San Francisco Unified School District Board - Regular Meeting

Translators, can you go ahead?

Thank you. SFUSD will provide interpretations throughout today's board meeting. El Distrito Escolar Unificado de San Francisco proporcionará interpretación para la junta del día de hoy. For interpretation in Spanish, please enter the number 1-319-382-9676 Please enter the key 665-996-976 followed by the numeral key or the cat key. Thank you. Cantonese interpreter, please.

Thank you. Thank you. Hello everyone. In today's meeting, the San Francisco Community College will provide Cantonese translation services. If you need Cantonese translation services, please call 1 Hey, um...

hello everyone we're going to start with item C reconvene to open session public uh well open session uh and I will begin with our readout of closed session the board betting closed session to discuss the following matters item one student mpj versus usd in the matter of student mpj versus usd the board by a vote of seven eyes zero nays and zero abstentions uh voted to approve the settlement agreement between parties. In the matter of Student EFM v. SFUSD, OAH case number 20... Yes, thank you. In one matter of Student EFM v. SFUSD, OAH case number 2026070949... In the matter, the Board by a vote of 7 ayes, 0 nays, and 0 abstentions voted to approve the settlement agreement between the parties. In the Grade Challenge Appeal, matter number 20262027GCA1, the Board has continued the matter to the next Board meeting. The board of education is committed to effective school board governance that center student learning. Based on student community input, the board has adopted our vision values, goals and guardrails in order to increase the portion of board meeting time. We spend a student outcomes. Every other regular meeting is a monitoring workshop. Our approach to governance also calls on the board to empower the superintendent to take full ownership of the strategies used to reach those goals within the guardrail set by the board. As we implement our governance framework, the board will continue to adopt new systems, routines, and policies aimed at improving student outcomes. We encourage the public to follow this work on our website at SF usd.edu slash governance as we commit to finding new and improved ways to more meaningfully engage with staff students and families. Moving to item D public comment hello and welcome to members of the public to the regular meeting of the board of education of the San Francisco unified school district. Our public comment period lasts for one hour today until we'll say 7.50pm. We look forward to hearing from the public before we conduct board business. Our goal is to conduct board business in an efficient, effective, and accessible manner during reasonable hours. We aim to respect staff, family, and community time by ensuring we move to board business as quickly as possible. Each participant may speak for up to one minute staff will think the participant at the one minute mark at one minute and five seconds I have asked interim clerk chain to please turn off the MIC and transition to the next speaker. I asked members of the public to please respect that one minute limit so that we can hear from as many speakers as possible. I encourage speakers who are speaking on the same topic to collaborate and combine their comments, so that the board can hear all viewpoints during our limited time. Please also note that the board accepts written public comments via email to boardoffice at sfusd.edu. We will first hear from students in person, then members of the general public in person, beginning with agenda items, then moving to non-agenda items. Regardless of whether in-person public comment is complete, we will save 15 minutes for remote public comment, taking commenters in the same order as in person. To members of the public, on your right, you'll see signs that outline expectations for public comment and meeting conduct. We ask that you model the kind of tone, language, and behavior that we hope to see from our young people, respecting different viewpoints and allowing for all members of the public to participate. As a reminder, board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during public comment time. If appropriate, the superintendent will ask that staff follow up with speakers. I came out and spoke with some of you, but we know that we have many, many more comment cards today than we will have time to hear them. So I encourage groups, as I mentioned in my remarks, if you want to come up in a group at a time, I don't think Clerk Chang knows the order of operations for some folks who want to speak. So if you are intending to come up as a group, please just feel free to come up as a group. And we just ask that you keep your remarks to one minute. And we can then see and recognize folks who are here. And again, I apologize in advance. We will end public comment at 7.50. And so at 7.35, we'll transition to online public comment. Ms. Chang?

Thank you, President Kim will start with students, I have one student public comment card, but if there's any other students that did not mark their cards, let me know, but the student I have is Nora Chang hey.

hi my name is nora my name is nora and i'm in first grade and i'm in first grade cis i want the workers to stop doing the lead involves work in because it's stopping people my friends from doing handstands on walls what do you see there okay i don't know it's okay

We will move to agenda items. I will call the five comment cards at a time. And then, as President Kim said, if there's a group come up later. Okay, I have Juliana Chen, Abby Chan, Justin Appold, Tim Tong, Jia Han.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Virginia Chung, and I am a parent. My kiddo goes to Alice Fong Yu, the very first Cantonese immersion program in the country. And I'm very lucky that my son gets to attend a program like that. I, growing up as a daughter of refugees, didn't have that opportunity. So I believe that no child's future should depend on luck. And we need to focus on our programs. If we want to attract more families into the school district and in San Francisco, we need to focus on expanding our revenue and providing programs that parents want. And we need to prioritize our Mandarin immersion program to ensure that we don't miss out on opportunities for our kiddos and language must be acquired in the first five years for it to be sustainable and impactful. So I urge you to prioritize opening the Mandarin immersion program and providing access across San Francisco as soon as possible. Thank you.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Tim Tung. I'm a district parent with two children currently thriving in an immersion program. I feel incredibly fortunate to have this access, but opportunity shouldn't be a matter of luck. I'm here to urge the board to fully support and launch the new Mandarin Immersion School. Every year, hundreds of families are left stranded on waitlist. I constantly hear from parents who have tried to enroll previously but failed. Many have told me they will give up on the district entirely if they cannot enroll next year. we know the plan doesn't have to be perfect right out of the gate please do not let perfect become the enemy of the good delaying this is a quiet tragedy these children will lose the chance to learn their family's language and connect with their heritage please follow through on your commitment and give these families a reason to stay in public schools thank you

Hello. My name is Abby Chow. I'm the mom to three kids, three and under, and I'm also here on behalf of over 900 families as part of the Friends of Mandarin Immersion, of the SF Mandarin Immersion School. I'm here to urge the district to open this school on time. If the district announces the school's temporary site, as promised, and parents can start enrolling this October, this will be the first dedicated Mandarin Immersion School in San Francisco. It will bring families back to the district, and it will grow enrollment. If we don't meet the October deadline, hundreds of families in our community with rising kindergartners will never have the opportunity to enroll in this school. We cannot let this timeline slip, announce the temporary site, and show San Francisco that SFUSD is ready to deliver what families want. Thank you.

My name is Gia. I am a parent to two in Bernal Heights with my husband. I came in June to tell you about how I met my husband. We fell in love in San Francisco. We've largely stayed in the city because of the Mandarin immersion school options. What I didn't understand until I was doing research on this is that these programs at Star King and Ortega are very celebrated. We get attention across the country for being at the forefront of Mandarin immersion. However, there has been zero new public school Mandarin immersion seats in San Francisco in the last 20 years. And there's been a large growth in that Mandarin speaking population. So I'm here to ask you please commit to the timeline that you've promised. Please help us make sure that the school actually happens or else families like my my own will need to look for other options. And we really want to stay in San Francisco and stay in public schools. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Wei-Anne Shea. I'm a Bernal Heights mom. I have a three and a half year old. I'm really just looking at SFUSD for your MI program. So it's very limited options. I'm excited to sign up for this TK next year, but it really does feel like it's harder than winning a lottery. So as we move forward, I really urge you to choose and announce the temporary and permanent locations that are accessible for these families. um i really urge that you can deliver on the proposed timeline family following through on this is this commitment will be a huge step towards rebuilding the trust and giving families the confidence that they need for the district's direction thank you

Hi, my name is Margaret. I'm a former SFUSD student. When I came at age seven, I was confused in both Cantonese and English. So it's great that there's all these immersion programs now. I have a four year old and she's looking for kindergarten next year. I just came back to San Francisco two months ago. And so a big decision is whether to have her in public schools and Mandarin immersion is a really big draw. So if it doesn't happen where she can start in kindergarten, she's not going to be able to have that experience. So it would just be really important for the schools to open on time and to where families are located. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Allison. I have a three-year-old daughter, a newborn son, and we live in Forest Knolls. I grew up in a community where there were very few kids who looked like me and that isolation deeply affected my childhood. My husband and I chose to raise our children in the city because of its cultural and economic diversity and the opportunities that come with it. And one opportunity that means a lot to our family is the public Mandarin immersion school. My daughter currently attends a Mandarin immersion preschool and would be eligible to enroll in the TK for the opening of the new Mandarin immersion school. Since being in a Mandarin immersion environment, we've seen her language skills flourish. I grew up without many language resources, and I never learned my family's native language, so it's something that I deeply regret. And I want my daughter to have that opportunity, and that's why it's so important for our family that the school will honor its commitment to opening the school by 2028 and move forward with selecting a site. Thank you.

Good evening. Junius, I have a son that's four, so he'll be a rising kindergartner. I've been here a few times to talk about this, and every time it's all about partnership. I show up so that you know that I'm here to be part of the solution and to help and to support this. And I think this is going to be the most stressful next few months for our family because what happens for our eldest is going to determine what our family does. And these spots are so important. We listened last meeting about starting smaller so that it can be high quality and completely agree with that. So if there's anything that you need from us, 900 families strong, like Abby mentioned, we're here to show up to help make this a success. So please let us know. Announce the site and we'll be there to back this and make sure it's successful. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Juliana Chen. I'm a San Francisco resident and I'm proudly raising my two children in the city. My husband and I each have a parent who's a second generation Chinese American. Our Chinese parents learned some Chinese, but neither were fluent. Our generation subsequently didn't gain fluency either. We wanted to prioritize Mandarin for our children, but it was never something we could offer at home. The only immersive opportunity has been through preschool. It's heartbreaking to think they may lose their Mandarin immersion education because of how few public school spots or locations there are in the city right now. This new Mandarin immersion program could be a game changer for our family, our children, with my oldest being able to apply for a spot in the new TK class. Please make this a reality for the kids, the families, the communities that we'll make such a difference for. Thank you for your consideration.

Hi, my name is Leanne. And I just want to say that this school represents a bit more than enrollment. It gives families a reason to commit to San Francisco. Personally, I know that there are hundreds and hundreds of families who are interested in the opening of the school. And we don't want to lose them for potentially forever as they seek other alternatives i also want to say that for our kids mandarin immersion can be truly life changing building cultural understanding confidence in their identity and a lasting connection to their families and their heritage and it means so much and it's like frankly a crown jewel of san francisco that we have this option to begin with so i think that it really reflects very well on the district if we are able to deliver the commitment that has been promised thank you

Okay. As a reminder, if I call your name, please line up in the order that your names are called. I have Justin Apple. Vincent Cho. Yeah, okay. Teresa Molina. Rosa Mendoza. Roberto Guzman Rivera.

Good afternoon. My name is Teresa Molina. I am the mother of Inovet. I have my granddaughter in Rosa Park. I am here to talk about the linguistic investment programs of San Francisco University that provide bilingual skills to students. y intensidad reales con beneficios académicos comprobados, pero tengo una preocupación específica. El acceso para las familias de bajos ingresos con demasiada frecuencia, los cupos de inversión terminan en manos de familias que saben navegar el sistema de loterías, que tienen transporte, um mientras tanto las familias de bajos ingresos incluyendo antes nativos de idioma quedan fuera del programa porque podrían fortalecer las habilidades que sus hijos ya tienen le pido a la junta de periódicos en la difusión y los grupos de inmersión en las escuelas thank you hello good afternoon my name is teresa molina and um i'm a mom and also i have my

uh great-granddaughter rosa parks um i want to talk about the the mission programs here at sfusd and to talk about the the all the benefits and bilingual skills and academic that these children can have i'm a little worried about the low-income families and how these are investments that a lot of families don't understand but some of them they actually benefit because they know how to turn around the lottery. And I know that for the low income families outside of the program, outside of the program can lose all the skills and they already have already and also I want to say to the Board of Education to continue this programs for the K through eight students. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Rosa Mendoza. I have a daughter in Denman. Soy madre líder de Innovate School. Es hora de dejar de transportar a los niños de un extremo a otro de la ciudad, simplemente para que puedan recibir instrucción en su idioma materno. Debemos crear más programas de idiomas en nuestros vecindarios de bajos ingresos para que nuestros brillantes estudiantes no sigan perdiendo valiosos minutos de aprendizaje viajando por toda la ciudad. Good afternoon. Good afternoon.

My name is Rosa Mendoza and I have a daughter, Denman. I'm the leader of Innovative Schools and I think it's actually, I don't think it's correct that they send kids from one side of the city to the other just because they can get instruction in their own native language. They need to be having these opportunities in their neighborhoods so they cannot lose very vital minutes or time between going from one place to the other. We, you the board, should be investing in our Latino and African American families. Have an excellent day.

Good evening, Superintendent Hsu, President Kim, and commissioners. My name is Roberto Guzman, and I have three children at Guadalupe Elementary. As you discuss the TKA Mandarin immersion school, please also consider bringing language powers to Guadalupe. For several years, Guadalupe families have requested Cantonese language pathways and Spanish bilingual transitional kindergarten class. Families should not have to send their children across the city to receive instructions in their home language. I asked the district to meet with Guadalupe families, review community demands, and explain what staffing, enrollment, and resources are needed to establish these programs. Language pathways should be available in the communities where families live. Bringing Cantonese and Spanish bilingual opponents to Guadalupe will give more children the opportunity to learn their own and their home language while remaining connected to their neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you very much. The remaining agenda item speakers, Melanie Bowsen, Blanca Catalan, Reina Tello.

Excuse me, you called Vincent Chao before?

I did.

Yeah, I was here. I just... Instead of being in line, I was tired. I sat down next to the line. But my name is Vincent Chow, and I retired from San Francisco Unified as a bilingual principal. And before that, I served as a Chinese bilingual teacher and then principal 20 years at Visitation Valley. And you know what? Even Visitation Valley used to be The students used to speak only Toisan because they are from the village. And guess what? I hear that they all speak Mandarin now. I was in Hong Kong. Hong Kong, come on. This is as Cantonese as you can get. I was in Hong Kong and they spoke Mandarin to me. I said, what? So just because of that, I think we should expedite the... well i don't know if it's pre-k or tk uh tk did not exist when i was when i was around so whatever whatever works asap like hopefully this coming 2027 thank you very much

Good evening, board members and superintendent. My name is Blanca Catalan and I am a parent organizer with Coleman Advocates and an SFUSD parent also. As you look at the district budget and our financial future, I'm asking you to make sure every single decision is grounded in what is actually best for our students and families. I'm also here tonight in strong solidarity with the Richmond Neighborhood Center, and I urge you to commit to a transparent public process that actively protects the youth, family, and food security programs our communities rely on every day. Fiscal responsibility and community investment aren't mutually exclusive. They can and should go hand in hand. Please make choices that strengthen trust, protect essential services, and keep students at the heart of everything you do. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is and I'm here in solidarity with the Richmond neighborhood center. Um, I was here at the meeting in April and offered the partnership with the race and equity and all planning coalition with over 40 organizations city wide with expertise in this very thing. And I was very, very upset. to hear that this grave mistake had been made by leadership at sfusd with many of the board members not knowing that this rfp would have gone out on friday i don't know what part of excuse me um that's not a on the it's not a facilities consent item um it's the same item that blanca was speaking about so i just wanted to say that i don't know what part of like The decision making process that the ad hoc committee voiced that we need a true partnership with community and I see a lot of community here willing to protect their neighborhood center. That mistake should have never been made without it coming back to the board at that meeting. I sat here and there was no decision made on that night. So I'm not sure how this grave mistake would be made, but I just wanted to clarify for you that an RFP is a contract. Whatever goes into that contract will stand. There will be no opportunity to fix it afterwards. And so I implore you not to make this mistake again. The community will be a great partner for you, but you need to put that first step forward. Thank you.

Um, Melanie Bowsen, it's the thick mat item.

Thank you.

Good evening, Commissioners and Dr. Sue. My name is Melanie Bowson. I'm the CAC chair. I have a sixth grader at Viz Valley Middle School. I want to briefly raise two connected issues around special education funding and transparency. FICMAP found that SFUSD applied a 2.26% indirect cost rate to special education rather than the 7.05% rate approved by CDE, resulting in special education costs being understated. Governor Newsom recently signed a historic $2.4 billion statewide increase in special education funding. As families, we would like to understand how much additional special education funding will SFUSD receive, and what does the district's plan for using these new dollars to directly improve services and outcomes for students with disabilities? We asked that the district provide transparency to families about these new investments and how they will be allocated and how we will measure their impact. Thank you.

Thank you to those who have spoken. President, can we move on to non-agenda items? Junius Ho, Kirsten, and Sarah for Tech and intentional tech.

Good evening. We are Tech in Check, San Francisco families, educators and community members advocating for intentional tech use and age appropriate parameters in our public schools, which is ultimately an equity issue. We have around 250 members, we're now in 55 public schools, and we have a petition with around 900 signatures. Our petition supports one, a moratorium on student generative AI use, Two, grade level limits on one-to-one devices and no recreational screen exposure at school. Three, social media free schools. Four, parental consent for data collecting ed tech products. Five, a reinvestment in physical learning materials. And six, increased transparency and family awareness. Please find our petition at tinyurl.com backslash T-I-C petition. Thank you.

