that open the Walnut Creek School District's
regular deputy board meeting.
It's December 15th at 6 o'clock.
We'll begin with opening procedures.
2.1, the pledge allegiance of the flag.
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
We have a motion and a second.
All those in favor?
Annual organization activities item 3.1 election governing board president for a
one-year term. I move to appointment Lee Johnson as
board president for a one-year term in 2026. I'll second. We have a motion and a
second to elect when Lee Johnson as president of governing board for a one-
your turn. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. With that, I will also, before I pass
the gavel, actually we can do that, as I'm passing the gavel, I also want to thank
Sarah Talek for her amazing term as board president. We have a gift for you that I think you'll get a kick out of when you open. Thank you, Sarah.
I'll turn it over to our neighbor.
Okay, item is to elect a board clerk to win your term for a 2026.
All motion.
To nominate a motion to second.
All in favor?
The next is appointment of district superintendent as secretary of the governing board of the
motion.
and the approval of the appointment of district superintendent as secretary of the governing board
I'll second. I have a motion a second all in favor
Opposed
abstention
motion passes
Next item certificate of signatures resolution 25-26-13
need a motion to
Recommend approval of resolution 2526 13
Motion passes
I have a motion on second all in favor
All right item 5 public comments. Any public comments? No public comments. Item 6. What you organization reports? WCTA? Oh I'm sick. Did he have a reporter? He didn't have a reporter. Oh and Chris is also out there. Chris is also out there. We don't have a report from CSA. Actually I'm here to present that. Oh okay. Perfect thank you.
So, I'm just in the nick of time.
Yeah, so hello everyone, my name is James Eben, I serve as the labor relations representative
for CSEA here in this district.
And so yes, since Kristin be here, I wanted to give some information from our chapter.
And so CSEA recently, I think just last week, elected our officers for the next year.
So they will begin their terms in January.
And then currently the association
is negotiating with the district
over some health-related duties, I would summarize it as,
for our students, specifically diabetes
and glucose management and feeding tubes,
and that work being either potentially in a new position
or being added to one that already exists
within the district.
And then we did want to address something else that has occurred this year, so to give a little
bit of background back in the month of May, we reached tentative agreement with the district
related to our contract for this year. As part of the contract, the district does have to post it
a specific timeline and so that contract was added to the district website in the month
of August and CSEA did notice that there were a few items that were in the agreement that
we reached that were never included in the contract itself and we also noticed that there
was one item that we did not agree to which was added into the contract as well.
So we did notify the district as soon as we noticed that and just essentially stated that
the corrections needed to be made.
The district did request that we make those edits ourselves and provide them with an updated
copy of that contract.
And so we did that.
We provided an updated copy with the items.
Copy for second.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
Tell me your name again.
James Eben.
I am the exclusive representative for the numbers of this chapter, okay?
I I appreciate what you're saying, but I feel like we're just asking for a report
And you're giving me something else that might be an item. We need to put on the agenda
So there's no voting or anything that would be something not really sure he's just reporting
Yeah, I'm just reporting on from our job and things that happened within CSCA
From his chapter from the chapter last month
Yeah, largely this
Is not understanding what's happening congratulations, I'm assuming new as of tonight
And so yeah, so we
Did provide the district with an updated copy of that contract which included all of the corrections and things that were necessary
We received a response from the district that our corrected copy would not be
posted and that the changes that were made to the contract, the ones that we
were stating were incorrect, were ratified by both parties and so when I
say both parties that means our organization our chapter and the board
itself as well. And so we kind of went back and forth over a few months. CSCA
repeatedly shared with the district that those changes were never ratified by our
chapter. They were not in the agreement so they were never presented to our
membership to ever vote on them. The response we kept getting was that it was
ratified. No changes would be made and so CSCA shared that that would be a
a violation of labor law because that change was made
without the agreement being ratified by our chapter.
And then just last month, we did a reach out
to the district one final time prior to moving this
to the Public Employment Relations Board specifically
to address the ratification issue.
So again, we shared that it was never ratified by our folks.
But it was also discovered through our investigation
that we watched the board meeting.
And the change that the district administration
had made to our contract was never ratified by the board
either.
And so we noted that that would be a violation of the Brown
Act.
And we asked the district administration
to clarify what they meant by it having been ratified.
So we said, how can this be ratified
if it was never presented.
We did not receive a response to that inquiry.
However, we did notice while prepping
for submission to PERB that the contract had been updated,
and it was to finally the copy that we had submitted.
So we were happy that we were able to do that informally,
even if it took three months.
It did allow us to do that outside of the legal system,
which was lovely.
We did also just notice that in that process,
we found that the contract had been updated on the website.
We were not notified at all that the change had occurred.
So we did just request that in the future,
if the contract is to be changed on the school website,
that we be informed.
The response that I got from Marie was,
You're welcome, all capital letters.
I will hold hope that someday you will practice gratitude
and understand how it can positively impact relationships.
That is of concern to us.
I have been here since March.
We've been trying to work with the district
on a number of issues.
This response is pretty indicative
of what we usually will get.
And in my opinion, I do not feel,
While we are happy that we found a resolution informally,
I do not believe that gratitude needs
to be practiced specifically just because the district is
following the law as it is written.
We hope that in the future, gratitude
will be shared from both sides.
And if it is not, then we will have
to remain grateful for the law and the protections
that it provides us.
And rather than trying to solve things informally,
we may have to go in the legal route immediately,
which we would love to avoid, as it comes at great cost,
both to us and the district.
So that is my report.
Thank you.
OK, next item, reports from Superintendent Cheekett
Burningford.
I would, as we enter this season and potentially
our winter break that is coming up next week and the week
after, I would just like to use this time
to extend a heartfelt wish to our entire community
to have a joyful and peaceful winter break.
