I am opening the Walnut Creek School District Governing Board regular meeting at 6 pm and we will begin with our complaint of allegiance.
An student republic for which it stands, one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Item 2.2, roll call of government board members.
David Notz.
Here.
Wendy Johnson.
Here.
Heidi Hernandez.
Gabby present.
Is that the right group?
Here.
Sarah Talik.
Present.
OK, moving on to approval of the agenda.
Item 2.3.
No changes to the agenda.
No changes?
OK.
I'll move approval of the agenda as presented.
OK.
I'll second.
We have a motion and a second for approval of the agenda
as presented.
All those in favor?
okay motion carries moving on to 3.4 consent calendar I move approval of the
consent calendar okay we have a motion and a second for approval of the consent
calendar all those in favor motion carries item for public comments okay
No follow-up comments item 5.1 Walnut Creek Teachers Association
Coach are
Good evening. Let's keep it short and sweet
everybody is back from fall break and I think a lot of people were happy to have that break and
You know break up October a little bit. And are we now back in the swing as we come really close to Thanksgiving break coming up
Our union is part of a bigger group called the Al Costa group, which is Alameda and Contra Costa County
unions and
There's kind of like a drive going through all of them a sock and glove drive
That will be done by our site reps of the different the different sites and it'll go started today
Actually, it'll go through November 21st, and we're kind of trying to see how many socks and glove pairs we can
contribute to the entire group of the Al Costa group and
They'll come and pick them up and take them to a local shelter when all the collections done
So it's just something that we felt like, you know
Not only in solidarity with the other unions throughout Alameda and across counties
But just something good for our union to kind of take on outside of just our normal responsibilities of day-to-day stuff with staff members
But also to give back to people who are less fortunate and obviously in this time of the year
You can see the weather's changing and some people aren't who's lucky to have those items. So we're just happy to contribute
So you'll see boxes at each site asking for those donations starting today through November 21st
Which is the day right before we go to?
Thanksgiving break
Item 5.2 CSCA does not have a report for this evening
Sure, just a few updates.
As we just heard, this week we started
Red Ribbon, oh my goodness, say that quickly, Red Ribbon Week.
And then Friday with celebrate Halloween
is at the end of this week, which I think is Friday or Saturday?
Friday, OK.
I do have it written down correctly.
Tomorrow, I want to invite all of you and anyone
to join WCI at the Fall Music Concert.
You know I always brag about those evenings
and say what wonderful evenings they are.
So if you're free, come on over and join us at WCI.
And then at the end of the week, we
begin the month of November already.
And we are well underway to planning
our Professional Development Day,
or Disrequited Professional Development Day,
which is on November 10.
We have a focus for our primary teachers.
We have a focus on literacy with our DIBLS training,
so we'll continue that.
training, which is a new assessment that we put in place
this year in alignment with a compliance structure
that we needed to for early literacy.
And then our upper grade teachers
will participate in some professional development
around math with our coaches.
Our instructional coaches are planning that.
And then all schools in the afternoon
will do a focus on safety.
And so this is the year that all staff members
will re-engage in the ALIS training.
If you remember, we've done that training periodically.
It's about every other year.
And so this is the year that all staff members will
take the ALIS module online.
And our site administrators will go through our Focus on Safety
document, where we talk about all the different aspects
that we have in place for practices and protocols
centered around safety.
And then finally, in the next week or so,
we'll be sending out a survey to all of our staff members
and all of our families to get some feedback on fall break.
I suspect we might have a split vote
and that there are going to be people just
an early assessment of just talking with people.
I think that we have people who absolutely loved it.
And then, of course, we share families with Akilani's.
And so there were some struggles with families
to have students at the high school level.
And so they didn't have the same opportunity to travel.
And so we'll have to kind of sift through that process
and see what it looks like as we will sit down
a little bit later after we get the results of that survey
to sit down and take out the instructional calendar
for the following year, for next year.
Agilani's has already put out their calendar for next year
and so we'll consult with that calendar
and see what we can do based on the results
the survey. So we'll be sending that out later this week. So lots happening. As you
heard, just a few, Mikael just said, just a few more weeks, and we have another
break of a Thanksgiving break. So November is always a tricky month, you
know, starting in the beginning of November and going through to the
holiday season. It's busy and lots of in and out of school, so kind of months
that are broken up for instruction.
So that's it for tonight.
Excited to hear from all of our partners.
OK, we'll move on to our reports and discussion.
Item set of point one, the CASC discussion.
Slides, a little preview.
You know, we bring you this report every year.
And our sites, our principals, our school site councils
have really been diving into the data.
Some form of the data has been available to us since August.
And just recently, all of the data became public
on the CASP website, and so that's been really nice
because we can dive even further into it
once that becomes public.
And we use this data, as you know,
to really look at continuous improvement.
And so you've seen this slide before.
This comes out of our Illuminate Data Management system.
And so what we'll do is we'll just
go through all of our reports for English language arts.
And then we'll do the math reports.
And so here, you can see that we're
71% overall in English language arts, which
is maintaining our high score there.
And when our California School Dashboard comes out,
you'll see that puts us in the high and the green area
for English language arts.
And we've been stable there for the past three years
as this chart showed you.
So first you see overall and then you
see the grade levels and three years of data.
Our fifth and sixth grade are really showing strong there.
And then a highlight is eighth grade, a nine point increase
over three years time.
so that is really a bright spot.
And then something for us to be thinking about
is looking at that grade three and that decline,
so that's something that we'll be talking a lot about.
This year, I wanted to bring some new reports to you.
We always look at our cohorts,
but we're usually looking at them in a table format,
and so this graph, visual representation,
I think is a really good one for us,
because it is important for us
not only to look at each grade level but our cohorts
that are generally the same students over time
and just monitoring and seeing that across each year,
are they staying stable, are they even growing?
And then maybe this will be the last year
that I'll say the word pandemic in a data reward.
But so this is our class of 2025
who are the eighth graders who promoted last year
and they were third and fourth graders during the pandemic.
And their outcome remains steady in English language arts,
but also overall, when you look at all of our cohorts,
their average results are a little bit lower.
And so I think that's interesting to think about
as just when the pandemic came into their schooling experience.
And so here is our cohort of 2026,
our current eighth graders.
They were second and third graders during the pandemic.
And the fifth and the sixth grade years were steady.
And then last year, this cohort declined by five points.
And so it's something for us to be thinking about
in seventh grade English language arts
and be talking with our seventh grade teachers
just about using the formative assessments
that are built in to cast the interim assessments
so that we can be monitoring that across the year.
and here is our cohort of 2027.
These students were in first and second grade
during the pandemic,
and this cohort is really showing strong performance
over the last three years.
And then this is the last cohort I'll show you,
2028, our current sixth graders.
They were in kindergarten and first grade in the pandemic,
and it's nice to see this eight points of improvement
since the third grade.
And next, we'll move into our area analysis.
this is the information that kind of just became available
for us to look at, is breaking apart
the overall English language arts into the areas
of reading, writing, speaking, listening,
and research and inquiry.
And the county gave us this nice visual representation.
I like it all on one page like this.
We can look at three years of data in one place,
so it's helpful.
And then I just added, because remember we were focused
on writing over this last year.
And so I just wanted to see what that looked like.
If I take our students who were near standard
and above standard, you'll see that over the three years
time, we were at 86%.
And then last year we made a 2% increase
in that area of writing.
So that was really nice to see.
This is looking at cohorts in that area of writing.
