone to when it's a memo that's just been written.

I'm going to offer a little bit of context.

So respectfully, I'd like a ruling because I've never seen it before where there's a memo that's written like this that's coming through a motion for adoption. What would it even be adopting?

I appreciate your question before we get to a ruling I'm going to provide some context so that everyone, including you and the public can understand the context. For why this is on the agenda and the conversation we had during the facilities committee meeting that led to this memo so last year during a facilities committee meeting we received. an update from the facilities team regarding the feasibility study that the board approved last year. During that meeting, the facilities committee requested clarity on the vision for one of the items in the feasibility study, which is the CTE Tayhub, so that they could complete the study. So this memo essentially provides answers to the questions that were raised. It does not initiate any new action. It does not provide new direction. It simply clarifies an answer to questions raised by the staff responsible for implementing the feasibility study so that that work can advance.

Well, again, my point of clarification was there's not a resolution here. So if it was just something needed to be clarified, that doesn't require a motion, an adoption from the board. And so what I would expect to see is if this is going to be something that's actionable, that it's written in a whereas, therefore format, and it says therefore and gives direction. Therefore, the board is adopting. But to just have a memo, again, written in the first person, I don't understand why this is how we're doing things. And if anything, this will confuse the matter more than clarifying anything.

I'm going to ask the parliamentarian for a ruling on this.

the legislation is is as moved is a motion in a second to affirm understandings in the memo uh and so it's an appropriate piece of legislation the board has the choice of moving it either voting it up or down

Thank you. I'm going to take public comment on this.

Then the point of clarification then must be to General Counsel because what does the language in this mean there? And that's the real thing that I'm asking. And I just want to be really clear because the last paragraph reads, I appreciate the work of the facilities committee and the facilities team to carry this forward. I am glad to align on sequencing and help connect staff with the coalition and partner agencies. please treat the vision above as the current reference point for the CTE Tayhub. And I've never seen anything that comes forward for adoption written with I and in the first person. And so, General Counsel, what is gonna be your ruling when something's written as I? And the easy remedy would have been, especially since this was brought forward two weeks ago, was to create a resolution in the proper format, and then there's no question. But I've just never seen this before. And so General Counsel, can we have a ruling on what's then enforceable? Because again, there's no whereas or therefore clause here at all.

Can I just clarify your question? You're asking for a ruling on whether or not this is enforceable.

I'm asking them, what does it mean when we're adopting a memo written in the first person as I, I, I? That's not what we do here, and it's definitely not a resolution. And so all that needed to be done was have a resolution that says, therefore, the board reaffirms the decision and cite the previous decision. But this is just not how things are supposed to work, especially in the 45th largest city in the country.

Okay, I believe that Director Berry did say that this was a vote to affirm the direction.

She doesn't make that determination. Just one second. That's why I asked for a point of clarification from the general counsel. I understand this. This is part of the problem. This shouldn't even been brought forward like this.

Director Hutchinson, I understand your question. I'm just reaffirming with Director Berry what her purpose was so that we can clarify the question that we're asking of the General Counsel. So as I understand it, the thing that's brought forward is an affirmation of the CTE TAHIP. What your question is is what is enforceable and what is the purpose? of this kind of memo, is that correct?

If you're asking me, I was very clear. That's why I asked general counsel. I really don't need you to restate it, but I've never seen a memo before written with I and in the first person. What does this do? And are we now in the practice of somebody just write something up and the board adopts it? There's a legal standard for everything and a process that we're supposed to work under. So how is this going to do anything when it's written as I appreciate?

Okay, I'm going to ask the general counsel for her ruling.

sure first I just want to add that I agree with the parliamentarian we agree on this being a memo that affirms the previous resolution and does not make any changes with regard to board action And then second, I will say that Director Berry is the author and has brought the item forward to the committee. And what you see there could be a typo or could be revised to reflect the committee or remain as the author. So to answer your question.

What do you mean a typo? What are you referring to as a typo?

You took issue with the reference to I in the memo that is presented to the board. There is an author who would be an I. And so Director Berry is a member of the Facilities Committee and has drafted this and brought it forward. The Facilities Committee is moving it forward.

Is it a friendly suggestion to change the I to the Facilities Committee?

Yes.

Public comment on this?

There is one. Assata Olaballa.

Two minutes, please.

I said this at the last meeting. In September of 2025, You voted and approved resolution number 2526-0028. That resolution allowed for the allocation of $732,000 for proposed scope of work feasibility study on three pieces of property. The one that you're talking about today, Bunch in Lakeview. It also required that that feasibility study would be brought to the board, not the facilities committee, on May 8, 2025, for board study session. That did not happen. You also are saying that you have a phase two of $100,000, and it's estimated that it'll be a part of phase two. I don't know what you're doing. You're talking about one piece of the resolution that included three pieces of property. You're pulling out one piece for a specific memorandum of understanding. And the feasibility study was supposed to take place as far as being presented to the board on May 8th. You have not gotten the feasibility study. Why? You've spent $732,000 from Measure Y. for that study. So it's confusing. It's confusing to me. You got clarity. Mr. Hutchinson doesn't have clarity as to what it actually means. What are you doing?

Thank you. Are there any other board comments? I mean, public comments?

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

Are there any other board comments? Director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. You know, over the last 18 months, the bottom has completely fallen out of everything. It's really been shocking. So I can off the top of my head tell you the history of Second Avenue, starting when it was intentionally flooded over the Martin Luther King weekend in 2013. And the first action that that newly elected board did in 2013 was to use the insurance money to rent office space at 1000 Broadway instead of remediating the building. As a community, we fought off multiple attempts to try to steal that building out from under us. starting with when we were first taken over and State Superintendent O'Connell tried to move on that building. Because that's our jewel, our jewel by the lake. And now, if you read through this, there's multiple resolutions cited. There's been votes before. And this doesn't even have a resolution. It doesn't even make sense. And if we're not going to talk about what needs to be enforced, I mean, we passed the 3Rs resolution where we were supposed to be looking at our footprint across the city, including that building across the street. If we want to do a CTE Tay Hub, we have sites that are available right now, starting with the old Chabot Science Center up on the hill. That's actually city property that we leased from them. And this particular project with the CTE Tay Hub A former school board president was involved with that group, set up behind closed doors meetings with Brooklyn Williams, who was in the mayor's office at that time. And any attempt to ever move this property to that group after what's happened will wind up in court. And so, you know, it's fine that there's people chuckling up here who think it's funny. That's why they're starting to be renewed reporting in the media. And I remember the first time I heard that chuckle in my ear. It was their first in-person school board meeting when he stood up and bowed up in my face and tried to walk up on me three other times. and no action was ever taken. This has been serious for a very long time. But when people try to steal our properties, they mismanage our finances, and we don't even have to have a real resolution to do it by? And general counsel's on a rule that it's okay to have an I statement as our governing resolution? At a certain point, I don't even know what to do anymore. This isn't even like real. This isn't real. So everything's coming down to what happens in November. Here's another example of what will happen if the community doesn't stand up and make changes. If the community does, we can throw all of this out and get back to the real work we need to do. But people should be ashamed of treating my birthright, our birthright, our public property on the lake in this sort of way.

Thank you, Director Berry.

Just because the board is being asked to take action I just want to clarify a few things for our consideration. So the first is I do deeply respect your commitment to rigor and to process Director Hutchinson. I do also believe that that energy in this instance is misplaced because this memo is only meant to establish clarity and understanding so that staff have the information and guidance they need to execute action that was already approved by the board. There is nothing to enforce in this instance, so your comment about this isn't enforceable is correct. All this is meant to do, again, is to provide some guidance. The I statement that you referenced, because what happens as we deliberate here on the dais is to improve, amend and advance the work that I statement no longer exists. So I hope that the board understands that and can consider the memo as it was amended here on the dais.

Director Thompson.

No, there's no need for me to give an explanation because it would repeat what Director Berry has just stated.

Do you want to put that up on the screen? I'll just put the change up on the screen.

One moment please. The recommended amendment is to, as is shown on the screen, is to remove the bottom paragraph.

Point of clarification, I did not adequately hear what General Counsel stated

She's putting the change on the screen right now, the paragraph that refers to the I.

The change is simply to remove the final paragraph, which would have made sense as it goes to the facilities committee, but not as you're approving it here.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Rakeshwar, can we have a roll call and vote, please?

Yes, on the motion as stated to adopt the affirmation as stated. Student Director Blah?

Abstain.

Student Director Tongan is absent. Director Lara?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson.

No.

Director Berry.

Yes.

Director Thompson. Yes. Vice President Batchelor.

Yes.

President Brohard. Yes. Motions adopted.

the next item on the agenda is q new business and that is q126-1869 annual statement of all receipts and expenditures of the district fiscal year 2025-26 the unaudited actuals closing of the books and i believe you have a presentation from oh i'm sorry can we have a motion to adopt motion to adopt item q1 second I'm going to make a statement first to kind of introduce this. There's been a lot of talk in the news and social media and public forums and on websites of organizations that say they support public education in OUSD about the budget.

You can spend a lot of time doom scrolling.

But tonight, I want to focus on facts, on the actions the board has taken. Last fall, we were told that OUSD was headed back towards receivership. And by December, there was more talk about bankruptcy, state intervention, and how many schools we would have to close. At the December meeting, the then CBO's recommendation was to certify the first interim budget as negative. The board made a different decision. We certified qualified. Why? Because the district could meet the current financial commitments. We had the cash to make payroll and pay our bills. A certification did not mean that everything was fine. It was a recognition that we had a serious problem, but that we also had the ability and responsibility to act. And we acted. The board adopted scenario three, directing the superintendent to make reductions as far away from the classroom as possible while protecting schools and maintaining local control. Vice President Batchelor and I worked closely with the superintendent to maintain the integrity of that direction. Director Lara, as chair of budget and finance, worked closely with the superintendent and finance team to make sure that the committee members had the information necessary to make informed recommendations. That is what governance looks like. As we achieved a qualified certification, the criticism changed. We heard accusations of mismanagement, a lack of transparency, and even accusations of fraud. So let me be very clear tonight. The fiscal team is very confident in the numbers that are being presented. These actuals are not a prediction. They are the historical record of what the district actually received and actually spent in the fiscal year. These actuals have been prepared through the district's financial processes and will be reviewed by the county office and the external auditor. OUSD's accounting department's responsibility is specifically to track budget to actual expenditures and prepare accurate and factual fiscal reports. The numbers also show something important. We have reduced the deficit. The work we began in December is having an impact. The district has reported deficit reductions through adjustments, expenditure controls, and strategic shifts. We still have structural challenges. We still have difficult decisions ahead. We still have to be disciplined about our expenditures and monitor contracts and continue moving toward a sustainable student-centered budget. And we must continue to use restricted funds for their intended purposes and protect our unrestricted resources. We also have to retain educators and employees who work directly with our students. Stability matters for student achievement and the long-term financial health of the district. There is place for disagreement and there should be scrutiny and there should be hard questions. Transparency requires it. But criticism must be grounded in facts, not accusations. So I welcome the questions, I welcome the scrutiny, and I'm looking forward to working with the community and staff to bring the solutions to the table. We have work to do. Our students, our families, and our employees deserve nothing less than our full attention to that work.

Thank you, board, superintendent. Before we turn to the unaudited actuals, I would like to thank the team that's worked really hard to close the books, and many of them are watching tonight. What most people don't know is that the team that's worked on this to close the books actively manage approximately 60,000 unique account code combinations across more than one million transactions. Our accountants, accounts payable, procurement, payroll, and strategic resource and planning teams work day and night on behalf of students and families. I want to recognize the leadership of Ryan Nguyen, Troy Christmas, Santiago Robles, Kayla Lee, James Guthier, Nicole Caldwell, Kim Rainey, Rosa Alterano, Diana Sherman, and Rekia Ezver. We would also not be here today without our support that we've received from HYA, and that includes Dr. Ruben Frutos and Micaiah Ali. We look forward, again, to the audits that are coming and to our county's review, and our county will be providing an update on our budget September 15th, so we're looking towards that. And with that, I'm gonna turn it to Troy Christmas, who will present the rest of our closing of the books. Thank you. Thank you, team.

All right, good evening, directors, STAFF, SUPERINTENDENT, AND COMMUNITY. AS WAS MENTIONED, MY NAME IS TROY CHRISTMAS. I'M GOING TO WALK US THROUGH THE PRESENTATION OF THE UNAUDITED ACTUALS FOR 25-26, THE CLOSING OF THE BOOKS. SO THIS SLIDE, I TRY TO KEEP THIS IN MIND, AND OUR WHOLE TEAM DOES, ABOUT Why we're here? We're here to help students succeed. I know we spend a lot of time talking about money, but that's why we're here. The second line is to manage our resources responsibly so we can actually do the first thing. And so we try to keep that top of mind. The agenda for this presentation, we'll walk through a little bit about the reporting context so we can situate the unaudited actuals in the frame of all of the reporting that we do. Summary results, detail in unrestricted and restricted general fund. The impact of those results on 26-27. Again, we're talking about the close of 25-26 and that will be on the impact of 26-27. Ancillary funds are the other funds. We're spending the presentation time on the general fund, but we have multiple other funds, and so we'll just give a summary there and a cash flow summary, which is just looking at where our cash started the year, where it is at the end of the year, and what our expectation is going forward, and then next steps. So our annual reporting cycle starts the same every year, but I want to draw some distinctions in terms of what happens. In July, or at the end of June, we adopt a budget for the following year. So in June, we adopted the 26-27 budget. On September... August 12th, we gave a 45-day update. And that was to make adjustments necessary to that adopted budget as they related to changes in the state budget. The state adopts its budget after we have to be done with our adoption. And so we have to make updates there at 45-day for anything that happened at the state that impacts our budget. And then in September, we have our unaudited actuals for the prior year. So 2526 ended in June, but all the receipts and invoices and everything else don't come in right on June 30th. And then we have to collect them all and integrate them. And as As Ms. Gard indicated, over that course of the 25-26 year, that's roughly 1 million lines of transactions that represent 60,000 rows of our 11-part account code structure. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. And then we're going to integrate that into our 26-27 budget at first interim. So the end of 25-26 sets the beginning of 26-27. And so we'll be talking about 26-27 in full at the first interim, which is based on October 31st information. And then we have a second interim that is based on January 31st information that we present in March. And we hope we don't need to do a third interim if required based on our status. And so we hope we don't have to do one, but if we do, that's the timeframe. What I wanted to mention was two things. Back here at unaudited, unaudited is not a projection. Most of the other things that you see in terms of our budget reports are projections. The unaudited actuals are telling you what happened. This is the accounting of what happened. All the receipts, all the invoices, all the paychecks, all the contracts, that's what happened. Most of the rest of these are projections. The other thing is that they are in a formal submission to this to the state and the county which was mentioned so i'm going to be giving you the presentation but there's a two hundred page document that the board is actually adopting uh... which the resolution is talking about and that two hundred page submission is what goes to the county and the state all right so what are unaudited i said a little bit about this but uh... so i won't go to the first bullet but after adoption the board by the board, un-audited actuals are submitted to the county and reviewed by September 15th, we submit by September 15th, and then they are sent to our external auditors for auditing. And then we get an audit report back that says there was a discrepancy or no discrepancy, and we get a final. So this is what we submit to get the final back from our auditors. After any adjustments from the auditors, that sets the new beginning balance for 26-27. When we adopted 26-27, we projected what we were going to start 26-27 with in terms of what's in our fund balance. But after the audit of 25-26, we'll know what that is. We'll talk a little bit more about that. And that happens in December. So what are the summary results for 25-26? SO THE SUMMARY ARE WE HAVE HEALTHY RESERVES MAINTAINED ABOVE BOTH THE STATE 2% LEVEL AND THE BOARD REQUIRED 3% LEVEL IN OUR UNRESTRICTED GENERAL FUND. OUR UNRESTRICTED FUND BALANCE IN SLIGHTLY HIGHER THAN PROJECTED AT ESTIMATED ACTUALS. SO WE DID ESTIMATED ACTUALS I BELIEVE IN EARLY JUNE OR LATE MAY AND WE ENDED SLIGHTLY HIGHER THAN THAT AT 32.5 MILLION. primarily due to allowable shifts of expenses. So you've heard a lot about that. You'll probably hear more of that. But that's been one of our key strategies is to shift expenses, allowable expenses, to a restricted resource out of the unrestricted general fund because the unrestricted general fund is where we have the most financial pressure. And so there's slightly more cushion for 26-27 by ending 25-26 higher. RESTRICTED FUND BALANCE IN SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER THAN PROJECTED AT ESTIMATED ACTUALS AT 137.8 MILLION PRIMARILY DUE TO UNSPENT RESOURCES WHICH ALSO PROVIDE MORE CUSHION FOR 26-27. AGAIN, ANYTHING THAT'S UNSPENT OR MOST OF THE THINGS THAT GET UNSPENT IN 25-26 CAN ROLL FORWARD IN 26-27. Overall, 25-26 sets up 26-27 slightly better than accepted with an ending fund balance that is $16 million above what we projected at estimated actions. All right, full year progress. Summary results, what happened? Overall deficit spending was down $20 million from the level we expected at budget adoption in 25-26. So in 25-26, we adopted the budget for that year in June of 25. We expected that we were going to have a deficit then. We still have a deficit now, but that deficit is down $20 million from what we projected at that time. Still have a deficit, but it's down. AT DECEMBER, WHEN WE DID OUR FIRST INTERIM, BEFORE WE MADE THE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES, THAT DEFICIT WAS PROJECTED TO BE HIGHER, AND WE'RE 38 MILLION DOWN FROM WHAT THAT PROJECTION WAS AT DECEMBER. AND THAT IS WHEN OUR STABILIZATION EFFORTS INTENSIFIED AFTER THAT DECEMBER REPORT, AS YOU'LL REMEMBER. COMPARED TO ESTIMATED ACTUALS AT THIRD INTERIM, REVENUE IS DOWN, ALTHOUGH IMPORTANT LOCAL CONTROL FUNDING FOR THE REVENUE WAS SLIGHTLY UP. Overall revenue ended down, which we'll talk more about in the detail. Spending is down more than revenue. So if revenue's down and spending's down more, that's positive, at least from a financial perspective. Almost all major spending categories ended below the projected levels, which more than offset the reduction in revenue. We'll talk more about that in the details. Okay, so here's the summary by the number that is the unrestricted is in blue, the restricted is in green. This is all the general fund. So at the top, you have the results of what happened summarized. Revenues, 517 million. That's what we're closing at for unrestricted. 321 million, if my bad eyes are right, for restricted. I better get my... personal one out. For expenditures, 401 or 402 roughly for unrestricted and 522.7 for restricted. And you can see the total overall in terms of the amounts. Net contributions and transfers. We frequently have lots of conversation about net contributions and transfers. To summarize for those folks who haven't been following this for a long time, we have transfers that go from restricted to unrestricted and transfers that go from unrestricted to restricted based on program. We also have contributions, which is just an accounting term for sending money primarily from unrestricted to pay for restricted programs. And so that's what you'll see there. And those numbers are almost always closely aligned because they're going from one side to the other, which is why you see such a small difference. Overall net decrease and increase. This is the number we talked about before when I said we had projected, we're 20 million better off than we had projected and adopted and 30 million, 38 million better off than at first interim. So you'll see we do have a deficit in unrestricted for 25, 26, 30 million dollars. And we have a deficit of 61 million dollars in restricted. THAT ADDS UP TO NEGATIVE 91.5 MILLION. THAT WAS OVER 100 MILLION AT BOTH ADOPTION AND AT FIRST INTERIM. THE OTHER THING I'LL REMIND PEOPLE IS BOTH AT ADOPTION AND AT FIRST INTERIM WE HAD NOT IMPLEMENTED OUR SETTLEMENT WITH THE OEA And so on top of just our normal operations, we added costs during the course of 25, 26. And so this is a significant change over that timeframe. And so what is the result of all of that? So our adjusted beginning balance, beginning amount you have in your account or your fund balance for unrestricted is 62.4. You subtract the 30 from above, it doesn't add up exactly because of rounding, it's off by like 0.1, but the ending fund balance is 32.3. And on the restricted side, we started at 199.3. You subtract the 61.5 and you end up at 137.8. And so our total fund balance ends at $170.1 million across unrestricted and restricted general fund. We're going to go a little bit into the detail of unrestricted and then restricted. And I better get my own paper when I'm looking at this one because this is getting small. So here what we try to do is share where we were at estimated actuals in the spring summer and where we actually ended the year. And so on the very far left, that column has a bunch of numbers and letters in it. The reason that's there is that it corresponds to that 200-page document that I talked about. So if anybody wants to reference how this presentation connects to that 200-page document, these are the outline of how those line up because this is more aggregated or more summarized than the detail that is in that report. And so what we did is we lined up estimated actuals in the first column after the descriptions and unaudited actuals at the second column and showed the difference. So you can see what the change has been. And so I'm only going to highlight the places that we're going to go in deeper, but the upshot you'll see for unrestricted, if you go to the difference column, which is the far right column, is that from a revenue perspective, revenue was down less than $1 million, 0.2% relative to what we had projected at estimated actuals. Expenditures were down roughly $4.2 million compared to... what we had estimated at estimated actuals, 1%. And so overall, there was basically a $3.3 million difference, positive difference, at least financially, to the difference between revenues minus expense. And then we have this total other financing sources and uses, which I tried to describe briefly before. And there were significant changes there where you see a increase from estimated actuals to unaudited actuals, $9.8 million. which was 7.2% of total other financing sources and uses, a reduction. And then that led to a change in the net increase decrease of $6.5 million.

