All right, it's five wait
5 p.m. And following this meeting to order
Any public comments on closed session topics? No public comment. Okay, so we will recess to close session at 5 o 1
session to order
opening procedures pledge of allegiance
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'll call and report out from closed session regarding GC number 54956.9 special education
final settlement agreement and general release for OAH case number 2026010136.
In closed session, the board took action to approve the final settlement agreement and
general release for OAH case number 2026010136.
The roll call vote was as follows, four ayes, one abstention.
GC No. 54957B1, Public Employee Discipline, Dismissal Release No. 1485.
For the session, the Board took action to dismiss the employment of classified employee
No. 1485, following their failure to timely request a hearing after the receipt of a notice
of recommendation for the dismissal of a classified employee of the district and directed the
superintendent or designee to send out appropriate legal notices. The roll call
vote was unanimous. Regarding GC number 54957B1, public employee discipline
dismissal release number 3274. In closed session the board took action to issue a
notice of non-re-election to probationary certificated employee
identified by employee number three two seven four pursuant to Education
Code section four four nine two nine point two one B effective at the end of
the 2025-2026 school year and directed the superintendent for designee to send
out appropriate legal notices. The roll call vote was unanimous. Okay five point
for approval of agenda. No changes to the agenda. I'll move approval of the agenda as
presented. I'll second. Okay, I have a motion to approve the agenda as presented. All those
in favor. Opposed? Abstention? Motion carried. Item 6, consent calendar. I move to approve
all items on the consent calendar. I have a motion and a second to approve all items on the consent calendar.
All those in favor? Opposed? Abstentions? Motion carries.
That has been public hearing WCTA Presentation of Negotiations Proposals to the School District.
Sorry. I am opening the hearing at 6-11. Does anyone have anything to say on the
topic of the hearing? Then I'm closing the hearing at 6-11. And item 8, public
comments. Any public comments? No public comments. Item 9, employee organization
reports. WCTA. Now it's your turn.
You only come up a couple of times with me.
Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, most of what I have to say is kind of in line with what's happening at
today's meetings. So the negotiating team for WCTA put out a survey in recent weeks
to get feedback from our members to help direct our conversations at our upcoming
negotiation meetings. We're always striving to get as much input as we can
all members so that we make sure that we're addressing everybody's needs in
those meetings and the team is always in communication so that's good and we're
looking forward to sunshineing in here in a little bit and that's it.
Thank you. CSEA. Okay just have two points. CSEA and the reclassification committee just
finished a round of pending reclassifications.
Those recommendations are now waiting for board approval.
And my second point is we are also currently surveying
our membership and preparation for the upcoming round
of negotiations between CSEA and the district.
So hopefully we'll be getting those filled out ASAP.
That's it.
Thank you.
Report from superintendent.
Thank you.
So March is that time of the year when we begin, believe it or not, to think about landing the plane of the school year.
Now that we start so early in August, we get to March and we're like, okay, we've had enrollment windows open for a few months now and starting to think about staffing and such.
So tonight, I'll just kind of give you a few updates of what is going to happen in the month of March, starting with this Friday at the end of the third quarter already.
for students over at WCI, believe it or not.
And so our teachers will have a half day on Friday
to assemble progress reports and get those notifications out
to families.
On the 23rd, the board will meet with the public
for a strategic planning session.
We always look forward to that period of time.
This year's strategic plan, we are
in the third year of this strategic plan.
And so we'll get updates and provide an opportunity
for our community to give us some input.
We have every school represented
from a staffing certificate, a classified administrator,
and a community member that we'll send invitations to
this week, so that happens on the 23rd.
It starts at five o'clock over in the WCI library,
and probably an hour and a half to two hour session.
On the 25th, once again, WCEF and the city of Walnut Creek
will host Taste and Toast.
I do believe this is my favorite event of the year.
I love walking the town and just seeing all of our families
congregating and talking with each other and mingling.
And then all of our little young musicians
are on various points throughout that kind of tour
downtown and just showcasing their talent and they're so excited to sing
with their friends and I just really think it is a highlight of all what is
best about our district and about the city of Walnut Creek so that's on the
25th. If you look for a QR code there are WCEF always supports all of our
employees in the district with a discount and so lots of rumbling right
now of all of the schools that will be walking the towns with our family so
that's a great event and then at the end of the month we finish the month off
with spring break which is at the end of March beginning of April and then we'll
be in the last full stretch of the school year so lots happening this month
but those are just a few highlights of things for us to look forward to.
Lots of positive energy right now.
Moving on to 11.1 WCTA presentation and negotiations proposal to the school district.
Um, so like I said earlier, we're all looking forward to the upcoming negotiation sessions,
a chance to sit down with the district negotiating team and our team, which is fully staffed
this year after missing a number last year.