And so you can see our eighth grade
over three years of time made a four-point increase
in that area of writing.
And then I took the data from our other cohorts,
and you can see that three out of the four cohorts
made a significant increase in the area of writing.
And now we'll do some comparisons.
So we always, every year, I bring you a chart
where I show you that this is, you know,
in order to be proficient at each grade level,
this is the mean scale score,
and we're always, each grade level is performing above that.
But that graph looks a little bit messy and hard to read,
so I thought I would just bring this one
that's really pretty clean,
that's just showing that we're always performing
above the state average, 21 to 22 points above.
And then I think what's better for a comparison
is really for us to find similar school districts.
So the state has a data bank where
you're going to put in your demographics.
And then the districts that it's a little harder
to find districts because we're a K-8 district,
so there's not as many to compare to.
But if you take K-8 districts about our size,
about our population of English learners,
and such economically disadvantaged,
these were the two that came up, a small district in Marin,
and then a district in Santa Clara.
And so when we're looking there,
we're three to five points above those similar districts
overall in English language arts.
And then we're looking at our student groups.
We see major gains in our students with disabilities
in the areas of English language arts.
So really, really amazing to see that.
It's 15 points over three years.
fantastic. And then English learners, you know you know that we talk a lot about
you know the supports and things that we need to put in place for our English
learners. They made a three-point game from last year but still are our group
that has the biggest achievement gap. Next we're just looking at our ethnicity
of our students and so this is a breakdown of the different ethnicities
that we have in third through eighth grade since they're the students who are taking
the class. And so this report just shows us that we continue to have those
opportunity gaps with our African-American and Hispanic students.
And now we want to pause for questions along the way. I'm going to move into the
math section or I can just take questions at the very end. What is your
pleasure. Actually in some ways it's more of a comment that I just think is
really important. I think it is slide 11 where you're looking at where we're
looking kind of across how the improvement is going in the writing area
where you start to deep dive in.
To those cohorts?
No, it's the new data that's available, this one.
This one?
Yeah.
When you look at the writing, one of the things
that I looked at when I just found this really interesting,
and I think it's important to lift up,
that that progress actually was also,
we saw that below-standard cohort shrink,
But we also saw the above standard cohort go by double.
So just to really call out and name that,
when we are thoughtful about what is necessary
for the most challenged and the most vulnerable,
we actually see how that notion
that a rising tide lifts all boats,
we can see that in the data.
So I really just wanted to call that out
because I think sometimes we imagine
that we're going to be we're going to be we're going to create interventions at
the detriment of some of our students and I think the data tells us that we're
not doing so I just that I when I was looking through this that really struck me.
That's definitely a great point. Let me get to math. So here and we are seeing an upward trend in the area of math so
really great to see because this is a at 69% overall that's a three-point gain
from last year which you can see here and then we see significant gains in
seventh and eighth grade really really wonderful and you remember last year we
adopted Desmos math and new curriculum so it's always very interesting to see
you know what kind of an impact that we have. We are watching this fifth to sixth
grade dip and so you'll see that in our cohorts too. So it's really something
that we're thinking about and when we look at our math MDTP the math testing
diagnostic project that really looks at you know fractions decimals you know
what are the components we are noticing that our incoming sixth graders are
lower in fractions than what we would like them to be and so that's an
essential standard in fifth grade and so that really gives us something that we
can really spend some time you know working with teachers and making sure
that we have good formative assessments and and you know if we need
supplemental lessons we can work on those with our coaches. One thing that we
did add last year was math as an assessment for our third through fifth
grade students hearing that the assessments that we had in place that
really aligned to our curriculum weren't as helpful to teachers. They already had
assessments in Bridges. They didn't really need us to put together a summary
of those assessments so we moved to this middle of last year and what we like
about it is you know they tell you that this is a very predictive assessment of
how students will do on task and our charts here are showing us that it said
that 71% of our students would be proficient and then here we are sitting
with 69%. So very close and a good predictive measure and just a nice tool
for teachers to use to monitor those kids who are not on track. Let's really
look at them, look at their small group instruction. And so here we are looking
at our cohorts and so this is our 8th graders who just promoted and similar
to English Language Arts, they're overall, this cohort is lower than our other cohorts.
And here's our class of 2026. 5th and 6th grade were strong years, and then we see that dip
in 6th grade, but then nice to see a seven-point increase in 7th grade. Class of 2027, our data,
again, showing us that 6th grade dip. Not as much, but still a little bit there.
And then, class of 2028, these are our current 6th grade students, coming in pretty strong.
And now we can look at our math area analysis.
And we are, as Marie said, for our professional development day, for our 3rd through 5th grade,
teachers really focusing on math and the new-ish 2023 framework that came out, that really is about how to teach math.
So it's really the same standards.
Standards didn't change, but just the practices
and really having a focus on problem solving
and real world problems.
And so I think that moving forward,
us really looking at problem solving,
similar to like how we've been really focused
and looking at writing, would be a good move for us.
And next we'll look at our comparisons.
So again, very similar to English language art
showing us above California's overall.
And then these are the same two similar school districts.
Again, we're scoring above those similar districts.
And now we're gonna look at our student groups.
And unfortunately those gaps are persisting,
but the good news is that every one of those student groups
did make an improvement from the following,
the previous year.
and then we're looking at those opportunity gaps
that we have in our ethnic groups.
And just really continuing to think about what can we do
to support our African American and Hispanic students.
Lesson that.
Our last assessment that we'll look at
is our California Science Test, the CAST,
which is a relatively new
and very challenging assessment, I have to say.
What kids learn in third grade
for each of their science units they need to hold on to
so that in fifth grade, when they see those questions,
they're able to do well on it.
And so I hear districts all around us
really talking about the California Science Test
and just what a struggle it is.
And again, it's relatively new.
And so here's four years of data for us.
And you can see our fifth grade staying pretty stable there
and eighth grade showing a great recovery from 2023.
And then here's what it looks like
when you compare us to California.
25 points above in fifth grade
and eighth grade is 19 points above the state overall.
I didn't do a similar school.
That would be interesting to do.
I wanna make sure I look that up
and see how those similar districts did
on their science assessment.
And so now we're kind of to the end
where we're just going to really summarize.
Again, it's just so critical that we review this,
analyze it, and use it to continue
to make continuous improvement.
And I know our school site councils are doing that.
You'll see evidence of it when our principals bring
their school site plans.
And when you visit collaboration,
our grade level teams are really invested in this data.
we're so fortunate to have all of these great supports
in place, and we always say this kind of makes up
our strong MTSS system.
And then I wanted to bring us to our areas of focus
last year.
We said that we were really gonna focus and support
in the area of professional development
and formative assessments, writing, and math.
And so we set this as a goal.
We know that goals don't always get met in one year's time.
It's gonna take multiple years,
but I just wanted to celebrate that we did have three
out of seven sites meet that, perform that goal in writing
and six out of 10 of the cohorts
and one year's time met that.
And so I think it's worth a worthy goal
and something that we should continue to focus on
in this school year.
And so just to summarize, these are our bright spots.
We're really a district that remains strong,
that math and writing are having a positive trajectory
and we saw a lot of gains in our student groups.
And so areas for strategic focus,
it really feels like really looking
at that third grade English language arts
and then thinking about second grade
and how are the second grade students coming in
and being prepared for third grade.
We know next year, the state is releasing a list
of new programs and I think it behooves us
to really take a look at those, and just think about what
we're doing to really have a strong literacy program.