point of clarification what do you mean reduction because that means we wound up taking 9.8 million more out of unrestricted it's actually an increase in the amount that's being taken out of it that's why there's a a negative around it and so we need to be really clear that we between estimated actuals and unaudited actuals this means 9.8 million more is taken out of unrestricted

Yes, correct and. And I'll explain more on the next slide. There was a transfer in to unrestricted from restricted that was then taken out. And so unrestricted was down as a result of that being taken out. And we'll go into detail about that on the next slide. And so you'll see that the adjusted beginning balance for, which is F1E, was fifty three million dollars at estimated actuals and is up to sixty two million dollars those two things correspond to one another the one that you talked about before director hutchinson around the nine point eight million and that nine point two million i'll explain that in greater detail The summation of all that, though, for unrestricted, if you go to our ending fund balance, which is F2, under unaudited actuals, you see it's the same $32.3 million that I mentioned before, that a reserve for economic uncertainty is at $27 million, $27.7 million, and that leaves, after you account for this non-spendable amount, which is basically prepaid items, which I can go into if there are questions, OTHER ASSIGNMENTS, THERE'S $4.2 MILLION LEFT OVER FOR BUDGET BALANCING SOLUTIONS GOING FORWARD AFTER 25, 26. SO MOVING INTO 26, 27, THERE'S $4.2 MILLION THAT WE HAVE AVAILABLE TO US FOR THAT. SO NOW I'LL GO INTO HOPEFULLY TRYING TO EXPLAIN WHAT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT, DIRECTOR HUTCHISON. When I mentioned before that there was a transfer out of restricted into unrestricted, that was the accounting treatment for shifting expenses from unrestricted to restricted at estimated actuals. After speaking with those that review our budget, talking to external counsel, the appropriate way for accounting for that was to have it as a restatement of the beginning balance in unrestricted because it was a prior year It was a prior year shifting of restricted to unrestricted. And so therefore, it shows as a restatement. So those almost offset the transfer that you saw in the total other sources and uses IN ESTIMATED ACTUALS AND THE ADJUSTMENT TO THE BEGINNING FUND BALANCE ALMOST OFFSET. THERE'S SLIGHTLY MORE SHIFTS IN THE ADJUSTMENT TO BEGINNING BALANCE SO THEY'RE NOT 100% ALIGNED. BUT ALL OF THAT IS COMING FROM BOTH OF THOSE. at estimated actuals and at unaudited actuals.

Point of clarification, because this is like the crux of a lot of this here. Is there a document that shows this shifting back and forth? Because what you just said doesn't really make sense when I look at the total numbers. But for you to say that things have been shifted back and forth and we have no accounting for it, And there's no number any place that shows this. This has been an ongoing pattern, especially since I've been denied access to the full budget. So is there a document any place that shows what's been transferred back and forth? And do we have a real explanation with documents other than a little worded paragraph explaining these changes in these numbers?

Do we want to take questions now? I'm happy to answer it, but.

I don't need an answer. I need you to send me the link and then I can look myself.

We're going to complete the presentation and hold on to questions. Thank you.

Okay. So the other thing that I mentioned on the prior slide, which is the second bullet, is that we assigned the additional fund balance to budget balancing solutions for 26-27 and that's the $4.2 million that I mentioned. So now I'll go into restricted detail. So on the restricted side, same structure. So on the left, the notation's tied to the full formal one report. That's a part of the 200-page document. And then estimated actuals, unaudited actuals, and difference. And here you see significant differences different than what we saw with unrestricted. You see our restricted revenues down $30 million and our restricted spending down more than that, $44 million. The net of that is an improvement. Again, as I said before, financially, if you have a reduction in spending that is greater than your reduction in revenue, it is a positive financial, and this is showing that at $14.2 million. In terms of total other financing sources and uses in restricted, you can see there's very little change, D4, and you'll also see very little change in terms of the beginning balance. But the net effect of that $14 million change is what you see in the change in ending balance. So an ending balance at estimated actuals, we estimated $124 million as an ending balance. We're actually closing restricted at $137.8 million, and that's $13.7 million improvement.

And so again. One more point of clarification, because it was just brought up before. Can we continue with this? No, no, this is important based on what he said. The other financing sources now unrestricted. We're going to continue. You mentioned unrestricted, that there was a shift going back and forth, but I don't see that shift reflected here for the restricted dollars to correspond, where the number from estimated actuals to unaudited actuals only changed by a million, whereas unrestricted it changed by 9.8 million. So I don't understand how those two don't coincide.

I'm going to ask my fellow board members to hold their questions until the end of the presentation.

Great. there was a question about how does revenue go down or spending go down that much between estimated actuals and unaudited actuals. And for many of our restricted resources, the revenue must match the expense, Title I being an example. And so if you don't spend all of the Title I money or many other of our federal and some of the state revenues, the unspent funds result in removing both. You remove the expense and you remove the revenue. The revenue will show up again as revenue at first interim in 26-27. And corresponding expenses will show up as well in 26-27. That is the lion's share of it. So I went to look through what were the key areas where we had revenue unspent. And the two highest, so I just picked the two highest. There's certainly more. We're an EPA grant, which is resource 5812, and that is related to our zoom buses. And so we have additional revenue to pay for those that wasn't spent in 2526. It will roll forward. I talked to the relevant department and they're anticipating. ALL OF THAT BEING SPENT IN 2627. SIMILARLY WITH TITLE I, THERE WERE SOME TITLE I FUNDS THAT WERE NOT SPENT AND THE EXPECTATION FROM THOSE WHO ARE MANAGING THAT RESOURCE EXPECT ALL OF THAT TO BE SPENT IN 2627. IMPACT, OKAY, WHAT HAPPENED?

Figured it out.

Impact on 26-27. So summarizing what we said on the previous slides, 25-26 unaudited actuals leave us with higher starting balances in unrestricted and restricted than were projected prior. And unrestricted, it's 32.3, which is 2.7 over our previous estimates. And we talked about how lower, well, I didn't talk about this. Lower spending, we talked about the lower spending in restricted. Well, that lower spending in restricted impacts how much our reserve has to be. Our reserve is calculated on total spending. If you reduce spending, the amount you need to keep in reserve goes down. And so that's why the reserve number went down from 29 million to 27 million. LEAVING THE 4.2 MILLION THAT I INDICATED BEFORE FOR BUDGET BALANCING SOLUTIONS. ON THE RESTRICTED SIDE, ENDING BALANCE IS 137.8, UP 13.7. AND THAT IMPROVES THE FINANCIAL CUSHION AS WE BEGIN IN 26-27. I WANT TO TAKE A LITTLE TIME, WHEN WE LAST PRESENTED THE 45-DAY UPDATE, WE IDENTIFIED AND ACKNOWLEDGED AN ERROR IN SOME OF THOSE NUMBERS AND SO WE WANTED TO correct that in relation to what it means for, what it means related to this unaudited actuals and what it means for 26-27. And so restricted, as we shared at the August 12th 45-day budget update, The team discovered an error resulting in underreporting of restricted expenditures. Correcting the error adds $4.6 million in restricted expenses, or 2627, an amount easily absorbed by the plus 13.7 that we just indicated we ended 2526 with. So we have decisions about what we do with that money, but it is there. unrestricted gain correcting an associated error of one point two million dollars in over reporting of unrestricted expenses so we over reported unrestricted expenses by about one point two million dollars that means that additional one point two million dollars falls to the bottom line and improves unrestricted at least as it relates to our projections for twenty six twenty seven ANCILLARY FUNDS. SO I MENTIONED AT THE BEGINNING THAT WE WERE GOING TO JUST SUMMARIZE ALL THE OTHER FUNDS. THE UNRESTRICTED FUND IS THERE AT THE TOP SPLIT BY, I MEAN THE GENERAL FUND IS THERE AT THE TOP SPLIT BY UNRESTRICTED AND RESTRICTED. AND THEN YOU SEE ALL OF THE OTHER FUNDS. AND KEY TO NOTE THERE IS THAT IN THE PAST WE'VE HAD CONCERNS THAT THE GENERAL FUND NEEDED TO SUPPORT MULTIPLE OTHER FUNDS. OVER MY 20 YEARS HERE, THAT'S HAPPENED MANY TIMES. AND WE'RE NOT IN THAT SITUATION NOW. ALL OF OUR FUNDS ARE EITHER OPERATING WITHIN THE REVENUES THEY GENERATE OR THEY ARE SPENDING DOWN FUND BALANCE THAT THEY HAVE. SO THEY'VE GENERATED THEIR OWN FUND BALANCE AND ARE ABLE TO SPEND THAT DOWN. SURE. SO THIS SLIDE INDICATES ALL OF THE FUNDS THAT WE HAVE AS A DISTRICT. AND IT SHOWS THE REVENUES, expenditures, whether they're at a deficit or not, what their beginning balance is and what their ending balance is. And so you'll see some of them have deficit spending going on, but their deficit spending is all within the fund balance that they've created over time for themselves. So we're not in a position where the general fund is needing to put money into these other funds. cash flow summary so Cash flow is actually not that different than cash flow in your household. Cash balances fluctuate throughout the year due to revenue coming in at a different pace and timing than spending going out. So in most of your households, money comes in month to month. That's not the way it works for school districts. We get a big, large sum at different points in the year, usually one in November, December, and another in April. Well, we need cash in order to be able to cover expenses that come in between those big infusions of cash. And so that's what cash flow is like. It's a similar concept as your house, but because of the way money comes into school districts, it doesn't operate the same way. And so we've indicated here that our actuals for 25-26 started at 267, ending at 167, and our projection for 26-27 is to end at $157 million in cash. Over that time frame, that number will go up when we get infusions, and then it will go down. And the key is to never have it go down to the point where it's threatening your ability to make your regular payments, like payroll. So the amount that we have currently is not quite, but close to three times our monthly payroll. Roughly, monthly payroll is about $60 million. And so that's about three times that, not quite. next steps Board approval of the full unaudited that 200 page document that I mentioned And then we will submit the audit actuals to the county office by September 15th We will distribute the unaudited actuals to our auditors who will begin their work and get back to us hopefully by well certainly in time for first interim we'll continue work to complete that audit and And we'll continue our financial stabilization efforts. There's nothing in this good news, which I think there's a significant amount of good news here. There's nothing in this good news that suggests that we don't have continued work to do. And then we will prepare our 26-27 first interim. And that will be the detailed look that ties the pieces together. So this is the close of 25-26. which sets the beginning of 26-27, which you've not seen before. And then we have the operation of 26-27 as it's going along and that will be through October 31st data and that's what will be presented at first interim as well as a full multi-year projection. What do I mean by full multi-year projection? The MYP or the multi-year projection we provided at 45-day is not the same as the one that's in the full SAC software that is provided to the county and the state. And that's where you'll get that, is that first interim. With that, I'm ready to take questions.

We're gonna ask that we'll have a first round of, let's do public comment first, actually. You're on here first, okay. I'm gonna ask that people actually ask questions, kind of save our comments for later, but to ask a question that can be answered, and I'm going to start with the student, yes. Okay, there's gonna be one round of questions, so make sure that your questions are all asked. Student director?

No comment.

Thank you. Director Berry?

Because of how we're managing questions, I'm gonna ask them all.

Okay.

I'm gonna do my best to take the notes. We'll see what happens.

So the first question, thank you, by the way, for the presentation, is around the expenditure category. So did any expenditure category actually exceed what was adopted without any additional board action?

I can go back and check. We didn't do the math of adopted to actual. Most of the comparisons that you see are estimated actuals to adopted. But remember, you adopted, and then you had first interim, which the board approved, and then you had second interim, which the board approved, and then you had the third interim, which the board approved, before you get to unaudited actuals. So checking against adopted is not a bad thing to do, but you've had interim periods between there where the board has adopted whatever changes happened up to that point.

And then related to changes in expenses, so those unspent funds, to me, that suggests that some service wasn't provided, and I do think this is probably a topic more appropriate for teaching and learning, but I'm really curious about what happened, is that you know unusual the amount was it unusual i'm thinking in particular about title one and so yeah i just want to make sure we're doing what we're supposed to do with the money that we have

Absolutely. So as was mentioned before, when we look at these, we're looking at 60,000 lines of data. But I go and I look at the top ones and say, what's going on with the top ones? And I call up, what happened with the Zoom buses? What happened with the Title I? But that's what you have to do to figure out each one. And so we haven't gone through each one, but we absolutely look at that. To your question about whether this has happened before or whether these amounts are consistent with what's happened before, I didn't look at multiple years, but I looked at a few, and it absolutely has happened before. And then the other thing I should note is we have some resources where we show the entire grant. There's no intention that entire grant is going to get spent in that year, but the way the grant operates, we have to show the whole thing. And so it's a multi-year spend down, and we know that going in, but we have to show the whole revenue. But figuring out what percentage of that total is those types of grants versus other types of grants, that's more work that we can do, but I don't have the detail of that right now.