So all schools are represented at the table, um, and we're really looking forward to that
collaborative process between the district and ourselves in the
interspace bargaining position. We will be sunshining Article 12 teaching hours,
Article 14 class size, and Article 24 compensation. Move to accept the Walnut
Creek Teachers Association negotiations proposals to the Walnut Creek School District.
I'll second. I have a motion and a second to accept the Walnut Creek Teachers
Association negotiations proposal to Walnut Creek School District. All those
in favor? Opposed?
Motion carries. Eleven point two. WCSD presentation of negotiations proposal to
the Walnut Creek Teachers Association. Hi, good evening everybody. I'm here to
represent the district's bargaining team and we too are looking forward to our
upcoming bargaining sessions with WCTA and we've elected to not
sunshine any new proposals this time around. We want to focus our efforts and
our attention on the proposals that the WCTA members are proposing to us and so
we want to spend our time on that and so nothing really to share with you other
then our effort is to continue our collaborative relationship with our
partners and productive and successful bargaining sessions that come in.
Thank you. I'll move approval to the Association's proposal to the Walnut Creek Teachers Association as presented.
I have a motion and a second to accept the Walnut Creek School District
negotiations proposal to the Walnut Creek Teachers Association. All those in
favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstention? Motion carries. 11.3, 20-25-26 second interim budget
report. Good evening. Christina and I will be representing today and I'm very proud to
report that in this go around the budget process Christina played a much
large role in preparing this report, including going to the governor's budget meeting and
incorporating what all those assumptions would mean in the outbears and also directing some
work of some of our staff to get this done. A lot of it is her work under my supervision
and I'm happy to have her.
Good evening. Remember, pleasure to be invited to go present with me again. My name is Christina
the last time I was here was in December when we presented the first interim budget report
and tonight I'll be presenting the second interim with budget information through January
31st.
This is the budget timeline.
This is a visual reminder for where we are in the budget.
As I mentioned the last time we presented the budget was in December and we presented
budget information through October 31st.
Since December we attended the governor's budget proposal in Sacramento, which occurred in January, with the company of board president Wendy Johnson and CTA president Michael Nathan.
The budget proposal provided more information about the governor's 26, 27 budget plans, and with the main source of information for the functions used in our second interim report, which is where we currently are on the budget line.
Next slide. Multi-year projections. So this is a standard slide you'll see in our
budget presentations because it serves as a reminder that our projections are
anchored to reliable and verifiable sources of information. One of those
sources is the School Services of California dark board which outlines
several key factors that influence school district funding and one of those
factors we discussed during the first interim presentation and with all
highlighted at the budget proposal, which is COLA, often known as cost of living
adjustment. Next slide. So in December, you may recall we presented this chart
for COLA in the three different scenarios of where COLA could land. Just
going through the chart, you'll see the top row with the current COLA with
ranges available at first interim. The magenta is the low range where it could
land at 1.27. The orange is the mid-range at 1.9 and the green is the high COLA
range of where it could land at 2.53 and so the governor's budget proposal
proposed landing at the mid to high range of 2.4 percent and so what we want
to know is how this impacts the district's revenues and reserve balances.
Next slide. So this slide shows us the revenue impact of the proposed COLA
rates for the next three fiscal years. Here we're showing you the COLA
assumptions at first interim and what they're being projected at during the
second interim. The main purpose of the slide is to illustrate how the reduction
in COLA results in over 1.1 million left in revenue across the next three
fiscal years. And so while the percentage change makes me small every year, those
adjustments compound over time and can significantly impact district revenues.
Next, we'll be reviewing the district's reserves, which also includes the updated
COLA assumptions. So there's a lot of information and little numbers on this
slide, but these are the district's projections for the next, for the current
year and the next two fiscal years. We'll walk through some of the details later
in the presentation, but for now I'd like to draw your attention to the
percentages, which I know are really small at the bottom, which are yellow
boxes at the bottom. These percentages represent our district's reserve levels
for the current year and two projected out years, and the green boxes represent
what the reserve levels were at first interim. We're happy to report, and I
know you can't really see it that well maybe, but there are no major changes
from the first interim to the second interim. Additionally, we wanted to inform
the board that we released $100,000 from the committed fund balance, which we will
look at in more detail in the next upcoming. So this is our schedule of
changes from the first interim to the second interim in both unrestricted and
and restricted budget.
Most of the adjustments we put here are routine.
However, one change we want to highlight
is in the area of salary and benefits.
We saw an increase in benefit expenses
of approximately $103,000 in the unrestricted side
of the budget and $50,000 on the restricted side.
The increase in health benefit costs
is primarily due to changes that occurred
during the fall of an enrollment period,
which resulted in higher participation in district-sponsored housing.