And we want to continue the use of formative assessments
and really thinking about tier one instruction,
and then an area of math, thinking
about problem solving, and then that transition
from elementary to middle school.
So there you have it.
Hopefully I wasn't going too fast.
I know you have the crowd people to give you
more presentations.
And Jen, I have one quick question.
For the bump up in students with disabilities,
can you remind us, do we make any curriculum changes?
With that population?
Sande is relatively new.
That's what I thought that would be.
That's our newest curriculum.
And Jen, would you say the implementation of Sande
is much more consistent.
And I would say that I think particularly
at the middle school level and an actual period.
Yeah, a period.
And so I think the implementation of the Sunday
program also has made a difference,
making sure that it's done with fidelity,
that students get those four days of intervention as opposed
to and specific to the needs of it.
So I think it's the program and the implementation of it.
We're seeing a little boost.
And I wonder, 95 Phonics, as a word study program,
is new to us last year, too.
And so all of our students are getting that as a foundation
in their classes.
That's something to do with it as well.
Question.
You've mentioned a possible future action
of working on math from solving skills.
And thinking about the slide where you outlined the NTSS
options, it was wondering how that might fit in somewhere
in the various NTSU to achieve that goal.
One thing I've been thinking about
is on our curriculum maps, we have lots of opportunities
for teachers to include tasks.
And there's a relatively new practice
called building thinking classrooms,
where students are 360 around the room
and they're doing these tasks collaboratively together.
And so that is something that we've had teachers studying
and thinking about.
And so that would be a way in just our tier one instruction
if all of our teachers are aware
of that being a best practice.
And we're also providing them rich tasks
that are engaging and interesting to students.
So they're collaboratively working groups to solve math.
Can you unpack problem solving a little bit more?
Like, what does that really mean in this context?
Just intuitively, when I look at those different areas,
I think, well, shouldn't we be focusing on concepts?
Like, don't you need those in order to be able to do the problem?
Because when I see problem solve, I think word problems,
and academic language, and other things.
So how do we kind of unpack the distinctions, I think,
with reading where?
I wish this assistant would do that more for us,
to be quite honest with you.
Because when we look at a performance task
for English language arts,
we are able to pull out the writing assessment
and see the rubric and see, you know,
where we're doing well and where our areas of growth are.
We're not able to do that with this assessment in math,
so I think that's a great question
to bring back to our teachers to think about.
and related to assessments because you mentioned it both
in the context of the ELA, the interim CASP assessments,
and then with these particular MAP assessments,
then how, like what is the difference?
How are not, kind of how are they predictive?
What is it that is, like why are these assessments
better than others?
Is it because they are more like the CASP test
and they'll ask questions in a similar way?
Is it because they are looking at different things,
like how do we think about why certain assessments,
certain formative assessments are either more predictive
or result in better tests
and then how do we braid that together
with real core curriculum?
I definitely do think that the questions
do look like the questions like you mentioned on CASP
And also they're weighted based on the essential standards
of the grade level, where the assessments that we were given
were really more focused on what were the two, three units
of study that happened in that trimester, if that makes sense.
And then the assessment is also computer adapted.
So it allows students to go above and beyond what
is happening in their classroom.
So that also makes it look very different
than your traditional benchmark map assessing.
That helps, thank you.
Yeah?
Yeah, so when I look at these three pie charts
of the formative winter, spring, and then the actual,
kind of interesting because you do see some improvements,
I think, I forget what the colors are,
but it seems like there's some improvements
from winter to spring,
but then the actual is almost like an average
of those two, the winter and spring formative data.
So are we going to sort of,
is the plan to kind of focus on those
who are coming in winter projection under?
Yes, and this year we're able to give a fall projection.
Okay, yeah.
So that's our first year giving it in the fall.
And why do you think, I mean I don't know, why do you think the 26, like I'm looking
at the 26% versus the actual 30%, that's almost like an average, right?
Between the winter and the spring?
When the students took the test in the winter, 28% of them were scoring below proficient
and 71.5% were scoring proficient and above.
And then when they took it in the spring, those are the results that you're seeing.
So in the spring, 29% of the students on this assessment were below proficient, and
71% were meeting or exceeding.
And then when we gave, the last one showed you the Smarter Balanced Assessment.
I think the fluctuations are having.
Question I had the English learners you do anything to improve their
Assessment on an English language test if they can't speak their language
Right now for math in the area of math another thing that our teachers are going to be looking at our math language routine
So really thinking about how to support
learning and
Providing language then things like that. So we're really focused on that in the area of math and then in
English language arts our students do get a designated English language development time
and right now for our fourth and fifth grade students we're actually looking at trying a
little bit of a different curriculum. We've been using EL Achieve as a very strong curriculum.
Our middle school is using English 3D. They make English 3D for fourth and fifth grade and we
piloted that for a minute last year and so that's something that we're going to be looking at.
work on that report to measure J update that Ed has handsteed.
Good evening everybody um perfect thanks.
Vince and I are going to share tonight a measure j update
um and we'll go through it as as quick as possible with kind of
pointing out bullet points of where we've been
where we are and where we're going in the measure j projects across the
district. And just to recap what we'll be doing tonight on the first slide here
from ballot which was November 2022 to where we are now in the summer 2025 what
what's taking place and some updates from specific summer projects to share
with you. Just to recap how we go about looking at our bond measure projects
obviously our bond measure J is on the heels of bond measure D. Bond measure D
was our modernizations at our middle school entities which is going to be WCI
and our upper school sixth or eighth at Tice Creek Measure J. We went out to the
community they graciously voted yes for us to go and add modernizations at all
five elementary sites as well as a six being the K through five portion of
Tice Creek. At each site we held stakeholder engagement through the
process of coming up with design at all the five, excuse me, five, six sites in this prior
to going out and definitively deciding what will happen on each campus.
Phase one with parent input, community engagement, and site evaluation matrix that was taken
into consideration in phase two baseline, which is staff engagement, educational standards,
and program development.
What this did was all come up with our aligning kind of cores and principles of what these
projects would look like after assessments were done on all sites. And the district previously
decided to let these six items guide the future modernization projects at the six schools
around learning environments, tiered supports, specializing in common areas, safety and security,
job nutrition and outdoor environments. Now, where are we now? So this summer, Park
Part Me 2025 was phase 2 of a two-phase project.
It involved the exterior site work, the addition of the TK modular building, as well as new
primary TKK place structures.
You can see some action photos from Part Me this summer to show the extent of work in
the thick of the project that took place this summer.
The project budget obviously stayed at the bottom of this slide.
the the overall budget for the two-phase project that we we we just completed
this year so we were proud to say Park Meet is our project complete the next
slide will show you no more action photos but completion photos there's
there are some photos that we've added that were completion photos to the to
the actual slide deck but many of you have seen it hopefully whether in the
audience or the board, that the completed project looks much different than our
action photos of the work being done this summer and it looks beautiful and
in sake of time ever missed not to be able to sit here and share all the
detailed wonderful things that were upgraded across Park Mead's two-year
project that is now in the completed phase. This site here shows Buena Vista. Buena
Vista is was also under the exterior site modernization site work projects
this summer in addition of TK and K modular buildings.
That was six new classrooms, two large buildings containing
three classrooms each.
And as well as, like Park Mead, they
did get a new primary and TK play structures.
These action photos show the work done this summer
from different exterior corridors being redone that
were existing and upgraded to the kind of the grand picture,
the grand piece of the project, which was probably
the most shock value to the eye was the new addition of the modular buildings that took
place.
You can see the budget as well as that.