And this question, I'm implicated in the homework too, but if you have it in your brain, but can you remind us what the 2024-25 audit letter said? Because I'm trying to, yeah, it's a big question. But just wanna make sure that if there were the findings that were indicated in that letter, that I wanna understand what controls were implemented in this round. OF ACCOUNTING.

I WILL HAVE TO GO BACK TO THAT. I DO NOT REMEMBER 2425 AUDIT LETTER OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD. I DO REMEMBER THAT IN YEARS PRIOR WE HAD TO PAY BACK MONEY WHEN WE HAD AUDITS AND WE HAVE NOT HAD THAT CHALLENGE. WE'VE HAD TO CHANGE PROCEDURES, WE'VE HAD TO UPDATE THE WAY WE DO THINGS BUT WE HAVEN'T HAD THIS ISSUE WHERE WE'RE HAVING TO PAY BACK MONEY. BUT WE CAN CERTAINLY LOOK INTO The control.

And then I think maybe just one or yeah. And then for special education, this is a question that I have asked over and over again. So I apologize for the redundancy. I do have more data because of what you presented here. And so I just want to understand why, if we have that information available, the special education cost came in higher than expected.

Special education costs came in higher than was in the budget. There may be some differences of opinion of whether that was higher than expected, but it was definitely higher than was in the budget. And it was the subject of some of our shifts in order to make sure that we were able to pay for those additional expenditures that we weren't expecting in the budget.

And we know what those expenditures are?

Line by line, yes. All this stuff has to, when we say there are 60,000 rows of data, those 60,000 rows of data represent an aggregation of a million different transactions. When I say a million, I mean a million. Every paycheck has several parts to it, right? You have your salary. You have your benefits. You have your retirement. You have your taxes. Each one of those is coded. Each one of those is a transaction. They roll up into the 60,000 rolls, and the 60,000 rolls roll up into this presentation. But we have all of that, and we have to, because when the auditor goes through and they want to question something, you have to have the actual transaction associated with that that they can go back to. And that's what they ask for.

And so because we have that data, and this is the thing that I keep pushing on, especially as we approve Jen consent. And I think the number for Jen consent this week is just a little over 100,000 dollars. But if the differences between what we approve at adoption and what we end up spending are so big, it feels important. to have tighter controls or tracking mechanisms month to month over special education spending. And that helps us understand not only the services we provide, but our capacity to fulfill said services. And as a board, I think that's important because I do think it'll help inform our advocacy even outside of Oakland.

So I'm going to name something that you've heard before. Certain board members have been here longer. You've heard this many times before. We need that for all of our programs. This is not a special ed thing. Special ed is just bigger and therefore it has a bigger impact on overall budget. But understanding as we go through the year, how close are you to spending the money that was allocated to you? Are you over that? Are you on track to be over that? Or are you on track to be under that? And to the point earlier is what does that mean for services to students, right? And so both the spending more than was budgeted and the spending less, what does that mean? And tracking that month to month. We have had a... Herculean challenge trying to do that with the staffing that we've had in the finance team and the asks of Oakland Unified, of FCMAT or the county or all the other things that we've been doing over the last several years. You've heard us talk about in previous times monthly reconciliation. We're not staffed to do monthly reconciliation. That'd be a wonderful thing. So that is an ongoing challenge.

Director Williams.

Yes, thank you for the report, Mr. Troy Christman, appreciate it. So actually my question is very similar to Director Berry in regards to deficit control measures like what, so most of the expenditure categories as you spoke about came in below projections. You were saying that basically they pay for themselves now, that the general fund doesn't have to go in and add to it. So the question really was, what spending controls generated those savings? What was it that, was there a shift in thinking, a shift in accountability? What was the particular measurement helped us achieve that particular goal.

So I do not have the whole story. I only have part of the story. But I do know that there were times we had a much more robust adult education program in Oakland Unified. And the funding structure for adult education changed. And so as a result of the general fund not being able to kick in to keep it the same size and structure as it was before, it changed. And so there are consequences for that. Similarly and slightly different, with early childhood education, THERE WAS A PERIOD WHERE WE WERE ADDING FUNDS TO THAT BECAUSE IT WAS AN AREA THAT WE WANTED TO GROW AND WE WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT IT HAD ALL OF THE SERVICES. BUT AS THE GENERAL FUND CAME UNDER MORE PRESSURE, THERE WAS MORE DIRECTION ABOUT WE GOT TO FIND A WAY FOR YOU TO LIVE WITHIN WHAT'S THERE. AND OVER TIME, did better than that, were able to generate surpluses in early childhood. And similarly with nutrition services, although slightly differently, that's only part of the story. That is not the whole story.

Sure, thank you. Yeah, I think that is a summary of it, but I'm thinking that there's particular techniques or there's something specific that uh... directives or a particular uh... rebalancing uh... particular funds that may have contributed to that so i just wanted to know uh... as because we're going to have to hold that type of energy and that type of thinking through this whole year right we're going to have to continue to keep our deficit spending controls at the forefront of our decision-making as well. And so I just really wanted to know what the measures and spendings are. Last question, and that was really quick.

That was one question.

The other one is, with the district end of the year with substantially higher fund balances than projected, what investments do you think we could make now that would have a big impact on achievement for our highest needs students?

I wish I had more background on that, because I do the numbers. But doing the numbers, the first thing I'm going to say is caution, caution, caution. And so the improvement that we talked about Helps us start 26-27 in a better place from an unrestricted, let me talk about the unrestricted part first. Helps us start 26-27 in a better place. But the better place we're starting is one where without the $28 to $30 million reduction in spending that we have projected, we're still skating at 3%. So there is no large amount of money available in that situation. On the restricted side, as you saw earlier in the presentation, we are deficit spending and restricted at $61 million annually, which is less than what we projected, but still $61 million. That can't continue. We don't have enough fund balance for that to continue. And so while we ended $13.7 million better, great, and it puts us in a position to start 26-27 better, we still have to address that that part of the general fund budget is being spent down faster than we can continue to do. Some of that's been down is purposeful, on purpose, want to do it, need services for kids, et cetera, all important, but it can't continue at the pace it's gone at.

Thank you.

Director Lauda.

yeah thank you um mr christmas for the presentation and i just also thank the fiscal team that miss guard named um because i know this has been a significant um amount of work over time um i have a my first question is more specifically about of some of the changes over you know from 2024-25 you don't remember the numbers but just some some something that we you know in terms of the to just highlight the unrestricted deficits and some of the shifts because when you look at 24 25 unaudited actuals compared to 25 26 25 26 unaudited actuals compared to 26 27 budget based on today's presentation The unrestricted spending, particularly within the books and supplies, the four thousands and as well as in the services and other operating expenses in the five thousands were suspending significantly. We were spending less overall and projecting to in the future, but also spending significantly less in the unrestricted in terms of the balance of how we're spending those dollars. I'm just wondering if you can speak to if that was related to the shifts or if there was other practices that will

So the team is going to come back, obviously, with an update on the financial stabilization plan. But what I will say is this. I present our finances to different organizations, groups, parent groups, et cetera, repeatedly. And there's a chart that's sticking in my head. And it's a chart of the unrestricted fund balance. that basically goes back to 16, 17. And you see the unrestricted fund balance being $3 million. And I was here for that. And that was when we had to do mid-year cuts. And then it barely grows, but it grows a little bit. And then we have COVID happen. And we were able to divert spending to some other resources during that time. And the unrestricted fund balance grew to where at its height, it was $118 million. Then in one year, it went from $118 million to 55, and that was 24-25. That's where all the alarm bells come from, right? And so I have the unaudited actuals in front of me for 24-25. It was a $61 million decrease in unrestricted spending. And so we all knew that can't continue. You can't continue to spend down that fund balance at $61 million a year. So yes, this year is significantly better. And without shifts, it doesn't happen. And I will tell you internally as a finance team, We were working aggressively to implement all the financial stabilization efforts. And then when we settled the contract and added expenses in 25, 26, because it was retroactive pay, we all pulled with little hair we had out and said, how are we going to make this work too? And so there was a lot of work to make that work. And it would not have happened without shifts. Just not possible.

Thank you. And then just one other question is around the, you mentioned about the fiscal stabilization implementation plan, the FSIP. That's coming, the update on our progress with implementing those solutions is coming at the next board meeting, is that correct?

That is my understanding.

Okay, great. I think one thing that I will just say, I notice when I look at the unaudited actuals is that In the, and I feel like I need to cite this, you know, F, section F, line D in assigned, there's the lines for board budget balancing solutions, which are projected to be less than what we, than what we're attempting to do with the FSIP, correct?

So, I'm just. I want to make sure I understand the question.

Yes.

The $4.2 million, is that what you're referring to? Or are you referring to something?

That and then I look into the next year and it's, well, then there's the second line that's for, it's, you know, again, I think as long as we're getting an update, because just to name your point about we... We're going through financial stabilization. We added new expenses. We've heard from our administrators union that we're still at the table with them. So that's one very obvious added expense that we will have in this year. So I guess my question is, when your team comes back with the FSIP update on the 23rd, will it be clear what we need to do for this year

and to ensure that we have space to add expenses that we anticipate adding like settling the uaos contract for example so i'm going to not be able to fully answer that question we're going to give an update of what we've done and where we're headed creating adequate headroom so to speak for expenses that we would like to take on requires us to know how much you'd like to take on. So I won't say any more about that, but we'll give an update of what we've done and how much we've cleared and where we're headed. Is there anything more you want to add to that now? All right.

Thank you. Director Thompson.

Yes, I'll make this relatively quick. Director Christmas, thank you very much for the report. It was really extensive. But I'm kind of on edge a little bit, and I want my concern to be allayed. So if we look at slide 22, It shows that the two of the twenty two thousand twenty five two thousand twenty six actual. There was a major decrease necessarily. And then I'm looking at the two thousand twenty six two thousand twenty seven projection. And then you're not showing such a drastic decrease. And so I'm wondering, can you speak to any cultural shifts that are happening in the department or any Any kind of shifts that are happening that could kind of speak to this and sort of allay my concerns?

Sure. So two things. One, which we talked about before, which is cash flow is in and out. So the date that you see is a snapshot of that day. Cash could come in the next day. Cash could come out the next day. And so this is a flow of money in and out. That's the first thing to clarify. The second is for 26-27 at at budget adoption at first interim and at second interim in that 200 page document is a cash flow report. And it's a projection in there about how much cash is going to come in and when and how much cash is going to go out and when. And you can look at the detail and see the up and downs, right? It's a projection. So this is the summation of that projection, but it's there. And so that's where you'll see what our expectation is in terms of money coming in and money coming out on a cash basis.

that that's it thank you thank you director hutchinson questions please thank you can you put that document back up now first off uh i don't trust these numbers i want to state to the community i still have not received access to the budget I want to say to the community, I got one question answered by an email during this meeting from Ms. Gar of questions I asked at the last board meeting, and all the documents weren't even there with it to make any sense. So as we can see from this, even with these numbers I don't trust, last school year, we spent $100 million more than we took in. That's how we burned through $100 million of our cash fund balance. And I don't believe that for 26-27, we're only projected to overspend revenues over expenditures by $10 million. We know that's not true. So I heard a lot of stuff today that I highly disagree with. First, I want to say, not only was the Budget and Finance Committee meeting canceled last week, ironic how some people mention these things. I only saw the closing of the book 72 hours before this meeting when it was posted publicly. No draft preview, nothing. And the President's statement at the start of this notwithstanding, there was no Scenario 3 plan ever passed. Remember, one of the things was raising attendance by 2%. That never happened. We got a notice of going concern from the county after our second interim report. We've had no CBO or chief of staff since December. Excuse me, you're not going to interrupt me when everyone else can say whatever they want about any budget. This is like predictable bi-clock work, bi-clock work, every time, every time.

I'm just asking to ask again, we've talked about having to ask you questions.

Every time, every time, so please restart my clock. We've had no CBO since December, and we've seen every financial document since then has had serious issues and hasn't made sense. So let's just put everything back in focus so we understand. We approve an adopted budget by the end of June for the following year. That adopted budget is what we are projecting to do. By law, the school board has the authority, approves that, and those are the numbers. There's no talking about projections and other things during the year, and we overspent last year compared to the adopted budget. Now that we know the true number from the error from the 45-day revision, we add 4.2 million to the 17 million that document already said we're overspending this year, and we're already projected to overspend by 21 million this year. When I say overspend, that's above the adopted budget. When we did the adopted budget for 2526 in this room, there was a conversation that in the unrestricted, there was only $300,000 above the required reserve. And we had a conversation about because of that, we couldn't afford to negotiate any new contracts. We couldn't afford any emergencies. But yet this board blew through that and blew through that and blew through that. So the question I have. Because I don't believe what was said, this whole idea about shifting, shifting. If you look at total revenues and total expenditures, that means shifting between the two funds doesn't matter. We are talking about totals. And when we have the estimated actuals that are in this document, those aren't from the second interim. Those were our third interim that were presented to us at budget adoption on June 24th. And I carry them all on my phone. I can rattle off the numbers and when they were presented and when the board accepted them. So I want to know how since estimated actuals at the end of June and the closing of the books now, how $30 million have disappeared from revenue. $30 million less in revenue. The end of June, our fiscal year closes at the end of June. We already knew what was coming in. We didn't all of a sudden realize, oh, we didn't get $30 million. But even worse, how do $50 million in expenditures just disappear? I know nobody gave us a refund. telling me that well if we don't spend it then we don't receive revenue and so are you saying we chose not to spend every dollar of title one available for our students that doesn't even make sense and if we knew that all along it would have never been entered into the numbers I've never heard a report like this is worse than the reports that used to happen when Vernon Howell was here. We've done this dance before, Mr. Christmas. I'm very disappointed. The numbers don't make sense. They haven't made sense the whole time. I don't have access to the budget. There's a $30 million- Can he answer the question? So my question, well, I'm not sure. What is your question? Excuse me. So I've asked, and I know that Director Berry spoke for over three minutes over her time. This is now the second time that you've intervened. She has several questions. That's now the second. So are you making the decision on what people can say and what they can't say? Yes, you can ask questions. And so it's just Director Hutchinson that you have a problem with that about? Okay.

I think Troy Christmas would like to answer your question if you take a breath. I asked the same questions last meeting. To give him an opportunity to answer it.

I asked the same questions the meeting before. I asked the same questions in June. I've not received any answers. And my real question is, because I know you can't explain these numbers, because this is just words and no documents. My question is, why isn't the head of the department presenting who's responsible? Or why isn't the consultants that we're spending a million dollars on this year doing this? Because he has supervisors. So when he doesn't give me the answer, and I've asked everyone else for the answer, they still haven't either. So why are these numbers like this? Why don't I have access to the budget? And why were these numbers not presented any time before the 72 hours before the meeting?

Okay, so I'm hearing three questions. One, why haven't you received the budget? I'm forgetting them. Explain the third. I got them all. You got them? I got them all. Okay.

I got them all. Got it. Okay. First, I want to thank Director Hutchinson for meeting me in the back of the room during the meeting and giving me a screenshot of a more full description of the budget that he was looking for.

A screenshot of a presentation our CFO made in June. So I know these documents exist, and I know you know what they are when I ask for a line by line budget. But don't make this sound like, oh, now you realize what it is. So why haven't you emailed it to me since I showed you in the back of the room? Come on now.

$1 billion here.

$1 billion here.

Would you like to answer the question? I can answer the question. Thank you.

So at the last board meeting that we talked about, the 45 day, I heard Director Hutchinson mention wanting a line by line. Early in this meeting, I mentioned that line by line could be a million lines if you want every transaction, or it could be 60,000 lines if you want every budget number. I did not know what he meant. So he met with me in the back of the room earlier today and showed me a screenshot of something that reflects what he meant, which is an escape report that I can run and we can provide. Not an issue. We will take care of it. You will not hear this at the next board meeting. So that's the first question. The second question was how are the revenues and the expenditures, how are revenues disappearing and expenditures disappearing at unaudited actuals? And so I gave an explanation during the presentation. I'm sorry that that was not sufficient. So this is not new. This is not new to Oakland. This is not new to school districts. In fact, on September 5th, 2024, at the Budget and Finance Committee meeting at that time, Lisa Grant Dawson, our CBO at the time, presented numbers almost exactly the same. $30 million of restricted revenue, gone, and $60 million of restricted spending, gone. And Mr. Hutchinson, Director Hutchinson, was the chair of that committee, voted in favor of sending those unaudited actuals, which I have here, to the full board, and the unaudited actuals were passed. Same basic structure. My explanation is the same. There's something called deferred revenues. If you do not spend the amounts, the revenue and the expenditure go away, and they show up in the following year. So I don't have any problem re-explaining things. I re-explain things all the time. But that's what happens in Oakland. That's what happens in other places. It's not anything surprising. It's not anything, as I read on social media, implausible. It's not any of that. It's what happens in school districts.

how how dare you invoke lisa grant dawson's name when she was forced out of the district and this happened i don't know what social media you're you're talking about but again we have real problems when there's no numbers or documents to back up what people say you can cite what you think happened in the past all you want there's no documents here and this is the real problem this has been going on for way too many months so if people answered the question that people provided the documents to me when i asked months ago then yes i wouldn't be here saying this But please don't tell me that now because I came and talked to you in the back, now all of a sudden you understand when the superintendent's been telling me weekly that she's going to send me the budget and still hasn't done it. And your supervisors have failed to do that work. So I'm not gonna play this game here in front of everyone, but I'm just very disappointed. And we all know what the truth is, and it's real simple. Show a document to prove me wrong.