Hi, I'm an educator, and I signed the Tekken Check petition. One petition asked is to block student-led use of YouTube on Chromebooks. Students spend class time watching YouTube shorts and can access traumatic content. I recently searched the word fighting on a school-issued Chromebook and saw content on how to start a fight at school and a disturbing video titled Kid Slams Teacher. I don't want any child exposed to this at school. We cannot filter YouTube, but we can decide whether we want big tech's worldview driving classroom environments or that of educators. To do nothing is irresponsible. Studies have named attention deficit and impaired executive control as cognitive consequences of short form videos. When I started as a teacher, I remember SFUSD served chocolate milk at lunch. We learned the health consequences of excessive sugar and stopped offering chocolate milk. If we can remove chocolate milk from SFUSD, we can surely block YouTube on student Chromebooks.

Hello again, Junious, and I'm in technology, so I'm keenly aware of some of these challenges. And I think knowing that I have very young kids that aren't quite exposed to this, I still feel responsible to help steward this and guide this and to show up. One of the hardest things is the different nuances, different value systems that people have with screens. We know how hard it is to parent the kids, but then also to keep them engaged in learning. So sometimes technology can creep in. To combat this, we need to, again, same theme, partner, right? And even in the handbook, it says all kids can't be supervised on their devices all the time. I don't want that. I don't need you to do that. That's my job as a parent. And if we can set good models with our kids at home and we can be on the same page in terms of what we expect, then I think we can have a much better successful coexistence with tech versus, as they said, products of the tech companies. Thank you.

Thank you. Laura Padilla. Manson. Sorry, if I'm wrong to pronounce your name. Hermie Kelly. Kelly. Hemi. Sorry. Michelle Cusano. Cliff Teague.

All righty. Good evening, Board Commissioner, Superintendent Tsu. All right. So we have so many organizations, community-based organizations, and parent-led programs who are filling critical gaps around public education here in our city. We're so lucky. They provide academic support, food for families, youth programming, family services, and many other services. The situation at 7430th Avenue is an example of what happens when there isn't meaningful engagement early enough in the process. The people most impacted aren't simply the organizations using the building. They are the youth, parents, families, and community members who benefit from the programs happening here. When SFUSD considers leasing or developing a property, I believe the district needs a process that asks not only what is the financial value of this property, but also what is the community value of what is happening here. I want to acknowledge that I believe SFPSD leadership and this board have made real efforts over the past year to strengthen community engagement. So my ask today is simple. Please do not take a step backward in improving community engagement processes or practices. I think we can protect the community infrastructure that helps our students thrive. 347 30th Avenue has opportunity to demonstrate that we can do all of these three things.

Hi, my name is Benson Lam. I live in Richmond for 50 years. I'm here to ask you to serve our community center. Let me tell you a few things that the Richmond and Richmond Center did. Some of you guys may have gone to the Chinese parade in Richmond. They did that. They also say, I don't even know how many business pandemic the door still open because they actually engage the merchant with the neighborhood. So they can stay open 1 of the business even right now in return offering 7 dollar lunch for the community. not to be not to mention the senior and the youth program they touch everybody in the community from a to c find a cbo that do that now i also work for cbo i can tell you on on another side note they're working actively for emergency plans for the senior and the disabled in our community if we don't have this a neighborhood center nothing will happen like this so please preserve our site thank you

Good evening, Commissioners and Superintendent Hsu. I'm Michelle Cassano. I'm the Executive Director of the Richmond Neighborhood Center. 46 years ago, Richmond District neighbors fought to preserve 741 30th Avenue for community use. Their victory has benefited generations of Richmond District families. Today, we provide youth and family programs, senior services, food assistance, and other essential resources from the site. While we sought a lease renewal and planned capital improvements, SFUSD moved the property toward redevelopment without telling us. That is not meaningful community engagement. We ask SFUSD to grant the Richmond Neighborhood Center a minimum five-year lease extension and sit down with us and our community to determine the site's future. Our community protected this space once before. Please do not make them fight to protect it again.

Hello there. My name is Henry Kelly. My husband's name was Dennis Kelly. Dennis Kelly was in the union. I'm in the union. And Dennis Kelly got the people who were sitting here 36 years ago to not take the I don't need these.

I was whispering to not really have this thing happen. And 46 years ago, the school district said, you're right now.

We're talking about young children. We're talking about food. We're talking about people like me who are disability and I'm 84 and I have problems. So I go there.

Superintendent Su, Board of Education Commissioners, my name is Cliff Yee. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer at the Richmond Neighborhood Center. And as you've heard over the past few days, and from just a small portion of our community here tonight, our people are furious. Our students, our families, our communities are furious. We at the Neighborhood Center serve more than 6,000 youth families and seniors, including folks accessing food security programs, youth development, workforce development programs, and our upcoming Family Resource Center. And we are one of your biggest providers. We're at 12 schools. And we're just really upset by this process and the lack of transparency the lack of community engagement that our people rely on every single day and just the anxiety and uncertainty that they feel it's our responsibility it should be your responsibility as well so we're asking and demanding to um to meet after this to come to our neighborhood center see what happens i do want to appreciate superintendent sue for your leadership and listening understanding and we're just demanding transparency and accountability thank you all so much

Thank you very much. Laura Chin Smoot, Ana Avile, Heather Marado, and Brandon Amores.

Let's see, was this a show? Hi, my name is Laura Chin Smoot. I want to thank the superintendent and the board and all the decisions that you have to make. And I want to help you make another decision for the Richmond Neighborhood Center. I'm an educator. I taught with the Unified School District for 32 years. I'm also a product of the Unified School District. My daughter is a product of the Unified School District. So I am for public schools. And what the Richmond Neighborhood Center does, I'm going to talk mostly as an educator, because they talked about the food program and things like that. But they've got all these schools in our neighborhood. We have 12 schools that they go in to do after school programs. They do lunch programs. They do before school programs. And what do parents need when they send their children to school? They need child care. And this organization provides it. And as an educator, I know an excellent program when I see it. and i've worked there 32 years at spring valley school at the first public school in california and it's an excellent you know and richmond neighborhood center does an excellent job so i want to speak on their behalf um the other thing is as a retiree i told the truth i graduate from work but um i do tai chi every sunday morning and now i teach tai chi so that's what i also got out thank you

Hello Board, my name is Ana Aviles and I am a DLAC chair and a parent of two children in the district, James Lick Middle School and Mission High School. You all had asked me in the past, what can we do to have family partnership? And my answer has been work with families, community, and continue to disappoint, and you continue to disappoint me. because you continue to do things the wrong way without community in the table, the impact that impacts them directly. I'm here to ask you to protect the Richmond Neighborhood Center at 741 30th Avenue that work with the Richmond Neighborhood Center at the community before making a decision about the future of this property. Show our community you truly care by listening and working hand in hand to ensure we continue to provide our community resources, protect the services and work with the Richmond Neighborhood Center. Protect 741. Thank you.

Good evening, Superintendent Hsu and commissioners. My name is Heather Cassandra Murado. I'm the executive director of Cross-Cultural Family Center. We are here tonight in solidarity with the Richmond Neighborhood Center, but I want to highlight something that's very critical. We occupy and have occupied the childcare center there at 741 30th Avenue and we were put on the list and not one person from SFUSD reached out to us and we have been tenants there for 33 years. We serve 60 families, subsidized families, we're part of the alpha system and not one person engaged or pick up the phone or sent an email to notify me directly that we were possibly losing 60 slots that goes against the mayor's goal in opening more slots for subsidized care in San Francisco. If you look at the RFP, we're not even listed. And it is, we need transparency on what happened and why no one considered the 60 families that were being served at the site. Thank you.

uh good evening everyone my name is brandon kuna and bryce i come to you as a community member for over 17 years and now going on to my ninth year as a staff with the richard neighborhood center i started my track here as a participant and now lucky enough to be able to contribute and be a part of the village that is the richard neighborhood center today we do it all you can champion any one of our programs any one of our staff that are working within day in and day out within our organization and look at the impact across whether that is our afterschool programs, our programs at the high school level, our food pantry, our new FRC dedicated to helping families and parents. These are all things that all directly help our community. And to think about a state in San Francisco where we might not have this anymore, it's something that I cannot imagine in terms of the pain and having to explain the amount of change that would go through our communities, our families, our grandparents, our parents. This affects everyone. So please do us a favor, show us the passion and don't forget to be human. We are all human at the end of the day.

Thank you very much. Nancy Chang, Sharma and Jenny Garcia.

I think we're different issues, but that's okay. Hi, I'm Nancy Chang, and I think you met my daughter, Nora, already. I'm here representing the many concerned parents who are still concerned about the lead paint situation at CIS. We'd like the district to commit to safety and transparency and keep kids away from areas with dangerous lead levels. We've made progress, thank you, in our dialogue, but the latest test results show unsafe levels, both interior and exterior, and that's after they did cleaning. So this proves that mistakes are already being made in a situation with no room for error. What's more, they knew about these results when they promised transparency when we met. They only shared them the next day, which undermines the trust that we'd like to build. So we request that any area with unsafe levels should be based on science rather than outdated regulations, be cleaned and tested before children return, and that all test data be released as soon as possible. In short, please model the behavior that we try to instill in our kids. One, clean up your mess. Two, tell the truth. Three, don't throw in other kids. Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Jenny Garcia and I have one child at Guadalupe Elementary. Tonight I am responding to the September 1st study session. Whether the board chooses neighborhood guarantees, citywide choice, or another enrollment model, it will not succeed unless resources are distributed with integrity and equity. Changing school assignments alone will not close a series literacy gaps affecting Latino and Black students. Every school needs adequate staffing, strong programs, and language pathways. Families should not have to send their children across the city to receive instruction in their home language. Guadalupe families have asked for years to keep neighborhood children in their community. Please bring Mandarin and Cantonese language pathways to Guadalupe and establish a Spanish bilingual transitional kindergarten class. Thank you.

My name is Raj Sharma. I'm principal at Gallup Elementary. I just want to say a few thanks for a few things that happened in our community. One is the food. Definitely the new vendor is excellent, is working. And first time I have seen our kids eating lunch. And it's kind of like a game changer. So thank you. Other thing, your investment in a springboard, you know, you saw like the new aspect growth is kind of a 20% change that unreal. uh in reading or like 25 in math for third grader and same thing we are seeing in first grade so around 20 this is not this is a story that you want to see so your investment is working and i want to thank board members and superintendent for that so thank you everyone

Okay, President Kim, that concludes our in person public comment. We'll move to virtual. Okay. So for the virtual attendees, a reminder, it's one minute, and we will start with students. So if you are only students, raise your hands. If you're not a student, please remove your hands. There will be time for non students to raise their hands. okay um star child go ahead hello can you hear me uh we can hear you but you're a little soft oh You'll have to wait if you're not a student.

Are there any other students?

Okay, we will there are no students, so we will open up to agenda items. Okay, we will start with autumn.

Good evening. My name is Autumn Brown-Garibay, and I am an SFUSD parent of three kids who are all in immersion programs that they love. Like many families, we are really grateful to be in this program. It's a restorative language for my family, and so it's really important as a part of my husband's culture that we prioritize this for our kids. um the reason i'm calling in tonight is because families were supposed to hear about the location of the new mandarin immersion school and we also have the enrollment fair coming up so my questions are what changed in the timeline when are the families going to learn about the location that they've been waiting on and what is the board's expectation for making sure that families have all the information that they need before the enrollment cycle begins this fall my hope is really that families get these answers tonight that they understand transparently and that we continue to build trust between hopeful families that want to come to our district and our district partners so please uh ensure that the families are getting the answers that they need so that we can build that trust and expand enrollment in our district thank you thank you star child you may proceed this time

Yes, my name, can you hear me?

You're a little soft, but we can hear you.

Yes, my name is Star Child. I'm chair of the Libertarian Party of San Francisco, LPSF.org, here to represent the roughly one-third of school-age kids and their families in San Francisco who choose independent schools or homeschool their kids, and all the people in the public who are forced to fund the SFUSD, in some cases against their will, even though they're not using the services Governments have wrongfully colonized the word public and tried to make it synonymous with government. It is not. We need to reclaim the word public for community public goods that are funded voluntarily through cooperation, not government coercion. One of the fundamental principles of American public policy is separation of church and state. We need separation of school and state for the same reason, because it is dangerous for government to be involved in telling people what to think and believe, especially the youngest and most impressionable members of society. Independent homeschooled kids have better educational outcomes on average than government schools and SF. So this is just a reminder for those who may be frustrated or dissatisfied with the government school system that there are better alternatives available that are nonviolence-based for you and your kids. And increasingly, there's help and support for low-income people and folks needing assistance to use these schools and homeschool. Thank you.

Thank you. Janice Huynh.

Hi. Good evening. My name is Janice. I was born and raised in San Francisco. I'm a proud product of SFUSD, and today I'm the parent of a four-year-old turning five and a one-year-old. I strongly support opening the Mandarin Immersion TK through 8 school in 2027. The demand is already clear. Families are competing for a very limited number of immersion seats. And research shows that dual language immersion can strengthen academic outcomes while giving children the lifelong benefit of another language. But I also believe this is bigger than one school. This is an opportunity for SFUSD to differentiate itself and be a leader among public school systems nationally. In a city as diverse and globally connected as SF, multilingual education should be one of the things that makes families excited to choose SFUSD. And timing matters. Our children only get one kindergarten year. Delaying this school means an entire group of children could miss that opportunity. As an SFUSD graduate, I want to see our district invest in programs that attract families, reflect our city, and make our public schools stronger. Please keep this school on track to open in 2027. Thank you.

Thank you. Corey R. Darnell,

Hello, my name is Corey Darnell. I'm the Deputy Attorney General for the state of California and a proud father of two. My youngest will be starting TK next year and I implore you to please have a Mandarin version TK available for her. I personally request you consider an AM PM option to double the chances of enrollment without decreasing quality. I do not speak Mandarin, but as a civil servant, I focus on righting wrongs within the community. It has impacted my work that I do not speak Mandarin within San Francisco. There have been times where I cannot adequately help or understand an individual because of my lack of ability to speak Mandarin. My daughter is half Chinese, and I regret that I do not have the skills nor finances to help her speak with her grandparents or with her community or embrace her culture. I ask you to please help her where I cannot as soon as possible. Thank you.

You're welcome.

She's here too.

Thank you. Tiffany or Taylor?

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

So I am a school teacher here in SFUSD. I teach at ER Taylor. I want to address two items, tech in the classrooms, enrollment and staffing in SFUSD. As a primary grade teacher, I'm concerned that my primary reading screening at this point is an AI character named Amira, and she is called a she by the district and their trainers, which concerns me. I'm concerned that I'm being told that tutoring by Amira is part of my balanced approach to literacy. I'm concerned that AMIRA was offered as an intervention to target support for our low performing African American and Pacific Islander families without other major supports put in place. I'm concerned that my assessment for my K-1 students is on a Chromebook with headphones. while they take an independent test that is not developmentally appropriate, nor can I see or hear what they are being asked. I applaud SFUSD's commitment to opening new programs. However, I have tremendous concerns about how the current programs are operating. Currently cohort three and four have the most K1 splits district wide. This means that schools are not filling up. So rather than consolidating students by local sites and filling grades, the district is placing multiple K1 slots at multiple sites.

Thank you, Tiffany. Your time's up. Kate's iPhone. Kate, we can't hear you. We'll come back to you. Rachel Jones.

Hello. Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay, great. Hello, good evening. This is Rachel Jones, Youth Justice Director for Coleman Youth Advocates. Hey, SFUSD has the responsibility to ensure that community, which means family and children, are at the core of every decision that is made at the table you sit at. That table, the table you've been voted into, the table has been made for children and families, especially the ones that compile the highest rates of the population in San Francisco. And we're dragging our feet to provide adequate equity education to all, which includes immersion. which includes the question of why are we sending out an RFP for a site that houses an org that's been a pillar of hope and guidance to students and families in an already sparse zone of San Francisco? And I ask, where is SFUSD leading us to? Thank you.

Thank you. Elliot Kent Yuritam.

Hello, my name is Elliot Kent-Iratam. I'm speaking personally tonight. I am a parent of two SFUSD kids. I have volunteered for the Richmond District, sorry, Richmond Neighborhood Center, I should say, in the Richmond District. And while I do understand that SFUSD is looking smartly at its real estate holdings and just trying to figure out what to do with underutilized assets. A vibrantly used community center and space that's used by not only something that's so valuable in the schools, but also providing food to people in the neighborhood, etc. Not to mention the cross-cultural center where kids go for preschool, et cetera. At any time I've gone by, it seems like a very well-used and loved place. So I would probably look elsewhere if we're looking to better use our assets. Thank you.

Thank you. Kelvin Kwong.

Oh, sorry. Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi there. My name is Kelvin. I live in San Francisco and I'm the father of one. I am here in support of the Mandarin Immersion Program. I grew up bilingual. It shaped how I think, how I connect with my family, and how I move throughout the world. It's also given me another dimension to interact with San Francisco and opened up parts of the city to me in ways that were never possible. Children obviously learn languages in ways that adults never can. They absorb it in a way when their brains were built exactly for that. And so with San Francisco being one of the largest Chinese-speaking communities in the country, a Mandarin immersion school isn't really just a specialty program here. It's something that is completely in line with everything that we need. And so I hope that you all can, I urge you to stay with the commitment of announcing the temporary location.