Next we'll focus on LCFF revenue, which is the district's primary funding
source and a key driver of our overall budget.
So our LCFF revenues are projected at about 42.2 million,
representing a very small decrease of about 37,000 from first entering.
Next slide. So our LCFF revenues are one of the key drivers of LCFF
revenue is average daily attendance or ADA. What you're seeing here is our
attendance pre-covid in the blue bar, attendance in the 24-25 school year in
the orange bar, and attendance in the current school year with the green bar.
We're happy to report that although attendance rates are not at the same
level as pre-covid, they are improving compared to prior school year. This
tells us that our attendance campaign led by Jan and her team is effective and
producing positive results for the district. And you may have noticed, just
going back once, the current year bars don't extend through all the month yet
as we're continuing to monitor attendance trends through the remainder of the year.
So in addition to state-funded LCFF, we receive additional revenue from various
different sources such as federal and state grants, local donations, and
interest to name a few. This slide shows approximately 13.9 million in additional
revenue supporting the 25-26 budget. So 13 million is broken down by source and
it's important to highlight that many of these funds are restricted or are one
time dollars. The one-time funding sources are highlighted in orange. So
turning to the other side of the budget, budget are district expenditures. The
total draft fund expenditures are projected to be 58.1 million. This is
about a $473,000 increase from the first
with that I'll tap it over to the end.
I recall at the first interim we increased our legal budget for both special ed and for our general legal counsel and we have no reason to believe to decrease that I've done moments over sustaining those increase amounts through second interim.
We'll watch you very closely to see what activities might happen between now and then in people to see if we would revise those numbers or not.
If you're looking at all the other funds and have to report a positive income balance for all of our funds
I want to draw your attention to fund 21, which is our building funds
I know it says at the bottom that we were projected to have
$700,000 of gain of the year that is not accurate because all of our construction projects are run multi years
But our system does not have the ability to segment or this is for this year and this is for that year
So when we know the full amount we encumber everything
and then we continue those POs for the following year.
All that to say that we would expect a much larger
fund balance at the end of June
when we pay all the invoices for this year,
and we would recommend those dollars again
to the following, the same POs, with our vendors.
Our program highlight for you is Child Nutrition Services.
The first chart, the blue bar,
is our breakfast and lunch participation last year,
and the orange bar shows our participation this year,
which shows that we're still increasing.
That's a good sign.
But I'm really proud of this table right here,
which shows our operating profit.
The revenue expected for this year
is around $3 million, which is a lot.
After paying for a labor cost, paying for the food cost,
and other materials and supplies,
we're expecting to make about $60,000 in profit,
which means that our program is balanced,
that our employees are being paid at the right rate,
that their FTE is where they need to be,
that we reinvested those dollars
into higher quality ingredients to make our food better,
and as evidenced by equal certification and such,
and the program is really a joy to watch.
I walk in there most of the time,
and it just feels different.
Everybody's smiling and almost whistling to work one day,
I walk in there, it's a not good thing for me.
No, it's really much different,
And the point of the program is not to make money.
The point of the program is to provide quality nutrition
for our children, our students, and this
is reflected in that number.
So I'm very proud of that program.
Looking ahead, you'll recall this from the first interim,
that we were worried about COLA, where it went then,
and now we know a little bit better,
although it's not cemented until the budget is passed in June.
We still don't know the certainty of federal and funding
policies.
We always want to be competitive in our salaries and benefits.
And we did talk about the increase
in our special education legal fees
and our general legal counsel as well.
But one thing new that I wanted to talk about today
is the enrollment plateau.
I have a couple of charts I want to show you.
The first chart on the right with the blue bar
shows you our month-to-month enrollment growth
from last year.
And what you would see is from the beginning
of the school year in month one, that blue bar
was we started in August last year of 3,600 students.
And you would see that every single month there
would be families moving and enrolling in our district.
And we would see an increase from 3,600
through about 3,637 in month eight.
And the orange bar shows you what it is now.
And you're going to see that it's not as increasing
every month like it did last year for Plateau Institute.
That means we're not experiencing mid-cycle enrollment
for our families.
But that's a sign that our enrollment may be plateauing
and may be pivoting to another different direction.
And the chart shows our tenure enrollment history.
You can see that dip during COVID.
And you see it going up from 21, 22 of 3,349 students
climbing up to 37, 19 as of this year.
I would say large, a big part of that
is our TK implementation.
And now that TK has been fully implemented
And we're seeing that we're not growing every month,
as we're seeing every year.
We're very cautious about the moment
that it might plateau or might start to dip.
Recall also that the state gives us a soft landing
if their normal declines, because they would fund us
based on the higher of this year's ADA, last year's ADA,
or the last two years' average of ADA.