Judge Batchelor, do you have questions?

Yes, thank you. I appreciate you and your team for the full report that we have here in front of us. And I'm excited to see some of these numbers, yet I know that we have a lot of work to do. And I think that's what you're also gearing us towards. So again, there are folks that have questions, some of the numbers that we have. So if we want to demonstrate that OUSD has genuinely turned a fiscal corner, What specific evidence can we see in the unaudited actuals that demonstrate that this is sustainable improvement rather than a one-year improvement?

So I'm going to answer the question the way I answered it earlier. This is not sustainable. I tell you, you have 91 million dollars of deficit spending in 25-26. We cannot continue that. We have to change our spending or get out of that situation. What we did do was we were on the precipice of not meeting our reserve requirements. And through the efforts that we took this year for 25, 26, we have pushed that away, right? Most of that was, not most of that, a significant portion of that was shifts to restricted. There is a limit to how long and how much you can shift to restricted. So that strategy is not an indefinite strategy. We have to change so that our spending more closely matches our revenue. And that is work that we need to do in the relatively near future.

But wouldn't you say before last school year we were doing the opposite of using our restricted resources last and our general fund dollars first?

No, I would not say that, but what I will say is this. Every attachment A, B, C plan that we had shifted spending from unrestricted to restricted, never as aggressively as we have in the last period of time. And so we've done it more aggressively, and we've gotten more benefit out of it. And that's wonderful because it supported our unrestricted general fund and kept our reserves solid and allowed us to pay for things that we otherwise would not have been able to pay for out of unrestricted. It's just a strategy that cannot continue indefinitely. That's all.

Thank you. Are there any outstanding liabilities, carryovers, encumbrances, or revenue assumptions that could materially reduce the ending fund balances of the audited on actuals that are finalized today?

Not that I'm aware of, no. We're intending to send this to the auditor, and our expectation is the auditor will come back and it'll be clean and it'll show up the same, you know, that will be the end result for 25-26 and set the start for 26-27. Thank you. That's it.

That will not take public comments. Do we have any public comments? Mr. Howes?

Yes, Madam President. We have seven, I believe.

Two minutes each.

Okay. I can call all the names listed. Carol Delton, Sheila Haynes, Asada Olagbala, Catherine Camp, Jack Nelson, and Jonathan Mates-Mutchin.

Let's take the in-person ones first, and then we'll do Ms. Hayes. If your name was called, Carol Delton, Katherine Camp, Jack Nelson.

Sorry about that. I'm Katherine Camp. I am a Glenview parent. I wanted to double tap on something that Director Lotta had mentioned about talking about the fiscal stabilization plan and mentioning that basically in conjunction with the budget updates. Because to me, I find it a little disconcerting that the big elephant in the room is the structural deficit and this budget solution of $30 million, or a little less now, right? But there's no clear answer at the same time. It's being answered in a fragmented way. Separate and we're having to as the public Follow and keep going back to this report and that report and this meeting in this meeting instead of being it Consolidated all at once so I guess my question which may be answered at the next board meeting, but I'm gonna say it anyway is you know after the latest budget update and from the you know in the 45-day revision and Do we still need to find the full $30 million in savings, or has that number changed significantly? And what does that amount already include, the full cost of our current labor contracts that we're expecting to negotiate? So the three bargaining units that we're expecting, how does that fit into the picture, and are we strategizing for that over time? There has to be some estimates that we're looking at for each one of them, and we should have a scenario ABC to address that. with ranges of some sort to understand what our worst case scenarios are. And, um, the answer that I keep hearing is basically like, well, we don't have the numbers yet, so therefore we can't give you an answer. And it's an unknown until we get to it. And as of right now, we are doing much better than we were, but it's still not considering what's literally right ahead of us in like a month or two as we go into these bargaining negotiations. So, thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. Carol Dalton.

So I would like to encourage anyone who has any questions about the special education budget to come to our meeting, the CAC meeting, online Monday, September 14th. There'll be a presentation that's been worked on by Jen Blake and also been reviewed by a number of us in leadership with additional questions. I can tell you that some of the questions that were ASKED TONIGHT SUCH AS ABOUT THE SPECIAL ED INCREASES IN COSTS ARE ADDRESSED. I KNOW IT'S STILL IN DRAFT SO I CAN TELL YOU THAT THERE IS A SLIDE THAT ADDRESSES THAT SPECIFICALLY BUT I WOULD NOT WANT TO PUT THE NUMBERS OUT BEFORE JEN HAS FINALIZED THOSE. So I also share Director Berry's concern that the reduction in the restricted spending due to services not rendered is a concern. And what I'm hoping is that as the meetings go by that the board can dialogue with PSAC, with stakeholder groups with the academic departments as to what are the most important expenses in supporting student learning. And that might mean that instead of having 17 different agencies that contract for literacy, you retain the ones that are doing the best, most impactful work. I'm also looking forward to seeing the fiscal stabilization plan at the next board meeting and looking at how far that plan will get us in terms of closing the gap. But also, if further cuts are needed, we keep hearing first interim, first interim. The public does not want to wait that long. to hear what the board and superintendent are thinking about because in past years, the past decade that I've been looking at this, what I see every January, February is a lot of frustration and decisions that are made too quickly. The district should always be looking to run the best services in the most efficient way and I hope you will start that maybe not next meeting, but certainly the meeting after. Thank you.

Thank you. Jack Nelson?

Yeah, that last comment is appropriate. I would listen to Carol. I worked with her in San Leandro, and she's fantastic. And Mike, I appreciate everything that you brought up tonight. Thank you. Looking ahead to 2627, there are, my stuff is small time, but the tech principal told me that he needed $5,000. Well, I got him $3,200 coming in, but it's going to come to you, Superintendent Sadler. So can I trust that you're going to get that and take care of that? And then McClymonds is getting $6,000. because they've got some needs and literacy and other things. And we're gonna, Mrs. Saada and I and Coach Tapscott are gonna meet with Kevin Taylor next week. So can I trust that you're gonna do this? Because I'm not sure I trust many of the other people.

I received your email, Jack, and I will take care of it.

You as a board are getting killed on social media. all over this nation. There's video of Mike Hutchinson speaking to the budgetary issues and his credibility is being embraced. And you are perceived as dysfunctional body of board members. I don't know what you do to correct that, but I observed Mr. Hutchinson many years before he came on the board and his capacity to understand things that I don't understand fiscally. I respect. But I also see whenever Mr. Hutchinson speaks, there's people in the community, it doesn't matter what he says. It doesn't matter what he says, they're going to disapprove. Because it's a personal thing about him and the way he does things. But there's no denying that many issues that he brings up have credibility. And then when he speaks, none of you speak to anything that he says except in a combatic way. You don't factually challenge anything that he says. So you're not looking good at all. And the president is reading something about we're being responsible, we have integrity, we've been informed. We have transparency. I don't see that. And it's not personal with me. And so I cannot understand how you have in this document deficits with adult education, child development fund, cafeteria fund, i don't know what this is the cock-frock fund uh... developers fees special reserve capital self insurance fine and nobody except i think you brought it up right on who brought it up how we're going to deal with these deficiencies in pain and it wasn't explained clearly how it's going to be done but y'all got it social media is a big deal and you are you are perceived as a dysfunctional board on social media. And what you're going to do to correct that, because this empty room, no matter how much you support from the people that are here, you are being mislabeled, and I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, as not being capable. Mr. Hutchinson is very challenging, and you got to accept that. He is going to be challenging. But the bottom line is the information he's saying, the facts of what he's saying, can anybody disprove what he's saying?

Are there any more public speakers in person?

Yes, Madam President. Sheila Haynes followed by Jonathan Mates Mutchin. I see Sheila Haynes online. I'll allow them to speak.

Okay. all right can you hear me yes we can hear you thank you so I asked the district to consider our students with disabilities and those who have been learning online, getting the bare minimum of support. There just has to be in-person opportunities to help for these students. As the years has gone by, the needs gets more and more critical. And it's been almost two years since my resolution has been introduced. And since then, over a million has been cut in services through a block grant and through staffing. We're not even able to get services through the IEP. And through my resolution, it asks for online students to be able to receive this education. Thankfully, I'm a master keyboardist and I teach my child at home, but I need more help. I'm the only support, and all students should be able to have consistency through the arts. I was happy to hear the mentioning of Dr. Frutos, but I was wondering why he wasn't the one to present. The district really spent a lot of money paying HYA to assist with these deficits. So I just hope that now that the closing of the books has been done, we'll get answers about carryover funding. I'm happy that the student board and ACC has asked that Measure N and H funding be returned. I hope that all sources of funding start being used in ways that goes back to the needs of our students, and I'm also hoping that the money Coach Nelson spoke of will be returned back. The time is ticking. It's been six years learning online, and the arts is an education that all students can benefit from. A definite pathway definitely for our students with disabilities to gain other skills through the consistency. Consistency is really key. We keep hearing about all of the positive results achieved through music and arts programs, the benefits of restorative practices through this education, but it's no cost to mandate respect. So I ask you to please think about the safety and future of our youth mindset. The funding definitely allows for all students to be able to receive this education. And while there are so many other funding sources that the district can take from, the hope is that fully funding the arts will be a real thing and urgently, because we really need to be able to trust that the district is using funds in the way that they should be using them. And it's hard to know when students like mine don't get the services they're entitled to, but there has to be a help on the way and urgently. And I ask for that help. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other public speakers?

Yes, Jonathan Mates-Mutchen. I will allow them to speak on Zoom.

Thanks.

Hi, Board. Jonathan Mates-Mutchen. Thank you for taking my comment. I must say I don't have a very well thought out comment for this situation. And I've been thinking a lot about the budget and I reviewed the numbers over the past couple of days. kind of like Director Hutchinson. And what I'm feeling is that the district has a PR problem because if I am still completely confused on how a $90 million deficit turns into $170 million surplus, in 25, 26 than other people are too. And I think what I'm looking for from OUSD is some engagement. And what I keep on finding is that there are, the actual information seems to be hidden from OUSD. from the public in a way that it was referenced about the resolution that the board or the direction that the board gave to the superintendent, but we never saw a plan. We never saw a real plan about how this is going to work. And if you don't understand why the public doesn't have faith or trust that this is actually gonna work out because there are larger contracts to pay teachers, which I think teachers should be paid more money. And just for my last couple of seconds, I do wanna commend Mr. Christmas and the whole budget and finance team, because I know they're working really hard to try to make this work, but they need help. and and the and the district and the board i don't think you're providing help to these people thank you thank you does that conclude uh public comments uh mr rake star can we have a roll call on the vote please

On the motion to adopt the resolution regarding the annual statement of receipts and expenditures, commonly known as closing of the books, student directors are absent. Director Lara?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? No. Director Berry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Abstain. Vice President Batchelor?

Yes.

And President Brohard?

Yes.

Motion's adopted.

Next item on the agenda is item Q2, which is the 26-1976 Education Protection Account Expenditure Summary, fiscal year 2026-27. Is there a motion to approve or to adopt Q2? I'll second it. Are there board comments? I mean, I'm sorry, are there public comments on this first?

Yes, that's Asada Olagbala and Jack Nelson.

So the, The purpose of this is to identify how fiscal 26-27 education protective funds will be spent. It cannot be spent on salaries or benefits of administrators or any other administrative costs. Financial compliance audits verify with EPA funds were properly divested and expended. What this is going to show is that the estimated cost for EPA is going to be over $57 million. It is based on average daily attendance. Let me see if I got this right. I'm still kind of messed up from last thing, you guys. It's just very frustrating. The majority of this money, all of this money is going to be spent on salaries for teachers and employee benefits. These monies can be spent on educational programs and daily school site needs. So the conversation needs to be had. Are we doing what needs to be done by spending all of this money on salaries and not spending any of this money on educational programs and daily school site needs. And that's the discussion you should be having if this is the way you want to go and not spend any money on our students.

Are there any other board comments? Oh, we have public comments, sorry.

All public commenters for this item have been called.

Thank you. Are there any board comments? Director Hutchinson.

yes thank you um you know this is just an another item that kind of highlights the problems that we're having now uh as a district and that's putting it kind of lightly this is one of all of these items like the one before should have been brought to the budget and finance committee meeting last week That's supposed to be the time where there's a deeper opportunity for discussion with the community and to bring forward all of the documents and things get put forward with a recommendation so then we can have a more streamlined meeting here and the questions then can be answered in committee long before here. That didn't happen. only saw these items 72 hours before this meeting we don't even have a draft agenda and like for tonight there's an item on the agenda that mentions over 50 million dollars in this fund and it's just a motion is made no explanation of for what this is no work to make sure the community understand no work to make sure the board understands but it just gets put forward it'll be voted on and this is just a huge breakdown in all of the process You know, we as a board only really have two jobs, manage the money and hire and fire a superintendent. Pretty wild where the biggest failures are for this board. And so again, this isn't how things are supposed to work. I cannot vote for an item involving fiscal year 26-27 when I still haven't even been shown the budget for 26-27, even asking at every meeting, even having multiple messages from the superintendent telling me that she would be sending it to me, that I'd have access. And again, Mr. Christmas has an interesting view on what's happened in the past. but i've been here at almost every meeting for fifteen years and every meeting involving the budget and the finances and we've never seen anything like this never seen anything like this and just lastly for the community we need to understand how the budget works in a larger sense we have a fiscal year july first to june thirtieth so the closing of the books last item closes that last fiscal year there's no more projections are no more unknowns We know from budget adoption to closing of the books what happened. And when we have questions every step of the way, the second interim, the third interim, closing of the books, the 45-day revision then on to this year, it makes it impossible to trust what's going on when all there are are words and thoughts. when all there are are words and there's no real documents to back it up. So people can talk about shifting all they want. People can claim how great this is and they've turned a corner. this is not true it's not based on reality and we see the real outcome of firing the superintendent forcing out the chief business officer not having a chief of staff spending a million dollars on outside consultants and not even the people in charge presenting the information to us thank you are there any other board comments director barry

yes when i saw that there wasn't a presentation for this item i did think that there would be some um at least some introduction of the item which i am hoping for i know that there are there's some background and context in the memo and in the whereas clauses but it would be helpful if someone walked us through that and i'm also curious about the if there's a statutory requirement for us to take this up right now versus on some other date, or whether there's a specific value to staff or the board to take this up tonight.

Mr. Christmas, do you want to come up and explain that? I know you are the person here.

Good evening, Troy Christmas. This is definitely not my area of expertise, but when something's on the agenda, I sort of do my background. And so if you'll remember, the EPA was passed as additional funding that came in as general funding. It wasn't specifically designated for this, that, or the other. But as a part of that legislation, we have to account for where we're intending to spend it. And we have to do that annually. And so, for example, there was a speaker that mentioned we're spending it on teachers. But we could spend it on other things. But this is a part of our general unrestricted resources. And so we're designating where we're spending it. but we'd just designate a different unrestricted resource for that purpose if we didn't designate this one. The key point is the legislation requires us to report on what we're doing with the money, and that was just part of the legislation. To answer your question, is today special? I don't know the answer to that question.

And the reason why I ask that question is because we are implementing fiscal stabilization strategies. And I'm wondering what the relationship is between how we choose how we're choosing to sort of like use this resource versus other things.

And sure, just like the rest of our budget, we're making up. projection about how we're going to spend money in twenty six twenty seven and when we get to the closing of the books for twenty six twenty seven it won't look exactly the same as when we started and so that's known by saying that you are intending to use the money in this way you're not saying we're locked into this dollar amount in this way

I do since it's come up a number of times about the budget and finance committee being canceled I do apologize I had a fever that night and thought maybe the rest of my colleagues did not want to get the same cold that I had so that was why I was not there but otherwise I do attend every meeting I want to talk for a minute about using the money for teachers versus programs and I think one of the things that I can speak as as a retired teacher is that It's the teachers who do the programs. And I think that, again, that's true with our early literacy. It is the early literacy instructors who actually provide those services to our students. I think that I'm a believer that I think it is the people and the relationships that matter the most to our students. So as I read this, going into the, excuse me, the money going into our teacher salaries, again, and benefits, right? That again, I feel that our employees are the most important resource to our students. So that was my reason for supporting this. If there are no other comments, can we have a roll call and vote, please?