Thank you. Kate's iPhone.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Great. Hi. Thank you. My name is Kate. Thanks for coming back. I am the mom of a third grader and first grader at the Chinese immersion school. We are still dealing with a district who is trying to strip light paint from a building where our four year olds are playing, sucking their thumbs and doing handstands. The work needs to stop or they need to relocate us to another building. As you know, we walked into school to find lead paint removal occurring and 99% of the families had no idea it was being performed. The district had no plans to stop work, test, or assess the situation. Since then, we have gone to the media and presented at a board and insisted on independent testing after parents confirmed detectable lead levels. Unfortunately, the most recent testing found high levels three times greater than the EPA hazard threshold in both the little girls' and the little boys' bathrooms. There is a vent that goes directly into the containment area in another boys' bathroom, and windows into a classroom have been opened that go directly into the containment area. the district did not inform us about the high lead levels in the bathroom until four days later and kids had been in there for weeks clearly this is all proven to be a project with one major error after another and our children's health is at risk people are fallible and there are breakdowns in containment there is no way to do this safely with our children in the building we are urgently begging for the entire project to stop a deep clean and removal of the containment area thank you

Ranjit Chakotay?

Hi, my name is Ranjith Chalko. My child attends the Chinese Immersion School at Diablo, where we're very concerned about a construction project that has disturbed lead paint. We've been hearing the district talk about transparency and openness, but we're not seeing it, just like many others have complained about tonight with Richmond Center and other problems. At last week's community meeting, the district gave us a status report But they did not tell us the two restrooms had tested above the lead safety threshold and had to be closed for cleaning. We only learned about that in an email the next day. During the rest of the meeting, the district ran its standard playbook for these kinds of meetings. The facilitators split us up into small groups, collected our questions, filtered them, paraphrased them, and then asked them to leadership themselves. We then addressed the facilitators as they asked those questions. The result was a bunch of district employees talking amongst themselves about what they thought parents cared about, instead of directly engaging with the over 100 parents who were right there in front of them. parents have concluded this outreach is nothing more than public relations, the district withholds what it knows, controls what gets asked, and claims it engaged in dialogue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lori?

Good evening. I'm a parent at Chinese Immersion School at Diavola. Parents at our school are urging the board to keep children out of the east side play yards until they have been thoroughly cleaned and retested to reduce lead levels as low as possible. Lead remains on children's play surfaces and dozens of families are asking to opt out their children because the district has declined to close the yards itself. now the district is backing away from its previous commitment to allow families to opt out and is also backing away from its previous commitment to deep clean the play yards parents parents should not have to fight for the district to follow through on the protections it has already promised we should be working to prevent avoidable exposure and reduce lead on children's play surfaces as much as possible. Please close the play yards and thoroughly clean them to reduce lead levels as low as possible before children return. And please move the remaining lead related work to summer when children are off campus and containment can be removed and adjacent areas thoroughly clean to reduce lead levels as low as possible before children return.

Thank you, Lori. Albert Chow.

Hello. Hello, SFUSD Board and Superintendent Maria Su. I just want to speak today about the Mandarin Immersion Program. I was one of the first people on the board of the Dragon Gate Academy where we wanted to start a charter school for this very reason. And it was out of frustration that we put that together. And I'm so happy to see that you're moving forward. And I want to express that the concern, the needs, and the demand are still there for this very important program. And I want to make sure that when you do select a campus that you do make considerations towards having it more centrally located, that it's not out in the corners of the city, because this will attract people from all over the city for this wonderful new school campus. And I would like to also say that my stunts go to Star King, and we'd like to find a way to make sure that we can transfer our children over to the junior high portion of the school when that becomes available. So thank you very much.

Thank you. It is 7.50, President.

Thank you. Thank you to members of the public for joining us tonight to share your experience and perspective. As a reminder, our board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during public comment time. But we appreciate you being here today, both in person and virtually. Moving to item E, land acknowledgement. We, the San Francisco Board of Education, acknowledge that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramaytush Ohlone have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. As guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland, we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors elders and relatives of the romantic community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. Moving to item for student delegate report.

Oh, okay. Yay. So I don't have much to report yet, because we're in the middle of, we're in the middle of setting up our first SAC meeting, although it's a little late this year. But we're in the middle of setting up our first SAC meeting of the year. And we're, we have about, I believe we have at least one representative from majority the SF USD high schools this year. And we're super excited to get started on all of our initiatives this year.

Thank you very much. I'll move to item five, superintendent report.

Great. Thank you, President Kim. As we pull up my slides, I have a few brief slides. I just want to say that the new school year is starting off really, really well. I'm super excited about all the things that our students and our staff are doing. And I'm really, really heartened to hear that students are eating lunch at school. Although I also hear all the other stuff too, but I'm going to focus on the positive here. Okay, next slide please. Yes, it's hard to believe that it's already been a month since school has started. I am so proud of how our students, educators and staff have come together for such a strong start. And again, just really appreciate everyone for joining me on the first day of school. And for those of you who have not watched the fantastic video that Commissioner Fisher did um that highlighted this fun way of us coming together to celebrate the start of the school year I think we had uh Commissioner Gupta there President Kim um and Commissioner Ray um so that was really fun but hopefully what the community is seeing and what everyone is seeing is that we all are working together to really um start our school year strong and start our school year together. Next slide, please. We want to inform everyone that the Department of Children, Youth, and their Families is starting their 2026 Family Listening Series. SF families are invited to share their experiences and help shape the future of San Francisco. We have been working very closely with the city, particularly with DCYF and the rest of our city departments to try to include questions in the survey that will help inform SFUSD as we move forward in better serving our students. So we strongly encourage families and young adults young adults up to 18 to 24 years old to please participate in this citywide survey. So the citywide survey is online. It will be available from now until December 31st. Or you can join me and our staff at the many, many family summits that's happening throughout the city. I believe there's going to be 14 of them happening throughout the city. I think the first one this weekend. So it would be Oh, yes, the first one this weekend at Aptos Middle School on September 12, from 11 to 130. So families who are interested, please come and share your thoughts, share your opinions. Honestly, share your direction for us as a city working together because we are talking about our children. It's not the city's kids. It's not SFUSD's kids. It's our children. Next slide please. I am also really excited to share the new field at Monroe elementary school, I actually had a chance to see it it's beautiful. it's a brand new field there and so sorry my talking points just disappeared. Sorry. all the safety measures that we have on my computer. But yes, I had the opportunity to see it. We did work and build this field out in partnership with SFPUC and with our bond funds. So very exciting there. And I know that our students are really excited to use it because rumor has it they love soccer. And so it's a great field. We partnered with another fantastic nonprofit, American Scores, to build out the soccer program there. Next slide, please. In a national first, California is making emergency asthma medication free and available at public and charter schools across the state. As a sufferer of asthma, this sounds fantastic. So through CalRx, which is Cal prescription, California will provide emergency albuterol inhalers and spacers at no cost for up to three years, helping schools respond immediately when a child is struggling to breathe. Schools who are interested in getting the free inhalers can sign up at California Department of Public Health's website, which SFUSD will be signing up for. So stay tuned to hear more about how we can have these inhalers available for our students who need it. And before the school year started, we partnered with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority, so SFMTA, the folks who manage all of our wonderful buses, to highlight the importance of safety, particularly traffic safety for our students. As you know, we've got 49,000 students and 9,000 staff traversing our wonderful city. And so we worked very closely with SFMTA to make sure that we prioritize safety for our students and ask all of our residents to keep in mind that particularly during school hours our young people our students are walking to school walking home from school and we are really really grateful to SFMTA and the city for working to reduce the speed zones and speed limits around schools so now the speed zone around schools are reduced down to 15 miles per hour which will greatly support our schools and school safety for all of our students. Additionally, at West Portal Elementary, SFMTA installed flashing crosswalks, beacons, at their busiest intersection. So we'll continue to work with SMTA to monitor the additional programs of the beacon lights and see how that is helping the students there. And, as we heard today, and I know that the board is now aware, we have heard the concerns raised by members of our Community regarding the district's recent request for proposal on five district owned properties. And we understand that there are important connections that we have with our community. As a person who formerly ran the Department of Children, Youth and their Families, I personally understand the importance of deep partnership. And I am grateful for all the partners that we have that supports our students every single day, including before school, after school, on the weekends and during breaks. The district, although has a responsibility to continue to manage our budget and ensure that we have a real estate portfolio that takes into consideration best practices and how to use our facilities to support our students, our schools, and ensure that we are appropriately using them for long-term needs. I firmly believe that these two things can coexist. We can continue to manage our portfolio of facilities and properties that are not well used, that are underused, that are perhaps vacant, as well as continue to partner with our long-term partners, community-based organizations, and figure out how we can all work together. So because of that, many of you have heard I have not released the RFP that was supposed to be released on Friday. And we are continuing to have further conversations internally to ensure that we do this right. Because again, it's about making sure that we figure out a way for all of us to work together to support our students and our families and our community. And... And then finally, family should know that the waitlist process for our enrollment has ended and this is the end of our official open enrollment process. So today the spring transfer request window opens and the last day of that process will be November 13th. Our SFUSD enrollment fair will be October 24th, where families can come and learn more about all of our schools and that kicks off the start of our next enrollment cycle for school year 2728 as always families who have questions or need further assistance please feel free to come directly to 555 franklin where we have in-person support for you or you can go on online and click under the enrollment tab on our website at www.sfusd.edu Um, with that, I'm going to conclude my remarks and, uh, I know that there were lots of questions about making sure that we open our TK eight Mandarin immersion program, uh, or school on time. And we will have more information about that during that part of the presentation. So I'm not going to steal the thunder, um, at that time until that time.

Okay.

Thank you, president Kim.

Thank you. Uh, moving to item F consent calendar.

The next item on the agenda is the Consent Calendar. President Kim has a standing recusal from the Consent Calendar due to his employment with the City and County of San Francisco, which is a frequent contractor with the SFUSD to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Do any board members have any personal, professional, or business relationship with any individual who is the subject of or who has an ownership or financial interest in the subject of any consent items, where, as a result of the relationship, the ability of the board member to act for the benefit of the public could reasonably be questioned, and thus the relationship should be disclosed in the minutes? Seeing none, Superintendent Hsu, do you have any changes to the consent calendar?

I do not.

I move the adoption of the consent calendar. Is there a second? Second. Could we have a roll call vote, please?

Student Delegate Anna Nguyen? Yes. Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander?

Yes.

Vice President Hewling? no commissioner weisman ward yes commissioner gupta yes commissioner fisher yes thank you and president kim you can return

Okay, moving to item F or sorry G voting on student explosion matters. I move the approval of the stipulated expulsion agreement for one high school student matter number 20262027 gca one for a one year expulsion period until September 8 2027 during the suspended expulsion period the student will tend to Connie school program can I have a second. Second roll call please.

Commissioner Ray. Yes, Commissioner Alexander yes Vice President healing yes President can yes Commissioner Weissman Ward yes Commissioner group though yes Commissioner Fisher yes.

I move the approval of stipulated expulsion agreement for one middle school student matter number 202 620 2702 for a one year explosion period until September 8 2027 during the suspended explosion period the student will attend baby you care middle school can have a second. Second roll call please.

Commissioner Ray yes Commissioner Alexander yes. Vice President healing. Yes. President Kim.

Yes.

Commissioner Weissman Ward. Yes. Commissioner Gupta.

Yes.

Commissioner Fisher. Yes.

Thank you. Moving to item G to the next item on the agenda is 269 dash eight SP one employment contracts for district executive employees can have emotion and second.

I move Action Item 269-8, SP1, Employment Contracts for District Executive Employees.

It has been properly moved and seconded that the Board approve this item. I ask Dr. Seward, does he need to bring this item forward?

DR. I invite Associate Superintendent of HR, Dr. James Harrell, to

Um, hello, uh, commissioners, uh, this contract is an extension of our current head financial officer. Uh, there are 2 changes to the contract that would be superseding the previous contract. Uh, the 1st is the extension of her time. So it would expire on June, 2028, um, which is aligned to other, uh, senior leaders in the district. And the 2nd is to align her salary schedule, um, between the heads, uh, to the head financial officer appropriately.

Any comments or questions on the board.

Seeing none debate is now closed on the motion to approve item 269 dash eight SP one employment conscious or district executive employees roll call please.

Student delegate on on new in.

Yes, Commissioner Ray i'm so sorry console, do you have to read the terms. into the record okay. Christopher McConkey- Okay, so sorry about that sorry before we vote on that, thank you for catching that. Commissioner Alexander. Christopher McConkey- Are you able to Thank you. Christopher McConkey- Oh okay.

Sorry, the contract would be starting, should the Board vote, starting on tomorrow through June of 2028. The salary schedule is Step 8, Grade 7, aligned to the nonrepresented senior leadership schedule. I have not internalized that. I apologize.

we will throw the ball inside.

We just I can look it up for a question.

Okay, that will pull up nice. Sorry. Um, so the term of this agreement is from September 8th, 2026 to June 30th, 2028, uh, unless terminated aligns to the agreements. The head financial officer shall be placed on salary grade 7 step 8 of the management salary schedule. Um. I will find the salary schedule exact amount for 2627. The unrepresented salary amount for grade 7 and 2627 this school year is 262,922.72. Has the name of the employee been read into the record? My apologies if I didn't hear it. It's our current head financial officer, Neeraj Jainaparan. Thank you.

Are we good to move on? Okay, great. Can we do a roll call vote, please, from the top?

Sorry.

Student delegate Anna Nguyen? Yes. Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander?

Yes.

Vice President Hewling? Yes. President Kim?

Yes.

Commissioner Weisman board yes. Commissioner Gupta yes. Commissioner Fisher yes.

Thank you moving to the next item on the agenda 269 dash 25. approval of pips and waivers can motion on a 2nd.

I move approval of item 269 dash 8 approval of pips and waivers.

Sorry, the agenda was misaligned here i'm going to repeat that just to cover our pieces, the nice next time and on the agenda, you were right, Commissioner Fisher is 269 dash eight SP two and you have seconded that tune to six. Yes, okay.

Second.

Thank you, Commissioner, I said word. been properly motion moved and seconded that the board approve item 269-8sp2 approval of pips and waivers dr sue yes before i hand this over to associate superintendent um h of hr dr harrell i just want to say that the just want to fully recognize that um our normal process was never to have you

Do all of the reading for for the executive contract, and so I just wanted to acknowledge that I apologize, but now i'm going to hand this back to over to you for pips and waivers.

This is a routine administrative item that allows our high needs teachers to enter the classroom while they're finishing their credential.

Any comments or questions from the board. Seeing none debate is now closing them motion to approve item 269 dash eight SP to approval pips and waivers recover, please.

Student Delegate Anna Nguyen? Yes. Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander?

Yes.

Vice President Hewling? Yes. President Kim?

Yes.

Commissioner Weisman-Ward?

Yes.

Commissioner Gupta?

Yes.

Commissioner Fischer? Yes.

Thank you. Moving to item H discussion items. The superintendent and our team are tasked with providing a draft of each agenda 12 days in advance for board members to review. Once that draft agenda is made public on our website, board members have made a commitment to submit. Clarifying and tactical questions and staff have made a commitment to respond to these questions in advance of each board meeting. This Q&A doc is linked into today's agenda in item E2. We invite the public to view those questions and answers alongside our discussion today. Moving to item one, FCMAT's fiscal health risk analysis report and presentation.

Thank you, President Kim and it's my honor to invite Jeff Potter and Jennifer Noga to the dais. Along with our deputy superintendent and business services, Chris Montbenitis. and our CFO, Niruk. We're going to bring the whole team up here. The theme is about team. Before I hand this over to our team, I just want to say thank you to FIGMAT for working with us. I know that the the FIGMAT firm has provided, has met with many, many of our school district internal staff, as well as members of this board. And I know that normally audits are difficult. I would like to believe that we did not make it as difficult for you, but oh, come on, Jeff, work with me here. We're trying to, positive vibes, good vibes. But I also acknowledge that the district has both gone a long way. We've moved a lot from two years ago when we all first came into this position. But I also acknowledge that we still have a lot to go. And so it's always wonderful to be reminded and to be humbled by how much more we have to go. And so with that, I am going to hand this over to Jeff or to Jennifer. Great to Jennifer. Great. Thanks.

I think. Can you hear me? All right. So so good evening board of trustees, superintendent and staff. My name is jennifer's she just said i'm with fit Matt, and this is my colleague Jeff potter. fit Matt again acronyms right and education so fit matt stands for fiscal crisis and management assistance team, so I appreciate the opportunity to present to you this evening. So, for those who are unaware is a state program that is funded with the state apportionment. So we're an external agency. We're not tied specifically to a school district or county office. We are a standalone entity, and we're our state apportionment is processed through the current county superintendent of schools. um again because of our name the fiscal crisis a lot of people think that that's the majority of our work and it is part of what we do but we also offer operational assistance and guidance throughout the state to all the leas throughout california so tk through 14. so again not just school districts but also community colleges as well as charter schools um so this And county offices. I don't know why I forget them, but I do forget them. And I worked at one for years.

What's that?