And we are fortunate to be in a district that
is comprised of diverse traditions
that are celebrated across our district.
And so I want to just appreciate that level of diversity
in our families and in our staff.
and tonight just wish our entire community a happy holiday season and
join a peace for our staff and their families. Thank you. Item 8 reports, excuse
me, 8.1 dashboard presentation focused on long-term English learners. We're super
excited to give you this report tonight. Jan today was the, as she's getting her
report us, you will know that Jan was almost squealing with how great the data
looks in our dashboard and so we're really excited to be able to share the
great progress that our students have made across our district.
So the California School Dashboard was released last month and it's just been
like Marie said, just a joy to look at all of the progress that we can see that
we attribute to our students and our educators who have just been working so
hard. Just a quick reminder about how the colors happen on the dashboard. Every
assessment gets a status level from very low to very high and then each year we
look at the change, the growth from one year to the next and that's what places us in a color.
So each assessment has a five by five grid like this and so you can see on the left hand is the
status and then going across the top is the change whether it be an increase significantly,
maintain or decrease and where those two meet is where you get the color. This is just a quick
graphic of the students that we had in our student groups last year who were
taking the assessments that make up our dashboard. You can see 501 English
learners was a pretty high number for us. This is a summary of each of the
assessments. ELA is for CAS and math is for CAS and you can see that we're
scoring in the very high status and then in blue the top color. So whoo-hoo! We're really happy.
After the dance comes in. Really happy about that. Chronic absenteeism and suspension, remember we're
trying to get to low, we're very low there, but because we make progress we're seeing the green
color which that's really what I love about the California School Dashboard is we're getting
credit for making progress and so it's continuous improvement and then our
English learner progress you can see we're high where our students our English
language learners are making progress on the L cap but we declined
like three points and so that moved us down into the yellow color that just Pam
Davis and I makes us mad but sometimes it's good to get mad because we've got
lots of ideas and Pam's going to be sharing some of the ideas of
improvements that we're going to continue to make to the English language
development program. And so here we're just showing you all of the elementary
school districts in the Contra Costa County and how everyone did and we're
just so proud to see Walnut Creek School District with all those greens and
There this is just it's interesting to watch over time how we're doing on that
California school dashboard what I really like here is showing in 2019 how
we really have recovered after the interruption of the pandemic back to our
very high status on our past results you can see chronic absenteeism we've made
improvement because we were high last year and now we're in medium but still
have a way to go so we can get back to that low area.
And then this is just showing you this last year
how all of the student groups performed on each
of those same assessments.
And the long-term English learners.
And those are English learners who
have been English learners for seven years.
And those students, we have a small group of them,
I think in like 27, are showing in the red in two areas.
And so because of that, we have the opportunity
to continue differentiated assistance
where the county group really helps us and guides us
and gives us extra resources and things like that.
And so this is just explaining that.
So you had to be in two areas in the red
before that student group.
And Pam was gonna share some of the work
we've been doing with the county. And then this just is explaining with our
English learners who take the summative LPAC, there's only four levels overall
that students get on the LPAC, but they've divided level two and level
three into two different levels, so it's nice because there's six steps that
students can make on their scores on the LPAC. And so to get a positive growth, to
count as having growth on the LPAC, students need to move up one of those
six levels each year or maintain a score of four on the LPAC. And so this is just
looking at some data over time. You can see two years ago we had 56.5% of our
English learners moving up a level on the LPAC for maintaining the four. Last
year we had 58.8% and that was putting us in the green. We dipped
down into the yellow like we saw, but we're still high at 55%, but we had that three-point
dip that caused us to go into the yellow.
What was more concerning really is our long-term English learners.
Even though that's a small group, we really want to make sure we're supporting all students
the best of our ability, and you can see that group had a significant decline in their Outpack
score.
But before I pass it over to Director Pam Davis to really talk about the English
Learner Program improvements that we're putting in place this year, just had to
pause again to celebrate just the great achievements that we're seeing in our
district. And so not only our overall but here is just a look at our schools. So
each school has their own dashboard and just so much to celebrate. So I'll pause
there for any questions I wanted to coverage so far before I pass it over to
Pam. I have a question about the long-term English learners Jan. Just
looking at in order to qualify as long-term you said it's seven years and
that's basically how long we would have any almost as long as we would expect to
have a student. Yeah, they're middle school. You've got the middle school, sixth, seventh grade so
So we're seeing, and because of the way I think,
I guess I wanna know, we continue to see a really like,
we continue to welcome students from all over the world.
How much, and I'm also looking at that like suspension rate
and the long-term English learners and it makes me wonder
how much more support we can give to families
and communities, what it is that we're seeing
in terms of what's the overlap between English-language
learners, IEPs and special ed, and how is it
that we are trying to wrap around
those kids and those families.
And that's why I share that I'm most interested in our support
of their academic support so that we can see them moving up
a level on the LPAC each year.
Because the suspension data, it's hard
when you're looking at such a small in size,
you know, three long term English learners were suspended.
And that's what put us in the red.
And so to me, that's not a huge systemic problem
in our district.
But what is a problem is making sure
that all students are making progress academically
on the LPAC.
And so that's where we put a lot of time and energy
focused this year.
And then I'm glad you also brought up
our duly identified students, students
with the INPs and English learners,
so we're having lots of conversations
with our program specialists, with Michael, just about,
like, let's look at the day of a student
who's an English learner and has an IP,
and what support are they getting?
How are they getting English language development?
So those are some very good conversations
that we're having.
Thanks for that great question.