Yes, on the roll call to adopt the resolution as stated, student directors are absent. Director Lauder?

Yes.

Director Hutchinson? No. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Berry?

Abstain.

Director Williams. Yes, sir. Vice President Batchelor. Yes. And President Brohard. Yes. Motion's adopted.

Okay. Now the next item on the agenda is item Q3, 26-1977, temporary borrowing between district funds, fiscal year 2026-27. Is there a motion to adopt?

Motion to adopt item Q3.

I'll second that.

I do have a presentation for 5 minutes I don't know miss guard or is there a presentation on this item. We have public comment.

Yes, madam president, we have to sign all of Bala and Jack Nelson.

If you would approach the dice miss a sign.

Okay, this says that we have temporary borrowing because we have a cash shortage in some funds because of the timing of revenue receipts during a fiscal year does not always align with the timing of expenditures. Some accounts hold excess cash. That's what y'all are saying. The education code allows for transfer of funds temporarily for payment of obligations. This allows for not borrowing. For 26-27 period of temporary insufficient cash and the adult education fund, the child development fund, and the special revenue fund, the district must incur and pay costs before submitting claims for reimbursement. the amount transferred must be repaid within the same fiscal year into the account you took it from, or in the following fiscal year if the transfer occurs within the fiscal 120-year calendar date of the fiscal year. Okay. All right, so are y'all going to have a discussion about this, or are we just going to rubber stamp? Okay, because how do you know when you have excess amount of money in an account that something might come up where you need that money. At the point you look at the account, the money is there. But how can you guarantee that some situation will require that you need those funds to deal with the area it's intended for, but you've taken it away so those funds no longer are available? that's a possibility or somebody's going to tell me all that not a possibility that it can happen you have excess funds but you know that those funds will never be required to be used for the purpose they are intended for is that that's not mine uh... no

Okay, are there board comments? Director Berry?

Hi, I asked this question I think last year, either in a two by two or I can't remember when. And I did feel like you answered the question the last time I raised it, but just in case anything has shifted, particularly because of this particular fiscal picture for 26-27, just wondering what, indicators we're tracking that might signal the need to do this, and how we're tracking that, and whether, and what board communication we can expect when you notice those indicators, and then what sort of criteria you're considering to trigger the borrowing. Okay, you had a few in there, so let me. Sorry.

No, it's okay.

Can you start with the first question? The first question is about the indicators you're tracking that might signal the need for this.

We're watching the, it's the cash, so we're looking at what cash we have and in their balances and in all of our funds. And so we will And we could bring it to budget and finance, maybe how we can be more proactive in bringing to the board. We do show it in our first interim. We go through our cash, but perhaps it's something that we can bring and talk about in budget and finance.

Yeah, and I'm imagining, this is just context for the question, that it's not something where you'll be like, oh, next month we're not going to meet payroll. I imagine that it's something that you'll notice. It's inter-fund borrowing. Okay. And then the second part of that question was about the criteria that you're using to decide what fund you're going to pull from.

So we're taking what fund we're going to take from? It's wherever we need just the funds that we named and then where we need. if we need funding in those funds.

Right, so that explains where you might be allocating funds, but say for instance, if on this memo there's a set of funds that you might pull from, right? Is there a threshold? Sorry, we're pulling from unrestricted?

Unrestricted, anywhere in unrestricted.

I have a follow-up question to that, and that is, is there a time frame for that account repaying the general fund?

We turn it around quickly, so as soon as we, you know, it's quick.

And then the cash flow shortage could be based on when the money was disbursed from the state or from other grants?

It's in our fund.

Thank you. Are there any other board questions? Director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. After the conversation for the unaudited actuals and the president's statement about how everything is great, everything is great, Now we have an item coming before us that has no numbers on it at all. Asking for a blanket approval to transfer money out of the general fund, we're told out of the unrestricted in the general fund, to cover these other items. Now for the cash flow analysis, it was presented at least for this year at budget adoption. So if this was the case, it should have been known before the budget was even adopted. And actually, at budget adoption, you only had one year of cash flow analysis. We still haven't seen what the cash flow analysis is for 27-28. But again, a blanket authority, and the answer that you just gave is it'll be paid back quickly. I'm sorry, that's not good enough. A blanket approval to take money from the general fund to unrestricted. The same unrestricted general fund that has a $30 million plug in it currently that represents we need to make $30 million in cuts. That hasn't been made. And now you want to take more money from there, an unidentified amount of money from there, with no numbers attached to it at all. And the reason you have to come ask the board is because we actually have fiduciary responsibility. So again, where is a document showing how much is needed, showing the shortfall in those funds, showing when we anticipate receiving the funds to be able to restore those dollars, or anything that shows that we can afford this coming off a year where we burned through $100 million of our cash fund balance, now we're talking about using them to cover some costs that obviously weren't done the right way in the budget. And so I am not gonna give a blanket approval to transfer monies between the funds when we don't have a CBO, when Ms. Gar, you haven't even made the presentations tonight, and we still, I still don't have access to a copy of the budget. And so why are we doing transfers and asking me to vote on it when that hasn't even been shared?

Thank you for all that.

I'm going to take Ms. Assata's words to heart here and I'm going to question you on something, Director Hutchinson. That I believe in the past we have transferred funds. I believe that we have transferred them in the similar way under Lisa Grant Dawson and maybe under previous CBOs as well. that I understand that we, again, as things, as different departments came short, we did transfer that money. We need to talk about that in budget and finance under your leadership and under Director Lara's leadership. I think that this is a common practice and I just wanted to double check to make sure that this is a common practice among districts to do this, so.

Thank you. Well, thank you for, again, speaking in my time and trying to speak for me. So if it was a common practice in all's well, then you wouldn't need school board authorization in order to do it. And if we want to talk about what's happened in the past compared to now, that's actually the point that I've been trying to make. So if you're here going to say that the current financial team knows what they're doing much better than Lisa Grant Dawson did, or even capable of replicating what she did, That's pretty amazing that we hired and again Why are we being asked to give a blanket approval with no dollar amounts attached?

So I think this is a something that we can clarify which is important to clarify we're not talking about a an income statement we're talking about a cash flow statement that's for the accountants out there what we said before is there is a difference between how much we're going to spend over the course of the year and when the revenue comes in and when the spending goes out When you do a cash flow borrowing, you're saying this other fund is due this money this year. It hasn't been received yet because the rate at which it's received is different than the rate it's spent. It's not about whether they're going to get the money or how much money it's going to be.

Respectfully, I don't believe anything anymore if there's not a document to show it. So you didn't include a document that shows any dollar amounts or any timeline. And for you to say words that are outside of the resolution in front of us is not anything that we can hold anyone to. So again, there is no document and this reads as a blanket approval with no timeline other than the 120 days required by law. So let me just be very clear. There's no document. So please show us what that is. Please show us how money has shifted between restricted and unrestricted. Please present any document to show it. But you can't just sit up here and say, no, actually, we're talking about income statements and just try to throw out these other arguments. That's fine. Give me a document. Show me anything. Show me anything. And this is a failure from your supervisors, Mr. Christmas, that they push you up here knowing that if a document exists, you all have it on your laptop. You all have the ability to email it to me right now. And the fact that you don't means I know that the document doesn't even exist because you're trying to slide through a blanket approval and the school board refuses to engage in our fiduciary duty.

So for those who are interested in the information. This is essentially the exact same resolution that we passed for over a decade, that this is temporary borrowing between funds for cash so that they don't have to go out and borrow externally. If you go back far enough, You'll see that our district borrowed externally when we needed to meet cash. We're able to borrow because, again, we're due the money. So it's not about whether we're due the money, it's the timing of the money. This allows us to borrow inside of our own house. We still have to pay interest, but we're paying interest at a much lower rate than if we were borrowing externally. And so this is not something new. This is not something that we have not done. There is nothing hidden. The documents were the same before, and if folks don't agree with that, that's fine. We're paying interest on an inter-fund transfer? Excuse me?

We're paying interest on an inter-fund transfer? We're paying interest to ourselves?

When you borrow, you pay interest.

But we're not borrowing, we're doing an inter-fund transfer.

If you look at what the document says, it's borrowing.

If there are no further comments, Mr. Rakeshaw, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

Yes, on the roll call to approve the Interfront Transfer Resolution as stated, known as item number 26, 1977. Student directors are absent. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Barry?

Yes.

Director Hutchinson? No. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Lara?

Yes.

Vice President Batchelor? Yes. And President Prohar? Yes. Motion's adopted.

The next item on the agenda is Q526-1769, Application for Variable Term Waiver, CBES. Oh, key for, okay, you're right. Moving along here. Q4, excuse me, 26-1978, the GAN limit, fiscal year is 2025-26, and estimated 2026-27. Is there a motion to adopt?

Motion to adopt item Q4.

Second.

Thank you. Public comments?

Yes, Madam President, Asada Olagbala.

Okay. She just waved off, she's, okay. Are there any board comments? Mr. Rickstar, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

On the roll call to approve the GAN limits, student directors are absent. Director Hutchinson? Absent. OK. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Barry?

Yes.

Director Latta?

Yes.

director thompson yes vice president bachelor yes and president brohard yes motions adopted thank you so now we're at uh q5 26-1769 which is the application of variable term waivers see best be clad and programs Any motion to approve this item? Motion to approve item Q5. Second. Oh, Director Thompson seconded it. Any public comment on this agenda item?

Yes, Vice President, Assata Oluwabala.

All right, Mrs. Assata, I see you waving. I got you. Board colleagues? Okay. Let's go ahead and take a roll call on this item.

student directors are absent director latter yes director williams yes sir director hutchinson he's absent director barry yes director thompson yes vice president bachelor yes and president brohard motions adopted

Thank you. Now I'd like to make a motion to take up items Q6, Q7, and Q8 all together and record the votes separately. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Public comment on Q6 through eight. And we'll do three minutes, so you can have one minute of each. Any public comment? uh yes vice president all three items asada olukwala so mrs sada we're doing q six seven and eight all together and you have three minutes i think that's going to be the only one i'm address okay um i want to remind you that proposition 40

is being opposed by the California Teachers Association, the California School Board Association, the Housing of California Association, the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Professional Firefighters, the Police Officers Resource Association, Both candidates for governor are opposing Proposition 40. California Medical Association, Primary Care Association, that's some of them, the organizations that are opposing Proposition 40. And can you explain why you are supporting it, particularly when the California Teachers Association, the California School Board Association is not supporting it? So if somebody can address, why are you supporting this when it appears that you got a whole lot of non-support for this particular item? And just briefly, the item that you're supporting, Proposition 3, the people who are opposing it are addressing already some of the highest income taxes are in California, and they say that the measure may create wealthy California's leaving the state, and it's opposed by the California Taxpayers Association.

Thank you. Board comments on these three resolutions? Okay. I'll just address Prop 40, which is the reason why I'm supporting it. I know of all those organizations that are opposing of it, but again, I believe that we do need to start taxing the folks that are the wealthiest Californians to invest in priorities like education and public services, even if it is just a one-time fund. I've been working a lot with community members that rely on Alameda Health Services in our county, and those about to be eliminated at the beginning of the year. 250 folks would have been fired. Eastmont Mall would have basically closed services for healthcare. And Highland Hospital would have been deeply impacted by it. These are all cuts because of HR1. which is legislation from the federal government. So we need to supplement the dollars for education and public services in order to keep our hospitals open, keep healthcare services in our community, and also reinvest in education. And so that's why I'm supporting Prop 40, that's why I've moved this resolution forward with Board President Brohard, because again, this is really important and we gotta make sure that the wealthiest of Californians can support the rest of us here in the state with these services. Any other board colleagues want to say anything? Yes, Director Berry.

I just want to say that I, because I engage with a number of the folks that you listed in the work, the poverty abolition work that I do at the state level, I'm familiar with a lot of the dissent. And I do believe that You know, a lot of it has been sufficiently addressed from the research that I have been able to engage with, namely the threat or the risk of us having a sharp decline in income tax revenue to the state and people fleeing the state of California. There has been a lot of evidence to demonstrate that that would not be the case. here in California and because of what Director, Vice President Batchelor just mentioned in terms of the need and the seriousness and the urgency of all of the turmoil that HR1 and other federal level policies have created for the state, it's really important for us to be creative about how we address the immediate impacts of that while also developing longer term solutions I think a lot of the feedback that I've received that this is not a strategic long-term solution and no one is arguing that it is that. What we're suggesting is that there's a real need and there's a resource that we can tap into it to address that need with very little impact on the most vulnerable who are suffering today.

Any other board colleagues? I see we're missing a few folks. Let's go ahead and take a vote on this item.

Okay, on the roll call to adopt concurrently Q6, 7, and 8, and record the vote separately. Student directors are absent. Director Williams? Abstain. Okay, Director Hutchinson? Absent. Director Berry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Director Lara?

Yes.

Vice President Batchelor?

Yes.

President Brohard?

Yes.

Motions adopted.

Thank you. Now moving to R minus R6 and R47. Is there a motion to approve consent items? Motion to approve.

Second.

First and a second. Public comment on these agenda items?

Yes, Vice President. This is Carol Delton and Asada Olopala.

Is Ms. Delton online? I know Ms. Asada is here in person.

Go ahead, Ms. Asada. I want to take a second to say I appreciate when y'all have individual questions. Thoughts and it doesn't look like everybody's rubber stamping anything. So yay, mr Williams and somebody else bit miss Barry today You've taken a different position and it doesn't appear that y'all are just rubber stamping so on items R1 R3 and R6 the funding for these items are from measure B J and Y and as I spoke in closed session comments I think you should return to having these items placed separately on the agenda for consideration. Item R10 is a personnel report, and there are eight items that are approving of administrative staff being hired, and you have made cuts to administrative staff, but you are bringing administrative staff back on board. And I hope you have reviewed that, and that fits into where the money's coming from for these salaries for administrative individuals. R22, Rugsdale, 40 hours a week mental health support for students. Rugsdale gets a lot of support, continue to support them, but other schools need to get that amount of support, and particularly, you know I'm gonna say McClymonds. R46 is Measure AA. And within that funding you're looking at anti-bias education for educators and leaders for early childhood. You have many agenda items that come up on a regular basis that deal with anti-bias issues. And when are we going to thoroughly look at the anti-bias issues brought up by your own administrator on social media? And I think, yes, this one, R11 is separate, right? Madam Chief, I'll speak to that. Thank you. That is separate item. Thank you.

All right, Board of Colleagues, any comments on? Oh, I apologize. Carol Delton online.

Yes, she is. I will allow her to speak.

Thank you for calling on me. I wanted to say overall, looking at the consent report, there are quite a number of contracts where the same provider providing the same service across a number of schools has now been consolidated into one contract for the year. And I think that's great. I noticed there were several, I believe, in the 40s for Dimensions Dance. which are a separate contract for each of five schools. So I'm hoping that you can continue along the line of having fewer contracts to approve and having the terms be equal across the district. I would like to mention an issue that has come up in the Outsourcing Task Force And that is to make sure that when the board has approved the budget, be it approving the June budget, be it approving the first interim, that any contract that comes before you is within the not to exceed that has been previously approved by the board. Thank you.

Thank you. Board colleagues, any comments on our consent? Director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. I really agree with the last comment. It's something I've been saying for a long time, that we have no fiscal impact on any of the items in the consent report. We now know, especially from the tone of the current conversation that we've heard over the last year, that most of these items in the consent report make up the amount that we've been overspending over our adopted budget. We just keep adding on top and adding on top. We know that's the case. We saw it in June when, for a minute, nothing was going to be passed because there was no fiscal impacts for anything. Who's in the district to do a fiscal impact analysis now? We haven't seen the consultants we're paying. They were supposed to be doing that. Ms. Garr doesn't make presentations and seems very confrontational whenever I ask questions. Superintendent hasn't answered any of my questions or emails in months. And so this has just been the pattern that we continue to pile on and pile on and pile on. And just lastly, as I referenced before, earlier tonight Ms. Garr finally sent me What she said was an accounting for Assembly Bill 1840, which is something that I know doesn't exist anymore. And the money we received for it, the last money we received for it, I'm pretty sure was 2022, maybe 2023. But yet that funding source keeps popping up as the source to pay for things. And it's because there is no money in the general fund. because we've burned through everything and so people are scrambling to find another source like what we heard tonight from miss haynes about prop 28 in our art spending like we heard from the student director today about measure n and measure h you can also include measure g1 and you can also include the charter office four restricted funds that there is documentation and real anger in multiple places because they've been raided and those dollars have been swept up Listening to the presentations, I assume when we hear about the shifts, that's what it means. And this is why when we have a closing of the books where $50 million in expenditures just disappeared. So now it looks like we only overspent by roughly 15 million last year instead of the 65 million we actually did. It's a problem. When we have a budget with a $30 million plug in it that says minus 30 million in the line by line budget, Because we haven't made those cuts. There is no fiscal solvency plan. And we just heard tonight there was just approval for a blanket vote for interfund transfers. Inter-fund transfers out of the general fund to cover more costs. Where's an accounting for anything? Where is any sort of fiscal management or financial responsibility? And it's never been like this before, but this is what happens when you operate without a CBO, no chief of staff, and the senior staff in charge are not qualified to do this work. Thank you.