Yeah, right. You remember them. So this evening, we'll be presenting a report that's called the Fiscal Health Risk Analysis. So Oregon, as in our world, right, and FHRA. So as you hear me refer to the FHRA report. that's what I'm referring to as a fiscal health risk analysis. So this was a study. The study occurred basically because the school district had a lack of growing concern from CDE, which is the California State Department of Education. Who is in your situation, your oversight agency. So, unlike other school districts, you know, you're structured being a single district county. So is your oversight agency and that lack of going concern was done in March of 2026. Well, you received the letter in March of 2026. Um, however, the deck, the, their. Designation was only on behalf of the school district. It wasn't found on behalf of the county office. Um, and so the school district. Based their designation based on the following concerns. They concurred with your qualified interim. And this was all based off of your first interim so throughout kind of this presentation you're going to hear us talk about different reports and so while their letter that was dated in March and your team was about to bring forth their second interim. you received this lack of going concern from your oversight agency. So kind of important because that impacted even our typical process and our timeline on how we do these things. So CDE's designation, basically, right, they concurred with your qualified certification, your first interim report, because of the lack of a board-approved fiscal stabilization plan with their first interim. And then you had ongoing unrestricted, um, general fund deficit spending. Declining enrollment kind of hitting throughout the state, but more so here, the use of 1 times funds to support ongoing expenditures. And then again, the uncertainty and again timing with the, um, strike and the, um, recently negotiated collective bargaining agreements to kind of end the strike. Right? And at the time. it was unknown on the impact that strike was going to have with your Ada. So other related areas of concern that they identified were kind of concerns outlined within your 2,425 annual financial audit report. So for this report, There is no cost to the district. There's no cost to the district. There's no cost to the county. Um, it's performed. As a result of legislation from the budget active 2018 19, um, which provides a state allocation to us for us to go out and conduct these, um. Studies and. Check for early science, it's, it's a proactive approach for us to figure out if there's districts that are in fiscal distress. So, the scope of the study included conducting this analysis in 20 different areas. So, it's been around for 30 plus years and over the 30 plus years of the districts that have gone insolvent. These are 20 areas that. impacted this fiscal solvency of those districts and so they developed this tool based on the 20 different areas and within each of those areas there's questions and they're yes and no questions so unlike our management assistance where we give you here's your processes here's best practices here's recommendations to fix it with the fiscal health risk analysis you're just getting yes and no answers on those items that we answered yes to we don't give any other narrative to that for the answers we give no to we give an explanation on why it's a no we don't go into recommendations on how to fix it we don't go really in depth on why it's a no so i think you'll find that throughout the report So again, this report was a result of as Dr Sue alluded to the staff provided a ton of documentation. And I, I have to think in that because she organized them in the absolute fabulous way with our numbering system and everything. We didn't have to go in and fix any of that. So please kudos to not for fixing that for us. But, um, a ton of documentations. We also conducted interviews. We met with district leadership as well as board members. And that's the only way we can get our information. We ask questions. We look at the document documentation, and then we triangulate what we see and heard. and that's how we come up with the yes and no so we conducted our field work back in June and so um figure out where I'm at sorry Oh okay so i'll also point out that okay so talking about the timeline so typically when we get those designations for lack of going concern, we always use that same baseline as the lack of going concern, but it's since it was received kind of late in March. There was no point for us to use your districts first interim for our review, because we were coming in in June, I mean you were already starting on your adopted budget so even as it was we were using your second interim. And the third interim is not a report that we based any of our studies from. So, while yes, you had that 3rd interim that happened in between there, and you had the adopted budget that was happening at the same time as our interviews, it wasn't completed. And so we based our, um, study off of the 2nd, interim report. So again, talking kind of subsequent to that right subsequent to that you obviously adopted a budget you adopted a balanced budget, and so the report might seem like it's a little outdated, but I still think there's room for. Things to be improved again at the same time, talking about the report. When we came in to do the report, you had new positions, a lot of new staff in their positions. You had just implemented the new financial system. You had just started a brand new position control system. And so there's a lot of change that's going on at the same time that. We're coming in to do this study, so there's just a lot of changing pieces that are happening. And so, as we're getting our answers. You can probably turn around and get papers to say we've fixed it. We've changed it. We might have already addressed it. Um, but before I go in to explain all of our analysis, I just want to thank, um, the district superintendent, Dr. Sue, as well as the staff across all the numerous departments that we met with, especially including the district's business office, because they're kind of impacted the most. Um, And again, thank for their assistance and cooperation throughout our study. So, very accommodating and certainly appreciate their assistance. And also would like to thank CD for their support during the process as well. Again, as their oversight agency, it's somebody that we would work closely with is the same as any other district. And so, um, I'm going to hand it over to. Jeff to go through the report a little bit.

So, moving on to the results of the study, and we'll take questions at the end as well. I'm assuming that each of you has had an opportunity to review the report. The report was in the board packet for those who may be watching online. The report will also eventually live on our website. um as all of our reports do certainly all of our fhra reports so if anyone's in search of that report it will live on our website uh oh probably within the next day or two it'll be available up there um i always like to remind uh districts that our report is written in a deficit model we're we're auditors and so I'm out of time, so I'm not sure what that was. Yeah, so our reports are, we're auditors. We don't write reports that outline everything that you're doing well. We only focus on deficits, weaknesses, areas of improvement. And so keep that in mind, because all of our reports, whether it's an or otherwise typically will be written in a deficit model where we simply outline the areas of improvement rather than those areas that are functioning properly. The report itself is divided into several sections. You'll find an introduction and a background, the summary, and then the actual FHRA or fiscal health risk analysis questions. And as Jennifer mentioned, there are about 140, I think 138 yes or no questions. And we only answer yes or no to each of those questions. Well, I think there's an N-A for those that don't apply. But there is no maybe box. There's no sort of box. It's either a yes or no. And that's important because where we can't verify something, typically we will answer no. And so, again, a deficit model in that regard. Some of the more notable items in the report. I'll in general get to momentarily, but the report for those who've had a chance to look at it, it is scored. It's kind of scored a bit like the game of golf. And so the lower the score, the better. Again, the FHRA itself is just a checklist of questions that assess a school district's level of financial risk at a snapshot in time. Um, the completion of the results in an overall score, um, at that point in time, and the overall score for San Francisco unified, uh, when we completed this, uh, study was 42.9. now, that indicates a high risk. As you may recall, FCMAT has conducted these studies in the past at this school district. One was conducted in March 2022. That scored a 38.4. One was also conducted in 2024. And that resulted in a score of 50.7. So this one fell right about between the two at 42.9. Each one of those was conducted by a different FCMAT team. I'll just point that out. I was not here in 22 or 24. Were you? OK. So glad I asked you that. I wasn't here. I was with FCMAT, but I was not on that project. I typically recommend that a school district not focus on any singular question. And that's because I think our reports, if you look at them as a whole, each one tells a story. and the story that it tells can sometimes be lost through any individual question certainly we're not employees of the school district obviously and so it's difficult for us in a short shorter period of time to answer each one of these questions with absolute certainty it's just really not possible we don't do a deep dive into each of these areas but um And if I didn't mention this already, the questions are weighted. Now, that's not apparent in the tool itself, but behind the scenes, the questions are weighted. So each one, depending on its content and how we think it contributes to a district's overall fiscal health, we will give each question a weighting. And so that comes into play when we establish a score in the end. I also want to point out that there are some underlying themes that most FHRA reports establish, and certainly this one, as Jennifer had mentioned at the outset, this one really was brought about by the CDE's declaration of a lack of going concern when they issued a letter, I think it was in March of this year, they outlined some of their concerns, which Jennifer just repeated. And interestingly, we found when we finished our study, some of those same concerns in the report, in our results. And so, you know, in some ways, I suppose, maybe verifies some of the things the CDE said, certainly an independent verification on our part. But to to go through some of these areas i'll let Jennifer do that, and then i'll wrap it up.

So. Oh, thank you. I used to turn them on up, as mentioned in the report summary. The primary areas of concern for the district. Our budget development and adoption budget monitoring and updates deficit spending in the unrestricted general fund. internal controls leadership and stability as well as position control um within each of these functional areas there's some key weaknesses not going through all of it i you guys can read the report but just some of the main ones which really aligns to the cde letter um oddly enough, so the inability really to kind of effectively budget and monitoring the positions due to ongoing reconciliation of all the position control data. So the all position control data. We expect everything to be in position control, I will tell you that that's not something that all districts do and so it's it's a battle, but. In case there's a change in leadership or our stipends are overtime or whatever included, it's best to have it in position control. And so again, best practice is to have everything included in there. So, again, do in part most of the findings were. Um, due to the district's recent financial system conversion, right? Because you're just learning a new system. You're just learning the new position control. A lot of the escape does a lot of this for you. So, some of it's answered just within the new software, um, limited consultation with some department leaders and educational partners during budget development process. Again, I think it's just the transition that, um, might have impacted some of those processes. Um, the large annual restricted ending fund balance, suggesting that the district may not be using their restricted funds before unrestricted. If you look at their percentages, they're just kind of consistent. I know there's a plan to use dollars over time, but if it's just kind of staying the same, um. That's something to look at and then one time funds being used to support ongoing expenditures and then the projected deficit in the general fund in the current and 2 subsequent years. Right? Because if you wait to act on that in 2 years. It's almost too late at that point. And so recognizing that you see the future and the deficit and the structural deficit. To act sooner and then obviously the, um, the change in district leadership, right? So, key administrators, um, changing within the superintendent and CBO have been with the district less than 2 years and obviously everything starts at the top. And so with leadership, everything kind of funnels down. And so that's important to keep.

Consistent and stable this already mentioned that, uh, you know, our. typical instructions not to focus on any individual question, and I know districts tend to do that, but you'll notice in the report that there are certain sections that have a higher percentage of no responses. Each time we answer no, you'll notice that we provide an explanation. We do not provide an explanation for any time we answer yes. And so that can be kind of confusing. There have been plenty of instances where I wish I could answer yes and provide an explanation, but that's not how the tool works. So, if you notice a, yes, and it has no explanation, that's simply the design of the tool. But I would encourage you to look at those areas where there's a larger percentage of no responses because those are the areas of deficiency areas of improvement areas that areas that the district can identify. maybe through a priority list of items that you can tackle to improve some of these functional areas. Now, there is no expectation on our part, certainly, that you take this report and fix everything by next week. That's not generally how these reports work, but there may be some low-hanging fruit in there. In fact, there may be some questions that have already been corrected from the time we completed our study, interviews, documentation review, created this report, and today. Because fortunately, as quickly as we try and do these reports, time passes, things change. And so and we're cognizant of that. We recognize that. And certainly the district can can, you know, itself recognize those areas that maybe it's already made some strides, made some improvements as you go forward. And that's what I typically recommend. I typically recommend going forward that you develop a plan to address those areas that have the higher percentage of no responses. Those areas that Jennifer just mentioned where we identified some areas that the district can make some improvements. Again, some of those may have already occurred and that's great. And I imagine some of the other ones probably are already on deck and being looked at already. So we don't typically return to the district in these kinds of projects. Again, Jennifer mentioned early on that this is done at no cost to the school district or to the county office. We don't typically come back on this engagement. Sometimes we get a question on when will you... Are you going to come back and fix all of everything that you've identified as being a weakness? Or are we going to do some kind of a progress report? That isn't typically how this works. We rely on the district to take this report and and use it to identify as I mentioned those areas of highest priority. to make those improvements. The blank tool is right on our website, which means anybody who wants to can go and use this tool to do a self-assessment. Now, the only caveat to doing a self-assessment is you have to be very honest with yourself. But to the extent that you're very honest, and I would say this to any school district, this isn't specific to yours, you can go to our website, grab the tool. We keep it updated with any changes that we think are relevant, and you could do a self-assessment that way. Thank you. That's all we have in prepared remarks, but we'll certainly oh, did I?

No, I was just no, you think I was going to say, well, we can open it up if you guys have any questions. And then the other thing I did want to add is there is a comparison table. In the back, just to show you kind of the progress and over time, the tool has changed slightly in some of the questions. And so we also footnote that. So with that, open it up to any questions.

Thank you. I'm sure there will be, and no shortage of honesty in this room. Thank you. Appreciate all your work. It was great to see, and I want to acknowledge staff and the finance team for their incredible progress that they've made over the years. Thank you so much for all your work, and please pass along our gratitude to your teams. I have a couple of questions that I want to start off with and 1 is is just more of a question. Most of these are are more for staff. Um. We've been talking about the dashboard or some sort of dashboard to monitor our work. Um. a recent conversation, I mean, more for the board's awareness, kind of the question that I asked was, you know, how are we to know we are staying in lockstep with our progress towards fiscal stability and solvency? And how do we know that? And can we create a visual way of tracking that information? So that, I think, is a conversation that will be upcoming as part of your metrics that you're going to be presenting at some point. But do we have something coming around that?

I know that this was something that the board had asked us last year and we have been working on it and I know that Chris deputy superintendent of business services has shared that in his previous district they actually had a full dashboard and I know that we were. talking about admiring and acquiring some of those components of that dashboard. I just don't I know that since that time, there's been lots of other things going on. So I don't know if we have a status update on

No, I was told by you in chief of staff that you were looking at resources, but I don't think any of them materialized at this time. The dashboard that you have that you always have the point in time is not a dashboard. It is your interim reports, right? So it's that multiyear projection, looking at the multiyear projection and seeing whether we're deficit spending or not, right? So we adopted a budget. that had a little bit of incremental deficit spending, but your fund balance is maintained for the current plus two years. And we even provided the board with a fourth year out, which still maintained a positive outlook. However, there's always changing variables, right? So for example, we are going to be sun shining and going into bargaining with UE. this fall for next year, right? So there's always new raises to consider and to calculate and to see what we can afford, increasing healthcare costs now that we've promised 100% starting in January, which is coming up a lot faster than I think we think about sometimes for at least our largest unit. uh ue and those costs have been going up 10 year over year so there's always going to be costs so that's why those interim reports are so important to keep your eye on and make sure that the unrestricted general fund in particular is balanced or at least close enough to balancing that we are using existing fund balance and not dipping into district reserves per the board policy on reserves i think the question was kind of beyond whether or not we are deficit spending or not and more of

Christopher McConkey- operationally physically, how are we to know that we have measurements internally that we can look at as a board know that we are on track or staying rather on track. Christopher McConkey- And so you know, one of the things I had put out there as a as a suggestion was you know, do we are can we track our ability to decrease the number of tickets that come in through payroll errors and stuff like that right just understanding at the highest level what it means for us to maintain a healthy yeah. fiscal and operational system, I think is just an outstanding question that we would like to be able to have in front of us so we can track that over time.

Yeah, and I will, I'll work with our deputy superintendent and as well as our associate superintendent of HR to put that in place. I know that before we used to have an operations, a fiscal and operations dashboard, and we have subsequently resigned that, but we haven't put anything new in place. And I know that's something that the board has asked us to do.

Thank you. At the risk of what was just said about us not perseverating on any one thing. I do have a question around 16.4, the training on financial management and budget provided to school and department administrators who are responsible for budget management. That to me speaks to kind of how we prepare our principals and site leaders to be effective stewards of resources at the site level. That is where the vast majority of our funds are spent. Do we What is the current plan around that? Could you speak to that really quickly?

Sure. So some things have changed. So first of all, we did our first Principals Institute this year where we were actually able to provide training. Thankfully, principals spoke up and asked actually mostly that we increase the amount of operational and financial training, which is what we did. Uh, they seem very pleased with that. But I also want to remind you that this past year, uh, we move budget. Development from what was typically happening in March or April at the district to begin in December and be fully implemented by the end of January. That also meant that we met individually with every single principle in the entire district. Uh, there were workbooks, there were processes, they received a handbook as well as worksheets to come to the meeting prepared with and every single principle had an appointment and it wasn't just with their budget person. It was with a cross functional team of their budget person, their HR person, and a lead representative to make sure that they understood how their budget interacted across their site and the district. And actually we got great feedback about that. The most intensive at first people were a little resistant, giving up an hour, hour and a half of their time to sit down and go through all of that. But I thought that that was incredibly helpful. What we did not do is we did not do that with district offices. District offices felt that they were more independent, would be able to get budgets done on time. But as a result of that, instead of finishing at the end of January, they did not finish until April. which means that all the time that we made up by moving the schedule ahead was lost by folks not being able to operationalize their office budgets. And so this year we've actually put in place the same mechanism for all of our district offices and that they will meet one-on-one with their budget person to make sure that they understand their budget, that they are planning appropriately for the following year, and that they're monitoring all of their costs. Also remember, our new system does give real-time reporting. So budget to actual variances, which I highlighted for the board last year, that report's coming up in October. That report is now available 24 hours a day to every single employee in the district so that they can look at what their budget is doing, that they programmed in last january february march depending upon where it's coming from and they can see in real time how they're spending versus how they budgeted and that's a functionality that sounds really basic to those of us that work in budget but that this district has never had before right and so and it's literally a click of a button um on the on the front line interface to get that for your department or your school at any time so that's significant improvement just in a year and again more to come and the entire thing will be completed this year by the end of January. No excuses, no exceptions.

Thank you. I think that might be related to 2.6 and 2.12. Sorry, just bet into this a little bit. That asks, kind of contemplates this question of like input from various departments, administrators on the budget development process. It names that there are some gaps or areas where that process, maybe isn't being fully closed with feedback loops or input is being taken so is that still the case today, what do we know which departments, those are has that been identified and are we closing the loop on that.

So that was largely our central departments last year, where that process sort of fell apart a little bit. Cabinet and executive cabinet have both indicated to my great appreciation and interest in starting budgeting even earlier this year. realizing what a heavy lift it is. And so we've actually started that process now. And why do I appreciate that? Because instead of me feeling like I'm forcing it down people's throats, which sort of felt like last year, and this year, I'm actually being asked to help people get there faster. So I just want to acknowledge that's a huge change in the culture of the district around budgeting, which will make us even better next year.

Thank you, and then Lastly, there, there are a number that have to number of. metrics indicators that are not number of things on here that speak to controls in place to prevent fraud. And a number of them were nose can we can you shed light on what exactly is going on there, and is that a continuing concern for us today.