So even though we may dip a little bit in the next coming
years if we do dip, the impact of our funding
is slow and gradual, it's not needed.
So it will give us time to adjust.
And that's why it's important to hold on to
as much reserves as we can.
It gives us time to make those changes
for things like this.
Another thing that we're seeing next year
is that 10% reserve cap has been reactivated.
And that just means that if the state
has more than 3% in their reserves for education,
the school district can't have more than 10%.
It's a logical, really, and we all don't like it
because we should be able to have reserves as much as we can.
But this is one of those things that we're looking for.
As it pertains to us issuing the third series of bonds
in the fall, recall that you guys, the board adopted
a reserve policy of between 12% to 15%
and basing it on this year's NIP,
we're barely holding on to 8% in the third year.
So if that sustains, there might be a risk for us
for credit rating when we issue our bonds in the fall.
You might see that you're not adhering to your board policy.
We might get things on that, and I don't know
what that impact would be to our credit rating at that time.
So those are the things that we're looking for.
Next, we will be using the same assumptions
to build a budget, because by the time
I present the budget to you mid-May,
the assumptions for May revise would not have been published.
So we would use the assumptions that we have now,
plus our revised assumptions for enrollment
and staffing to produce the budget.
And then we would of course bring back a 45-day revision
sometime in the fall when the state pass through that budget.
Then I'm asking the board to locate the second interim
with a positive certification.
I would take your questions.
Then so I guess I have a question about this last piece
that if and when the state requires
that we have no more than a 10% reserve.
Presumably, we don't need to amend that resolution
to reflect the legal realities of any given moment in time.
Correct.
And that's our percentage reserve cap
for the first year of the budget year.
So when you have three years,
that first year has to be 10%,
but the next two years can exceed it.
Okay.
And Vince, you mentioned enrollment might be plateauing
based on what we're seeing.
is a lot, do we have good numbers from what we've received so far this year for next year?
Or that year getting that data?
The last time I looked, which was last week,
we were about 40 students short of our project,
we projected flat for about 40 short,
but enrollment is not all we had.
We're expecting to see growth during the summer.
And that's mainly TK, Kendra, you're watching closely?
It's a lot more in TK, a lot more than 40 is in TK,
but it is for all the grades.
All ages.
OK.
OK.
It's really great work to see the 88 going up.
I know it's like that is not done easily.
It's a lot of phone calls and follow up and soft touch
and empathy, and it's, yeah, but it makes such a difference.
Thank you.
I'm a site principal, so I'm doing a really good job of it.
Just to give you a little bit of perspective,
projected 267 TK-ers and we have enrolled 251 so we're close. Yeah, 26, 27. We will most likely hold the
projections flat for next year and just wait and see. I think families are still
figuring out TK. We'll get a few more. I mean the enrollment will continue. It's only
March but I just want to give you a cut note. We don't want to be too
do a long range, but just want to give you an idea of what's going on.
It makes sense that it would plateau right now, given the fact that we're at
full implementation of TK, and we saw pretty rapid growth in those first few
years. We're seeing the same level of enrollment plateau in our preschool
program. So by this time in our preschool program, oftentimes from regional
we'd have as many as 60 to 70 preschoolers coming our way and so we're
seeing about half that amount and so that makes sense in terms of everything
shifting so our preschool program is a little smaller than if after we watch tomorrow.
So when will you, with the parcel tax in June, will you then refile, depending on what happens, will you then refile the budget to reflect that and come back to us in the June?
It would be in the fall when we come back in August.
The 45 day revision.
It's usually an August meeting, right?
There's a date by which you have to do it, depending on.
45 days from June 30 is when we have it, so we would take the results of the parcel tax,
whether it passes or not, plus the enacted state budget, we would incorporate that into
the recalculation of our revenues for the 45-day division.
And that might get you up into a better number for credit purposes.
Yes.
I'll move the approval of the 25-26 second interim report with positive certification.
I have the motion and a second to approve the 20-25-26 second interim report with positive
certification.
All those in favor?
Opposed?
Opposed.
Abstention, motion carried.
Thank you.
Can we also just say thank you to Kristina?
Yes.
Thank you, Kristina.
You districts just don't have a Kristina,
and they are definitely the dynamic duo, so very fortunate.
Thank you, Kristina.
Thank you.
OK.
11.4, transportation plan.
Hi, again, are you ready?
This is probably the shortest slide show.
So you or anybody else.
It is literally, besides the title there,
the next slide is the last one,
so it's really one slide of information.
So this is our annual transportation report,
and I just wanted to share with you
that we transport about 30 students right now,
students with disabilities,
for various programs in our district,
and some who also attend non-public schools.