Jan, on that student group report,
is there a reason there's no data for science
three of the group. Your slide nine. I think it's just because there aren't
enough students there like if you have only 11 students in that student group
yeah I'm thinking and science is only given in fifth and seventh grade so
that's what would cause that. I see. I have a question just about the definition of the long-term English learners as Heidi was noting you know by definition they need to be in middle school. If a student comes from
another district does they join as long as they've been in California of her
setting so we inherit those records and maybe they were a couple of years in
another district and then a couple years and hours and that's something Pam has
been doing is like really putting all of our students our long-term English
learners our English learners really on a data dashboard so we can really look
at who they are and how long we've been here and just trying to look at all the
metrics so that we can try to focus on the right things.
And, Jane, can you remind me, how often is the ELPAC given in the school year?
Oh, we give it initially at the beginning of the year for any new students that are
new to California, but then at the end of the year in the spring, we give it every year.
That's what I thought.
And if we inherit a student like Amy's question, do we just take their records and that's their
score?
unless they're here during the window of time
that we're getting the assessment.
Okay, then we would assess them at the end.
Okay.
But yes, they can only take one time.
One for you.
Okay, that one they come to us,
just at the end of the year.
Exactly.
Got it.
Turn it over for the really fun stuff.
Yeah, let's dive in more.
Data, data, data.
Hi all, good to see you, happy Monday.
Happy almost day.
I'm gonna jump into just a little more details.
Thank you, Jan, for turning it over
and highlighting all the amazing work.
and I'm happy to dive in a little deeper
to show some of what our team has been working on.
So as Jan shared, we've had the opportunity
to join the network committee,
really with a lot of teams, even regionally.
We have some coming from like Antioch,
a bunch from the South Bay.
There's one up in like Fairfield.
And so it's really great to have the opportunity
to really combine and collaborate with a lot of teams
from across the area who are working on similar aspects
of their programs and what they're doing.
So we've been enjoying that.
We do have a multidisciplinary team here from Walnut Creek
which includes our program specialists.
Jessica Garcia includes one of our designated
ELD teachers, Analisa Kouloudou.
It includes one of our core or I say core
but it's English eight teachers from WCI.
and that it also includes Jia and myself
and Melissa Bannister who's at WCI as well.
And really the focus is on WCI at this point
because as you both mentioned, you do the math
and the majority of our long-term English learners,
our LTELs are at our middle school campuses.
And what we've really done is we left data
and so anytime you are presented
with a little bit of a challenge as we know,
team was to dive in and get lots of questions going and so that's really
what we've had the opportunity to do is saying okay coming from all of our
lenses let's dive in and what are we wondering what are we noticing and so we
really were able to hone in and do a big dive and try to develop some deeper
understanding of our long-term English learners and we did throw that through
really two lenses one is on their student profile so what are their scores
look like? What does their academic progress look like? What are their grades
look like? What classes are they taking? What have they scored in the LPAC every
single year that they've been taking it? And where are we seeing growth and where
we see installs? So we were able to really dive into that and then where we
really feel like we gained so much of our knowledge is we decided to go beyond
just numbers and colors and names on a list and rather say let's really host
some conversations with these students.
These students have been taking the LPAC.
They've been in designated ELD.
They've been getting supports.
And so what we ended up doing was developing interviews
for our students, and so we did a subgroup
of our long-term English learner students,
and Ms. Flores and Ms. Akulovu interviewed them.
We also interviewed teachers,
and then we also interviewed our WCI counselors.
And a lot of that learning and those questions
just wondering about kind of that baseline knowledge base
almost about how are we getting the status of long-term English
learners?
What does the supports look like?
For students, it was a lot of understanding of,
do you understand the high stakes when you take this LPAC?
Because it is the number one criteria
that they have to meet to be re-designated,
and they have to get a four on it.
And so that actually, while the numbers were amazing
and it gave us information that was really
where a lot of our direction and our guidance
that we developed came from.
And as you know with middle schoolers,
where we really landed, and we landed in a lot of spots,
I mean if you saw the post-its on our wall
and the charts, it was like we can go this direction
or this direction or this direction.
And we really decided to kind of hone in that data
and say really our goal right now,
from now through basically February,
and this was November, December,
was we really aimed to first, that first starting point,
was to increase the understanding
of the reclassification process
for all of our educational team,
which includes our students, includes families,
and all of our staff.
And so that was our big goal,
and then we have already set some things in action,
and so I'm gonna walk a little bit through that.
One of that is what are our support plans looking like,
and that's increasing understanding of the classification.
How are you to put in that classification
as a long-term English learner versus an English learner?
And what is that process and the steps needed
towards reclassification?
So really just diving into that reclassification process
and making sure there's clear understanding
of the four criterion that are needed.
And so we actually have that scheduled in January.
So we're gonna be doing that with all of the core team,
all of the counselors, all of the admin teams.
So we're ensuring that we have the similar language,
the similar goals, and we're all on the same page.
So as we're communicating with our different stakeholders,
we're all clear on what that path looks like.
And of course, as we know, part of that
is also going to be our students.
And so what a lot of the data came out of
and through those interviews and conversations
as a middle schooler.
well we just take the test every year and yeah I just take it every year okay
and like do you try their best night yeah sometimes and like we got a lot of
this like really casual we're like oh my gosh but this is so important and you
got to share your best work and so part of that was really having those
conversations ahead and so what our team is starting to do is we're having this
PD and then the second stage of that is to really increase that student
understanding and so our core team along with counselors and with the support of
Miss Akubu as well will be holding student agency meetings and that's
where and they've actually have started these all for some of them but that's
where it's looking at and you'll see kind of the student page on the right
for our six-eight students is like okay this is the criteria this is what you
got this last round and this is what you need to get so if we would have to go
from here to here what are our goals and what is that going to look like? And so
really making it very explicit and very targeted and empowering our students
that you know that you try your best like you're capable of doing this you're
showing the progress as Jan said through those healthy levels. And then with that
is now that they know where that direction that they're going to it's
then jumping in and really saying okay what can we provide for LPAC supports
for those students, and what the team came up with is using the amazing schedule that
WCI has structured and has the time within their schedule to use some of their academic
prep periods to invite some of our English learners and really our LTL students in to
do those guided practice, and those are all public.