Oh, I can go. I can go first. Just to offer some context here before we get district-specific, we do a lot of these FHRA studies, and we've noticed statewide that at least some of the fraud questions are often answered with a no. Districts seem to lack fraud reporting hotlines, for instance. There may be hotlines for other things, so maybe bullying or maybe some kind of a uniform complaint process. um maybe some other kinds of complaints perhaps curriculum related but we often don't find districts that have fraud hotlines in fact we have encountered districts that have fraud hotlines but when we interview everyone nobody knows they exist which means they're essentially as irrelevant as not having one and so um just to offer some context it's not uncommon for us to find districts that don't have all of the fraud safeguards in place that we like to see. I know I keep mentioning the hotline, but there are others, policies and procedures. I think the question is to discourage and detect fraud. And so a more robust policy, maybe a board policy, administrative reg, something like that can really go a long way in helping employees, community members of the public, you know, understand that the district takes that very seriously. And of course, you know, part of what FCMAT does are extraordinary audits or AB 139 audits, fraud investigations. And so obviously something that we tend to look for when we go into a district. And yeah, I think we're hoping that over time we can see more and more districts offering more robust policies and reporting mechanisms to make sure that we can that we can better better identify fraud more quickly.

so uh and we do have an internal auditor now and one of the key roles of the internal auditor which district has never had is to receive reports of waste fraud or abuse right they're also conducting their first internal audits they just kick those off they're governed by an audit board that's made up of a cross-section of folks that are aware of where liabilities lay specific to Fraud are there areas of concern that I would consider extremely high risk that I have for the district? The answer is yes. Uh, however, I don't want to discuss those publicly, uh, because it literally would be a how to, uh, and and so those are things that I immediately identified actually literally within the 1st days. They were shockingly apparent. And so we've put some backups in place to monitor, to make sure that somebody is monitoring those areas for any kind of misuse. And it's going to take us a while to close those up because our system processes had not been updated in decades. And so there's some of those areas that we're highly concerning. The financial team is aware of them and monitors them now monthly. And we're also monitoring cash very carefully as a result. The other high area of misuse of funds that actually Jeff is expert is secondary student fund accounting and actually associated with this, even though I didn't know Jeff was the person doing it. So we've been using FCMAT to do training for our staff. It's one of the agencies that we've been using to train our staff. And we've been having Jeff come in to improve our accounting team and we'll be improving our sites awareness, particularly secondary sites of how they're supposed to handle money. when it comes to student fundraising and accounting, which is a special brand of accounting in public school districts. So we are getting that assistance as well.

Thank you. I would welcome any policy recommendations from staff or the superintendent to ensure that we meet our obligations as a board on ensuring that we cover our basis there regarding fraud. So if that could be submitted as a request to make sure that we have a policy in place. Thank you. I appreciate it.

uh commissioner fisher thank you thank you commissioner fisher before you go can i actually see if our student delegate has any questions before you go for it okay so i don't know where to direct this question okay first of all i absolutely love your like tumblr i've like that entire meeting that's like absolutely super whimsical i just want to say that sorry i want to get out of the way first want to get out of the way first i've been like looking at that the entire time it's like so whimsical second of all i want to get out of the way and then second i don't know where to direct this question but this might be for the board this might be for staff just sort of putting that out there i don't know where to direct this um this might be more clarifying for me because i've served significantly less time than the rest of the board um so i noticed earlier that staff was mentioning a lot about how the district was using more restrict or is using what's it called A lot more unrestricted funds on a lot of one time funds on a lot of stuff that we've been a lot of the. A lot of the initiatives that we've been implementing at the district, and so my question is why aren't restricted funds being used to fund like some of our programs and how like. So obviously understand that sometimes things aren't like they don't qualify for these restrictions or like. They don't like some of the programs that we want to implement to the district don't fall under like the qualifications and so with That being said, how do like. How does like this year's budget on like the future budget, how do those allocate for these programs and for these was called initiatives for the future of like our district and like budget planning.

It's a very good question. So most of the restricted funds that are being referenced sit on the restricted side of our general fund, but they're unique actually to San Francisco, right? So our partial taxes, for example, highly restricted sit on our restricted side. Our PEAF funding, our student success funds, this gives us for a comparably sized school district elsewhere in the state an extra literally $300 million to $400 million a year. uh and we have been trying to spend that more effectively and so what the board noticed in our financial reports is that the deficit spending that used to be first of all it was over projected right it wasn't at actual spending levels but we moved a lot of that spending to the restricted side because we never seem to spend as much of the restricted money as we project because frankly it's harder to spend because it's restricted so we've literally opened that deficit up on the restricted side and then it's mitigated by the fact that people don't spend it as quickly so we actually are Intentionally spending more of that faster now in order to see to the better health of the district on the unrestricted side, which is our more flexible money. So that's exactly what you've seen over time in our financial reports. Is that spending moving to the restricted side? Those 1 time they're also sometimes called 1 time funds. Some of them do renew annually, even though. their one time we also get one time funds that are restricted from the federal and state government that we try to expend on time occasionally we run out of time and and we spend them out like we're doing with some some assistance funding funding right now in special education but we are pretty good at spending things before they expire commissioner fisher

It's always hard to follow our student delegates. They have such great questions. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And thank you very much. It's great to this report is kind of a snapshot being a one snapshot in time. It's fun to see how far we've come. So thank you. And you alluded to the fact that we had a report done in 2022, 2024, and now 2026. And frankly, I'm feeling very popular. You know, I looked at your annual report, the FCMAT annual report from 24-25, and it showed that year you did about 65 special reports and only 20 of them were FHRAs. So why did the CDE suggest that we as a district get the third one here in I mean like there's 1200 districts in the state like statistically why us why now every two years.

I don't want to be that popular frankly so it's there's triggers so it's not that CDE said hey ficmac come on in and do this so there's triggers and the minute they took the district as a lack of going concern designation that's one of the triggers and so that's what brought us up here to do the report I will say that we don't do them um at 18 months has to be after 18 months So you guys seem to be on the two-year rotation. But again, I think there's a lot of positive changes happening. So don't necessarily foresee that in the future. But there are other triggers. So again, self-qualifying is good to do as a district because then you know your fiscal position. And so for districts that might self-qualify themselves within three of their interim budgets, again, that would trigger for an FHRA to be done. So you have a disapproved budget that would trigger for FHRA negative interim report. So the minute the downgrade of one of your interims. So if you thought you were positive and your oversight agency downgraded, and then like I said, the lack of going concern, and then the three qualified. So there are triggers. And so it's out of all the districts, we are out there doing this, a lot of these, especially right now with a lot of the one-time funds expiring and nothing but kind of replacing it right with all the COVID money.

Thank you. That's informative. And, you know, I know Deputy Superintendent Mountbenetis said he doesn't want to give a roadmap of what to do from a fraud, but I think that's a great roadmap for us as far as moving forward this year. So thank you. I also just wanted to follow up on President Kim's question earlier about the the dashboard and public information. I know there's been a request over the we used to under our old financial reporting system on every consent agenda. We had a list of all the contracts year to date. We haven't seen that under the new system, so I don't know if that's i did not i'll go back and look i didn't see it on tonight's consent agenda um but i think more of that um would be helpful in order to just be more transparent with the public as well so i'll go look for it right now i missed it so commissioner ray

Evening, everyone, and thank you so much for being here. I have a few questions, but one I wanted to start with first is just acknowledging that the report indicates that we have a high risk level, but that I understand that there have been many changes since then, and I had asked about what some of those, what the weaknesses were, what we had done in response to them, and what other changes had happened. So I wanted to ask our team, I assume, Vic, Matt, you folks have said you don't come back and look again. So what does our team think the analysis would be if it were based on our current situation? Do you have a sense of what score, what risk level we might have, given the types of changes that you outlined in the Q&A?

David Price- you're going to get me in trouble with my state colleagues i'm not supposed to opine on such things, this is, this is, this is their body of work and they know it so. David Price- Listen, we would still be there are some of these points that are immutable, this is a deficit model so, for example in February. had Superintendent Hsu and myself been here for two years? There's no way that the answer to that question can be yes. I just finished my 14th month. We are now past two years for Superintendent Hsu, but we weren't at the point in time that the study, so that answer will never be a yes, right? Did we actually do a fiscal stabilization plan in December? There's no way retrospectively that that answer will ever be a yes. So, I mean, these are no answers regardless of what we do. Are we still, would I still consider as moderate risk at the very least? Yes. Why? Because we've gotten back to a balanced budget, but we haven't even done it for a full budget cycle yet. So very quickly, you get back to a balanced budget, you go through negotiations. Do we have the discipline to maintain the stability over time? And that's actually what a lot of these questions ask. Notice a lot of the framing of the questions is, have they done this for two years or three years in the past or and moving forward because remember always doing current year plus two and they're always looking back two years so have we been able to maintain it for multiple years is really what a lot of these questions get to and still we can't answer yes as a school district for that we've gotten there right now we've put a lot of things in right now but what they're going to be watching now in the oversight role cde is can you maintain it and frankly that's i will just say as a fiscal manager that's harder so for example i kept la out of lack of going concern and 10 months after i left guess where they are right 10 months after all that work right sorry la if you're watching i know that's frustrating to you uh but but i'm just saying I want you to think about that. So an $18 billion budget that I was able to keep positive and 10 months after I left, it's negative, right? Or it's actually qualified right now. So it's about time and that dedication and seeing leadership. That means board members and leadership staying and providing that stability. Stability is the key indicator for financial stability is stability and leadership as well. So currently, we're doing a good job. Would I say we're going to be great a couple of years from now? I don't know. I'm watching as well, right? That's part of my job is to watch the finances. But have we made a huge amount of improvement? Yes. My colleagues have pointed out we have more to go. And they will tell you I agreed with them on a lot of that, right? There's a lot more that we can do and that we have to do.

Did you want to add anything?

So I just want to add what what he was talking about with the right the stability when the reports are being brought forward, right? The interim reports, the adopted budget, and the staff is is talking to you about their deficit spending or their structural deficit and the fiscal stabilization plan. They're hard topics they're hard decisions, but to stay fiscally solvent it's things that that that's not always easy right we all do it with their own budgets to we all make decisions about staying within our means and so that's I think the only thing that I would kind of further. kind of support his decision right is the district continuing with that balance budget are they staying balanced for just more than. a picture in time, but the plan moving forward, right? And so that's the only thing I would add to that.

Okay, thank you. My next quote.

That was a really good answer. No, I don't know that I have anything additional to add to that, although I do echo the concept of having a balanced budget for a year or maybe a fraction of a year, if that's what it's been. That doesn't really make a trend. Obviously, we want to establish some prolonged period where the district has a balanced budget, not just currently, but obviously in the projections. But that is a good observation. Our tool does look back at where you've been to determine what might be likely ahead of you. And we also look at your future projections to see where you think you're headed. And so the two years before and two years after we do this study are very, very important. And as the outlook, as the forecast, the projections change, so too would our FHRA. So just keep that in mind. This is a very fluid document. Thank you.

I'm going to just thank and dismiss Student Delegate Nguyen. Thank you.

Okay. I'd like to follow up on that then with I'm glad that we're hoping that we're functionally at least a medium risk rather than a high risk category now. What do we understand to be the impact of the FCMAT report saying that we are at high risk since other folks are not going to have a bunch of later context on that. Do we anticipate any significant impact on, you know, on our bonds or ability to issue these or anything else significant in the district?

No. So I just got done with bond ratings. Every credit agency increased our credit rating as a result of our improved financial performance. They do a very different digging from a credit agency. And we just sold our new money issuance and refinanced our bonds, and they were fully subscribed to because of the increase in fiscal controls and our improved credit rating. So it doesn't affect us materially in that way. um however uh it's about confidence right um and for six years actually longer we we have been at a high fiscal risk uh are we making progress yes uh it's only been a little over a year so we're making rapid progress now but it just doesn't change overnight i guess just like it doesn't at home it takes discipline it takes time We're back on track now. You also have a reserve and a reserve policy for the first time in the district, and you have an 8% reserve, right? That's something the district hasn't had before. By the way, that's one of the key reasons our credit rating and agencies went up. And so those things are in place that have not been before. You do have position control, right? We don't necessarily. 100% agree, uh, with, with, uh, with, with our friends, for example, they want all of our stipends and what we call add ons here in position control. And the system that we use doesn't support it. We budget for them, but putting them in position control is really difficult. Uh, because of the way our stipends and add ons are structured here. Uh, and we've talked to other districts and, and I would say it's less than half of them that actually do that, but it's a yes, no question, right? So, but we are constantly looking at this and it does provide us a roadmap and we've had robust conversations and, and, and it was not an adversarial process. Uh, Jennifer and I collaborated ahead of time and I said, let's see if we can get all the documents together in two weeks. She was like, no way, we're not gonna do it. Guess what? The team got everything together in two weeks. right on on demand everything before everybody arrived that hasn't happened in our other two iterations but uh so we are we are facile we're developing some some ability and some facility but it's about building confidence over time and that is my goal for you folks so that you can confidently say it to your constituents as well as for me because it's important to me for the district

um if i could actually quickly follow up on that i have some other questions but uh this mention of of having all the documents and i think uh i've forgotten your last name i'm sorry jennifer okay um your um your reference to the district having documents i thought i had read references in the report to insufficient documentation was that really that's really something different than it might be a specific document for that question

so um as far as whatever we were looking for or the thoroughness of that document so we received everything and there might just be one document that you as a district don't have don't use don't um haven't created and so yeah if there's something in there that says insufficient it's just it didn't have either all the components that again, we consider as best practices. And yes, we are best practices. That's what we do. And so, yeah, it's just it wasn't that there weren't documents uploaded. I guarantee you, your staff took everything and their time to give us documents to review

before we came out and did our review which is not the common so okay uh thank you and i appreciate that from staff um i had a question as well you actually just mentioned uh mr mapanitas you mentioned the um And I had a question around that because of one of the answers that was made here. There's a statement and it's on page five of the Q&A about expecting to comply with the newly triggered 10% statutory reserve cap consistent with FCMAT's findings. And I wondered how that relates or doesn't relate to the recommended level of having essentially two months worth of money for reserves.

This is a hearty conversation I've actually had with Commissioner Alexander. There is conflicting advice from the state government. I don't want everybody to be too shocked by that. The reality is that when we're in a test one year, which is a very wonky financial thing, but essentially it means that Prop 98 is fully funded and the government has made a deposit into the Educational Rainy Day Fund. When those two things happen in the same financial year, school districts are not allowed to have more than 10% reserves, and that includes their unspendable reserve, which for our district is 2%. And so we are fully funded at a reserve level of 8% in Fund 17, because when you add the 8% in Fund 17 and the 2% in Fund 1, that's 10% cap. Test one years are not the norm. They happen about three out of every 10 years. we're usually in a test two or test three year which means there is no cap the lao recommends a reserve of 17 and a half percent for unified school districts which is two months of expenses so yes the recommendation is more than twice what we're allowed to have in a test one year CBOs have been asking the state to correct this lack of consistency in ED code for a number of years, and the state has declined to do it, which means we have to answer this question over and over again in every school district that I've worked with. And that's very frustrating because it's conflicting advice that they're expecting schools to adhere to. So it's really confusing to be told, yes, you have to have 17.5% to be a healthy reserve unified school district, but you're not allowed more than 10% in three out of 10 years. It's just an inherent conflict in the rules.

Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful to understand what's happening. Another question I had was over county, sort of the lack of distinct oversight we have from the county level, given that we're a unified, you know, district and county. Do FICMAT or our fiscal team think that we should have some way to have a separate level of county oversight, whether through our personnel or through getting oversight from a different county or something.

a wonderful question we are one of six single singles in the state meaning that the county and the school district are the same boundaries and so we there's only six of us in the entire state all of the others are rural counties uh in in the state we are the only single single single which means we're also a city so we're the only urban district that that's true for in the state of california it creates problem because there's not enough oversight yes yes although there are others that are also their own selpa so we're not unique in that way but you're right uh so it creates a little bit of a lack of oversight because you get too comfortable in being both in charge of the district and the county so because we have both the deputy position and a cfo niru and i try to balance that out so i look at all of the work that she's doing in the district and then she approves everything that i do in the county, and then we use different folks to manage each one. So we've tried to create a little bit of internal. I have suggested that I would prefer, because I don't think CDE is a good oversight agency. That's not a surprise. I'm on the record saying that to everybody. That's why they're my biggest fan. But the reality is that if CDE were good at financial oversight, FCMAT and school services wouldn't exist. That's the reason that those agencies were created, because there's not a specialization of financial knowledge at CDE. So my preference would be, I know I'm not supposed to say those things out loud, but my preference would be that, yes, the single singles, all six of us in the state, should be overseen by the Kern County Office of Education, which is where FCMAT is housed, because frankly, they're much more facile at, like, we can talk about money and none of us is offended. That's why I enjoy those conversations, even if they tell us that we're lacking. Whereas there's this weird issue with CDE because they see themselves as an educational mission, but they don't have the financial oversight skills, right? So I think that those six single singles should probably all have oversight through the one county office of education, and it should be the one where FCMAT is housed. I've been advocating for that for a long time. It would just be far more neutral, but I'm just a CBO. No one wants to hear that. But we do try to develop internal controls as well.