And next up for summer 2026 will be the interior site work and modernization for next summer.
Our third and final site this summer that was under construction was an interior modernization
part one of two phases at Walnut Heights.
And some highlights from the interior site work along with all classrooms and learning
spaces being modernized was the new admin building configuration which is
drastically different from what it was prior to the project and the NPR
transformation taking the NPR room and making it more longer standard of more
square footage with the removal of the stage as well as making it a cafe style
with our different seating options that have happened in there and you can see
based on the action photo on the right that our district standard of what
classrooms are looking across across the district. Our completed classrooms at
Park Mead look obviously very similar to complete classrooms at Walnut Heights
along the bottom of that is our budget as well as the next up which will be the
exterior site work for the Wal Heights next summer. Now to elaborate more on budget.
First report is that measure D is completely spent out. We ended measure D last year with
about $5 million in our fund balance. So before we close the books this year we moved $5 million
of pardon me expenditures into measure D to completely close out that project. So now the
oversight and the audit is going to be focused solely on measure J. Another update from measure
J is we've now had two issuance with issued $97 million out of the $134 million
that are authorized. We're analyzing our tax limits, our projects, and our cash flow
to figure out the timing of when we're going to need the rest of that cash.
Our bright spot is interest earned. At the beginning of the project, we projected
about $3.3 million in interest earning, but because of high inflation
that also raises interest rates, and as of today we're sitting about five and a
and a half million dollars.
Two million dollars over the jacket.
This next slide is a little heavy, but how?
Okay.
It's a tad.
It's the same picture times three.
The chart on the first left is our net position as of today.
So if you would look at this chart right here,
which solely focuses on bond dollars,
are measured J and B, combines about $144 million in revenue.
And each of these lines are project budgets,
like Buena Vista is at $25.9 million.
And in that budget, it includes a 5% construction contingency,
just in case.
And then the same thing with Part Me and all the other projects.
There are also 5% contingencies within them.
Buena Vista, we already know, came in at $260,000
of the budget for construction.
Part me, last year, phase one came in $75,000 of the budget.
This year, because of the $750,000 playground addition,
it's over by $200,000.
So if you take that playground structure up,
the poor construction project really
came in at about half a million dollars of the budget.
While the high is because it's built together
by the same contractor for both phase one and phase two,
we're going to learn about the change orders
and over under budget at the end of the phase for next year.
And if you go further down the line,
you'll see all the other projects
that we have, including program expenses, which
pays for our support, classified salary support,
legal fees, facilities planning.
And then you see that we have a $4 million program
reserve outside of project reserves just in case.
And with all that considered, we're
sitting at about $12.9 million net position, just with bond
dollars alone.
The chart in the middle now adds the developer fees
that we already have, redevelopment agency fees
that we also have in our fund 40 funds for special reserves
for Capital Outlet, which we can use for any of measure J
projects.
And that bumps up our net position
to $15.4 million as of today.
Not including interest that we're
going to earn in the future for cash can we have?
Any other development fees that could come in the future?
The last slide adds the state facility matching rent.
We're entitled to it, but when budget becomes hard,
that debt can't get kicked out further down the road
and the state continues to do that.
So best case scenario, we're going
to get that $2.7 million in the end of 2027
towards the end of Measure J projects.
So we don't really count the money until it's here.
So for all planning purposes, we're sitting at about $15.4 million
in that position at this time.
Sooner than later, we would like to bring proposals to the board
on what to do with that money, including roofing.
We use that for solar.
Can we use that for IT infrastructure,
which was last refreshed with measured $8 back in 2017,
I believe.
So they also have an end of life, just like everything else.
So part of our next presentation is
to bring back some recommendations for the board
to consider.
Any questions about the budget?
There's a lot of information here.
Just that it's great.
This is really careful budgeting, and also I
think we just don't know what inflation's going to do from here
to the end of our project lives.
So having this gives me a lot of comfort.
I'm really happy with our partner,
Graystone West, who's been keeping all of our contractors
and projects in time and budget, and who are really advocating
for us after I'm done feeling so grateful for you.
The next step is where are we with the DSA?
That disappeared, my apologies.
DSA, where are we with DSA?
DSA is the unknown factors.
Right now we have Buena Vista, phase one.
It's already out of DSA, ready to start.
Pardon me, I'm not, pardon me.
Sorry.
Where is also at?
Wanna Vista and Merwood, Phase 1 is out of the insane, ready to start.
Phase 2 for Merwood and Wanna Heights is trapped well within the insane.
We're expecting it to be approval sometime in January and February for those two phases.
But Merwood, Phase 2 is not going to start until next summer.
So at this time, we're very confident in the three projects so far.
yeah, Merwood Phase 1, Renna Vista Phase 1,
and Walnut Heights Phase 2.
What is being submitted to DSA literally as we speak
are Indian Valley and Tysbooks.
And I sit in the DSA meetings with our architects
and priests, and I can already tell you
that Indian Valley is very, very much complicated
and heavily scrutinized with DSA.
We have a little bit lower confidence
that who will come out on time,
but it's too early to tell at this point.
Both types of week, and if you were to give a race,
tax break for Indian Valley, tax break
is a much, much simpler project than Indian Valley.
And they're both going to be the same at the same time.
So right now, the way it looks is, from next year,
we're still planning on four projects.
That would be one of this at phase one,
one of the heights at phase two, one with phase one,
and Indian Valley phase one.
And in the following summer, we finish Indian Valley.
and finish from our work.
And then we touch TypeScript.
That is the plan.
But of course, as planners, we have
to think about contingencies of what happens if one
kicks out before the other.
So we're thinking about that because we
have to get it out to bid contractors by December,
by January, because contractors, they also
have their dance cards filled pretty early.
So you may have work available, but no contractors
are available to serve them.
So there's a whole timing issue that we're very much
to where we're planning for.
But we'll bring you more updates as we know more information.
Apologize for the missing slides, but that's all we had.
But today, any questions?
No, I swear those slides were there when I reviewed
the presentation this week.
Right.
I don't know where they went.
Right.
Me too.
No slides for dinner.
Of course.
Yeah.
And I read them again today.
But you recovered well.
Thank you.
Yeah, it is very exciting to think about all the projects that I've done.
Potentially four.
Yeah.
Four is a bigger number.
Four is a bigger number.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Four is a more nervous number.
Yeah.
But Indian Valley, very much TBD, it sounds like.
And the same thing with that space.
And the one-time space, yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, Merwin has been delayed by DSA, so you just never know.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, Facebook got up sometime in September for Merwin.
He does never know with DSA.
things and do our best to get push it through.
Now that we've been through two delays,
Buena Vista and Merwood's delay,
now our dance card looks different
in terms of contingency plans,
just so that we're ready to go
because we just know now the probability
of that happening is greater,
and so we wanted to bring this to you
just to tell you kind of the conversations
that are happening with us behind the scenes
and with our partners just so that we're thinking
about what that might look like.
Thank you, guys.
Thanks.
I think we're gonna stay.
Oh, you're up here still, sorry.
Okay, so I had to make point one into the action agenda,
our community partnerships?
Right, we're really excited
to bring our community partners here today.
They'll be presenting their donations if you would accept.
As you know, we have two major arms
of our community partnership.
We have our fundraising arm,
And I want to differentiate a little bit because they are the fundraising arm, which means
that the money that they raise actually fits our financial system.
So tomorrow we'll be depositing that chat.
And while our PTA, their budget is separate, not in our system, it does not get commingled.