They have interim assessments and they have practice tests, and so it would be inviting
them in to walk through, this is the rubric, this is how it's scored, so how do we get
responses to where they need to be. And so it's really, again, deepening that
understanding of the four areas and the requirements and the blueprint. And then
with that our ELD team and Kelly Laskey, who is our ELD coach, has been
supporting a lot of this work district-wide and that includes, we always
say, you know, Eltels are made in elementary school because we want them
and to reclassify before they get to that many years.
And so a lot of it is saying, we just
need to also increase, as we said to staff,
in our elementary schools.
What does the LPAC look like?
Because we have a team that provides it.
And so the teachers don't necessarily
always have the familiarity of the rigor that is included.
And so how can they then encourage,
when a speaking rubric includes, you
have to state your opinion and give two reasons why.
How can when a student has been taking this for five years,
how can we encourage them every time they're
answering in class to say, oh, can you give me two reasons why?
And just promoting that so it becomes
more familiar and more standard practice.
We're going to be hosting it at all of our elementary sites.
Kelly Alaski has already done it at two.
And so our principals are looking
to schedule that over the next couple of months.
And we've gotten really good feedback on that
and just understanding.
So we are deep in the work.
It's been very exciting.
I think the team is very empowered
to see some of the information, and then also just
some of the conversations that are coming up,
the understanding of, well, how many of our students
are duly identified?
And what are the data points we keep building on our data?
We'll never wonder about this.
And it came up as your question exactly,
ideas how many of our students have we had since kindergarten and have been
going through a program versus have joined you know throughout their years
and so that's some of the data we're still diving into so we are looking at
seeing our continued growth of our English learners and our L tells and I
you invite any questions. So what specifically like how did you narrow or
tease out the script the LTBL because there are 20 you said there were about
27 so what I was thinking is it's great what you guys are doing for this group
But if you look at, say, the socioeconomically disadvantaged or disabled group, those are
bigger groups.
I wonder if you could likewise tease out smaller subsets of that group that are maybe taking,
you know, the green to a yellow or, do you know what I mean?
whether you could apply the plans that you're doing now to other smaller
subsets of these groups. So I guess my initial question is, how did you come to
find this small subset? Were you provided that information or did you grab it?
Both, yeah, I mean right now we're really, we have the support of the
county. So we're in differentiated assistance because the LTEL group is in
those two red areas. So we're calling it an opportunity but it's a
requirement for us to join the county and to make a plan and so we're
highlighting that work today. So the county actually separated the group out
for you because of the red. And our dashboard has that like we have that
information so those all of those students are the ones that we're focusing
on and I mean we are in a fortunate place where we actually do have a
manageable group of them because we're in this small district and as Jan
mentioned you know we are seeing that progress so we have the opportunity to
really hone in on them versus some of our other large logistics who have 200
plus of these students and they don't have the opportunity for these teachers
to go through this process. But I love what you're saying when Lee about
looking at those student groups who are in the yellow and continuing to support
them and our sites do an amazing job in collaboration. They're, you know, weekly
looking at student work and assessments and coming up with plans at a school
site level to move students and to make progress. In this week's board update I'll
give you some, Jan and I will put in maybe a few snapshots of what those data charts look
like in some of those other areas that schools are doing.
I'm just going to ask about the level four because there was that one slide that should
measure growth on the summative ELPAC and it was students who either increase or maintain
a level four and so I was just wondering if they're maintaining a level four wouldn't they
to be graduating out of that status?
We would hope so, but there's multiple criteria.
Can we speak to that?
Yeah, so there's four criteria that must not.
The first one has to be a four.
But we do have, there will be students
who won't reclassify based solely on that,
because they're not meeting other criteria, which
includes teacher input.
And it includes meeting basic skills in ELA.
And so we look at multiple criteria,
including the SBAC, including how they're doing
on our local benchmark assessments and all that.
And then I was also curious about,
if you've analyzed, if, figure out how to phrase this,
if there are deficits that are really concentrated
in academic language versus conversational language?
Yes. Definitely.
Right as an area.
Yeah.
We really work.
Yeah, luckily the ELPAC is amazing.
Sorry, I'm totally lazy.
My voice off is in.
But the ELPAC is amazing in that it does break down
two subgroups, but it includes how they scored
in reading and writing, listening and speaking.
And that's very common, right?
We are sound much more fluent initially
than we're actually able to transfer that knowledge
to reading and writing.
So we went by and looked at every single student
and identified the subgroups
and what are their areas of focus.
And in 3.5, it really lands mostly in reading,
or I'm sorry, in writing, and 6.8, generally speaking,
it's mostly in reading.
And so those are the areas that we're really diving
into some of that practice questions
and some of the supports and looking back into the areas.
Oh, that's really good information
to see if you know where to target the support.
Related to Amy's question, first off,
How often does a student pass with a four
and then the other criteria don't match up?
Like how much of a predictor?
Like what, is there a, I'm just curious.
I know, so we just went through our last round.
That's what's coming into my mind right now.
Cause we just completed, we just reclassified 18 students
and only, we had 20.
So only two of our 20 students in this most recent round
a couple weeks ago, met a four and did not meet
some of the other criteria.
Very low percentage.
Yeah, that's what I was having to do.