I'm going to follow that just a little bit. We would not be an external independent voice at that point, which yes, we have this conversation. What I will say though, is unfortunately recently we did have a single Um, district county go and solving and so what we recognized, we expect Matt, because of the fiscal crisis situation, right? We're in the district now, right? Because of their insolvency situation. And so what we recognized was the lack of understanding and in depth, um, oversight that's necessary from. So, what we are doing is actually now training. staff at cde so that they can properly do their oversight and so that is something that is now happening and that there's a new module up there that they're going to be working and asking more fiscal questions and understanding more fiscal questions so i will say that's again our tool evolves everything we do right evolves and it's because we learn something new when a situation arises and unfortunately it took a district again kind of going insolvent that we didn't realize for those single singles that there was maybe possibly something lacking and so now we fix it and so that's what we do moving forward so we're training CDE

Janet Michels, Okay, my last question is just a confirmation thing I see that one of the answers was that all 11 of our district authorized charters are not infant fiscal distress. Janet Michels, The thick that report identified one five keys does that mean that five keys is no longer in financial distress.

No, they they've consolidated. They're gone. Uh, so five keys has two charters. The one that has consolidated is the formerly and currently incarcerated youth charter. Uh, and because they had so few students, they decided to merge with the other charter that was safe serving that same population in the district. uh this is an interesting point right so charter oversight i actually am very good at charter oversight i set up the the protocols that we now have that's why you're getting new fuas with new rental agreements and special education agreements and i've helped the person that provides that oversight to help streamline for you all the renewal processes and all that kind of stuff but the reason you'll notice that so the charter checklist for ficmat has changed and i wasn't aware of it and so they now want to see what is it more site visits and stuff like that which frankly i don't I don't have the staff to do site visits. We have, we have a part-time person that does all of that. And then I do their financials myself. But like now they want site visits. So, right. So there's, it's best practice. Do we have the staff to do it? No, we did get to a bunch of the sites this year, but the best practice is monthly site visits. I just, I mean, at some point we just can't do some of these things, but anyway.

Yeah, thank you so much for your work on this, I think. And Deputy Superintendent Mampanitas, I really like your honest commentary. And no, I think it's important. I think for all of us on the board, I mean, the more we go through and the more we talk this through, the more we learn. And so I think all this conversation is really good. On the reserve point, since we're giving opinions, I think that the reason there's that conflict in state law is because there's a tension between spending today's dollars on today's kids and having a reserve. Right. And that's actually intention. Right. And one of the things I've heard a lot from constituents and others is if we have a 17% or 20% reserve, it's like, that's money we're not spending this year on today's kids. Right. So I do think there's just a, so I think that's where this thing between the state saying in years where we have enough money that we're gonna have a 10% cap, makes it it makes sense like so i guess what i'm saying is like in defense of the state's somewhat incoherence on that topic i understand there's it's actually a tension that i think they just haven't resolved maybe um and so i do think as a board we need to keep coming back to that question of how much is a healthy reserve um you know how much do we want to make sure we invest now um the other point i was going to make this is more this is a question i'm done finding my question although this may have a slight opinion um for deputy superintendent benitez is is around this dashboard question When I look back at this, the three-year, I really appreciate the three-year summary that you all did, but it doesn't convince me that this tool is the most useful, right? I mean, when I look at the position control numbers from 2022 were really good. We had horrible position control in 2022. The special ed numbers were... were really bad in 2022 and then got better in 2024. And we had a huge problem with our budgeting and SPED in 2024. So just as having been on the board, this didn't always catch the thing that was our problem. So if we're going to do a dashboard, I guess my question would be what or What are your thoughts, Deputy Superintendent, on the on sort of the high leverage pieces or to your point you just made around the site visits like that might be one that we say, OK, you know what, that's not going to be on our dashboard. But what are the pieces of this that are the high leverage indicators that on a systems level we're moving forward? Does that make sense?

Yeah, I mean, the process of developing a budget is huge. The dashboard that I'm always interested in, and it's the reason I keep emphasizing it to you all, and I know I'm a broken record, budget to actual, right? Your interest is seeing that what people are budgeting is what they're spending, right? they're not putting in extra fudge and then they underspend right which is where we were sometimes in triple digits right just a year ago not good practice so are you budgeting accurately and are you then managing the budget so that the budget actual variance actually goes down throughout the year versus expanding on it, which is what we used to do, right? That's the good fiscal management. So to me, that's what I want to see in a dashboard, right? So for all the different programs, maybe the board defines by department. So you can see each school and each major department, what's their budget and how are they doing on their spending? Right? Halfway through the year, guess what? I mean, it's not tough to figure out. Half their budget should be gone. Right? And if it's not, what are the reasons for that? Right? Is it vacancies? Is it because they didn't do a big contract that they had budgeted for? Right? And that's money we're leaving on the sidelines. So part of the reason I don't like a budget to actual variance is that's millions of dollars that we're not then budgeting to spend on today's kids and it could be used more effectively if we were spending it on things that we thought or knew to be effective. Right that's my whole point at getting it better, so that we can spend that money on today's kids on what we think will be effective, so that we can see the academic progress.

that makes a lot of sense I think the other piece of it was what what about the technical um not not maybe technical is the wrong word but things like fraud prevention or what are the systems changes that that are where you agree with their analysis that there's things we need to improve how do we as a board track that right like what are the five or six most high priority things like fraud prevention when are we going to get to them I think that's when we talk about a dashboard that's more what I think of is like oh we don't have those systems in place but you know over the next 12 months 18 months here's our plan here's how we see does that that kind of thing I think would be really helpful

Yeah, and I would appreciate engaging with the board about that. But some of it's going to have to be, like I said, I don't want to put a roadmap out. Some of them are actually significant. And if I shared with the board, you'd say, oh, yeah, let's not. advertise that right but i want the waste fraud and abuse hotline out there right we've discussed that we have an internal auditor i want the controls i want to stop writing checks and that's a hint at where our problems are because we are still a check writing district we do not send money electronically we still cut an inordinate number of paychecks instead of doing direct deposit direct deposit can be compelled by law Right? Because it is a high rate of abuse, and we are still cutting a check for every transaction in the district from 5 cents up to millions of dollars. That is not a standard practice, right? That's the kind of thing that the board, when I say we're moving to ACH, that's something you should be saying, do it yesterday. right uh what do you mean you have people in rooms cutting checks with no with no signature on them from me or you right so that's the kind of thing that actually keeps me up at night at times until I go through and I look at all of them that's the kind of thing that the board should be wanting the payroll improvement like I don't know if you're hearing but our problem solving on payroll and our payroll accuracy is going up dramatically now that I've been able to find a leader to commit to that It's dramatic, right? But I need to have the resources to do that. Right now I'm moving my people around to cover holes because I just don't have a lot of resources and I'm not trying not to expand my footprint because I want the money to go to schools, which I'm pretty fierce about.

So if it's helpful, and I don't know if this resonates with board leadership and others, but I mean, I think that would be great. I mean, we get progress monitoring on academics. The kind of dashboard I'd love to see is deputy superintendent's work plan, a strategic plan around here are the things here's, you know, at a high level and, you know, periodic reports to the board saying, hey, look, we set out to do the ACH thing. We set out to do this fraud thing. Here are the three or four highest priorities. This is what we're working on. And then I think that would help the public to be able to see that, but not creating more work, but what you're already doing in terms of the metrics you already have for your team, but being public with the stuff that makes sense to be public with.

I'm going to take a stab at asking a question that Commissioner Ray asked a different way to see if it's answerable. So I did a little addition, and it looks like there's 60 individual no things that we were dinged for that came out to our weighted 42 point whatever percent, 42.9%. And obviously there are some we can't go back in time and change and we can't go forward in time to wait for them to happen. But do we know how many of those 60 if we were to do this snapshot today would have gone away?

Yeah, thank you. I haven't tabulated rephrasing, but there are several items of note. We do want to highlight. So some of the issues we have since resolved since in our adopted budget. One was that that we didn't document our assumptions for the Myp. That is something we've already resolved. Um, so the issue with 1 of our charters, we just mentioned that already that charter since consolidated. So that's no longer a point of concern. Um, we are also using the district's tools. Um, sorry, forgive me tools for our projections. So the calculator in order to accurately project our revenues as well as their projection pro tool. We're using that to project our. Two years are we are in a balanced budget for adopted budget. So that also did not surface and review. We've balanced the current year as well as the next 2 years. There's no fiscal stabilization plan required. The restricted funds. So the note about us minimizing the use of restricted funds did not review our 2627 budget, which does heavily rely on restricted funds in order to maintain a balanced budget. and to fund our collective bargaining agreements. So that also was not covered in FICMAT's report. So those are the major changes that I would surface that did not show up in the FICMAT report. I don't have an exact score, unfortunately, but we do want to highlight the progress that staff has made since then. Thank you.

And we have closed bargaining agreements, and Dr. Hsu's been here 18 months, and Yes. Thank you so much, and thanks for all of the great work from staff and I guess, this is a question, perhaps for thick matt I know. Part of your analysis was talking to board members and looking into governance as well, are there any recommendations that you have for us around governance, I saw the. You know, completing our regular policy reviews and updates are there any things that might not be a. Already written in the report that we've already read but feedback or room for improvement around governance that we should know that we could implement to help strengthen the district's position.

Yeah, that's a good question. I immediately was going to answer your question with update your policies regularly, but you've already mentioned that one. Updating board policies and administrative regs, obviously something that's, you know, critical for any school district to do to make sure that your existing board policies meet your needs. They're robust, they're complete. And so, you know, we see districts all the time that have stale policies, maybe that haven't been reviewed and I saw one the other day that said 1987. Not quite that old, but sometimes they are quite old. That's true. Sorry. But, yeah, outside of that, governance training, certainly governance training, you know, fiscal, most board members are not. Uh, well versed in school, uh, California school business and school budgeting. And so, uh, governance training, you know, through through the, um, not just governance, but budget training, I think is really important. Um, I would encourage the board to to, uh, as well to, um. Review and approve all new positions now in a district with declining enrollment. You probably don't have a lot of new positions that come before you. Certainly not recently, but all new positions should be reviewed and approved by the governing board. not, you know, not focusing, especially on replacements and things like that, but new positions, which, again, you probably don't have as many of, especially when you have when your deficit spending, but it just something to keep in mind in the future. Beyond that, anything else you can think of?

No, you talked about that training.

Yeah, that's about it.

Thank you.

um i'll be brief because all my fellow colleagues have asked wonderful questions so um question on 9.2 what percentage of unrestricted general fund of general fund revenue or opeb costs i mean i i think well does does around 4.5 sound about right

I don't want to answer it incorrectly off the top of my head. We're a pay-as-you-go district, which means that we're funding our other post-employment retirement benefits out of the general fund on a year-to-year basis or out of the... And it can be both restricted or unrestricted. It depends on where the person is paid from, which is how we pay for their OPEB costs. on a pro-rata sort of basis. We also have some new information coming to the board about a SERP account, which we'll talk about. So CalPERS offers an opportunity for a school district to invest in an OPEB account, which when they fully fund it, will pay for those expenses instead of us paying out of our current general fund. If we had one, it should show up in our actuarial report. And recently, and when I say recently, last week, Nehru and I were shocked to be contacted by our colleagues at CalPERS to review the district's SERP account, which no one realized we had, and it does not show up in our actuarial report. uh there used to be board policy that we contributed to one annually and that account is still out there waiting for us to finish funding it and so we will have an update as soon as we meet with them because we of course said we wanted to meet with them immediately as a result of getting that phone call uh so so we will update the board about that but for example that's a way to pre-fund the account uh current money you invest it you earn interest with calpers and then you pay for that opeb instead of paying out of today's dollars for employees that are no longer with the district

interesting so that that kind of answers the next question i was going to ask which is just around how do we get down to that i assume that would help to get down to um you know under the two percent threshold it would i'm assuming but you tell me like what i guess generally what is the plan to get under the two percent threshold that vikmat has

There is no plan. So the district's been doing pay-as-you-go for some time, and unless we do have a fully funded SERP account, there is no other option. Right? So that would be the recommendation if that's the direction the district would like to go over time. We'll do that report. And actually, Commissioner Gupta, if you want to send me an inquiry for the whole board, I'm happy to put it in like a board weekly, like a summary. uh it's stuff that I look at because I do wonky stuff like that I think you're the only person that's ever actually asked me about it on the board but I'm happy I'm happy to share it with everybody in a weekly if you'd like about OPEB it was one of my questions I didn't get to it so I honestly it was OPEB anyway yeah yeah I feel I feel like OPEB

I live. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Anyway, superintendent Mount Bonita is at all is always I you're a broken record on certain things i'm a broken record on others so i appreciate you exactly so um you know i'm i one of the things i don't think has come up but i'm very curious about and forgive me if it did is facilities our facilities team does a phenomenal job with the limited money that we have and i know in our facilities um Christopher McConkey- workshop that we did one of the key themes seem to be that we just never have enough to be able to. Christopher McConkey- maintain and upkeep our buildings, to the extent that we wish we could, which would then it seems, you know produce. Christopher McConkey- or just just generally be be a better financial situation i'm curious if there's anything that our team or the FICMAT team would recommend in terms of what might we do to. I don't know again, our team already does so much with limited resources, but is there anything there that we can put forward in a plan?

uh yes uh so we do have funds and we need to utilize them better so you're referencing fund 21 which is our bond fund which is what we do modernizations and new construction with the district has other funds we have fund 14 which is where we put deferred maintenance every year you make a deposit anything of your rrm that you don't spend which is a wonky calculation that i'm happy to go over with you sometime We have a Fund 25, which is impact fees. We have some other pots of money that we get that are specific to capital projects and outlay in a school district, and we don't use them in an efficient manner. So it's actually something I'm working on because I have a partner there in Katie Poyle now that we have a head of operations. that we are planning on more work in the future to better utilize those funds to maintain our facilities better. Now, it's still a stretch. We're operating 126 facilities, and as you know, many of them far under capacity. So we're still spreading funds too thin over the needs that we have of our facilities, but we are going to do better. And so that's another one, if you'd like to ping me, I'm happy to share more details because we've started some of that multi-year planning to do more capital projects with our funds.

I will pin you on both of those. Thank you. Thank you to our financial team for doing such a wonderful job. Thank you to the FICMAT team for your recommendations.

I have a few more.

I'm just totally kidding.

Thank you so much. Appreciate all that you've done to support us. And many thanks to the finance team for all your work. So appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks. We've learned a lot from you, I would say. The board has really has, I think, gotten a really deep dive into financial controls. But we might not have gotten if we weren't in this negative situation, but we have learned from it.

Thank you. We will move to item two, major decision update TK-8 Mandarin Emergent School. I will remind the board we are at 9.37 p.m. Just a friendly reminder of our timing.

Thank you, President Kim. With that, I'm going to invite the amazing team to join us at the dais. Um, I know that deputy superintendent is staying. I see Dr. Steiner coming and sure. You sure chief SF, um, homemade pain is joining us. Okay. So, um, I know, right. It should be really exciting. This is exciting. Thank you, Abby. Thank you. Well, to each their own. We are very excited about the update that we want to share today about the progress of our TK eight Mandarin immersion school that will it will launch for school year 2728. So this update is an update building on Oh, yes. And amazing. Leanna, do you want to sit up at the table? come on it's gonna be fun um okay so uh this is an update that builds from our june 9th update and sharing with our community and with the board about the progress for how we will identify the temporary school site and consideration for the permanent site. I want the community to know that while this work about launching a new school is extremely exciting, I need all of us to be really sensitive about what that means for the school that we will be eventually locating this school in. It means that we are going to have to have some really hard conversation with that school community as we come into that school community and build out and build up The TK Mandarin immersion school, so I know for some of us in the Community, this is extremely exciting for for the the potential future permanent site it's also. A different type of feeling and I just want us to all be mindful of that. However, we are going to talk about what we are going to do for the short-term site and the long-term engagement process. And before I hand it over to the team, I really do want to say that SFUSD and all of our language pathways is truly the envy of many, many school districts. I see our deputy superintendent of ed services over there nodding. Everywhere I go, whenever I talk to other superintendents from not only in California, but throughout the country, they are just blown away at how many different language pathways we have, how many pathways that are nestled inside our schools, all the different options our students have. So this is something that we should be really, really proud of. And opening up a new school that's going to be wall to wall Mandarin immersion is something that we should all be really, really proud about. The technicalities of opening up a new school is also really, really real. It's really difficult because we are a public school system. where we can't just hire anyone to teach in our schools. Our teachers have to be certificated. There are lots of rules, lots of restrictions. And I am just so grateful to the entire team that's sitting here from operations to ed services, to the coordinator of everything, um, to making sure that we follow the rules, we follow the law and we have the best experience for our students possible. So with that, I just want to thank the team and then hand it over to Dr. Steiner, who's going to take us through the presentation.

I'm only taking us through this slide right now, but thank you. Good evening, commissioners and members of the public who stuck around for this. It was very exciting to hear so many people coming and talking about how important this is to us. And as with all of our work, this effort's grounded in our district vision. You can go to the next slide, sorry. our values, our goals, and our guardrails. At the heart of all of this, we want for our students is for them to have access and opportunity. We want students to leave SFUSD as independent thinkers. We want them to have a strong sense of agency, and we want them to be able to um contribute to their communities and thrive in an increasingly interconnected world and that means also being bilingual so we're excited that expanding Mandarin immersion supports that vision we want to give students the opportunity to develop their linguistic cultural and academic skills that will prepare them to be the global citizens and as we build this new skills our guardrails matter and so we're going to talk a little bit about how we're ensuring that our guardrails are in place as we move into opening this new school. And I'm going to pass it over to Hongwei to talk about the agenda.