They are for community events and bringing the community together.
while there's a crossover where you submit reimbursements
to PTA and we reimburse the PTA for teacher supplies
and field trips and other things like that.
So it is the same donation, we accept it the same way,
but there's a difference between two.
So first I'd like to call WCF,
who's had such a, can't wait to hear about
the record-breaking year of fundraising that we have.
WCF first, come on.
Hello, everyone.
I'm Ine Rasketi.
I'm a resident of Wanki Education Foundation.
I have here with me Lacey Brown, our other resident
and current soldier, our executive director.
And we are here today to share a little bit about our budget
for this current school year.
So our goal for this current school year
remains the same as last year, at $1.6 million.
And out of that amount, board approved $815,000
to go to Wallachic School District, and $490,000
will go to Las Lomas.
Every year, we work with the district
to kind of come up with what this amount should be.
And it's kind of a balancing act between what the need is
and what we realistically believe our community can raise.
And we are super grateful for the partnerships
that we have here.
Also, because of our volunteers, our expenses
are very low at 10% of total revenues,
which means 90% of every dollars that we raise
actually goes to our schools, which I think is pretty amazing.
We also have our general reserves
29% of total annual expenses, required minimum is 25%.
And that just allows WCF to be financially stable
from year to year.
Endowment, we have a small endowment fund at $200,000
with the goal of growing the fund to $1 million
before we can start spending interest or income
earnings at the moment.
And again, the idea is to allow WCEP
to be a self-sustaining organization
that can support our students in the future.
And here are all the programs that we help fund
at the elementary school level.
We fund art, science, and music programs.
And at our middle school schools,
we help fund nine additional lesson classes,
which creates more choice for students,
and also credentials of their own.
So our fundraising update for this year,
we've so far to date have raised,
well, as of October 22nd, we've raised $770,300,
which is $14,500.
And we are, as of October 22nd, $80,000 ahead
of where we were last year.
Our goal is obviously always 100% participation.
If we could get to 50, we would feel really good about it
because last year we were at 44.
44% of our students, our community, our students
are participating in the fundraising.
But Readathon was a huge success.
We can't do this without all of you, everybody here.
It's such a community involvement.
There's no way it's just us.
We really are trying this year to really impress upon everybody
that we are you, you are us.
I'm a parent, I have to run out of here 10 seconds
to go get my kid at Los Lomas.
So it's really, it's about us coming together
and doing this for our students.
So it's not just a foundation,
it's all of us as parents, it's design and thing.
So, Readathon was an amazing success because of that.
We raised over, our goal was $200,000.
We raised $217,364.
We also had students at the schools
read over a million minutes, which is incredible.
Such a great, outstanding thing,
really encouraging reading.
Kids got after it, there were some kids that read.
There's hours and hours, so they did well.
And of course, that's another testament to principals,
to the kids at the school, to the parents,
who are really encouraging that,
so thank you so much, librarians and everyone.
What's next for us is that we have
Turn Up the Heat campaign, that's usually,
when we send those big red envelopes home
and we ask if you've already participated, we say thank you.
But if you're willing to give a little bit more,
we'd love you even more for that.
And those red envelopes just are so,
it's kind of been our symbol.
You see them, you know what they are,
hopefully that encourages the kids to participate.
We also have our Taste and Toast event coming up in March,
which has been awesome.
Ina last shared his fantastic job on it.
You did?
Me.
Yeah, we did, but you did a ton of stuff.
So we're looking forward to doing that again.
Town Walnut Creek has been great.
They gave us all of the proceeds from that.
We obviously had to put it on, but that was a huge gift
that they were able to give us.
And then also one of our favorite events
that Allie sold out is our annual
for Education Golf Tournament.
It's a really fun event.
It's small because it is expensive to put on,
but it's sold out and we always have a great turnout
and make a lot of money for our kids.
We do love that.
And that's where we're going,
because of all this hard work.
We're honored to be able to present...
This is a picture with support, if it's okay.
I thought it was like if she had known she would have told us what color to wear today.
Yeah.
I know.
I think that's right.
She would have afforded me this.
I know.
I think.
Alright.
I put it up a little on your side.
Here we go.
Sorry.
They're not going to let us look a little much right.
That's my own.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I feel like that's my home.
Mike's like, no.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think that I did this picture of the group right on the way.
Seriously, I could eat all the food.
Okay, next up I've invited, we've invited our principals and our PTO partners, they come represent their language here.
Do we know BB's first?
Woo!
I know, great evening.
I have two amazing co-presidents on my PTA, Mary Stone and Rochelle Stivoll.
And I thought the odds would ever be in my favor that at least one of them would join me tonight, but they both had conflict.
So they apologize for being here.
But I do meet with them twice a month,
and we go over things in detail.
And they are great community partners.
So they asked me to present their slide for them.
They are very much a partner with me in our school
and in making sure that we are bringing communities together
and planning events that include all of our students.
And so some of our highlights always are,
and we've had earlier every year,
so we have more daylight to celebrate,
is our multicultural night.
We had that already this year.
and every year they just hit just a little bit
to make sure that more students feel welcome and involved
and families can present and be comfortable coming
and representing their culture
and there's a fashion show with the kids, it's amazing.
We had our BB Jamboree carnival this Saturday,
it was a little wet, but we had a pretty great show out
despite that and once again,
they're always changing it just a little bit, so love that.
They also fund many of our multi-cultural equity
assemblies that we have, including our ability
awareness assemblies that we have in January.
I think the thing I am most proud of in my five years
as principal at BV is they had started a program
during our book fair where every student gets
their own book bucks money.
And so regardless, I mean, I don't
know if you remember when you were little, when I was little,
I loved going to book fair.
We knew not all students got the experience
to pick their own book.
Every student at Buena Vista has a pretty great budget,
$15 per student, to go pick a book, any book
they want in the book fair.
So it's pretty amazing.
And there's more.
You can read it up there.
They're a pretty great team.
We work together pretty closely.
Our approved budget for this year is $73,665.
It says our reserves are $102,000.
It's not quite right.
That's our total money in the bank.
So our reserves are more like $30,000.
We've limited it to one fundraiser.
We do our fun run in the spring, which is a lot of fun.
And actually, it's more community building,
I think, than fundraising.
I don't know if the kids realize they're raising funds,
but it's a lot of fun.
So we look forward to this year and working with PTA,
because they do a great job.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, last year you got the Minik and Linik show,
and now you get the Minik and Marsh show today.
So I think going out with the new principal
always comes excitement and energy around the community.
So we are on fire this year, girl.
And it is just people in and out the door all the time.
So it's been great.
We've already hosted two back.
We did our welcome back picnic already.
And then Friday was our family movie night.
So great turnouts for both.
But along with that, I'm still learning some of the tradition
and the things that we'll be doing this year,
but also bringing in some new ideas as well.
So we also have a co-president.
And so they split the job tonight.
But they're amazing.
Do you want to say anything about?
We have our first assembly, school-wide assembly,
coming up at PTO's funding.
I think we're on snake number six.
Four of them were alive.
Two were dead.
And then today was a huge old tarantula.
So a little jungle James coming in.
Wednesday to teach us all about the critters and things
at Indian Valley.
So PTO's been gracious enough to pay for that.