And so we have two services that we use to do that.
One is a transportation system of us companies
that we contract with to transport kids
either to the non-public school or to our own schools.
If there's some places where students
need to go that isn't on those routes,
We also have another service provider
that provides driving service to those students
to get them to where they need to go as well.
And so our expenses for that in terms of reimbursements
that we get is about 60% for this school year, which
comes out to about $370,000 in reimbursement
for those transportation costs.
All of our transportation costs at this point
are for students with IEPs.
And we also do have the possibility
of doing transportation, providing transportation
to other students who might need it
depending upon their specific circumstances.
But that's a pretty rare situation
we partner with the county to for that,
if there's any need to do that for our families.
We are looking to continue to provide our services
that we have in place going forward.
Don't expect many changes for this kind of school year.
We do have, like I mentioned, two service providers.
Last year we had three, one that we had.
We're not needing to use this year
because that particular situation,
we don't have that need any longer in our history.
So I anticipate things will stay relatively
sent out of the same in terms of our needs from after.
I'm gonna kind of try to compete with Steve
on the shortest presentations.
So we're looking at about $20,000 per student.
You said 30 students, and the total is what,
600 something thousand dollars?
Is that kind of typical?
Or is it, I mean, that's a lot.
There's not usually a lot of options.
No shopping around for, uh, no bargaining, that are uber, uh, wades.
There are no wades.
Not insured for student, uh, transport.
No.
Okay.
There are more car services that I've vetted for that, for transporting math as it's used
Yeah, but each of these students are being driven individually or together some.
No, the buses that we use, so that's the Student Transportation of America is the company we
use.
They carry multiple students to and from school on their route.
Like how we did it back in the school.
I did that.
So as power is for the additional...
We have a few students who attend non-public schools that aren't on a bus route
and so we have to contract with that company for those driving services.
I guess my question is about just consistency of drivers and how that relates to the families
and their comfort level with the individual drivers.
We grew up with a model of a New Year bus driver because it's always the same person,
but if you move to more of an Uber-style model,
then it seems like there's more turnover among the drivers.
More possibility, I would think.
The fortunate thing for us is the service that we use for those few non-public school students,
those drivers are consistent.
And also, of course, our buses are too,
unless there's some kind of turnover within their company but the drivers
that our kids interact with and interface with and our families do on a
regular basis are consistent for them. Is there a mechanism for families if they
have concerns to share those either with us or with the company? Yes, they can do
both. They can reach out to us in our office and also to the transportation
companies also. So a lot of times if something were to come up like that, we'll
work in communication with the transportation company and the family as well.
And have our families been pretty happy with like the general window pickup times? I've worked with
families in my career that have had some crazy early pickup times and it's a little
alarming for a preschooler to get on a bus. And also sometimes some
inconsistencies with times of pickup and drop off. I think this year has been positive in
that way and we did a lot at the start of the year to pay attention to that and
to work with those the company that we use and and the families I think there's
at the start of the year there's always a little bit of a bump as we get
started but it's been consistent during the year so that's a good thing.
That's reasonable for families and children to get on the bus, the tiny.
Have you been using STAR and Solar for a while?
We have, we had Hopskip and Drive also in our, you might have heard of them in the past.
That's the company that we're no longer using, just because we didn't have that data anymore
for a particular student who's no longer in our district.
Things like the shift in the model over the last several years, first there were some companies that didn't really come out just as with all these other innovative technologies.
We learned by trial and error.
Yeah, but now I think hopefully we're at a point where things have stabilized.
We've had, it's been consistent this year, we haven't had a lot of need, honestly there's been
few interactions between, with us needing to reach out to the transportation company or anything,
so that's a positive thing. We have had years where that's not the case, and oftentimes I think
we get pretty direct and quick feedback from the bus company.
And we've had years where we've actually even sent a para
on the bus to help monitor in the past
if we have a student who the bus is challenging.
Because you can have students that that bus ride
can be very challenging.
And so we've had some of our pairs ride on the bus.
Also, if you go to the schools in the morning,
particularly like our schools in the drop-off zone you'll see the consistent
para that comes out and meets the students so they really this this really
is an area where we have to actually pay some pretty close attention because
those consistencies in their schedule and the people they see are really
important and so we've had some some internal conversations over the past
several years about, you know, that it can be scary and that and even families
in the beginning when they first get kind of a almost that private driver it
takes a bit of time if it's new to them because they're not used to it either to
think of for say Uber coming to pick up their child and so I think in the
beginning that that communication is super important. Hats off to Antle and
who does a ton of this work in terms of the collaboration between all the
different parties. We have definitely had emergencies where something's happened
on the bus and one of us had to go to that stop or make sure that that phone
call gets to the parent before even the child gets home or they missed the bus.