Thank you, Dr. Steiner. Good evening, board and President Kim, Vice President Hewling. So just to walk us through what we are planning to share with you tonight. Next slide. We will be sharing updates on our work to identify a temporary location for the school. However, I do want to underline that there are no decisions being made tonight, no decisions being shared. Tonight, this is a discussion item to make sure that you are aware of our progress, we will first walk you through where we are in the project recap timeline. To just provide better transparency and information to the Community, we want to share with you and discuss considerations and the site fit analysis related to the planning process of identifying a temporary. site and what will go into the process for identifying a permanent site and then lastly to share with you Community engagement plans to ensure that this is a collaborative process with the Community, Dr steiner back to you.

Um, I think that you already know this, but I'm just going to reiterate what our process is going to be. So we're launching the Mandarin program in 2728. so I want to reiterate that that there's not been a delay. We did hear in public comment. Please don't delay. Please don't delay. We're not exactly sure what where that's coming from, but we want to say that the work is moving forward. Um, we're not delaying the launch of the school. So just to be absolutely clear for members of the public. Um, we are currently in the process of identifying a temporary location that can successfully support the school for its 1st year and then think about how to engage members of the community. Sorry, you guys, I was sick over the weekend, so I'm just having a weird throat day that can successfully support the school going forward and to engage properly in that. So we will be doing a phased approach as, you know, we'll be starting with. TK and kindergarten that will allow us to 1, identify a long term site, but it'll also allow us to ensure that we have teachers that are properly credentialed and to examine how the curriculum is rolling out and to make adjustments along the way. Similar to what we're doing at mission Bay right now. And then, as, you know, despite not wanting to come and join us at the dais. um this work is guided by um our former principal of alice fang yu liana sito who is the founding principal of the nation's first chinese immersion public school and we're excited to be working alongside of her thank you dr steiner next slide please um so as you may recall from our presentation in may we are adopting a two-prong approach to site selection and announcement

We have since published additional information and this timeline on our website and really the focus is to make sure that we have a successful launch of the school in 2728 at the at the temporary site. And at the same time, concurrently engage in a public and community driven process to identify a permanent site. So the goal is to be able to identify and announce the temporary site this month prior to the enrollment fair. Which is on October 24th this year, so that families can learn about the new school during the fair. So a bit of a shameless plug here. Please save the date October 24th concurrently. We will be holding a community engagement process to identify the permanent site and begin any design work for the temporary site. Um, so that we are able to prepare. Uh, for 2728, we will be announcing the permanent site sometime between December 2026 or January 2027 to make sure that we have enough time to gear up for the 2829 enrollment planning process and timeline. And beginning in spring, we will work with existing school communities as well as a district wide working group to discuss opportunities for programming and being able to think through how to implement the permanent site. Over the summer next year, construction will occur on the temporary site to make sure that we're prepared for the new school year. And in August 2027, we will be welcoming the first class of TK and Kinder students at this new wall-to-wall TK8 Mandarin immersion school. And then at the same time, as we finalize the permanent site, construction will occur and it will be completed by summer of 2028 so that the school can relocate to its permanent home, co-programmed in fall 2028. Next slide. Just to kind of walk you all through high level, what are some of the considerations that's going into site selection? Because as we heard tonight, and as we have been engaging, there are many excited and enthusiastic families who are eagerly waiting for the school to open. This school does provide an opportunity for us to first leverage high quality programming and excitement around this new school to grow student enrollment. Specifically, we're looking at growing enrollment in the southeastern part of the city as a form of reinvestment aligned with the student assignment work that we have been doing, that the board, more importantly, has been leading through study sessions. Also, we have heard from various communities that it is critical that we have an authentic process, specifically as we went out to discuss and engage with school communities. It is really important that when we do the site selection the temporary site doesn't just de facto or grandfather into coming the permanent site, so we want to honor that as part of the consideration. We also know that there are several requirements that a building needs to have in order to fit the total number of students, both in the first year in terms of TKK compliance with state laws, but also in terms of when the school is fully enrolled and the footprint that is required for us to be able to select a permanent site. Additionally, as the board is looking at policy opportunities to reimagine our elementary student assignment policy, we are also looking at the analysis at neighborhood and programmatic levels to ensure that they are adequate seats to accommodate future student enrollment patterns as the board has discussed at the last student assignment study session. And actually, this was a question that I think the board had raised when we were sharing our TK expansion plans back in the spring. So I just want to appreciate that guidance. Aracely Montoya- Lastly, and importantly, as we talk through and launched a new school and discuss changes and co programming with current school communities. Aracely Montoya- We have to follow our Labor agreements and as part of this work work closely with our Labor partners to ensure that we are adhering to our collective bargaining agreements. Aracely Montoya- and turn it over to deputy superintendent of business services and operations to walk us through the site fit analysis.

So the site that analysis is just basically looking at the 2 years and the 2 periods of growth for the school the 1st year being a transitional site that can accommodate 1 TK and 3 kindergarten classes starting in the fall of 2027. of course, that means that we have to have classrooms at a site that are fully outfitted according to code, right? All of those small bathrooms and ingress and egress spots as well as play structures. And then looking at the following year of opening a permanent location with a capacity of 24 classrooms. And the words in between there are just basically illustrating the frequency of the classrooms needed. So two TKs, three classes of each, K1, 2, and 3, and two classes of 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th, a total of 24 classrooms minimum. needed in a site. And that would also mean that they need to have those classrooms with special ingress and egress and play structures for the early childhood grades. The most important thing on this page that I was told to emphasize by our head of operations is that there are no vacant buildings currently That can accommodate the entire program illustrated in item number 2 without ending current programming that's in that space. So, so a permanent site would have to accommodate this school with a minimum of 24 classrooms, which would mean that the current program that is at that facility could no longer be programmed. We move to the next slide please. temporary site um all facilities in the district were reviewed for the following criteria criteria ford code compliant classrooms with dedicated restroom access play space and exit for our tk and k requirements and existing programming not being impacted so we looked for sites that we could do the transitional site without ex without impacting current programming And then for the permanent site, all facilities are being reviewed for feasibility with the following criteria. That minimum of 24 classrooms, including five TK and K code compliant classrooms, either currently or that could be converted with minor modifications to the structure. A maximum of 30 classrooms. yard square footage per student and designated spaces for age appropriate separation. So what does that mean? That's our wonky way of saying that TK and K structures are separate and different from first and second grade play structures, which are different from third through fifth play structures and which are different from middle school play structures. And so everybody needs to have adequate structures and space in outdoor areas to actually accommodate that many grade levels at a single site. And construction requirements, costs and timeliness. So construction to be able to move into a permanent facility that quickly would have to be limited. So what does minor modifications mean? So something that we could do in a year would be, for example, to create fixtures in a bathroom, which are appropriately sized for TK and K students, right? That's something that we use the existing bathroom footprint. And then we just modify the actual furnishings of the bathroom, possibly ingress and egress. In other words, making sure that doors are operable in such a way that there's more than one entry and exit point, that type of thing. In other words, not massive construction, but modifications to an existing structure. So something we could get done in that year to accommodate the site becoming a permanent site, as well as an enrollment analysis. right so does the enrollment that we're getting the interest that we're getting actually support the structure that we're calling out in other words does it fit our our image of a full tk through eight with that number of classrooms all the way up through and then for community engagement is that back to you great back to the chief of staff

You be superintendent. So, um, so just wanted to actually start off the section of the presentation by saying, thank you. Um, I want to say, thank you to all the advocates who have come out. I want to say, thank you to commissioner array for sitting in on the many, many meetings, Abby, Justin, and also a special shout out to Josephine Joe has been. really important in engaging with us to provide that kind of input to help us bridge and really name where we can get stronger, do better listening. And so as we go through this process, we have engaged with different facets of our communities. And I just want to say thank you for the many, many fierce conversations that are ongoing. But as we sort of head towards the finish line with temporary site selection, Bearing the considerations in mind, we will also begin engagement for the permanent site from September through December 2026. So we are anticipating that in the next two weeks to announce the temporary site and then at the same time kick off the community engagement process for the permanent site. The engagement process for the permanent site is twofold. First, on the school site level, as we had alluded, there are a variety of changes that are coming to school communities in the upcoming months, not just with this school, but also some of the major decisions that the board had indicated that you're you know, wanting to take up around our student assignment policy programs, uh, strategic resource allocation and assignments. So this is really thinking about the school level engagement as a package where we are engaging with listening and consulting with staff, families, and students, um, of most impacted, um, communities and eligible schools so that we can share information, gather input on impacts and then be able to plan together. around transitions. Additionally, as part of wanting to make sure that we are, you know, having a transparent process, a representative one, we will also be convening a district working group that includes stakeholders of various parts of our district ranging from laborers to educators to administrators to families current and prospective. subject matter experts who can weigh in to provide recommendations as we embark in this process of permanent site selection and transition. Next slide. So just wanted to kind of share the timeline based on current plans. Here, there will be several working groups in the upcoming months. Again, with permanent site announcement sometime between December and January taking into account the holidays. I also did want to note that we have to be attuned to staffing assignments and transfer timelines. So even though this timeline goes up to January, the engagement and the ongoing planning and implementation will extend beyond this engagement timeline into likely April and May to account for some of these operational factors in our system as we look to implementation. So that concludes our presentation for tonight and we would love to get your questions. Thank you.

Thank you. And many thanks to staff for what I know is a lot of work that's going into this. So much appreciated. I'll kick us off. I just have two questions. So one I think the concern around the delayed comment is that part of it was that we had agenda is this meeting as being the date of announcement of the temporary location, I think there is a genuine fear that we may not actually announce something. Well, in advance of the October enrollment fair, so I guess my question is, do we have any concrete timeline of when we will announce it like a date by chance.

I don't have a date for you. We did indicate that in September is when this announcement will come. And we're looking at, you know, finalizing site visits and a couple of conversations.

So really, in the next couple of weeks, okay, because I don't think we have a regular working a business meeting until October 13. This will just to be clear, this will be announced asynchronously from a board meeting. Is that correct?

This will be announced prior to the board meeting, yes.

Okay, thank you.

However, my understanding is that the plan is for October 13 we would we would submit a resolution to the board. To approve the district to request new cds codes for this brand new school. But that's, but that's a technical component so that we can then move forward with budgeting and all those wonderful things.

Okay. And so the temporary site will be announced prior to that, but not the permanent site, correct? Right. And then, so the other question I had was around slide six. says grow enrollment in the southeastern part of the city, I think this is the first time i'm seeing. Something mentioned southeastern part of the city, can you share a bit more about where that's coming from and and the rationale around that.

Can start and would love for. Teammates to kind of chime in. Um, so I think there are a couple of components to this. Uh, 1 is really thinking about the strategies related to leveraging, you know, high quality programming. Um, so that we are able to. um have the community be very excited and that you know it's it's principal sito's model if you build it they will come and as we are having these conversations around you know um boosting enrollment growing public school and building public confidence in you know historically under enrolled parts of the city that this is a strategy that we can put in place to cultivate, continue cultivating excitement and energy around, you know, enrollment in southeastern part of the city. The other sort of factor is as we think through where we have, and this is tied in with the assignment policy, think through where the programming currently exists, think through where we can grow, and then layered on just footprint facilities, et cetera, that there is a sort of natural convergence around analysis, making some of the options in the southeastern parts of the city ideal for this new school to launch.

I can add a couple of other things, which is just that when we looked at the analysis of where Mandarin speakers live, it does seem that most Mandarin speakers, not all, but many of our Mandarin speakers live in the southern part of our city. And when we compare the Southeast to the Southwest, the Southwest schools are largely fully enrolled. And so when we're thinking about the earlier comment that Deputy Superintendent Mampanitas made, that no matter where we put this school, there's going to be a period of like, you know, we haven't closed schools, we've closed some schools. So like, we do have to say if we're opening a school with 24 classrooms, somebody is going to be moving to someplace else. And so we have to have those conversations. And we have to think about where schools are fully enrolled and not fully enrolled. And I think that was the earlier comment that Dr. Sue made about this being an exciting conversation for all those folks that lined up tonight. And it's not so exciting if your building is being considered and you currently don't attend a Mandarin immersion school. So I think we have to just name that, right? We have to say, We're going to engage communities where the school can fit. We're going to listen to them. We're going to ask them what would happen, where else could we go? We're going to consider the working sessions that you're currently doing around school reorganization and the larger strategy. And then we're going to have to make a decision. And that decision, the process for making that decision is going to have to be really clear so people understand that. And I don't think that's going to be without pain. um having having lived through that in my own school um you know when I was a principal I think that there's going to be some challenges and there's going to be some feelings about it but that's that's some of the considerations we've been taking into and some of the factors we've been taking into consideration

I just want to also add that in looking at all of our school facilities and the very specific requirements that a new TK-8 Mandarin immersion school would require, which is 24 classrooms with all the different types of restrictions and requirements, and we wanted to balance the the need for uh renovation but not a lot of renovation because we have to balance how much money we have um so we and then and then with our student assignment process we do know that there are certain areas within the city that's going to fill up very quickly um and and so we're trying to balance school buildings that we know based on potential enrollment changes will fill up and will not be available for the tk-8 mandarin immersion school and we also know that we're trying to balance the language pathway programs throughout our city as well i guess my the follow-up question oh shoot sorry um can we do a quick roll call to extend our meeting i moved to extend the meeting past 10. thank you second roll call vote please

Commissioner Alexander?

No.

Commissioner Fischer? Yes. Commissioner Gupta?

Yes.

Commissioner Ray?

Yes.

Commissioner Weisman-Ward? Yes, but I appreciate that. Vice President Hewling? Yes. President Kim.

Yes. I guess my question then is, is I mean, this temporary site is going to be announced a year before we actually enact a new enrollment policy that takes place in the 2829 school year. So unless the suggestion is that this school is expected to continue on in the southeastern portion of the city, I mean, I guess maybe the direct question is, is that the expectation that this school will continue to stay in the southeastern portion of the city as opposed to moving it around? and I'm trying to square that up with the conversations we're having in our study sessions of of contemplating moves of city-wide programs broadly so I guess I'm trying to figure out what what are we supposed to glean from the fact that there's a comment or it stated on a slide that this is supposed to be from in the southeast portion of the city

So I think as the staff, when we were mapping this out, planning this out, and then laying on top of the ideas and the plans with the new student assignment redesign, we very quickly realized that we were locked into different configurations and constraints. So one of which, of course, is a facilities constraint. And so our amazing head of facilities did a run of all the facilities that would be available to us to fit a TK classroom, which are all the construction requirements, as well as have enough classrooms to go up to 24 classrooms total. So that shrunk down the number of schools that were available, and then we laid on top of that. If we were to make well not if when we make the student assignment change how will some of the larger school buildings and school facilities fill up based on the changes in assignments. And then we laid on top of that all of our different language pathways that we're trying to build out and maximize. You've heard many times here in public comments that a lot of our bi-literacy programs are comboed Uh, meaning we just don't have enough students because we've got too many of them all over the city and so many different schools. Um, and so we're diluting the number of students that would participate in our by literacy programs. So, in order to maximize that to not have combo classes. to have full classrooms, then we might want to move and think through how we distribute our language pathways throughout the city. And so as we were going through all the different iterations of this conversation and layering on top of each other, These restrictions, um, it became very clear that there are only a few schools. Buildings that would fit all of our criteria. And that's that's what we're trying to work through now, which is why this process is quite long. Um, I think many of commissioners have heard that I've been visiting. I've been visiting schools since last year and, um. and you know I think sometimes uh it causes some stir within our community of like whoa are you visiting our school because you're thinking about putting the Mandarin program here are you not um so I think I think that um again the community is very excited but the the community that's in the current school has lots of questions and so we need to think very carefully about this process And then, yes, I really do want to commit that the temporary site has to be close to the permanent site, because we do not want to tell families. Yes, here's your here's your temporary site and then later the permanent site is like you know across town so that doesn't make sense either.

yeah that all makes sense to me, I think what I want to. Christopher McConkey- What I would hope is that we're trying to be as direct and honest about all of that as upfront as possible right so that if that if there is an association of the temporary site relative to a future site that we just we say that yeah right. Christopher McConkey- And, and then it begs this kind of question like that. I would want us to make sure that the engagement that we are doing then is genuine, that if we're gonna be reengaging folks on a conversation or on a longer term permanent site, that it's not a foregone conclusion that we're going to just stay where we are, that we're of a temperate, right? Because then it begs the question, like, why are we reengaging community if we're just already going to choose the site now, right? So I think there's a tension there that I just want to acknowledge. I think we should be as upfront and honest as possible with the conditions that we have. If the statement was like, you know, for this temporary location, there's only these six sites available, we're going to go to the site where we have the highest concentration of folks who already speak Mandarin. I think my question would be, but do we know that they want to go to the Mandarin, right? So like, there are some like, kind of questions, I think, in advance of that, that I would want to make sure that we, we

I can respond to that. So I think we had the same conversations and 1 of the conclusions we came to is we need to choose a temporary location that can't host the permanent location on purpose, because we want to be able to engage places that can have the permanent location. without them saying, oh, well, inertia is going to say we're going to stay here. And that was a big debate, right? There are some temporary locations that could also have become permanent locations. And I think when we were initially saying, you know, what should we do? I think the current conversation internally is we should name a temporary location that can minimally host these four classrooms with not a lot of construction with not a lot of um disruption to the current um situation and then we can have an actual honest conversation about x number of schools how many schools do we want to engage three four whatever we think is appropriate to say here's what we're thinking what is how does this land for you here's the way we're going to make this decision so that the input Is clear to folks that the the just because we're getting input doesn't mean that, like, the decision is being built on consensus, but that the decision making process for that permanent location is clear that the temporary location isn't like, well, no matter what we know it's staying here. And I think that that was really important for us to say, because I think that was a real fear in the conversations even. that we were having of like, how do we know that we're authentically engaging community? And that's something that's important. I think that the other piece you said, this conversation is a little bit. What's the word where it comes before proceeding? Sorry. sorry guys preceding the conversation about the decisions around student assignment and so i do think that there's a tension here that we're experiencing of you know i personally would like to wait to see where we're headed with student assignment and how that relates to our language policy language pathway um policy and how that all goes together and we know the community is asking for a program to open for next year and so those two things actually are um Juxtaposed next to 1 another and so we're going to make a concession and then maybe there'll be an exception and a little asterisks in our portfolio. Because what if we make a decision that's different on student assignment and language pathways that, like, a little bit there needs to be and we're not moving it again. So, I think there's, like, a tension here that we just have to acknowledge.