So Culture Heritage Festival, I've
even been to that when I wasn't even a part of Indian Valley so that is a true
staple not only to Indian Valley but actually to the Water Creek School
District. They blow it out of the water and I've attended almost every year even
without being at the new Valley. So anything else you want to say? No. We just do lots of family fun stuff. She's bringing in a pumpkin
carving contest. We have our parade and parent socials twice a year and family
dance and we're just trying to bring new families in all the time. It's really trying to get
they engagement participation higher. Yeah, so that's our goal and we're
working together to get there. Oh, our budget. And then once again similar to
point of this day and this is not quite accurate, our reserves are a little less
than that because this is what's actually in the bank right now. Hi everyone. So we
want to talk to you today about our amazing, and I want to say, powerful
merlot at PTA. They work so hard. Our parent volunteers
are amazing. Megan has done such an outstanding
job leading our volunteer troops last year and this year
with a big focus on really expanding and inviting and involving the community.
So this year we had our Fall Fest on Sunday. Yesterday,
all the rain, and it rained from beginning to end.
And let me tell you, our families showed up.
Every booth was covered.
Our kiddos were having a good old time.
You wouldn't have known it was raining outside.
It was really, really just heartwarming
to see our community come together.
But our PTA has also done some wonderful things
with increasing our grade level park days.
And so it's something we've historically done as a school
and PTA to invite our TK and K families on a Saturday.
So they get to meet each other and make new friends
and parents get to connect.
And so this year our PTA has expanded that
through all of our grade levels
and had a family fun day per grade level for each grade
throughout the beginning of the school year.
And that was just really wonderful to do.
And so, like I said, they've been working so hard
at really just opening our doors
and making sure all of our families feel welcome
and can find a place where they can commune
and connect with their children, their children's friends,
and connect with other families.
And our current approved budget for PTA is $85,375.
And this is our reserves in our savings,
And our PTA savings is $38,879.
And would you like to share anything about President Day?
Sure.
Yeah.
The reason it was a Sunday was because we were getting feedback
that on Saturdays everyone had soccer.
So we were like, great, we'll do it on Sunday.
And everybody showed up, as did the rain.
But it was a real testament of, I honestly, myself included,
couldn't believe that everyone stayed, was there.
We had t-shirts to sell that the student leadership designed
that we sold out of.
We had socks because everyone loves socks.
So it was really fun and different.
We really corralled around our garden.
First time this year.
There was a disagreement about who owned it.
Turns out we do.
So we've made it really fun.
We hosted a PTA meeting there, which
was our most well-attended meeting, so highly suggested.
But it's been a fun exercise of meeting our families
where they are.
We got a sponsorship for our garden.
We did.
Yeah, turns out if you ask your realtor if they want to sponsor something, they say sure.
And we got $2,000 to fund our garden.
So we got pumpkins for everybody for our pumpkin carving, we have lots of fresh vegetables,
we have twinkle lights.
It's been really fun.
That garden is special.
It is so special, especially watching my husband try and put irrigation back into it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hosting us tonight, I'd like to introduce Raquel Forslund.
She's our treasurer.
Sure.
Amber Katowski had jujitsu, I think, tonight with her kids.
She had everything going on.
She had everything going on.
She said she couldn't make it.
She tried to make it, but I told her we could handle this.
So Park Mead, we, over the years, we have had a lot of changes in our PTO.
When I joined Park Mead, we had a very large reserve in the bylaws that said it had to
had to be two times the budget.
And with new leadership, we were able to change that down to one.
And so we've been spending the last couple of years
on our students and staff.
Try not to spend frivolously, because we
want to make sure we're respectful.
We also have a very giving community.
And so we're trying to shift the focus of fundraising
to community building.
And that's what we've spent the last few years
with a lot of our not really even fundraisers,
but community events, our multicultural events.
We did get rid of our auction to much, everyone's dismayed,
but we also really didn't see the need
of putting all the work in to fundraise this money
when we have so much sitting in our reserves.
We have a very giving community,
and so we're trying to just refocus,
give in other ways, you know, help support
and volunteer at the school, help with our garden,
which we did do the irrigation on our garden,
and it was a huge failure, but that's okay.
That's what we, that's why we oppose this.
And so a lot of the things we do are community-based.
This year, we're going to be starting, on Wednesday,
actually, we're starting a math and science club
that's being run by our parents and supported by the PTO,
by PARC.
We're going to be starting a very cool robotics club, which
should be really interesting, and hopefully going
to host our first tournament there this year, which
is kind of nerve-wracking because it's a lot,
but it's really focusing on community building.
Do you have anything else I'm just talking?
I'm here to make sure he's the right thing.
Story of my life, folks.
But yeah, we have a lot of new families
that have come into our community.
And so we've kind of developed a club putting parents
together, like existing parents who
have been there for a while with the new parents,
and kind of bringing them into like what
happens, these events that happen at the school and stuff.
our ambassador program, which we took from another school.
But really, just like Raquel said,
getting those families that are new to the community
invested in the community through other families.
So that they feel welcome, you know,
their new kid coming in.
Yeah.
And, you know, we try to also treat our teachers
every month with luncheons, breakfasts, something like that.
And so, but we have an approved budget of 146,730.
And again, we have a hefty reserve that, you know,
we'll try not to dwindle away right away,
but it's just there, gaining interest for us, so yeah.
Sorry about Tice Creek's PTA.
I have been, I feel very lucky.
I don't take it for granted at all.
The amazing events that our PTA puts on,
focused on family, community connection.
Also academic excellence supporting our teacher budgets,
classroom budgets, project-based learning,
dovetail drive with global competencies,
and it's not cheap to develop these experiences
for our kids, and our PTA helps to fund
those classroom budgets as well.
Highlights so far this year, evening on the green.
So cool, I don't know if you were able to come.
Maybe Karen.
Yeah, we had a band playing there was food trucks. A lot of people showed up. Great night.
Yeah, very good. You want to share. We also are excited to have a new principal this year.
So welcome. He's been great to work with. So thank you. He's allowed me to have my crazy ideas out there.
So appreciate it. Yeah, evening on the greens. Our big kickoff. We did start off with a welcoming on campus.
in person. We're still trying to get that face-to-face contact, not just all online.
So that's been really helpful on campus. We had a lot of new kids in our middle school,
a lot of new families, which is great. Families, whether they didn't go to WCI or they moved
into the area. So it's been really great to have those extra folks come in and just really
gained support of our volunteerism.
We just had our Halloween school dance, which was last Friday.
Sugar Fest was fun.
But at the end of the night, I got there about 15 minutes
before it was out.
And all 6th, 7th, and 8th were dancing together.
It was really great.
Kids were leaving saying it was one of the best events.
So it was really nice.
And yeah, they had a really great time.
But yeah, Sugar Fest.
And it's funny, when we used Parent Square, which was great
because it was a volunteer thing, like, here's your sign-up.
And it really did work.
I will have to say, I just want to put it out there.
Because Halloween dance, we have so much
in our storage of Halloween, just over the years,
parents of paid or purchased or donated to us.
And we just had, it's like, I feel
like it's my Christmas when I bring it out, 12 bins coming out.
And we put it up in almost an hour.
And I really feel that Parent Square
help because it was right there, center location, sign up.
That was the hours.
It was really nice.
And so we really had a lot of parents
show up for cleanup or set up.
It was really nice.
So it was clean.
And we didn't have a janitor that night.
So we did a good job.
Just putting that on.
Janitor's doing the dance back there.
So yeah, some big events for us.
That's already happened.
We're going into Halloween for this week.
We have Spirit Week.
Each day is a different dress up.
And then Halloween, we'll have a morning breakfast,
or not breakfast, a morning coffee for the parents
as they see the parade.