Director Thompson? Director Lata? Director Williams? Dr. Berry. So I'd like to lift up a couple of different contracts. So we are doing some really strong facilities work, and that is reflected in our R2, R3, and R5, which is the new construction at Garfield, providing them with more analysis and geotechnical consulting. At Markham, I know I've heard many, many things about the bathrooms, so we're getting those bathrooms fixed, which is very exciting. and then there's a couple of school services that i'm also excited about so r22 which is ebac for rudsdale then we have destiny arts that's providing dance programming and art programming for lockwood steam we also have R-19, which is Dimensions Dance Theater, which is providing support for Burkhalter. R-43, which is Greenleaf, providing bilingual mental health providers for our Greenleaf families and students. And then R-40, which is the Early Childhood Mental Health and i think this is really important as we have begun to expand our transitional kindergarten supporting those earliest learners with their mental health is essential and lastly i would like to quickly just uplift the professional development of early for our early educators again as we are supporting more more of our early educator early learners we also need to provide the support for those early educators so r29 and r46 which are again early childhood professional learning by first five measure aa funds which is also great to be in partnership with them so just wanted to highlight those uh president burhard anything okay um yeah uh superintendent i just wanted to highlight um r11 which is the mou between smith college in massachusetts

It's the top school for school social workers. And the way that program works, I've had a chance to visit the program. participants in past years but the way it works is that their practicum is during the school year that they do all their coursework in the summer so we are the beneficiary of several social workers who are assisting us at several of our sites so i just wanted to highlight it's a real clue for us to maintain that program and get the support without having to pay funds

all right let's go ahead and take a roll call on the vote on the consent yes on the motion to adopt the general consent report minus are not including items r dot dash six and r dot dash forty seven student directors are absent director lotta yes director williams yes sir director hudgenson abstain director barry yes

director thompson yes vice president bachelor yes and president brohard yes motions adopted wonderful now we are at r6 which is one that i pulled is there a motion to approve r6 i want a motion to approve r6 Second second director very wonderful. So, yes, I believe the mover was vice president bachelor with the approve the motion to approve was director Thompson and director Barry.

Okay.

6, so this is 1 of the most important consent items around facilities and thermal comfort. That I found on our agenda, but there is. what looks like a $2.034 million reduction in ventilation scope over 78 school sites in OUSD. Now again, this is an important piece of the work that we've been doing, so can you talk a little bit about what the work was that was originally planned for, what was actually completed, and which sites may have lost work, or where did we see the $2 million in reductions?

Thank You Preston Thomas chief systems and services officer What this is was a very difficult memo even to write to try to articulate something that's very complex So I'll try right now essentially The district partnered with Sizerco to apply to state funds for the Cal-SHAPE program. That was largely built on estimates on what it typically costs for a district to move forward on those items at the 78 schools. The two most notable issues there are the ventilation and the CO2 sensors across all of our schools. All of the proposed work was completed. it came in under the estimated cost that we projected initially that it would be and so now we're coming back to you to reduce the contract with sizerco by about two million dollars but the scope was completed across so all of our classrooms now have co2 sensors and temperature sensors that we're reading that dashboard should be up by the end of this month so that you could check temperatures across schools So all the work has been completed. It just came in under the estimated cost when we initially brought forward the cow shape item for the board. And so 1 of the important things about why it was critical for the district to move forward for this. going through both the ventilation and the CO2 sensors allows us to qualify for future rounds of funding for if Cal-SHAPE program continues at the state level. And so that's what you're seeing here tonight and why there's the reduction of about $2 million in the contract.

Thank you so much. Board colleagues, any questions? Okay, oh, Director Hutchinson.

Yeah, just a question to clarify. If we authorized a contract with an up to amount, why are we doing this now just to signify that it came in under what was bid? And the other question is, if this is something that requires explanation or that needed to be highlighted, why was it buried in the consent report? That's more of a question for President Brohard, but I don't understand why we're doing this now and why this isn't just a quick announcement that thankfully things came in $2 million under.

I'm happy to answer that, Director Hutchinson. One variable about the way that the Cal-SHAPE program works is you get 25% up front, then you get 50% at the midpoint in the project, and we're about to close out the project and need to submit it to the state. And so this is the dollar amount of the contract that we need to submit to the state for the reimbursement of the full Cal-SHAPE program. And so that's the timing of it. The project will sunset in this fall, and so these are the final documents that we need to submit to the state. So that's why we're coming back with this revision to the contract.

So if that's the case, then I would have liked to see this as a standalone item so we could pass a resolution or pass a business item saying just that, again, instead of burying it in the consent report. And this is something that if it came to the facilities committee first, they could have just passed it forward, had an announcement, and we'd do this separately. But including this in the consent report, especially since we don't have a dedicated one anymore for our facilities bond, creates a lot of confusion and and honestly Our priorities are misplaced putting all of this time into this when there's other items that are still to be determined That should be discussed on a deeper level Thank you any other comments Public comment on this agenda item As I said before

you have a fiduciary responsibility related to local bonds or partial taxes. And that means your key responsibility is to determine and verify legal compliance, to review oversight reports, to maintain fiscal transparency, and to prioritize districts' stability. You can't do that by throwing these measure B, J, Y, items into the consent report. And then at some point you may pull an item, not required to address it, to make sure that these items are being responsibly handling of partial tax funding. Also, I don't understand how the Measure B, J, and Y Committee gets to weigh in on certain fundings and not all fun so i don't know when they got to meet again but the agenda most of the stuff you are proving they have not considered have not considered and you have proven it and i don't know if that's complying with the mandatory obligation that a committee reviews the spending of measured bj and why funds This idea that on a whim, a board member might pull an item related to a measure, B, J, and Y, instead of mandatorily putting it on the agenda for full consideration before voting on that measure. When you get ready to go to the board voters, I'm going to say no. Don't vote because they don't take the responsibility of handling our money correctly.

All right. Let's take a vote on this item.

On the motion to approve R.6, student directors are absent. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Hutchinson? Abstain. Director Berry?

Yes.

Director Ladder? Yes. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Did you say abstain? I said yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. So yes. All right. Vice president bachelor. Yes. And president bro hard. Yes. Motions adopted.

Okay. Now we go back to our, our 47. Is there a motion to approve our 47? So moved second director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. I don't know where this came from or why we're doing this. This is a contract for up to $114,000, paying an individual $300 an hour to, let's see, goals of engagement, elevate positive stories, strengthen public trust, identify and mitigate reputational risks before they escalate, support district leadership with executive communication, position Oakland Unified as a leader, increase earned, made opportunities, narrative development, and I could go on. I don't understand why we're hiring this now, where this money comes from. It says from AB 1840, but like I stated earlier, we haven't received money from there for years. why are we hiring outside consultants again to do the job that we have people already in-house or hiring a staff person to do it you know we lost our cbo we hire consultants we don't have a chief of staff now it looks like we're replacing them with that i've heard that miss gar has been put in charge of the communications department and now there's this contract that drops out of nowhere A board that says we're working on eliminating outside contracts and consultants and a task force. But here's this, paying somebody for some reason $300 an hour up to $114,000. So where does this come from? This is obviously being added on top of what is already the adopted budget. And it really sets off alarm, Superintendent Sadler, when you don't have a CBO, you don't have a chief of staff, but you're hiring consultants who are not district employees, who are supposed to worry about and work on people's reputations. I assume that would be yours. This is a very inappropriate spending item, especially given our current finances. So with no explanation for this to be buried in the consent report, I find very troubling. It goes against everything this board has said they've been working on. And again, is somebody gonna explain why we're hiring somebody where one of the goals that's listed is reputations and creating narratives? What is this position? And why is it necessary now?

Superintendent?

I regard to speak to it, and I have some comments.

Thank you for yes, I am working with the communications department now and We do want to engage with this Person to support our work in communications. There's a lot to do right now. We are going into a year with our final third year of our LCAP we have to do some communications around our budget. And we did reduce down our communications department down to one and a half FTE. And so as we look into how we prioritize in the coming year, we can look back at that, but we need some support in our communications right now.

Okay, so if I heard that correctly, we eliminated staffing in that department, and now we're hiring an outside consultant at $300 an hour instead? Did I hear that correctly?

If you heard me correctly, yes. We are needing support in communications, and Director Hutchinson, I think that you probably would understand why, considering that you're putting out a lot about our district that is in a negative light uh... a lot and so we have to work on how we're communicating and get the real truth out to our community about how we're doing it's really important that we do that and so we're working on that well i'm glad you say that i'm glad you say that it's because of me wait excuse me she just addressed that to me directly you want to say this is because of me that's fine so instead of hiring an outside consultant instead of

Instead of hiring another staff person inside the district, we're going to hire outside consultants instead.

All right, we are now back from our recess. Can we take a roll call to establish quorum?

On the attendance roll call to establish quorum, student directors are absent. Director Lara?

Present.

Director Williams? Here, sir. Director Hutchinson? Absent. Director Barry?

Yes.

Are you here okay director Thompson. President okay, vice president that. By the back here and president for. Yes.

Superintendent, I believe you wanted to say a few words about this contract. Okay. So we have a motion and a second on R-47. Superintendent is passing. And then we have public comment. Thank you. Public comment on this agenda item.

My sister just called and she said, when you coming home? I said, soon. Believe me. Anyway, I don't understand strategic communication and reputation management. But I kind of understand now we're trying to address some things that need to be corrected in terms of public relations and board credibility. So I do understand. And you do need this. You do need this. So I hope you approve it. And... I hope we all can become better people, myself included. That's all I can say.

Thank you, Mrs. Sato, that was lovely. Any other public comment?

Yes, Carol Delton. Wonderful.

Thank you for calling on me. I wanted to address, I will always have a concern when a contract compensates someone at this very high level that could be a staff position. At the same time, I hope that, I understand that this is a perceived immediate need and I certainly hope that this contract won't be coming back to the board in the future and that rather this person will train existing staff and help the district assess what type of staff positions are needed to respond adequately in the media. I would just like to say I've communicated this with superintendent and assistant superintendent at times that even the most positive articles that are printed about OUSD often say something like we asked for comment and there was no response. You can give a response even if it is to say Thank you for your inquiry. We will have an appropriate department get back to you with a free business date. You can have a response. Thank you for your inquiry. Please look at the published agenda for such and such date that includes a report on the matter that you are addressing. So you don't have to necessarily recreate a lot of documents, but you can respond. And as somebody who works all the time in communication issues, I will say that not responding is probably the worst thing that you can do for a relationship with someone. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's go ahead and take a vote on this item.

Okay, on the adoption of R-dot-47, student directors are absent. Director Lara? Yes. Director Williams? Abstain. Director Hutchinson? Director Berry?

No.

Director Thompson? Yes. Vice President Batchelor? Yes. And President Brohard? Yes. Motion's adopted.

Thank you. Moving on to R1-126-1742, which is services agreement for 2627 for soccer without borders at Redsdale Continuation High School. I will go ahead and motion to recusal.

Yes, I am recusing myself because I am friends with a member of their board of directors.

Wonderful. I will go ahead and motion to approve this item that comes I think it right. Any public comment on this agenda item.

The side of the ball.

And I loved you Bell and you. And my team is I think it's called Reality Madrid. Something like that.

That was good. But Jude was good. Jude is good.

Jude was good. And was the guy from France? I like him too. Superintendent, I have to leave. I wanted to hear your report, but I'm drained. I'm drained. And I just want to say this. I'm glad that any school will get an opportunity to be exposed to soccer, but the vast majority of students who are at... Rugsdale are living independently without parents and they rely heavily on part-time and full-time work shifts. And so I just wonder how many of our students are gonna be able to stay after school if that's the intent. And is it gonna be an investment where we're gonna get full participation based on this demographic has so many tremendous responsibilities are they gonna be available to participate at any high level or any level of substance?

Board comments? Director Hutchinson?

Yes, I just wanna say I'm glad that at least one director understands how to recuse themselves from an item, thank you.

Director Thompson, Williams, Berry? I also really appreciate the exposure to soccer programs, and I will also like to uplift that Rudsdale has now evening classes, I believe, for our students, excuse me, for our students that are working during the day and need to attend school in the evening. So I have similar questions to Ms. Assata because of that different schedule, but I hope that we could have some of these, excuse me, We have folks that are speaking Thank you. So I hope that we can see how students are interacting with these programs, especially when we have alternative programs like Redsdale. Board President, would you like to say anything about R1?

No, I do agree. I think that was a good question, Ms. Assata. And I am also a new soccer fan. The World Cup kind of did it for me. And I'm going to go home and watch Ted Lasso tonight, so. Yes, it's on on Wednesdays.

All right. So with that, let's go ahead and take a vote on this item.

Yes. On the roll call, student directors are absent. Director Lauder is recused for the reasons stated. Director Williams. Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson. Abstain. Director Berry.

Yes.

Director Thompson. Yes. Vice President Batchelor. Yes. President Brohard. Yes. Motion is adopted.

Moving on to the superintendent's report.

Yes, thank you, Vice President Batchelor. I'm going to start with their highlights. um that we normally that i review but i want to go right into the goal setting for this year i'm going to ask our chief academic officer dr aguilera to please come forward this is something that we worked on with our leaders this summer we're acknowledging what our goals were last year our role for This year and our priorities, so I would like to to give most of my time to her to be able to review this with you.

Good evening board of directors. I'm Sandra Aguilera the chief academic officer for our district and I was asked to put together the Goals for our school year, so we have been focusing on similar goal areas They are a cascade from the LCAP and the strategic plan

It's okay. We were just commenting on the hard copies had nothing on the front. And so it's a little troubling that this is how the superintendent's report looks here in the hard copy. That's why we were talking.