Yeah, thank you. Before I pass it to Commissioner Western Award. I just will acknowledge, like, I think that was really helpful to hear the thinking that went into this. And I think in some part, what I heard was both an excitement and a concern around, like, what's going to happen with this site that's driven a little bit by a lack of trust and confidence that we're going to deliver. And that's understandable, given our history. um and so in some ways I view this as an opportunity to like build trust and confidence from the community and the work that we're doing and I think it's articulating the to the trade-offs that staff are thinking through is actually really helpful in understanding what kind of conversations happen behind the doors that folks I think are wanting to to uncover a bit because it it's just helpful you know um so so thank you I appreciate you sharing that uh commercial wise award

This isn't a question just more of a thought and a comment I really do at Dr Sarah I really appreciate what i'm hearing is this like this balance between I think it's a great idea to say. The temporary site will not be the permanent site before that transparency and for people to think you know I think hopefully trust that the engagement will be meaningful and not just the superficial rubber stamp which we have been known to do. And I also think to your point Dr Sue. A commitment to that permanent site being relatively close to the temporary site is key. My kids are now in middle school and high school, so I'm not going through this, but I can't imagine saying, okay, where is my TK or Kinder going to go for one year? Will it be close to my house? They live in the Mission. Or are they going to send me now a year later to the Outer Sunset would be... a non-starter so i think just in terms of planning for families it's really important to be able to say if this is a school i want to apply to and i'm committed to um or ranking in my when we do the the ranking the current still lottery whatever whatever but um the city-wide program i would want to have that sort of able to gauge long term is this feasible for my family so i think that balance um makes a lot of sense and i appreciate the thoughtfulness behind it

Hey, everybody. Thank you for hanging in there with us. Really appreciate it. I just also wanted to express my appreciation for thoughtful consideration of what's happening and the importance of having real community engagement around the permanent site decision. a couple of things that i wanted to check on first i wanted to go back to this question again about when uh the temporary site's going to be announced so president kim already asked about this um to some extent and i think also some of the concern and uh mistrust also comes from like mixed messaging that we're sending out so if we have something in this presentation that says the temporary site's going to be announced in september But then it was expressed in the presentation verbally today that that is the goal to, you know, to announce it in September. That makes it sound like maybe we won't announce it in September. And I think makes people doubt what we will actually do. So I think we need to... I would hope we're actually committing to announcing this in September since it is in any event coming later than today, which is what I, if I recall correctly, was on kind of a draft prior calendar. So that's one thing I wanted to check on. Like, are we making a commitment to announce this in September or is it more like any time before the October 13th enrollment fair?

The temporary site will be announced in September.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. Second thing I wanted to raise is around, I can totally understand that there are tons of factors that go into trying to find a site and why why uh you know staff is looking at sites in the southeast um one thing that i would like just we are also thinking in this bigger picture of modifying our enrollment system modifying where we have our programming and so forth um i have some concern uh sort of personally based on what i've heard you know kind of what i've heard over time but also from what folks are raising folks are raising transit today for instance when they were talking about things and how far away things are when i think about where our mandarin programs are currently They're basically on the perimeter of the city. They're at Jose Ortega, at Star King. We're now talking about putting the site in the Southeast. And that starts to feel to me like a real concentration and not something that seems very accessible to many families in the city. Like nothing seems central, nothing seems Western at all. And that makes me concerned about the balance of where we're doing the Mandarin immersion programming. Janet Callahan- i'm raising this is something general to consider it's like we also have Cantonese programs we have Spanish programs we have programs in different areas, but. Janet Callahan- Our folks thinking. Janet Callahan- Thinking around that that how we can distribute our programs in a fair manner.

I think that's a great question. I was just thinking about, wait, Jose Ortega is actually in the Southwest. Is that right? Am I? I knew we were there. I know South-South, okay? This is where my geography, I need a little help. But I had to like pause for a second to like picture that when you were saying that. No, I appreciate that. I think, you know, there is a conversation that, again, I'll just go back to the asterisks that I said to President Kim that like, you know, We do want programming to be across the city and to be accessible the idea that there's going to be a language pathway of each type in each zone. It's not really possible. Like, I think you all have been having these conversations in the study sessions of there are some trade offs. Um, and I'll go back to what I said last year during the algebra conversation. When you build a master schedule for a middle school or a high school, you can have 2 priorities. The 3rd priority knocks the 1st priority off. So, as you all are considering what priorities you have for. The enrollment system, you have to think like, do we want diversity in schools? Do we want language programming in schools? Do we want big and small schools? Do we want everyone to be able to go to school in their same neighborhood? I've just named four priorities. You have to narrow it down to two priorities because once you get a third priority, The 1st priority gets knocked off and so that's an answer non answer to your question, which is yes, we want to consider this and we really do want our language programming to what I said earlier to be something that is high quality and services. We've been discussing consolidation of language programs for. Over 10 years since since when I was in curriculum and instruction, and that's not because we don't believe in language program, but because we do believe in language programming, because we want the language programs to be robust and to be well staffed and to be have really good curriculum and to have the model across the city be the same. And I think that if our assistant supervisor services was sitting here with me, which I think she's behind me, she would agree with this. And so I think the answer is. Sure. Part of what we need to discuss is location and where it fits. We can't take a school that only has 10 classrooms in, no matter where it is in the city, and say we're going to put it there. So we have to think about the however many schools fit this number of classrooms. Then we have to think about how much would it cost to make them all CODEM compliant. And then we have to think about all of the language pathway considerations and where are we trying to offer language pathways. And that last question dovetails with the conversation you all are having in the study sessions. And so I think we'll have to do some brainstorming and engage. You'll also have to make some recommendations to us, and then we'll have to come up with a way to move forward. And I'm hopeful that we'll be offering something that feels right to families and that feels right to the Board of Ed. But I don't yet know what it is because we don't have a decision, so.

Can I piggyback off of that comment, Dr. Steiner? So I think this is also where having a district level working group that comprises of current practitioners and not just, you know, practitioners on the curriculum and instruction level, but, you know, principals and teachers and parents who are enrolled and are working every day at these programs would be really important as part of the process to develop a set of recommendations that we should be mindful of. And perhaps some of that could speak to, you know, program like location density. How do we really think about distribution? These are all aspects that we've been going through. And, you know, I think it's really important that we have a representative Uh, process that allows us to shepherd the, the permanent site selection, knowing that there's so much evolution that is happening, um, in different parts of the district as we engage in planning.

I just want to gently remind everybody when we're talking about facilities it's actually not a cost question folks we have money for facilities it's time. Right if we're looking to open in 28 at a permanent location there's only so much building modification, we can do, and if we break through an envelope meaning we modify walls, it becomes a three year to five year DSA project so it's the facility that we can modify in a timely manner, so that it actually opens in 28 it's not about the cost of minor modifications.

Janet Callahan- I just want to clarify one thing in case i'm not sure if it was clear or not i'm thinking like in the overall perspective i'm not specifically saying the facility that a permanent or temporary facility can't be in the southeast i'm. Janet Callahan- Thinking about where we have the Mandarin programs located and. Janet Callahan- What we could do to try to make that more accessible to the city thanks for maybe we can add one somewhere else as well it's like thinking about ways to do that.

I want to echo Commissioner Weisman Ward's comments around I really appreciate the public affirmation that the temporary site will not be the permanent site. I think that was a fear I had and a fear I've heard from community that it would kind of be used to the temporary site would be used to kind of get a toehold in a location without meaningful community engagement around the permanent site. And so it gives me even additional reassurance that there's a statement that the temporary site cannot physically hold the permanent site. And I think, I hope that that, I really appreciate that kind of thinking. And I think that that will go a long way hopefully to build trust with the community. So I really appreciate that. I also, want to echo president kim's statement around i did expect that we were agendizing today that we were going to announce the temporary site for this agenda item and there are only three weeks left in september and so it i really appreciate the commitment to announcing in september and the commitment that we're definitely launching in 2027 however If I would expect, for example, board members to be being pulled about their availability for briefings in advance of. meetings that are already being scheduled with families at the site in advance of a media rollout and things like that, if this is in fact happening in three weeks, so when can we expect to hear what the site is and when can families expect to hear.

Yeah, thank you, Vice President Healing. So currently, we are getting on the calendar for walkthrough just to kind of walk you through the nitty gritty here. We're scheduling walkthroughs of the site that we are narrowing down. We need to also set up some time with our labor partners because any changes to working conditions may need to be negotiate it concurrently with that. We will reach out to you members of the board to just walk you through how the proposal aligns with the presentation that we are making to you and the public tonight so that we are able to roll out a decision again in the next two weeks. So there are a few things that we have to kind of get through in terms of the list. But we are very much committed to making sure that in the next two weeks we have an announcement out and that it's a coordinated sort of communications plan and strategy. I will also say to Dr. Su's point around bringing a resolution to the board by the October 13th meeting. We're working with Interim General Counsel and her team um to get that drafted um the you know agenda for the draft agenda for that is currently slated for october 1st so what we would want to do is be able to tee up the communications um prior to that so that there are no surprises so uh truly working on that so hopefully that level of detail provides some level of confidence

Thank you. That's exactly the type of detail I was looking for. In addition to a calendar hold, if there's going to be briefings in the next week or so, because we want to make sure that the board is brought along as well. And you walked right into my last question, which is about the resolution. This is the first I'm hearing a public discussion of a resolution needed and a new school code needed. uh in the past um with respect to moving the academy moving the newcomer program and changing programming at mec and repurposing the edward anita lee school from an lea school to a county school there has Jessica Gronsbelli, there have been many questions from the board about whether we need board action and whether staff need board authorization legally in order to take those actions. And so is there new thinking about whether the superintendent can unilaterally repurpose a school code for different programming? If there's an existing school that's going to be at this site already and you're not proposing using the existing school code and. If so, I would ask whether perhaps general counsel could give the board direction about whether there are any steps we need to take with respect to other programmatic changes that have happened or expect to happen so that we don't. fall down on our duties there.

So not not to trip over Council, because I will always defer to counsel um but just to also let the board know that part of the work that we have been doing to. kind of clean up all of our systems is there are there's actually a whole sheet of like hundreds of cds codes that have been outdated, and so we plan on essentially auditing that and bringing. that to the board also at the same meeting on october thirteenth at board leadership's request um to make sure that we are up to up to speed up to date um where our school codes are um i i will also say that you know um in addition to just the um technical and legal guidance that we have been getting from interim council um we've we've learned a lot um over the last year um in terms of sort of aside from the administrative and technical aspects what is required of a process like this so that we are able to really um deepen public trust and confidence in our process so um you know we we definitely want to make sure that we are following the appropriate procedures and engaging the board along the way

Thank you. I know my time is up, but given the conversations that have happened around programmatic changes or relocations that may come to pass with respect to changes to the enrollment system, I do think it would be helpful not just looking back and cleaning up our codes, but proactively to have some guidance from Council for the Board around what types of changes do and do not require CDE codes and what the role of the board is and the timing of those things um so that we can properly um exercise our governance role and keep the district in compliance I just want to um and express my great my great my thanks to our general general counsel um interim general counsel coming

because she's helping us. She's helping us think through what it takes to open up a new school and to help us be in compliance with state laws and to review all of our policies. So I look forward to continuing to work with Comey on that. And we'll make sure that we do review and update as what FIGMAT advisors just shared with us, review and update all of our board policies so that we are in compliance.

It is worth, I would just say, I mean, I know we have to have a conversation when it comes on this, but Hongmei is naming the October 1st time because that is the day that the draft of the October 4th 13th meeting will go public. So I'm saying this out loud in part because for the members of public who are listening, that will likely be a consent item because it will already have been announced what the temporary location is. So I just want to be clear on the process of that. That's the October 1st deadline by which we are going to announce because that's when the draft will go public.

So should folks choose, they can stay home cozy in their bed because this will not be a discussion item. Correct. Young consent.

Exactly. Commissioner Fisher.

Thank you and I am so excited for this school and thank you for our public cheerleaders who are still here. We appreciate you. We need hype people like this at every meeting, I have to say. Right. Yes. So I'm going to follow up on the questions about the timing. I appreciate the recognition that the work that still has to be done with site visits, and I can expect anyone in facilities is going to have people following their cars for the rest of the month to see where they're going. But just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm not encouraging that or any form of stalking. I'm being very past 10 o'clock here. So I appreciate the when. How will this be announced? Is it going to be put in the fab? Are we doing a press release? Are we going to have a news conference at the school? What is the release going to look like? How can we direct families to watch for it? How is it going to get out to the more general public? So that's question one. And then two, I appreciate the planning that's mentioned on the eight about the permanent site. And based on some of what we heard, like in public comment, we heard someone whose student is at Star King. who actually would love to move his child to the middle school. And we also recognize we lose a lot of kids between elementary school and middle school. Are two classrooms per middle school going to be enough? Or do we need to plan maybe for more? Could this actually be a feeder school for some of our other language program pathways that don't have, like for Jose Ortega and Star King? I know there's a lot of other planning that's happening with the language programs.

you know maybe this will but just thinking about middle schools and the need for more language pathways there and is this enough classrooms so as they're as they're deciding how to answer that I think for our HR side it's really hard to hire up um uh be clad it's tough Oh.

Yeah, I think just to kind of answer part of your question, Commissioner Fischer, the way that we're projecting the school enrollment to work is that we have some best practices, right, three TK, 3K, matriculating up to two 4.5s and then, you know, further into 6.8s. Six or eight grades and that's just sort of the minimum model that we want to implement at that rate for looking at a tk through eight school we're looking at anywhere between five to 600 students at one particular site so it's and this was shared before, given the constraints around building footprint. There are some limitations to how much we can scale. In addition to that, we've been working with the Association of Asian American Administrators, the Association of Chinese Teachers, and other community advocates to find ways to strengthen our partnership with SF State so that we're getting more eligible teachers to be certified as BCLAD. teachers, and I know that our colleagues and teammates in HR have also worked to find creative solutions to address teacher pipeline recruitment and expanding opportunities so that we're able to attract and retain talented educators at SFUSD. So there are these different factors, but I think in terms of Thinking through the number of seats in relation to building footprint in relation to our most important resource, our human resources, our people, our workforce. These are all factors that feed into why at this scale at this time.

I'll just add in terms of like, why wouldn't we go bigger? I would say there's like a K-8 reason, like you choose a K-8 because you want your kids to go from K through eight. And so adding two classes at the sixth grade level means you've made a comprehensive middle school inside of a K-8, which like if you've ever kind of examined our K-8s, there are K-8s that we have currently right now that students stay. through the entirety and then there are k8s where we lose some students from the fifth to the sixth grade and what happens then is we get an influx of new students in sixth grade and then the k8ness of the k8 goes away um so the reason I was turning around to confer with that with um assistant superintendent Krugman was because you know there's an examination of our language pathways and how successful they are at the middle school and where families who attend our elementary programs where they choose to go, whether they choose to follow the language pathway. And as we're considering shifts to our language pathways through reassignment, we have to consider all of those things. So anyway, I just was like, there's not a fast answer to that one. And I just wanted to confirm my thinking before for adding to that.

Thank you for that thought process. Appreciate it. No, back to the first question.

But we will continue to evaluate. Like if there's a lot of need and we've got long wait lists, I think that will pivot the way we're thinking about the school and maybe one school and maybe we should have more schools and different programs and different types of programs that would meet the needs of our families. So we commit to continuing to evaluate and to assess what the needs, what the demands are and build accordingly.

So how will families find out?

Thank you.

So we are looking at a variety of different channels. First, I think it's really we have a website that, you know, we've been posting updates, announcements, including board meetings where this item has been discussed. So we will continue to update that website with any additional new information. We also have a variety of family communications channels that you've mentioned, Commissioner Fisher, including the weekly Thursday bulletin called Family Announcement Bulletin, aka FAB, that we will be posting announcements Through that channel, but I think our sort of focus before going to the media pieces, we want to make sure that. families and staff and students, even at current sites are not taken by surprise, they shouldn't have to learn about something through the media so that's kind of where they're going to hear first right. And then I think following that is just the larger district-wide announcement geared at families. In terms of the media plans, we are talking with different partners to make sure that we are really able to demonstrate how this is an opportunity for us to all come together and rally around a really important and positive milestone. So details pending, but yeah, we definitely want to create a drumbeat celebrate and um really talk through not just the announcement of the temporary site in September but also the process that we will launch uh to identify the permanent site for the school thank you very much I know it's late oh thank God sorry um uh sorry I did not

Appreciate all the work that is going to this. Looking forward to learning more. And I now adjourn this meeting at 10 38 PM. Thank you.