Something September 7th, him and the team have decided to do
is make sure that we're communicating that,
not only to teachers and principals, but to families,
so they can be really aware of, you know,
which of the criteria is holding them up
and so we can all be working towards that goal.
Which is actually my other question,
which is about students and families.
Are you finding, I mean,
I guess I'd be curious, having friends
who have reclassified over time,
there was some concern at the family level
that reclassification would mean a loss of service
or support to the student.
So I'm just curious about what, if you're encountering,
or I'd be curious as you continue to like roll out
and think more about how it is that families
and students need to be engaged to understand this
to, I guess maybe it's just to encourage you to tease out
where there might be like kind of hidden fears
that maybe people aren't quite ready to articulate.
Yeah, we do get some sites get those questions
on what does that look like and you know,
they were classified today,
what does tomorrow even look like
and what does that program look like?
We do monitor all of our reclassified students
for four years, including this passes through,
you know, with them to high school.
And so we do continually monitor
through every single trimester or quarter
what is their progress and that information is shared
so that site teams can then look in and see those supports
and see then, okay, what areas of need are there
or are they continuing to show success?
And that's a four-year process after the classification.
But as we know, we can always continue
to improve that communication, especially to our families.
We are excited because we've been able to push out
the reclassification letter through Parent Square,
which again provides us the ability to translate,
ensure that it's translating,
and it gives us also the optics
on were they able to open it, did they view it,
are there any follow-up questions that are coming through?
And so that's been another successful component of that.
So just a question, and I'm wondering
if this is what you're wondering.
if a student is as part of their schedule,
if they're in an ELD class and they reclassify,
they don't change the class.
They continue to be in that supported environment,
at least through the end of that semester,
because the student may want to take the opportunity
to get another elective.
It's not like today and then tomorrow you move out,
or like you do kind of an assessment
of what that might look like.
It makes some recommendations, right?
Yes, yeah.
And that's really part of that.
Then from a family perspective,
I would be thinking that it would be like,
well, is that glass, you know?
Yeah, I know that's definitely been some,
like I said, just from familial experience,
having seen what that looks like.
And sometimes it is just fear like not knowing
if the support is the thing that's been making
student successful and so really just helping our families understand kind of
the richness of the experience that we're trying to provide.
So I look forward to bringing more data and upcoming future meetings.
Thank you.
Hey, Vince you jumped the gun.
I am nine.
9.1.
Resolution 25-26-12, accounting of development data.
Okay. So this is an annual resolution that the board must approve.
We're going to see in December.
And this provides an accounting of our developer fees that we received and
spent last year in 24-25.
The resolution is pretty standard, but if you look at exhibit A,
you'll see that in 24-25 we received $550,000 in developer fees.
At that point, we did not move any investment expenses to that bucket yet,
but we will do so this year,
so right now our balance in developer fees is $1.31.
So I'm asking the board to approve this resolution
and this account of the developer fees.
All moving approval of resolution 252612,
counting the developer fees.
Back to city amount.
Do we have to say the amount?
I'm sorry?
The amount?
I don't have to say the amount.
No, you don't need to say the amount.
So just a resolution.
Right, it's there.
I'll second.
Okay, I have a motion and a second
approve resolution 25-26-12 accounting of developer fees. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?
Second? Motion carries. 9.2. First interim report. I'm asking the board tonight to approve a first
interim report. I am very proud of this interim report. Just because I didn't view
the work. Christina did the work under my supervision and I'm just so happy to
have her present with us today. For most districts Thanksgiving is a very
stressful week because they're trying to get the first interim. We're typically
done with our interim work the first week after October 31st. We're done the
first week in November because we do interim work every single day. We do
budget adjustments. We see the impact of our reserves in real time. All of our
requisitions and position control is always in check, and a lot of the work is
really done by Christina. So I'm happy to have her co-present me today. Ready?
Yeah. Okay. I thought we had to definitely grill her, so.
Good evening board members. Again, my name is Christina Gobobachi. I've worked for the
I've been here for a little over three and a half years now and I am very excited to be able to present here today.
Like Ben said, I got to work with him on preparing some of this work and so I'm excited to be here to present.
We're going to start with slide one, which is our budget timeline.
We're currently at the December 15 marker where we report on the first interim.
And the first interim reports financial data from July 1st through October 31st.
And it's our first measure that compares current projections against the original budget that was adopted back in
First interim is a major math done because it's our first official review at monitoring the district's finances and
Helps us track the full solvency for the current year as well as two out years as required by the state under AB
First interim is also important because we now know the number of students
staff that we have which helps us identify any major discrepancies in the
budget. It also helps analyze 3% raise which was calculated using which was
calculated based on staffing levels at the end of last school year and the
first interim is reflecting those raises applied to the current year. Looking
ahead in January we will be receiving information from the governor's proposed
budget for the state. This is our slide on regarding multi-year projections. Like
I mentioned earlier, multi-year projections are required by the state
and they ensure school districts can meet their financial obligations for the
current year and for two subsequent years after. As financial stewards, it's our
responsibility to emphasize that projections are not fixed and that
budgets will and do change due to underlying factors. There's a common
phrase and budget that says budgets are approximately right not precisely wrong.
I.E. budgets are projections and not predictions. And here at the district we
anchor our projections on verified data sources such as data from the school
services dartboard which provides rates for the COLA, cost of living adjustment,
serves and purse contribution rates, and state apportionments for revenue sources.
All that to say, our budget projections are data driven, transparent, and based on the
most current and reliable information available.
And this is our district's multi-year projections with data as of October 31st.
There's a lot of data there, and Vince will go over the details of the budget more in
depth later in the presentation, but here I want to highlight the district's reserves
for the current year, year two, and year three.