I remember a summer where I was sitting in front of one of the schools for ESY
because the student was struggling or there was a challenge in the
classroom and then they missed the bus ride, and so you really have to make sure
that there's great communication between all the partners. So it's a bit
of a coordination in the beginning of the year and the consistency I think
is really the key to transportation being the best possible.
Yeah I think it is really important and also it's trust you know as a parent putting your child into that.
And they develop a relationship.
And there's like a tracking app too some of the services offer I don't know about that.
Yeah we can with the services that we use it's you can find where people are.
So, I think what's very true is the consistency and the connection of relationships.
Because if you have, if you don't have that, then you have the opportunity for things not
to go right and if they don't go right, you're not able to respond as well in a timely manner.
But I think there's been a lot of work to make sure that that's not the case.
And if there is something that comes up, then we'll work on it and deal with it.
One thing that I would say that I think is something our staff does really well, just in general,
and this always makes me feel so much better in a situation where sometimes it's the unknown that actually causes the angst more.
And that is that I think our staff overwhelmingly has been trained that if there's an emergency,
reach out, don't hesitate to reach out and contact help immediately.
like dial the 911, get the Walnut Creek PD
or the Sheriff's Department or whoever it is
in the event of an emergency.
I think that if people have that mindset right away,
that sometimes when there is that extreme emergency
in a situation like that, that communication
is what ends up kind of salvaging the situation
a little better than if we had that wait and see kind of,
attitude or perspective. That's coming from experience of like call. And I say
that because like in Angela she doesn't even hesitate to make those calls if she
got a call. All those approval of the district's home to school transportation plan for the 2026, 2027 school year. I'll second. I have a motion and a second to approve the home to school transportation plan for 2026, 2027. All those in favor?
I'm here tonight to present the findings of the Fall 2025 Reclassification Committee,
their outcome.
So let me take a step back and kind of give you a reminder of the reclassification article.
So the reclassification process was a newer article that we've had in negotiations and
this is an avenue by which classified employees can make changes to their job description
based on job responsibilities that are new or have been added and then receive adequate
compensation for that.
So all of these applications can be initiated either by the employee or by the district
and they start by going through a process of filling out an application, they share
with their supervisor, who can get feedback on whether or not they are doing
those job duties, if they assume them voluntarily, if they were asked to do
them, and then they will take that information, put it in the application,
and then it goes to the reclassification committee. This fall's reclassification
committee was made up of five members, Vince and Michael and Julie Craig, who's
a teacher at Merwood and Carlos, who is one of our craftsmen, and then Rachel
Davis who is a wellness para at Parkview. So those five employees sat down with
all three of these applications and they reviewed them starting there were
actually four applications that were submitted so they reviewed all four of
those. The outcome of that committee changed two of the job descriptions for
two employees and then created a second job class so they essentially took the
child nutrition support and broke that into two so that now there's an
intermediate child nutrition support and an elementary child support. They
created the recommendations which include changes to the job description
and then a corresponding range and they put forth those recommendations to the
superintendent. She had the ability to make changes any of the recommendations
or pass them on with her approval, which she did. She approved all of them as they
were presented and so we're bringing them tonight for your approval to those
specific changes. All the changes that we make because these were done in the fall
will be retroactive to the beginning of this school year. We're about to enter
our second reclassification period and then those changes would be starting in
the new school year. So I'm happy to answer any questions on their behalf. I
was not part of the reclassification committee but I'm happy to answer any
questions about it or about the process. It seems like it's a good process. It's a
good opportunity to really look at what people are doing and making sure that
that we're able to align appropriately, which I think is very aligned to who we are as a district,
who want our people to be paid for jobs that they're doing.
It's a very collaborative process that there's, it's part of our tradition to have members from both units weigh in on this.
So it's really nice to have somebody from WCTA that's weighing in on these issues for our classified employees.
of approval of the recommended classified employee
reclassifications from the fall 2025 submissions.
I'll second.
Okay, I have a motion and a second to approve
the recommended classified employee reclassifications
from the fall 2025 submissions.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Abstention.
Motion carries.
Thank you.
11.6, superintendent.
I will take this one on Thursday.
Well, can you, but we haven't actually addressed
the reasons that we're leading to hire a search firm.
Okay, I was going to.
Okay, wonderful.
But I'll just provide a summary,
and then you can help.
On Thursday, March 5th,
we, the school district governing board,
interviewed three superintendent search firms.
were McPherson and Jacobson, HYA and Leadership Associates. It was done over the course of two
hours at an open meeting, in-person meeting. The reason that we are doing that is because
our venerable superintendent has announced her retirement and so we need to get started
So that have the process moving along and we'll discuss the interviews and
make a recommendation to approve a firm to begin the search process.