So we also did have a meet the principal morning coffee
as well.
So all of our parents were able to meet Tyson there
and have that open communication.
Let's see, I had a lot of notes.
Let's see.
We also had a lot of new faculty on campus.
And we have Green Friday.
We have our kids first year.
Every Friday, we wear green.
So we provided our staff green t-shirts this year.
We have a Coyote cash program that
has gone through from our middle school and our elementary
that our principal has put on.
And we fund it.
So it's been great.
A lot of students have really taken to it.
It's been great.
Sorry, the biggest thing that we've had so far
is six parent parties that were sold at the auction.
This year, we're changing our auction,
not really going out to the community
and asking for donations,
but really turning into our parents
and asking them to put on parent parties
and Sarah and I put on a party.
And ours, actually, were focused and given to WCEF,
so it wasn't actually to PTA,
but the other parties, other five parties,
was a pizza party and three fathers came in
with making pizzas.
And another one was a progressive party,
and it was in our lean neighborhood.
And that was an amazing one.
It was four different houses that we went to.
So these are just, we're making actually a lot of money
off of them because it's per ticket,
but it's building that community.
And you don't have host,
like I had a friend that asked me, I always say this,
they asked me, oh, why didn't you invite me to that party?
And I was like, I didn't have an invite list.
It's whoever buys the ticket.
So it really, it's like third grader parents
and first grader parents and, oh, you're a kindergarten
That's great that you came out already.
So it's a huge building for me because you
have no idea who's going and who shows up.
And then you have your regulars that are always there too.
So it's really great.
And I've really pushed that to volunteer.
It's like more voluntary, more building of our community.
It's been working out great, where other groups would
like to be invited to.
So maybe we'll open it up.
We have reflections going on right now as our art show.
We've been working really close with our art teacher.
So it's been really great that the kids have
been putting in their art.
Book fair for us is next week.
We are trying something a little different.
We're hosting our game night, where
it's a detox digital night, where it's board games.
And so we're bringing in all of those things
where kids can talk to kids, and parents can talk to parents,
and just play a game of strategy, and whatnot.
So that's next week.
But we're also pairing it with our book fair
so that parents have more time to purchase books.
And then we're still celebrating our 10-year anniversary,
which is ending this year.
So, Tice Creek is providing t-shirts again
to the whole class, or to all the class.
First week of December, we're hoping our eighth graders
will be going to Yosemite, making sure that there's no,
you know, that government thing happens pretty quickly here.
And then we have an all-dance party
that's coming up at the beginning of the year,
We do still have an auction party, but this year, like I said, we're not going out to
our community to ask.
We're really just in-house, coming up with the premium parking spots, lunch with the
principal, so just really thinking of ways to coordinate and enjoy our community more.
I'm trying to wrap this up.
I do want to put a shout out to some of our parents.
We've had some great parents that have gone above and beyond PTA, and they're taking on
more of a sponsorship role. So one of our parents was a title sponsor for the readathon. We have a
mom's night out that's coming up on November 6th, right? And they're doing
facials and different things, knowledge base, and it's a great evening so it's a $50 ticket,
but again it's another parent that's at TICE that's going beyond PTA and really trying to
give back to our community and then also cash anometers cash thermometers
cash on our sorry we have quite a few tice parents that are out there too so
I'm really proud of our parents that are just taking you know the leadership role
in the volunteer and seeing how important it is to have such a great
community so this year we're bringing the joy and building the community with
a new principle by side and you know just having a good time thanks that's it
for our revenues are 85,925 expenditures we divided in community events and
enrichment for classrooms 78,000 60,000 for those two and then our
reserves is 108 is in our checking but we also have a savings account I did not
get that in there so we are there but yeah that's our year so um any
questions? Sorry. Alrighty, thank you. Thank you for inviting us here tonight to go
ahead and talk about some of the highlights of our PTA program at WCI. It's great to
hear my colleagues talk about PTA at the elementary level. The Beast is a little
stronger at WCI in getting parents involved and engaged. Sometimes kids are
trying to separate from their families. We still want to build and keep a sense
community. But with that said, and with the leadership that we have at WCI, I'd like them to share some of the
highlights of our support in our community. Ms. Cops, Steve? Hi. Our focus is always engagement,
not just with the middle schoolers, but also the parents. You do see a little bit
bit of a burnout when it comes to that,
once the people get to middle school.
I, loudly and proudly, take every chance
I can to say to all of our incoming families,
we don't fundraise.
We have an annual ask at the beginning of the year.
Every event you come to, you're not
going to be like asked to pay all the time.
It's truly just about community engagement and involvement.
And we take pride in that we offer no cost tickets
for every event.
So our skate night that we just had last year,
I think we had four people apply for a no cost ticket,
and this year it was 20, just for the sixth grade.
So I think it's great people are utilizing that,
but also we're keeping in mind funding more for that.
And some of our events are our sixth and seventh grade skate
nights, we have a dance coming up in November.
We help fund the web team, and that team has really
taken off and revamped their web program.
Also, teacher appreciation and staff events.
We try to do something every other month.
November 14th, if you're free for lunch, come by.
We have a chili cook-off that's all of the teacher's favorites,
and you can vote on your favorite.
This is our treasurer, Kathy.
Hi.
Yeah, our approved budget is $64,874.
And the reserves listed there, $35,000,
to clarify that's our savings account.
But we also do have a checking account with $75,000 in it.
So more than covers our approved budget.
And we know Jason is coming up with a proposal
for some support that he would like
to use to make some improvements to our PA system then.
Pardon?
That way?
Yeah.
That's not it.
Well, last but not least, we'll keep it quick and add on to all the wonderful things my
colleagues have shared, but I would like to introduce you Melissa Moore, my PTA president
this year.
She's amazing.
She's on the WCIA PTA.
She's on the Walnut Heights PTA.
She loves public speaking and somehow found herself as a PTA president and does just an
amazing job.
I just wanted to highlight a couple of our goals and similar to they shared about TICE,
My community is taking on Parents Square and kind of jumping in because they have a commitment
to be sure that we're communicating with all our parents and making sure that we're reaching
everybody in their language has been a real highlight for me.
And now that we have people getting that communication, they're really working on inclusion and making
sure that everybody is invited and can attend all the events.
So similar to what we heard, like WCI, we have things that are sponsored to make sure
that all students can attend.
We picked up from Buena Vista, and we've
been providing book fair shopping
dollars for our students, which is a highlight.
And I think a real special thing at Walton Heights
are the different cultural festivals that we put on.
And we have a style of doing them at lunchtime
so that all students benefit.
And this year, our Latino community
came together and put de la loo, the first Fiesta Latina, which
was huge, and a lot of new families
coming and participating and getting our kids engaged.
And then we had Diwali last week,
which is always a favorite.
And so that went really well too.
And I'm thrilled that we finally put on our calendar,
our Ability Awareness Week.
It's just so important and so now it's scheduled
and it will happen.
And I'll turn it over to Melissa
to share some of our PTA and highlights.
We just had our fall carnival on Saturday
and we didn't get rained out luckily.
A few of our more family friendly attended events
are Ice Cream Social and our Multicultural Heritage Night.
And we really just like to make sure
that everyone feels welcome, they have a place,
and that they're included,
that they're part of our community.
So we like to celebrate their heritage.
And if you want to share your heritage with us at lunch,
we would love to celebrate you.
And then we have an amazing nature area
and some very enthusiastic parents,
and also community members who have been in the nature area
since they were in elementary school at Walnut Heights.