The state requires a minimum 3% reserve
and reviewing our projections you can see
the district's current year reserves are at 7.7%,
year two is at 6.9, year three is at 7.7.
And while we meet the state's reserve requirements
of 3%, we do recognize that these percentages
are below the district's policy target of 12 to 15%.
But that's why we project three years out
so the district and the board have sufficient time
to identify and implement decisions that can change
the projected reserve amounts.
Slide four.
This are our schedule of changes from the 45-day revised.
Again, Vince will go into more depth on these figures,
but I just wanna point out some non-routine adjustments
in the unrestricted and restricted side of the budget.
On the unrestricted side, we saw an increase
in the beginning balance of about 1.6 million,
mainly attributable to Fund 5 recovery and 24-25 budget dust.
We also saw service cost increase by 425,000,
majority coming from legal funds and software licenses.
And on the restricted side, we saw an increase of about 550,000,
also from prior year budget dust.
And revenues increased by approximately 380,000,
mainly from federal title dollars.
And finally, there are service costs
that increase by about $430,000, mainly attributable
to special education.
And with that, I'll pass it over to Dennis
to finish off the presentation.
Hey, thank you.
Questions for her?
I do want to talk about routine adjustments and what it means.
When we budget in April, if we don't
have a direct vote from a vendor that we're planning
two years the following year, we take a three-year average
of the line item and we project three-year average of that item.
If the line item at first interim
is over 10% of what we budget, then I
would call it out as not a routine adjustment.
But anything else that moves within 5% to 10%
or we project that I consider a routine,
because we just too many decisions that have to be made.
And quotes change, and needs change, and staffing changes.
One example of a routine adjustment
that I'm going to show you guys is
a jump over a little bit is salaries and benefits.
We projected this is the $35 million item for our district.
And we used a projection in April for the following year.
And those are a lot of these people have exited,
falling free, they're retired, and they're resigned,
and they've been replaced with new staff.
We've also made adjustments to our staffing.
We projected 359 FTE in April.
We're at 360 now, right?
So the variances in salaries of the $35 million
is about $100,000.
That includes movement within the salary reuse.
That also includes reclassification
from the CSA partners that we've done, and so on and so forth.
So that's why I call out routine that's
within below that threshold, if it's above that
or a new line item that I think is significant
for you to know, then I would call it out.
Look, don't worry.
Going back into the schedule of changes, as an example,
another point to make is our LCFF revenues
only went down by $14,000 from our projection.
86% of our LCFF is coming locally from our property taxes.
We rely very little on the state of about 14%.
Look at our projection for our enrollment.
In April, we projected 37.18.
October 31st, we're at 37.19.
I give a lot of credit to Kelly and the work
that she's doing with the office manager
to identify all of those enrollments by name.
To come within one student of our projection,
I think is pretty phenomenal.
So good job, Kelly.
I'm also excited to talk about our attendance.
I've been showing this bar not for a few years,
that blue bar represents our pre-COVID monthly attendance.
And then the orange bar is what it was last year,
and the green bar is what it is this year.
This is the first year since COVID,
where we've seen three months back to back,
over 96.5%, right?
That's very close to where we are, right?
Typically, we would see a big dip in the third month like we had been seeing, so our attendance
campaign is working and we can always improve it.
These are our revenue drivers and this is very, very stable.
As far as other revenues, all of our other revenues were not by at least $490,000.
A big surprise for us was Title I.
We were at 283 years ago, and then last year,
it dropped to 120, and now we're back to 260.
And I've been asking them, can anyone explain why?
And the answer is not really, I swear I have the email.
And that's why between Title I, II, III, and IV,
by the way, when it comes to our federal title dollars,
in April, we don't have any amounts for the following year,
so we tend to project flat.
So when those actually come in in the fall,
They've been coming in higher.
Routine adjustment, a big part of our revenue swing
is our classroom donations that our schools collect
for field trips.
Our PTA pass through when they submit a reimbursement,
then the revenue comes in and we spend it out.
All those things that don't budget ahead of time,
because I don't know what we're going to get.
I budget them as we get them.
So we have corresponding increases in revenue
and expenses with our local donation classroom PTA group.
You would see that in this chart,
there's a couple of orange bars.
We received $1 million in one-time money
for our student support and professional development
and discretionary block grants.
That means it's a discretionary block grant.
It is one-time.
It is $1 million.
And we plan to bring back a commitment proposal for you
by second interim.
We also have received additional learning recovery emergency
block grant.
Those are COVID era funds that were clawed back from us
a couple of years ago that we promised to give it back.
And they gave it back.
It's $1.10.
And we have to include it in the out cap.
So it's already included in the out cap.
My quality pass, is it OK?
Next slide is our expenditures.
We increased by $1.1 million.
and I do, I already talked about the style of the benefits.
Materials and supplies only went up by $8,000.
The community partnerships, those are the PTA photographs
that I'm referring to.
And this is between special ed, because we shift from staffing
to contracting services, and so on and so forth.
We have a new kid.
We need additional services.
So this is pretty natural with the first dinner in.
And same thing with our utilities and other line items.
The two big ones that I do want to call out
of legal fees. We budget $200,000 a year for miscellaneous legal fees, and we usually come
under that. But analyzing our burn rate, we're putting through that budget a lot more. And
it makes sense. Both of our labor partners are very engaged, and a lot of questions are
being asked. And of course, our priority as district staff is to educate our students.
We don't have legal counsel on staff. So when those things happen, we have to make sure
that the district's rights are protected,
and therefore we outsource a lot of those to legal.
So we anticipate that we will need to at least
double what our current legal fees are.
Same thing with special education and litigation,
and we have a couple of high value potential
settlements that could hit our books.
Between those two, 450,000,
that's the cost of a 1% raise.
So we hope that it will come down in the future.