Well, I just want to say that I have worked with Superintendent Morgan for
10 years and it has been an honor to watch your leadership grow over the years.
And watch the growth in our district, which has been phenomenal.
So I just want to express my appreciation to you
for joining our team here at Wallach Creek School District.
Because I think we're much better for it.
Possible.
I know.
Better smile than a blanket of my eyes.
I have two years.
But the task at hand is for us to find a search firm.
So I think when we interviewed them, we had a few.
Well, many different considerations.
The top of mine were culture, stakeholder engagement,
and the processes that they had in place.
Team support, obviously cost, and then timelines.
So those were the considerations that we,
I guess I can start, talked with the different firms.
I think the thing that stood out to me
was the stakeholder engagement and the team support
from one firm outshined the others,
and that was leadership associates
who were prepared to provide us with dedicated
to coordinators who would facilitate
all of these discussions and meetings.
And what was really important was that
Not only did they talk about stakeholder engagement,
meaning staff, administration, but also students.
I'd just back up and say that from the perspective
of providing a comprehensive search experience,
the differences, I think, are the ones
that you really called out one way.
Each of them have a kind of basic package of what they do,
and it is, at some level, inclusive of all of the things
that we would want to see from having
some kind of support to providing some amount of research,
to doing surveys.
But not all of them provided that equal measure.
That there was a limit on some of the engagement outreach
that two of the firms would have put in the existing pricing.
We start to look at how that relates to cost.
And then I think the timeline was clearer in this one
and at least one other of the proposals
than it was in another firms.
In I think McPherson's timeline was less clear in Hungary,
but all of them seemed like they had the ability
to be flexible.
But I think one of the questions that comes up for me then
is given that for at least one of the associates
from leadership, one of the partners at Leadership
Associates, they would be really full time
dedicated to our work, whereas the other two firms had
consulting partners who would be doing multiple searches
alongside ours and really wanting
to make sure that our community has an opportunity to weigh in
in a way that we think that is robust
and will provide us with the most solid leadership profile
to fill some really big shoes.
to continue the really good work that our district has done.
But now the athletes, and some of it, too,
is the marketing of it, and some of that
came with additional costs.
Yeah, when comparing, when trying
to compare apples to apples, what on paper
might have seemed like a lower cost for one
is actually not, once you added hard items, cost in the end,
I think, was not really a huge factor because they all
came out in range. But one, provided sort of all-inclusive experience, which was
leadership associates and definitely resonated in terms of over-class.
Having the three, having the lens around California, and I mean obviously with
tonight having the budget presentation, the complexity of how the budget is
managed in California. It's very unique. So more local versus national and also
being it having just think about the process in general that I almost feel
like it's two sides of the coin and that they have to really understand what our
community is looking for and what our team is looking for and that's a huge
process and then the second is going through candidates and recruiting
Canada is embedding that right so it's like they don't take the time to really
understand what we're looking for what has been built in the last 10 years by
this under your leadership with the rest of the team is really important so
having that dedicated focused resource I think is really important I agree when
they in the sense that when you look at the cost the one make person yes it was
a much smaller amount but it was like very it was limited like additional
fee for this additional fee for this additional fee and we probably would
have wanted that those items so essentially they're very similar in cost
and then the engagement piece as I was just saying is so important that's one
side of the coin and it did seem like with leadership associates having that
approach of yes we would they see you know these groups and as many but if you
want to do more we could do this and we can happily add more in-person virtual
this is very flexible in that sense so and then having the two dedicated staff
and they also mentioned students ignore the same lines because I agree and I did
want to you know approval of leadership associates as our superintendent search
I have a motion and a second to approve leadership associates at Walnut Creek School District
Superintendent Search Firm.
All those in favor?
Abstentions?
Motion carries.
Just to keep us on track with maintaining our board policies as the, we call them batches.
CSBA releases batches of board policies
for us to update in terms of any legal implications.
And then you all have heard me say this many times,
and then once you adopt those updates to the board policy,
we go through each one of those board policies
and make sure that our practices align to those policies.
And so once that process is completed.
But we also, I think it's just really important
that you know that our entire cabinet team,
we even break those policies down
in terms of how they affect each department.
And so each cabinet member reads those in advance as well
in anticipation of the work that will need to be done
after you all take a look at those policies.
And here we have the latest batch, per se,
board policies from CSBA and I would ask that the board approve CSBA's
recommended updates and additions to governing board policies, administrative
regulations, and board bylaws as indicated. I don't have any questions about this batch but I
will say that going through them I was this was a particularly interesting
batch to me because I felt like everything that's in here is work that
we already do that has now suddenly become legislated which have some mixed
feelings about whether or not a fire drove in the first ten days of school up to be done
by legislation, but was very gratified, honestly, to see, you know, that our administrators
and our school sites take safety seriously, that we have all of these components in place
that our board policies and our board bylaws actually are now more reflected in California
state standard and that's not the other way around.