And then our family play dates.
We like to get all our new families together and host a few play dates.
And then we're going to have a family orientation for not only like TK&K new families, but for
all of the families to get together, and just so they know they belong.
And our approved budget this year is $133,251, and our reserves are $79,867.
I'll just wrap really quick, I think that was the last one, right, I just want to wrap
really quickly, and say, first of all, thank you.
Thank you all for being here tonight.
This always feels deeply personal to me
because I get to work alongside each and every one of you.
And I think the board has heard me say this,
particularly in the past year.
This is my 10th year in the district.
And by far, the leaders that we have in our district
right now are parent leaders, our leaders of WCEF
and our advisory teams that come to participate
as a community really feels like a community partnership.
And for those of you I know who've been around
for a really long time, much longer than me,
the transition of moving from our parent organizations
to really be about community building
and to hear you talk about the goals that we've set
as a district in our strategic plan
about ensuring that each and every one of our families feels
that sense of belonging.
I can tell you that you feel it
when we walk onto our campuses
and you are a huge part of making
our strategic plan come alive.
And I just want you to know from me
the depth of gratitude that I feel for,
not just the work that you do every day
to fundraise and to give back, but the volunteer time
and all of those projects that truly are alive
on our campuses, it's absolutely amazing.
This is by far and away the most amazing collaborative group
of community partners that we have ever had in our district.
I said it last year, I say it again this year,
feel your presence and know how much you are doing to welcome families into our
district so I just did not want tonight to end without telling you how
incredibly grateful I am because you are such a major part of my work each and
every day and I look forward to the time I get to come to meetings and work
alongside you so thank you for making that reality kind of come true for me I
I truly mean that from the bottom of my heart.
So thank you.
Thank you for all that you do for our students
and for our staff in this district
and making our families feel like they belong.
What you did tonight and what we heard from you
is truly what it means to create a sense
of belonging together and I'm very grateful.
So thank you.
Thank you all for making the time to be here.
It's a very long time.
So thank you for your donations and efforts.
I'm approval of donations to the Walnut Creek School District of the 2025-26 from WCEF and Walnut Creek School District's PTA-PTO Park Partnerships for the annual requirements of VP3290.
I'll second.
Okay, we have a motion and a second for approval of donations to the Walnut Creek School District for 2025-26 from WCEF.
And the Walnut Creek School District's PTA-PTO partnerships for the annual
requirements of BP 3290 gifts grants and requests. All those in favor?
Okay, motion carries.
We have one more item so I'm not going to restate.
It's up to you.
Okay, you're all like whoo!
They have a try.
Looking at Angela, she's got 40 minutes or I've had.
Thank you.
Jason, I think they tied it up.
They did.
Four two for a minute there.
Would you like me to push that for me?
Okay, I'd make point recommended, updated and additions to board policies.
So these are board policies that have come to us at the beginning of the year and just
know it took us a little longer and we still have a second batch to bring you and we will
bring those forward but the batches that have come from CSBA have been a little more cumbersome
And we wanted to make sure that we went through it
with each department to see the impact of what
a lot of these new board policies and additions are.
So we have sifted through them.
Each one of the departments has sifted through the policies
that are here so that we could confidently
tell you that the updates that we bring you tonight, many
of them are legal updates.
Some of them, you know, the law is changing daily.
And so again, we have another batch to bring you.
But these are the recommended board updates from the fall
from CSBA.
And so we ask you to approve the recommended updates and additions
to the governing board policy and the AAR administrative regulations
and board bylaws as indicated.
We think it's really important to keep our board policies updates.
This is the latest.
We're a result of the court decision, the single court decision.
And we have more.
There's a couple, there's a couple more that will be.
I'll move approval of the CSBA recommended updates
and additions to governing board policy,
administrative regulations and board files as indicated.
I'll second.
Okay, we have a motion and a second.
To approve CSBA recommended updates
and additions to governing board policy,
administrative regulations and board bylaws as indicated.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Stentions?
Motion carries.
Moving on to item nine,
reports from governing board members.
Amy, do you have anything?
No, I don't have anything to report.
I did, I guess I was going to share,
but I have received an email inviting me
to copy with Senator Grayson,
and I was just curious if anyone else had gotten that email.
Not close to me, do they still think they're invisible?
Okay, and then also I'm sure you've all gotten an email about the upcoming meeting with Rob Bonta, district office, which is a new location, usually there at the county office. So, just highlighting that for you in case. This is November 3rd. The board meeting, prior to the general informational meeting. The board meeting starts at 5.30.
5.30 and the informational meeting with Mr. Vonta starts at 6.30.
Thank you.
We have a number of you in the station.
We're just strongly encouraging our feedback.
OK, why?
I think it's been a good evening to meet you.
Yes, so October 23rd, I believe I attended the WCEF meeting.
And then today at lunch, I did the CSBA Lunch and Learn
on which I'm guessing is going to be the second part of the CSBA updates that I
did a tour at Walnut Heights my
Sarah on October 20th that's all I have to report thank you Steve and touring
a surrounding okay so you mentioned Marie's back so for future agenda item
Oh, just, I mean, I'm sure it'll come down eventually, but at lunch today I attended
the CSBA lunch and learned about Mahmoud versus Taylor.
So those are some of the policies that we're still going through.
Right.
Okay.
So I'm guessing that eventually you'll provide us with some updates on how we'll, those situations
future if that's something to discuss. I'm looking at you because when I put
some of it in the board in a previous board update I can repeat it so we have
we have our process in place I just we're still looking through the actual
policy that has been sent by CSA before we bring you a policy we just want to
make sure that all the work has been done before asking you
to adopt a policy that we're unshucked at.
Yes, definitely.
Any other future agenda items?
I do have a future agenda item to look at events.
The longer the government shutdown goes on,
the more I worry about the implications
of the loss of SNAP benefits for our students and families.
So just hoping that we can maybe talk about that.
Or it doesn't necessarily have to be in the context of meeting
convey by way of update.
Just that weighs heavy on my head.
20% of my family.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
I would think that would be good enough.
What sort of segway?
We looked at attendance last week on Friday.
It was an attempt that we were looking at attendance,
and it wasn't effective on Friday.
I will tell you that I brought the leadership team
together to have a conversation prior to my sending out
the messages I did last week.
And since then, we've been a little bit more hypervigilant
on what families are calling and reporting to us
so that we can really think about what kinds of supports
our families might need as well more individually than globally.
Because I think that is how we're
are gonna be able to help and support people in the process.
I was surprised,
principals have had a few families come into the office
who are thinking about the effects
of what is happening around us,
how it's affecting their families and the impact on them,
and then making sure that they have some support.
So we definitely have families
that are being impacted by what is happening
on many different levels of the federal level.
Whether it's immigration, whether it is
their living conditions and where they are,
whether it is just a whole host of things.
So we're watching it very closely.
I got calls on Friday from three principals saying,
hey, I just want to give you a heads up,
this family, this family, this family.
So I suspect that is not going to change.
And I think the greatest response we can have
is being able to ensure that we're up to date with the latest
information, so that we can give people the support
that they need at that moment in time.
And so that's kind of how, because we
can put out global messages.
We can put out lists of resources.
But if you know people individually
and what they need and what their circumstances are,
Those are some pretty powerful impacts.
So everything from childcare to living,
what they need.
And I'll put a regular update in for you
so that you get that information
as we find out about it as well.
Moving on, item 11, pertinent dates.
We are done this evening.
We adjourn our meeting tonight at 37 p.m.