All of our other funds are positive.
Our Fund 13, I'm happy to report that last year,
it's a $30 million program at this point.
Last year, we made about $80,000.
And this year, based on first-in-a-room,
we're about $100,000, which is where we want to be.
That means I think that we're properly staffed.
You know, the quality of our food is amazing.
And you guys should take a trip down there one day.
You'll see that the morale is so much, much different
than it was before.
People are smiling and actually want to show up to work.
It's nice.
Fund 21, we're analyzing our projects for the summer
to make sure that we have enough cash.
We're working with our financial advisors
to make sure that at the time, when do we
issue series C of measure J, right?
This slide is the road ahead.
Cold uncertainty, this is not new.
You guys have been to the CITB mentioning.
We've heard this news in October,
And this happened a couple of years ago.
Because the last time that the COLA is projected is in June.
And that's what we use.
And actually, even before that in May,
that's what we use for the next two years.
The next time it gets re-forecasted is not until January.
But it doesn't mean that the LAO and our county
does not have any information right now based on inflation.
And there are five different things that make up that COLA.
and three out of five already came in
and it's showing that cola next year could be
between one and a half to two and a half percent,
which is a big drop from our 3% that we projected.
I'm not even talking about years two and three after that
because years two and three, the cola for those,
as of June are above 3%.
So when inflation goes down, cola goes down, right?
And it's going to go down next year from our projection.
And it's logical to assume that it
will go down for the two years after that, which
we don't even know yet.
There's also the impact of federal funding
and the policies that this is meant to lead
with the department event and what it means for us,
the Medicaid requirement to work.
What would it do to our supplemental followers?
It's just a lot of unknowns.
What would it do to our ELOP dollars?
Competitive salaries and benefits is always on our mind,
particularly the health benefits MOU.
So this is something that both Marie and I
in the cabinet discuss,
how do we find permanent funding for this?
Because it's so hard to take away
and given our district employees so much value.
I realize it in my own paycheck.
You know, so it's a challenge
because it expires at the end of this year.
What do we find the money for next year?
How do we find permanent money for that?
And I've already talked about the increase
in special education and legal costs.
This is why these are the things that's
in our mind as we prepare a commitment
plan for our discretionary block grant.
Recall that we have a Fund 5, where whenever a payroll
is processed, all of the mandatory things
that we have to pay, taxes, PERS, Medicare, FIPA,
they all sit in this account for us
to pay it out and when districts don't reconcile that it gets out of hand
because they would put money here and then pay it out of here anyway so you
have this money that's sitting here that shouldn't be growing and when I got
here I noticed that every year is being grown. Finally we reconciled it actually
Christina reconciled fund 5 last year and we recovered $830,000 that's sitting
in our fund 5 that's double charged to our general fund so we recovered those
dollars, put it back in the general fund, and part of this interim work is we're
asking you to commit those funds for coal and uncertainty as well, right, along
with all this. And our last meeting, I did talk about the parcel tax, and we
already have a survey company that's looking into that. We're going to bring it back to
results in January, okay? These are the potential impacts of the coal
variances that we're seeing and stand as a hard truck to read. So let me start
with the first line. The current COLA is 3.02 and 3.42 percent for 2627 and 2728
because the COLA for this year has already been established. Those three
numbers right across is our current reserve level based on those COLA. So you
can see right now based on what we have currently our reserves is 7.72 and then
it goes to 6.98 and then it goes to 7.77. The county asked us to present to you
three different scenarios the COLA went to the low 1.2 or the mid or the
highest but you have we all have current information based on the CABA that state
revenues are coming in higher than expected, right? So even the LAO which is
the CBO for government realism is highly confident that the COLA is going to get
funded at two and a half percent for next year. So instead of focusing on the red
and the orange, just focus here on the last line which is the high COLA. This is
our best case scenario. If everything stays as is, we're looking at the 7.7
reserve this year, 6.6 next year, which is a 0.3 drop from where we are, and a 6.37
in the third year. And this is the best case scenario, because that 3.42% that I'm
using as the cola for 27-28 is, if I was a betting man, would drop below 3% when cola
look as we bench for this year and the next two years. So we have to be very
aware of right sizing programs for the budget that we have and like I said we
already considered we already passing the board to commit fund 5 recovery for
all of these uncertainties. I'm also asking the board and superintendent to
reconsider the timing of our negotiations. I get to say every now and
been at the CBO meeting at a minute, the county, the 16 CBOs.
And I'm the only one that gets to brag,
we're done with negotiations every single year,
because everybody else waits until they
have the money that they have, the salary that they have,
more information that they have to negotiate safely, right?
Even though it is a retro, it is a lot of inconvenience
for our employees and the payroll department,
but it is the most responsible thing to do.
gone away from it from it before because we had a healthy reserve and most of the
time you were looking at it's good now but it can possibly get better when
mail revise comes but this is one of those here with split law it's good now
and we anticipate the number the projection numbers are only going to get
worse as their cola is rebetched for next year so I highly recommend that any
he talks about money is postponed until the budget, the state passes their budget
and we have students settled, we have staff and settled for the following
school year to determine what is the size it deserves. So in January we'll be
going to Sacramento together to look at the governor's proposal. Oh by the way
our audited actuals might be postponed to March because our auditors did not
receive federal crime lines until very late. So they're running late too. So they've
asked us to put a placeholder in March just in case, just to give you guys a
answer. This is our first interim report. I'll take your questions.
Yeah, because of the government shutdown. I believe it's a part of it, too.
It didn't release the guidance. Can you remind me more about Fund 5?
Wait, you've mentioned it already. I'm happy with it, too.
Yeah, I was just, because you always include the schedules of Fund 13, Fund 17, Fund 21,
And I'm 40 and 40 in fund 51, but I haven't ever seen fund 5.