So I thought I'd just say, we're doing great work here,
friends.
Well, it's no different than oftentimes we come back
from CSBA and we say, wow, other districts don't
aren't proactive.
I mean, this just talks about, you know,
and is, I think, demonstration of this superstar team
and all of you in terms of the work
that you also do in making sure that our board policies align
with our practices, and oftentimes they're behind us.
And so our work in putting the practices in place sometimes
isn't that great because I'll just say this on a side note.
There's a few of us who also have a bit of a chuckle
every now and again when we sit at superintendent's meetings
and people ask questions.
And we say, do not read all of the legal updates that
are coming our way, because we get these legal updates
in various forms knowing that these policies are
going to be updated.
And so there's a couple that we're talking about right now,
and I suspect internally.
And I suspect that three months later, the policy
will get updated, even though we're already
talking about what it would do to shift our practices.
And the reason for that and why that's so important
is because, again, it goes back to kind of what we were talking about with transportation.
The communication piece of it is the most important so that people don't feel blindsided.
So thank you for the acknowledgement and kudos to this amazing team for the work.
The approval of the CSBA recommended updates and additions
to governing board policy, administrative regulations, and board by-laws.
I 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?
Opposed, abstentions.
Motion carries.
Item 12, reports from governing board members.
I was pleased to go to Buena Vista,
Read Across America.
They celebrated Read Across America last week.
And I was honored to be a reader in the SDCT classroom.
the teacher happened to be out sick that day but I just want to commend the para team that they
have there they were clearly a very well oiled machine they did a fantastic job and the sub
seemed to I don't know maybe you subbed there before but you seemed to just fit right in and
they needed like I was very impressed. I also went to Buena Vista and run to a second
Last Friday we, Marie and I had a week ago I read a Buena Vista as well.
I was next door to Amy, I don't know, I'll figure out the same thing in the K-1 STC-5.
And that was also fun.
I was supposed to do that last week.
I got my dates crossed, I'm gonna go tomorrow.
But no, I don't have anything to report right now.
Future agenda items.
Fourteen pertinent dates.
Anything to add, Amy, didn't you have something to add?
Yeah, well, I know how quickly the end of the school year
comes up once we hit March, and especially after spring break,
and we won't have a true board meeting again
before spring break.
So I wanted to ask about celebrating or scheduling
some celebrations at the end of the year
Should we take our lead from a member of the staff, should we discuss dates now, should
I don't exactly know who should leave in this.
Obviously on this calendar right now,
not all the dates are there.
Like the open houses aren't there.
This doesn't go through the last day of school.
But I want to make sure that we don't miss opportunities
because I know how cluttered the main calendar gets.
So we just scheduled the date for the retirement,
social for all staff,
And so if you want to put May 7th that Thursday on your calendar,
like it's the Elks Lodge.
At the Elks Lodge, yeah.
So that'll be a good, yeah, May 7th.
So that'll be a good opportunity for the staff
to get an opportunity to honor all the retirees
and to honor them.
And then we did discuss possibly having a time
that parents or community members connected to a board meeting
might be able to come in and give their respect.
So, I think I'm the only one who remembers the previous transition and there was a reception
which was in this room for the outgoing superintendent and I don't know if we want to do that again
in this room or wanted to use a different location but I do think it's
important to have some basically an open house where community members can come
and I agree I might suggest ice Creek as opposed to this room yeah yeah it can
where ever the timing works. Again, I'm repeating myself, but I know May is really busy.
Well, one consideration might be to not have it on a school campus, if you want to have any celebration in terms of drinks.
But that's probably, I don't know if that's appropriate for me to say.
Well it depends which level, which solution we're talking about.
Yeah, I think to allow school families to be better on a school campus.
Maybe in the afternoon, like after school is to spend.
That's good, I think.
Yeah.
Because then I think kids will be able to come.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Okay, so if, I'm still not exactly sure, should we talk to Kelly?
Should one of us, we talk to Kelly?
I mean if you guys want to choose a date, I can work with you on a party plan.
I think we're going to look to you to help us find a date that isn't absurdly conflicting with 100 other things.
Because what we can do with my house this year, I don't have enough time to move.
Around that week, it is May 18th.
Oh, it's a little sorry.
Okay, very great.
As long as the wheels are in motion, that's fantastic.
That's kind of all I needed to know if the wheels are in motion.
Thank you. We do not need to adjourn to closed session. So meeting is adjourned at 716.