okay so i'll take us through the goals for this upcoming year when you think about the massive documents that we produce in terms of the lcap and the former strategic plan they are a very big goal areas for schools to digest and so in order for it to be more comprehensible and a little bit more focused, we do direct our schools to look at fewer goal areas that we are going to hold them accountable for throughout the school year. So we don't only just state that these are the goal areas, We also work with principals on a regular basis to progress monitor the data that would then inform if we're going to reach these intended goals or not. So when we look at attendance, it was a major area. We have been setting a goal of elementary schools and our ECEs our early childhood education centers of reaching the goal of 96% overall, and then for our secondary schools to reach 94% positive attendance overall. And if schools are REACHING THOSE GOALS, THAT DOES HAVE A HUGE IMPACT NOT ONLY ON THE ACADEMIC PROGRAM BUT OF COURSE OUR FINANCIAL STATUS. SO WE FROM THERE ALSO BREAK DOWN FOR SCHOOL SITES. YOU SHOULD AT LEAST EVERY SCHOOL YEAR INCREASE BY 1%. That is what we ask for our school sites to go after every year. No matter where you're at, if the 96 or 94 seems unreachable, you can still go after 1% every school year. And so we did set that as a district-wide goal, and you can just see the progress that we've made over time. We often pick up data after COVID. It's a huge marker. because we did have a lot of high rates of absenteeism and chronic absenteeism, even in the years after COVID. So you can see that we did increase from last year. We did not hit 1%. We reached a half of a percent. And then for chronic absenteeism, you want to decrease the amount of students that are chronically absent. And so we were able to decrease by 1.3%. And for chronic absenteeism, we set the goal, the annual goal of reaching 3% decrease in chronic absenteeism. The few slides sort of in the middle will lift up the school sites that were able to reach these goals. That's what we highlight when we come back for the school year. And we will produce more communication around these positive outcomes. and also still lift up that we have more work to do in these areas. But I do think it's, you know, it is encouraging to celebrate our school sites. Oftentimes you'll walk into their offices and you can see their awards that they were provided as a result of their hard work. Just acknowledging that it really does take the whole in order for us to reach these outcomes that we're going after. So for suspensions, We have a particular focus for reducing suspensions for our African-American students and our students with disabilities. We set more aggressive goals. It's not only reducing suspension by 1% district-wide. It is also stated that we're going after 3% reduction for African-American students and then 1.5% for our students with disabilities. And this is where we talk about disproportionality of our suspensions because our African-American students are being suspended at much higher rates than our total district. And so that's why we're setting more aggressive goals than just the 1% district-wide. And so we are lifting up in the later slides the school sites that not only reached the 1%, but also reached the goal of reducing suspensions for african-american students and our students with disabilities so you can see that we've made progress overall but again not hitting the overall target of one percent uh... we were able to reduce by point four percent uh... and then point seven percent and then what is that point seven percent for students with disabilities and so still you know we have to use statistics when we set these goals uh... so oftentimes it's like why don't we go after reducing completely it's just not statistically possible to set that type of a goal because it's not realistic that you will reach that goal so we try to do the smarty goals which means that you're still trying to go after achievable goals because if you set them so that way it's impossible to reach them it will feel discouraging if you never reach those goals. So we're celebrating the small increments of positive results. And you can see over time we have been reducing the number of suspensions. Okay, so reclassification. We'll come back to the board with these data. We are seeing an increase in the number of students that are reclassified. A couple of things that you will see, and the ELMA office is really great about communicating this out, In this upcoming season of reclassification, the rules are changing for reclassification and the metrics are going to shift slightly. So we may see a false positive in these adjustments and then we will taper off because of the way that the cut points are created. And the results don't come out until October for reclassification, so we'll be able to update. But really when you look at this rate, this is the signal that I hope we're seeing the connection between language and literacy development. If we only focus on literacy development, We will not make a difference in the outcomes that we're producing. We have to link language and literacy as a goal area because many of our students are struggling with language and so of course that's impacting their literacy rates. So whenever we talk about literacy, I am reminding our team that we need to link language and literacy because you have to have both in order to produce different outcomes for our students. And so when you think about the cascade of what is needed to actually move language development, it is deeply embedded in the content knowledge of our teachers. And that is where we're focused, especially with the work with our literacy team and our ELMA team to couple the development of language and literacy strength in our teachers. When we go forward with IEPs, we have not only the goal of creating on-time IEPs, but we also want to do the re-evaluations on time. And then this isn't even getting to just the quality aspect of our IEPs. So we have been setting aggressive targets to increase the on-time evaluations of our students and ensuring that families are receiving on-time IEPs. And so you can see the results so far. We struggle the most at secondary, in high school especially, and we're having the best success rates at the progress monitoring for middle school. They've made the most growth. You'll see that in the school slides when we go through that, but I do really wanna lift up the practices that are happening in middle school, and that's what we're trying to replicate across our district because they have good systems for progress monitoring. And this is also, of course, coupled not only with the network team but the special education team as well. And oftentimes what's lifted up to us as a deterrent for on-time IEPs is the ability to schedule IEPs and then also schedule translation to be there so we have compliant IEPs as well. But we have been making progress in on-time completion we have not made progress in IEP re-evaluations. And so you'll see us start to shift and not only try to maintain our on-time completion rates, but then increase the re-evaluations that our case managers need to complete. In terms of our SBAC, lifting up that we as a district were leaders in the development of multiple measures as a statewide conversation, we said that it's not appropriate to only look at achievement as one measure. aspect is the state measure but what you're seeing uh... also in the sites are the different local indicators that we have lifted up to say don't only look at one assessment please look at these other areas as well our district should be really proud of being at the forefront of that conversation because we helped shape that policy and uh... really informed uh... how we would go about discussing a student achievement With that, SBAC is a number line metric, and the closer to zero you are is the best. So if you are able to reach zero and above, that means that you're at proficiency, and the further negative you are is not good, right? So just think of a number line, and when you see SBAC, We've managed to decrease to 49.7. So we still have about 50 points to go to reach proficiency. And for math, we are actually further behind when you look at our entire district. And what you're seeing here is about 68 points away from being proficient. One thing to keep in mind as well is that not all of our students are tested on the state exam. It's third through fifth grade. It is 7th and 8th grade, and it is 11th grade. And so keep in mind that's not all of our students. It is those slices of grade levels. So we do have the goal of ensuring that 98% of our students are tested. Otherwise, the states, they apply, in their words, sanctions. We have been in that situation in the past, and so there are certain steps you have to take to show that You are monitoring to get to 98%. We have been above 98% for the last couple of years, and we are going after a 15-point increase in ELA and a 20-point increase in math. That is supposed to be statistically possible, but you can see for our results we have not been able to get close to those outcomes. For I-Ready, we're also seeing progress in all areas. You'll start to see more movement in high school because I think many of you know we didn't start doing I-Ready assessing until last year completely, you know, district-wide. And so these assessments are newer to our upper grade students, our high school students. And we're already starting to see progress when you look at spring to spring, fall to fall in the results that we are producing. It's still not sufficient when you're seeing the amount of growth that we've had. But you can be assured that this is the focus, which I mentioned in terms of linking language and literacy. We will not be successful as a district if we're only looking at furthering the literacy knowledge of our staff. We do really have to couple, as I said earlier, language development and literacy strategies together. For graduation rate we are actually able to produce the result now We just got this it was actually emailed to me as I heard from dr Sadler that she would like this included so I was able to update the slide We will be able to do more of the breakdown for This the specific students you can see student groups, but we have been able to increase our both the A to G rate and the graduation rate. And we are lifting up the schools CCPA, MetWest, Oakland High, and Sojourner Truth for having a 5% increase in one year. And so we're going after 60% as our target for A to G, and an increase for each school site by 5%, and then a graduation rate target of overall 80%. and an increase of 5% for each year. And we were at, you can see 2023, 2024, we were at 79.5%. Some people would round that up to 80%, but we are sticklers for, we were at 79.5%. So that's what we're working towards again. One thing that I'll highlight, and so people could look at this rate and say, oh, great, we're increasing. But what you might also be seeing is the absence of our newcomer students, because the rate in which we're serving newcomer students is going down. And when you disaggregated our data previously, you would see that the students that we struggled the most to graduate and graduate on time have been our newcomer students. So I want for us to be, of course, optimistic that this is headed in the right direction, but we need to be sure that it's for the right reasons and that it's not just because we're serving less newcomer students because of the political implications. but this is actually us achieving higher rates with our high school students. So I just wanted to note that because I think that will have an impact. And for us to be cautious in terms of celebrating the increases, we have to really know what we're celebrating. And so we will break that down for you all so that way there's an understanding of why these rates are increasing. In terms of teacher evaluations, this is an area that we are shifting a lot of focus towards and identifying what the obstacles are for our principals in doing teacher evaluations. And you can see the rates, it actually went down from the previous year. And even being at 15.8%, so 353 teachers out of 2,234 are evaluated, that's just not sufficient at all. And so this is something that Jeff Dillon and I are going to progress monitor in a different way than we have in the past, so that way we can increase these rates. And the same for administrator evaluations. And just to note, when we looked at all of the data We did see that our principals are struggling to do the leadership development system with their assistant principals. And so that is the area that we will focus on. And of course we have to do our evaluation centrally as well. So we are going after 45% at the school site and 50% at central office. And again, this is an area that we're changing the way that we progress monitor, so that way there's more accountability on us reaching these goals. I probably won't go through all these sites because I know that I've taken up a lot of time just to go through the goal areas. But in terms of what I was talking about for the cascade, I mean, here are the LCAP goals that were in the final year of the third year implementation cycle. We have our district strategic plan. And then in terms of what we're really focused on in our, we have cycles of inquiry that we do with our principals during their professional learning. We're focused on the multi-tiered systems of support and attendance, which is really relying a lot on the coordination of services teams or our cost work. And this is the ability for us to understand how our basic instruction is serving our students. And then when the basic instruction is not serving our students well, we talk about going to tier two and tier three. So that's a higher layers of support that we're offering. And when you look at school sites that are successful in moving the needle in terms of their outcomes, they have really strong coordination teams. And they have really clear ability to move a student into a higher level of support. And so that's why we focus so much on MTSS and cost, so that way students are accessing the support that they need in order to be successful. So that is part of our focus. I mentioned ELD. which is the coupling of language and literacy together, our special education work, and then our evaluations. We have these terms that we pick themes each year with our schools. And I think it was three years ago, it was delivering on our promise of a quality education we are in these roles we've accepted the responsibility that we want to do well by our students and our families and our staff and so we say the term delivering on our promise because we promise that we will achieve higher rates and so what does that mean for each school so that's part of our motivational you know, talk with our schools to get them energized in terms of fulfilling that promise. And then building our collective efficacy. And that's the notion of, like, you can't do this work alone. There's no superheroes at school sites. It really does take a team. And so we focus a lot on our development of teams, not only on the individual principal or maybe some leaders that stand out at a school site, but really like how do you build that team because it is a collective and also not only within the school site, but also district wide. No one school is successful because we have these feeder patterns. And so we need to think of the whole and how we come together. So we're trying to build that muscle and this is our theme for this year. With the two coupled together we're saying that we'll build quality schools So that way our students can reach the graduate profile, which is our North Star for our district so that's the way that we talk about the work in order to motivate our staff and to You know get them to think about their systems and the way that they work and interact with each other Because we do not see a school site being successful when One single leader tries to shoulder everything. It really is about building teams and having good systems at the school site. Graduate profile and our definition of quality community schools. This has come up in teaching and learning. It will be, again, a topic coming up soon. I won't take us through all of these slides, but I do really want to just highlight our schools that have reached these goals. I won't go through every single slide because I know we're pressed for time, but I really would like to encourage our board members and the community to look at the school sites that are lifted up. And you'll see some school sites in multiple areas that are lifted up. And so when we talk about building out good teams and building out strong systems, these are the schools to interrogate as to how they're getting to these higher results. So I'm not going to go through each one, but this content is here for you to review. And I think at this juncture, I'll pause for any questions. But I hope that you get the sense of where we're going with our goals. And then we didn't even scratch the surface as to how we're getting there. And that's really the discussion in teaching and learning. But happy to come back if there's any particular area we'd like to dive deeper into. But I'll take any questions from the board.

Thank you, Dr. .

I did have a couple of questions. Sure.

first I just want to thank you the last teaching and learning committee meeting was probably one of the best I think going through we had such I think a rich discussion about the goals and that we didn't even finish the packet so we have to come back and do it twice so I think it really laid the basis for our work this year I did have a couple of questions, though. One on the suspension rate for disabled students. How many of those are also African American students? Because, again, I know, and then what supports do we have for LTELs? Again, that was a lower percent, and does the change in the the reclassification testing does that change the percentage at all or instruction that we're doing with LTELs and then with I-Ready there's been this whole discussion that people have been calling about are we only paying for the testing part and not and I have heard from a number of teachers, both in elementary and middle school, that they have found the lessons really valuable and valuable in working with parents, so that was my, and then, The final question was, you mentioned teacher evaluations, and as someone who was made tenure without ever being evaluated, this is a question that is a little near and dear to me, but what steps are we taking? I think, again, looking at the principal's workload to try and be able to mitigate some of that.

Okay, so for LTELs, in terms of the support, we still have the, depending on how many students are being served, we still have an assignment of a teacher on special assignment that is deployed to and allocated to the school site. So that's still afforded in the contract, and that is still happening. We also have... In terms of the late arriving course sequence for secondary, I think that's important to lift up because without that, we don't have the option to give students the courses they need to graduate. And that's why that was developed and implemented. So that would be another support that I would lift up in terms of what we're offering for our long-term English learners. Additionally, students are, if they have not been reclassified, they are lifted up for their further tiered interventions. So it's not automatic that they just go into the tutoring services that we have, but it is likely that they are accessing tutoring because of their literacy rates at higher rates than their peers. So that's another aspect to consider. I think there's more, of course there's always more work to be done. We do have special professional development for teachers of LTELs. And if you were to ever go to the ELMA offerings, they are always packed. We actually have to turn people away because I think teachers are really searching for how to improve that area of instruction. I think I'll jump to the iReady question because that has been coming up. So, yes, we did shift in terms of iReady has two aspects that we have been purchasing. We have purchased the assessment and we have purchased what's called MyPath. So you take the assessment first and then students are given their own learning courses that they access to then help them in the areas that the assessment revealed they needed further support and development in. So MyPath is like a specialized way that they go through additional lessons to improve the areas that they were scoring lower in, according to the assessment. So just because of our financial constraints, we did invest in the assessments. We also have reclassification tied to us implementing the assessments. So that's another area that we need to just be mindful of. We have to do a level of assessing in order for students to be reclassified. And we have been using iReady. It's named as our local indicator for this particular area. So we need to have some form of assessment that we're offering. But in order to reduce the cost, we did take off MyPath. And that reduced the contract by a couple of million dollars. And What we messaged to school sites was that if you still would like to have this service, we will entertain doing, instead of a district-wide license, we can invest in school sites that want to continue this service. And so I think the communication has been a little muddled in that. as I did get the feedback from Dr. Sadler that a school site was saying that they were gonna fundraise for that and that they don't need to. We still need to look at the actual cost to make sure that we can afford and sustain this type of investment, but we are currently collecting the school sites would like to continue. We did, previous to making that decision to go at a lower contract rate, we did a look at usage. So we do have the ability to look at, are schools really using this service? And when we looked at it across the board, I don't feel like it was an investment that people were, school sites were really utilizing, but we have received some requests from our secondary schools, especially our high schools, two middle schools, and three elementary schools so far. But with the latest information that I was provided, I did talk to our team today to say that we need to go back out to school sites and ensure that they understand that there is an option. Right now we're looking at what the pricing would be and we can update you all on that. So that is the update in terms of where we're at with iReady and MyPath.

I just wanted to say, We just started it most recently in the secondary level, which is very significant because we're finding that several of our secondary students have a lot of difficulty with reading. And many of our staff at the secondary level have not been trained to teach basic reading skills. They have the content training and credentials, but this is an area that we've been working on. So I-Ready has helped us identify early on um the needs of students for instance who are reading at a third and fourth grade level and we're able to deploy staff to assist early on so this is why it makes sense to me that some of the secondary schools have absolutely desired this support because it helps identify right away what the areas are of need for those particular students And I suspect that we will have fewer issues with suspensions related to it, other issues, because students haven't been able to access the content at the level that they would like to. So we've had long discussions about this, Dr. Aguilera and myself, and we want to make sure the board understands that this assessment will help us be more detailed around what the specific needs are for our students and help us leverage the monies that we're spending to make sure that we're not just having a program across the board, but not everybody needs it. Invest in what we need. So that's the kind of assessment that I'm asking everybody to do so that we're really clear about maximizing and leveraging our dollars. Thank you.

Director Berry.

I was trying to listen and get my collect my thoughts, so I apologize if this is not. linear or coherent. My first is just a reaction. This is why the feelings I have is why I think it's so important for us to look at the kind of data we saw tonight. Every time we convene, it's incredibly sobering. It's also grounding. And for me, Even though I prep for the meeting and saw the data before and walk through it, but just hearing you walk through it today just reminded me of how related all the other things we talked about today are like the huge rifts that I've seen just in my time on the board. And the. Impact that it clearly has had on sites and especially because I do believe my perception and experience of that is that those risks came without a clear vision for how we were going to fill those gaps. And so you have people standing in the gap and doing the work and absorbing things that they weren't previously responsible for. Of course, it influences a principal's ability to be in every single classroom they want to be in, to deeply evaluate and not just show up to observe, but also to deliver the coaching and the feedback and to be part of how an educator and a principal works together to respond to what one sees. how the the support that a principal receives in managing their site and so just like there's so many things that i think we need to pay attention to at the systems level beyond just some of what you shared today in terms of the programs and services we want to invest in and leverage the workplace culture of the system has to get better and i think we need to take more seriously the kind of guidance that the board and the superintendent needs to deliver, particularly in moments like this. So that's just one big, long, two-wordy reaction. One question, and I have many, but the one question I'm curious about that I want to hear you speak to today is how we set goals So thinking about especially the suspension reduction targets, so did you look at districts that are implementing similar practices to decide on the targets and you use those as like a baseline or compared Oakland to similarly sized districts just for the goals you said, what information did you use to decide we wanna improve by this amount every year?

So the biggest driver that we use are our own trends. And then if you look into the LCAP, there is this massive metrics table. And I smile because I know it's massive and it's really a lot to go through. But we sit with our partners at the county in order to set those metrics. And if they feel like something is too low or too high, there's conversations about that. So they actually help us with, ensuring that the county is moving together and That's the way I would suggest you know that we are being compared to Fremont to Hayward unified that are similar in terms of location and then of course of makeup to The county really helps hold us accountable for those stretch goals So there's some oversight is what I'm trying to explain as well.

Thank you Board colleagues Dr. Williams.

Thank you. thank you miss bachelor director bachelor um thank you very much for the part i know we kind of reviewed a little bit in tlc which is great really excited about the conversations um i think we're starting to really find a focus and how we as a board can start to have conversations about what our work plan is i mean it's been brought up multiple times we haven't fully identified that vision. And that's something that, yes, should have been done earlier, but we're still going through the process. And I think Data like this is very helpful. I think we as a board will have to come together again to continue to talk about, you know, how we can support the superintendent to move the work that, as she's working with yourself, to really support our kids. One of the things that have been my big focus is targeted initiatives of equity. You know, I've talked to a number of folks who do that work, and it's really disheartening that they lost their positions, for example, Arab American targeted supports had a positive attendance rate of 95%. The attendance rate, you know, we saw in general is not that high, but it's very high for Arab Americans. You know, 74% of the kids have a 95% attendance rate. For the African-American kids or students, African-American students, 90% daily attendance rate compared to the district's 76% or 80%. And it goes for each ethnic group. the investment that we put into our young folks with the programs and targeted initiatives actually pay off on a higher level, a larger level than just in general. And so I think we are missing a big opportunity that our priorities and how we're investing in our students or in our programs, we haven't fully had this conversation as a board and how we're gonna do that. So I want to continue to bring that to the forefront, because not only do these targeted initiatives work with our students, but also their families. And what we're talking about is most of the young folks have brothers and sisters that are coming up. If they start to build the example for their younger brother or sister, then it will continue to reverberate and compound our results. And so I think right now we're kind of in this holding position. Well, I got 60 seconds left. In this holding position, time goes so fast for me. I don't know. I'm not talking about much, I guess. It just goes. But it It's something that I really want to continue to talk to my board members about is how do we look at our budget, which we just had and I asked actually Troy Christmas the question. The additional funds that we have, how do we use it to target the resources for our young folks, for our most at need students? And I hope that we continue to have that conversation because it's really important. I would hate for us to slide back into half the growth that we've had over the last couple years. But thank you again for that. I see no questions, but thank you.