Because fund 5 technically rolls up to fund 1.
But it's just the pass-through.
Yeah.
It's all those are money that we've already
accounted for in the sense of fund 1.
So there is no fund 5 report in the government accounting.
We just know it rolls up to fund 1.
So it was sending us a payable, money
that we're supposed to pay out.
But we've already paid it.
So we recapture those dollars.
Well, congratulations on auditing the fund
and figuring that out.
It's going to be quite a bit of work
to go back a number of years and unwind all of that.
It really was.
The county actually came to visit us
to see what she's done because other districts were struggling
to even know where to start.
So they're using her work as a case study
for a lot of districts today.
My question was if the high COLA scenario is our best case scenario, are you considering revising your budget to submit COLA numbers instead?
We would revise the budget after we get information from the Governor's proposal in January.
So when I bring back the budget to you in March with second interim, we would have updated colon numbers
for 26 27
Other things get adjusted to it's not just the cola
We also adjust how much is everything that we buy today?
How much is it going to cost based on inflation?
So cola goes down that goes down too. So there's a little bit of an offset
We will present the information in a second.
I see your point about the budget maybe flip-flopping next year because I think a lot of the presentations
that were presented at CSP were very money focused in terms of the future education and funding.
There was a lot of different presentations on that type of information.
I think all districts are really having to take a look and look twice.
We really are so fortunate because when we did the budget adoption, we were at the 10% reserve in year three.
Can you imagine in district that is that 3% on year three and suddenly they're receiving information in October,
that the COLA is going to drop and that means that they're going to be below that minimum.
They're already below that and they're already more of a panic mode now,
but they have to cut now to be able to meet that and we haven't even received the COLA.
And this is why I appreciate our policy of being taught to 15% because it gives us plenty of time to correct
correct course
They make good smart decisions, you know, you're in a hurry
I
Want to just highlight it get you highlighted earlier the attendance rates the 96 that is really great
I know that October is tricky because we did the one week, you know break
and all of that, and I know we're in review, but I've always talked about how it is so
important because we're just, you know, there could be a potential way to bring in and close
that gap, but I know it's so difficult, and I know you guys have worked really hard on
that, so it's great to see.
It would be really interesting to see November because the gap is so far, right, if that
that 96th hole, that's really great.
I also just, not to beat a dead horse,
but just really want to highlight the concern
around being under 10%.
It's really great, we're very in a good position,
but it is concerning to see that 6% over the outer years.
It's, yeah, because it can dip so fast.
And I also, just really thinking about the MOU
and the health benefits is so, so important.
I know it's important for the board
and the rest of the community.
Just really feel much better when we have a set path forward
that's secure for the staff.
But knowing also that it's hard to balance priorities, right?
You would love to fund everything,
but hard choices.
I move approval of the 2526 First Interim Report
with positive certification.
We have a motion and a second.
All those in favor?
Okay.
Opposed?
Abstention.
Motion to approve the 2025-26 First Interim Report
with positive certification carries.
9.3-2024-25 Measure H Carsel Tax Report.
Okay this is also another annual item that I bring to you. So part of when you
pass Measure H part of that is it gets there's there's a company that audits
and reports for us. So we are SGI consulting and this is a report that we
provide to us every year. I'm not going to take you through the report but the report
that showed that last year we received 1.264 in parcel taxes and that funded
about 13 teachers right and the rest of the report actually has a long list of
all the parcels that are being taxed so the data has for your approval of this
report those of you that have been on the board longer how many did it fund
when it first how many teachers did it fund when it first 18 to 20 yeah over 20
presentation. We don't have an escalator for parcel tax. So every step increase
every race that we get keeps up all those hours for the same people.
I move approval of the 2024-2025 measure H parcel tax report. I'll second. I have a
motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed?
Abstention. Motion to approve the 2024-25 measure H parcel tax report.
Carries. My blank. 9.4, 2025-26 consolidated applications expenditures report.
the state system that we use is called CARS,
C-A-R-S, Consolidated Application and Reporting System.
And this is the reporting part now.
In the spring, I bring the application part
where we apply for federal one, two, three, and four dollars.
So this is the mid-year reporting
of all of our federal dollars and how much we spent.
And I think once you review the report,
you'll notice that it goes back two years
because we have two years and three months
to spend federal dollar grants.
So whenever we do the report, we always go back,
well, did you spend your 23-24 title two?
Show us.
Did you spend it in 24-25?
And this is why you're going to see the same report
for different years for title one to kind of three.
But for the most part, we do spend all of our,
most of our title dollars the same year.
Every now and then we won't have to carry it over,
but we make sure we don't get it back.
We'll spend it.
And this is your.
I'll move approval of the 2526 consolidated applications expenditure report.
I'll second.
I have a motion and a second.
All those in favor?
All right.
Opposed?
Abstention?
Motion carries.
Motion to approve the 2025-26 consolidated applications expenditures report.
Carries?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I was also pleased to be able to attend the CSBA 8 conference, always valuable time, so thank you to the district.
And I also wanted to share one thing. You may have heard in the news that former mayor
Gwen Regalia passed away in November and I just wanted to note that she was a former
school board member for Walla Creek School District before she became a city council
member. I just looked it up. She served from 1978 to 1987. I just wanted to acknowledge
I also attended the CSBA event from December 3rd and 4th I believe there was a WCEF something
at some point but I did not write it down.
I apologize the family, the family, the idea is that one.
in any case, moving on.
Item 11, any future agenda items?
Item 12, pertinent dates.
We're gonna break soon, come to school.
Those count.
Item 13, no closed session, right?
So I think we're done.
We are adjourned at 7-17.