One comment I will say is that we have been able to maintain the site investments while we did reduce the central staffing. So it's something that I am agreeing with you and plus saying we need to reach more students and we just don't have enough funding to provide this service to all of our students that really should be receiving more targeted support. But 100% agree with the students that are receiving the support. You are seeing the results and we were able to maintain that investment at school sites.

Well, yeah, I know just quickly for Arab Americans, they don't have an individual person who's going to, you know, supervise that program. They're doing it at a site level, but the relationships that were built in the community families are going to start pulling back and so that was the reduction at central um correct so we're going to do triage coming up this year and i think we have to uh do some preventive uh conversation uh discussion on what we can do i'm so sorry thank you um with that we'll go to public comment on this agenda item we have four public comments i thought we were on board comment i didn't see any other you didn't ask if anyone else was we went would you like to see director hutchinson

thank you you didn't even answer that question but go ahead oh well i'm scared if i talk too much you'll go to recess again like you did the last time again i'm the only one that gets treated this way up here so it's it's fine i'm used to it you know unfortunately um the numbers in here are not acceptable You know, not acceptable at all. And Superintendent Sadler, every target listed in here, came nowhere towards reaching it in 25-26. This report should have been agendized as its own business item for the community. Should have been held when the community was here, when the student director was here, when the principals were here, instead of burying it after 10 o'clock at night when nobody's here. None of the data here is even disaggregated. when i asked at the last board meeting where the goals were coming from i received different answers from different people in this for the foci page 18 the foci for 26 27 school year first it says four lcap goals when you click on the link it's actually eight goals and they look nothing like the wording that's in here and they just list actions they don't have goals or targets in the lcap The other foci is district strategic plan initiatives. That link takes you to the strategic plan, the last one, which actually came to its end in 2024. We're now in the second year with no superintendent work plan, which is where traditionally we had put goals and targets. And the second year with no board work plan. For example, let's look at the attendance one here. We see at the bottom that it says attendance, the target was to increase by 1%. We didn't make that, but also in your scenario three that you put forward, you said the goal was 2% a year to achieve $10 million in more funding. We heard earlier tonight that scenario three was approved and it was part of a plan. So how can we have these different goals and numbers being thrown out and then we don't meet any one of them anyway? This used to be the work of the board and the superintendent in developing our work plans and our strategic plan, not just made up goals and consultation with the county. That doesn't even make sense. To see that the African American suspension rates, the disproportionality has grown to a point that's even greater than we were put in under a voluntary resolution from the Civil Rights Department. We're almost three times the rate of disproportionality. And even if the targets were achieved, African American students would still have twice the rate of suspensions as the general population. That's not acceptable. We see the SBAC numbers are flat. There hasn't been an improvement and nowhere near the 15 points ELA and the 20 points map that is the target. According to this, from 2425 to 2526, we saw an improvement of 1.3, not 15, and 4.6, not 20. That's nowhere near. So where is the action since we didn't meet the targets in your first year as superintendent? Where's the work plan to address this? Where's the urgency? Graduation rates have gone in the other direction now. I'm not a big fan of SBAC and standardized tests. But graduation rates, it's shocking. And to see no disaggregated data, to not have this lifted up at the start, to not have your whole senior leadership team here to address what's going on, this is the real world consequences of what this board and this administration have done. And it's unacceptable, unacceptable. And it's sad that we have staff members and people up here that would rather attack people or say things and that stuff instead of addressing these numbers. Addressing what's happening with our students. This is not okay. And this is the real world consequences of the financial and the governance mismanagement that's been going on. Does it disservice to our community? And if you're gonna put goals and targets, you might as well at least try to reach them because this was nothing that was voted on by the board. And again, where is a superintendent work plan or a strategic plan to guide this work which has not been developed while you've been superintendent or we've had this current board leadership? Just hasn't been done. Hasn't been done. So you can show me the work plan, but the two years y'all have been here and in charge are the only two years we haven't had work plans. The only two years we haven't had work plans. This is the failure, and looking out here for this presentation, that should set off alarms to somebody.

Yeah, to somebody. So, next.

Excuse me, do you want to actually address me direct? No, we're done. I love it how every time I speak, you have to say something underneath your breath. We didn't even get noticed that you're chairing this meeting while the president's sitting there. You can say as much as you want and chip away as much as you want. These numbers don't lie, neither do your lack of action to address it. So you can say whatever you want to me, I'm more concerned about what's happening to our students and our community, which I am the only one here that's actually grew up a part of. So keep saying stuff, but this isn't okay, this is shocking and unacceptable. And now we don't even have any finances any place to inject into new investments to address it. This is a complete failure and people can talk all they want about creating a plan in the future. The problem is you all haven't done it yet, and it's your job and responsibility.

President Bohart, go ahead.

Yeah I do want to address that I think for years that I the years I've been on the board we have dealt with these looked at these numbers and I think we've had conversations in teaching and learning about the numbers and I don't think that anyone has been satisfied with them and that's been the four years I've been on the board but what I do want to say is within the teaching and learning committee I believe that we have tried different ways to examine the data. I think you've brought different reports. We've brought in different people from both elementary and secondary to talk about literacy and the work that's being done. I'm gonna go back to a meeting with Claire Fisher, I believe, when she came to talk about secondary, and again, changing that focus so that our, again, as a person who once taught middle school, I believe that teaching literacy in secondary is something that teachers aren't used to doing it tends to be more content and I felt I want to appreciate Claire Fisher's leadership and your leadership in that meeting to really address the needs of our secondary students who aren't reading at grade level and to incorporate both the content area which is something you and I have talked a lot about into reading strategies, so I don't think, again, that anybody sitting here, and I know your work, nobody is satisfied with this, and I think, again, particularly at secondary level, it's a complex issue to think about how we teach our older students And again, having been in special education with middle school students, there are many issues that you're looking at in terms of how kids feel about themselves, about reading, how they feel about coming to school when they're not able to access the curriculum. I think under your leadership, Director Williams, that we've also addressed some of the needs you just mentioned about our families that have benefited from strategic intervention and targeted intervention. I know certainly the work with the API community. So again, I do wanna, I think as a district, we are trying to grapple with how do we increase our literacy rates um so i would say nobody is is you know accepting of this um i think i know i've talked with different principals as well at my sites and the issue of newcomers or students having to work also came up i know my principals know those kids by name and i was really impressed at a high school level that they know So I think that we have done a lot of work on this, and I think, again, I think this is something that needs to be agendized at every meeting, and I know Director Thompson, you've brought this up both in our student work, our student report, and in our work. on the board, so I appreciate again, Dr. Aguilera, that you have brought forth information that we've requested. I think we've also struggled with what is the information we need. I appreciate, really deeply appreciated the work that you've done with the iReady and looking at the cost and usage, because I think this is also something that's come up for us too. So I think that the work is progressing. I think teaching, reading, and teaching reading through content areas is extremely complex for particular older students. So again, I don't want to give the implication that we have not thought about this work, that we've not grappled with the issues, that we've not looked at different ways to assess it, that we haven't brought in experts in teaching and learning to help us grapple with the question. So with that, you want to continue with your report?

Okay, I wanted this to be the primary part of the report. I do want to say that we have been working as an SLT to meet regularly around many of these issues that have been discussed. Unfortunately, some of the board members have not seen some of the reports that I've written and recommendations. So you'll see more of that. And this is starting at every meeting. There will be updates on where we are academically, and I will be working with board members around our point. Thank you, Dr. Aguilar.

Is there public comment on this?

Yes, Madam President. There are four, Carol Delton, Sheila Haynes, Assata Olagwala and Alexandria Williams.

Miss Williams first and she's here in person and then we'll take the online comments.

Hello, good evening, morning almost, but I appreciate the celebration in this report. I would. We should recognize the schools and the students who are making progress. My concern is that we are looking at different data points that I'm not sure what the board is actually being asked to focus on. There's a difference between giving information and giving a strategic direction. We can celebrate Frick's improvement, 20 points in ELA, and recognizing that there is still more than 20 points below the standard. We can recognize district-wide improvements in SBAC while still seeing performance is 68.2 points below the standard. We can recognize A through G completion. at forty eight point seven percent where our goal is sixty percent and we can also we also have system concerns with fifteen fifteen point eight percent of teacher evaluation completed while site managers are at eleven point eight, nine percent. I think this is really where I'm at with this is that like while we're going through this structural deficit and like we're trying to figure out where we're managing our funds and where we're putting our energy is like what is the strategic plan and the strategic things that like in the there was supposed to be a four-year plan and I don't know what happened with that or if we're just giving data but it's just a lot of data being thrown out, but the board is sitting at a high level trying to figure out how they're gonna make their decisions and where they're gonna make their decisions, where they're gonna allocate funds. And I just think we've got to make sure that we're prioritizing what outcomes are the highest priority right now. And I think that's what I would like to see. and like that strategy of like, where are we going? Where do we need to go? How do we get there? So I thank you for the celebration. I always love that we always are highlighting the positive of Oakland and what's happened in Oakland schools, but also we gotta acknowledge how we're gonna grow.

Thank you.

Thank you. Can we have the online speakers, please?

There's Carol Dilton.

Thank you. I appreciate the statement about how these goals flow from the LCAP, and it would be very helpful to me and possibly others if when the data is listed, it can be stated what LCAP goal, what is the LCAP goal that it relates to maybe in a side note, so that we can feel that we're working on a unified set of goals. That was what I wanted to address from the presentation. I also just wanted to address in general to ask that superintendent consider more often responding to questions of fact with quick answers and certainly to statements of misinformation that come up in these meetings. One example was a statement about the specific fund balances. I actually saw that page, and I had a conversation with Mr. Thomas before the meeting. And they're all very healthy balances, and they all there's a spending plan for the funds that's there. And he reminded me that a lot of that came before the board in June. So that's the kind of thing where if it's not corrected, it stands out there and it's all too likely to be picked up by others as a laugh when in fact it may not. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

There are no further. Nope. Sheila Haynes.

Hi, thank you superintendent for your report. I pretty much said all of what I wanted to say earlier, but I just wanted to comment on the sections raised in the report around suspensions. I do serve on the committee for black suspensions and although there's been some reductions and suspensions for the students, it's still just not enough. I continue to speak on the arts as a way to keep our students in a joyful space to improve mental health and student safety, restorative practice. And I hope that in regards to the IEPs that was mentioned, that there will be availability of online opportunity. There will be availability of in person opportunities for online students. I worry about the safety of all students that's learning in person. And I just hope that my hope is that once my student goes back to school, they'll be in a safe place. So I just thank you for all of your support. And that's all I have to say.

Thank you. Next on the agenda is the president's report. I do want to read a letter that was sent to us by Nona Whittington Ogunsula, who's from Oakland, was a graduate of Oakland High School. And I think other board members received this letter as well. Dear OUSD Board of Education members, as we approach the 25th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, this Friday I am writing to share an important connection between that historic day and the Oakland Public Schools community. Wanda Anita Smith-Green, a member of the United Airlines Flight 93 crew, grew up in Oakland and was educated in Oakland Public Schools. She graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1970 along with her twin sister, Sandra Smith Jamerson. I am also an Oakland Tech alumna, class of 1982, and learned of Wanda's connection to our school after visiting the 9-11 Memorial and Museum in New York City and later the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania in 2016 and 2017. I prepared the attached 25th anniversary remembrance to help ensure that Wanda's story and her connection to Oakland are not forgotten. I have also shared the remembrance with Principal Martel Price at Oakland Technical High School. For today's Oakland students, Wanda's story provides a meaningful and personal connection to history. More than five decades ago, she walked the same halls that Oakland Tech students walk today. She went on to become one of the early African American flight attendants employed by United Airlines, and on September 11th, 2001, was aboard Flight 93 with six fellow crew members and 33 passengers. Her heroic actions saved many lives. And as the nation commemorates the 25th anniversary of this Friday, I hope OUSD will recognize Wanda Green and her connection to Oakland Public Schools. I also have shared the attached information with the district's Public Affairs Office for its consideration. Wanda Anita Smith Green is a part of Oakland's history, Oakland Tech's history, and U.S. history. And 25 years later, I hope we can ensure that a new generation of Oakland students knows her name and her story. Thank you for your consideration. Best regards, Nona Whittington Ogunsula, Oakland Technical High School, class of 1982. That concludes my president's report for this time. I do want to see if there's a motion to extend the clock for 15 minutes. So moved. And is there a second?

Second.

Okay. Mr. Raikstra, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

On the motion to extend the meeting until 11.15 p.m., student directors are absent. Director Lara?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson?

No.

Director Berry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? No. Vice President Batchelor? Yes. And President Brohard? Yes. Motion's adopted. Okay.

Next on the agenda or board report members reports. If you have a report. Director Hutchinson.

Thank you. Unfortunately, I think we saw again tonight that we don't have one metric any place that shows we're headed in the right direction and doing a good job. You know, from the budget to graduation rates. And it's been a complete failure. You know, we have items on the books that we're supposed to address these items. It's what the three R's was supposed to be. You know, Superintendent Sadler, when you first became the superintendent, in our first meeting, I started asking you to make sure to restart the three R's process and to provide a fiscal solvency plan. When you first became superintendent, you were working with me and Lisa Grant Dawson and Dan Bellino to ensure that the board approved strategies to address the budgetary shortfall by October 8th, 2025. We sat together and made an agreement that we were working together on that. Unfortunately, you changed direction. And now the numbers are shocking. And to have Tara Gard stand up here tonight and say the new contract for $114,000 at $300 an hour was hiring somebody to message and work on restoring reputations because of what I say and put out, that's wild. And that's on your watch. But you didn't stop her from saying that. You didn't say that wasn't true. You didn't say that's not a wise use of money. It's not the first time that that's happened here, with disrespectful behavior from senior staff, who all report to you. All report to you. It's so disappointing where we are right now. And here I am ending this meeting again. I still don't have access to this year's budget. You sent me a text message within this last week saying you were going to have TerraGard send it to me. Nothing. Nothing. So how am I supposed to consider your words when you tell me these things, you make these guarantees in public and directly to me privately, and it doesn't happen?

This is very serious work.

As somebody who was also from Oakland and who has worked in the district all of this time, you know that this is serious work. that deserves and requires a certain level of professionalism, dedication, expertise. That's not what we've seen at all. Not what we've seen at all. It's shocking, it's heartbreaking, and at least to me, you've gone back on everything that you promised when you were first hired as superintendent. Maybe sometime it'll change, but after 18 months, I think the pattern's established. It's very disappointing, it's sad, and the numbers show it. So if you wanna restore reputations and do all this work to try to counter something instead of spending money to ensure our students have the best education possible, you're proving my point every time.

Thank you, anybody else? Okay, Director Lara.

Yeah, I just wanted to make one quick announcement is that I have my monthly office hours this Saturday. I always do them the second Saturday of the month at 11 a.m. I'll be at Timeless Coffee. It's also Rosh Hashanah still, so I just wanted to make sure that people knew. I had sent folks this individually as well, but But if you are observing and you can't make that time, please reach out to me and I will make a time to meet with you individually.

Thanks.

Just want to shout out a few dates. On September 19th, that's my next office hours at 10 a.m. September 14th at 6 p.m. there is another illegal dumping accountability session. At Allen Temple, doors open at 5, program starts at 6. And then on September 28th, we have the, I think it's the first for this school year, Ed Partnerships meeting at 3.30.

Thank you. Yeah, I just want to lift up our buildings and grounds plumbers because on August 27th, the school community at Skyline reported a leak or some water issues. The buildings and ground staff went to the site immediately. were able to continue to keep the water running while students were on campus, so folks had water, folks had access to water. As soon as the school day ended, our plumbers did everything that they could to repair that leak, and it was fully addressed. And again, I wanna thank the whole team, the Skyline admin team for notifying the facilities team, the facilities team getting there on time, then doing the work that they need to be doing to support our students and again there was no disruption to skylines day for that day and then the following day they were able to open on time so along with that the next facilities meeting is happening on the 17th from 6 to 8 and And for every meeting moving forward from now until December, we will be talking about the thermal comfort and the issues that families have addressed with us. And we'll be giving a full report at this meeting as well as to this work that happened over the summer. So please come on by. We will be there on the 17th from six to eight.

Thank you. And it looks like there is no new introduction of new legislation. So with that, we are adjourned.