and we are live. All right it is 6.01 and I'm calling our meeting to order, Pledge of 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.
5.2 roll call.
Is that a right answer?
Here.
Amy Maugh.
Here.
Wendley Johnson.
I'm here.
Sarah Tallet.
Here.
And Heidi Hernandez.
Gabby?
Present.
5.3 report out from closed session.
We have nothing to report out.
5.4 approval of agenda.
New changes could be approved.
I move approval of the agenda as presented.
I'll second.
OK.
I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as presented.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed, abstention. Motion carries. Item six consent calendar. I'll move approval of the consent calendar.
All second. Motion and a second to approve all items on the consent calendar. All those in favor.
Opposed, abstention. Motion carries. Item seven public hearings. 7.1.
Propose one that Creek School District LCAP. This public hearing is to allow for
public comment prior to governing board presentation regarding the proposed 2026
27 LCAP data. Any public comment? Open it and then ask for it. Okay I'll open it.
7.2 proposed one that Creek School District budget. You can actually open
public hearing for all of those items. Ask for public comment on any of those. We shall
do that again. I will open all items under public hearings, any public
comments on 7.1, 7.2, or 7.3. No? Okay, then I will close it. Item 8, public comments.
I lean on okay, this is just before you start
This is an opportunity as you know for members of the public to address the government board on these matters
Just remember
That you are restricted up to three minutes
per speaker
Public comments are to be made a person pursuant to the Brown Act
No discussion or action related to public comments will take place
With that said, we wanted to acknowledge that we are listening and have heard the comments from our community.
So Eileen, go ahead.
Good evening, governing board members. My name is Eileen Ahm, and I'm a parent at Tice Creek.
This district is at a crossroads.
Right now, across the district, there is frustration,
distrust, and disappointment that can no longer be ignored.
families feel it, students feel it, staff feel it,
and the community feels it.
I was one of the parents who spoke publicly
about concerns at Tice Creek, because I
believe transparency, accountability,
and honest communication matter.
But what happened at Tice Creek did not create these concerns.
It revealed them.
And to be clear, this is not coming from one school,
one group of parents or one isolated incident.
These concerns are being discussed quietly and openly
across the entire district.
Parents across this district are asking the same questions.
Are families truly being heard.
Are staff truly being supported.
And can trust be rebuilt under the same leadership structure
that allowed this divide to grow in the first place.
These are difficult questions but avoiding
that will not fix this district.
That is why I am asking this board to hire an external candidate for superintendent.
Because this district does not need more of the same.
It does not need leadership that is tied to the very culture and decisions that cause
so many families and staff to lose confidence in the first place.
This moment calls for independent leadership, fresh perspective, and
the credibility that can only come from a true reset.
Staff need to feel supported.
Families need to feel respected, and no one in this district should feel afraid to speak honestly about problems that affect our schools and our children.
Communities do not regain trust when the answer to failed leadership is simply continued leadership.
Trust is rebuilt when leaders show the courage to acknowledge when something is broken, and the courage to change course.
an external superintendent would not solve every problem overnight but it would send a clear message
to families, staff and this entire community that this board understands the seriousness of this
moment. The decisions made in this room matter because long after this meeting ends people will
remember whether this board chose to protect the status quo or chose the opportunity to restore
trust and move this district forward. For the sake of our students, our staff and
every family who still believes in the potential of this district, I hope you
choose a new path forward. Thank you.
Emily Moffitt, good evening. My name is Emily Moffitt and I'm a walnut hedge parent. Thank you again
for the opportunity to speak. Two weeks ago, ahead of the May 4th meeting, I raised
the concern in writing to the board about agenda
transparency for personnel appointments.
That led to a personal phone call
with Superintendent Horgan, in which
she acknowledged that the spirit of the Brown Act
is transparency.
I appreciated that conversation.
I then came to the May 4 meeting and made the same request
during public comment.
Tonight, I'm looking at Agenda Item 9, another open session
management appointment.
And the language is identical to what it was two weeks ago.
It says the recommended candidate,
but it doesn't include a name, bio,
or any supporting materials.
I want to be charitable and assume
this is a matter of habit and process rather than indifference.
And having reviewed a full year of past agendas,
I understand that this has simply always
been the way it's done here.
But that's exactly my point.
A long-standing practice isn't the same as a good practice.
I want to say that again.
A long-standing practice isn't the same as a good practice.
And it's discouraging to raise a concern
through every available channel.
Email, a phone call, a public comment,
and see no changes ever.
The Brown Act exists to make local government
accountable to the people it serves.
Naming a candidate in an agenda item is not a dramatic ask.
It's one sentence, and it would signal to this community
that their participation is genuinely welcome
and not just tolerated.
I know you're unable to respond to me directly
during public comment, so I'm respectfully acting
that the board place this on a future agenda
as a discussion item, so this community
can get a formal response and a clear commitment
one way or the other.
My hope is that I shouldn't have to keep returning
to this podium with the same request.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, trustees, friends, and I'm here with the California School Boards Association,
making my rounds to the entire region to say hi.
I know most of you guys know that we are an association that assists all of you with any sort of resources.
And so today I brought you an AI resource.
But if you need anything from me or from the association, I figured it out.
So placing a name to the email to the business group.
So thank you for all you do and I'll go ahead and leave this over to this friend.
Good evening.
I'm Rose Pareto.
My family has been in this district for 12 years and I am the parent of two children
in who received special education services.
I'm here tonight because a new superintendent can set the tone for how this district treats
special education families, whether that relationship is gradual, collaborative, or adversarial.
I won't share our family's story today.
I'll share a number instead.
In the past five years, the Special Education Department has had four degrees.
No leader can build trust and repair systems or even learn the case work in a single year.
Your own community input report names the states plainly.
It states, and I quote,
The unique needs and interests of special education programs and students will continue
to place stress on the organization.
This includes programs designed for mild, moderate, and severe students, and the resultant
need for professional training for implications and implementation process.
The litigious nature of complaints in special education is a resource issue for the district,
likely to continue at least in the near future.
I'd like to read that last line again.
The litigious nature of complaints in special education
is a resource issue for the district.
Families do not begin with complaints.
We escalate to them only after communication
and problem solving have failed.
We need a superintendent who treats special education
as a matter of service quality and honest communication,
not as a legal risk.
So in your second round interviews,
I ask that you please press each candidate on three things,
how they are personally engaged
with special education for their roles,
how they will support and retain leadership
in this department,
and how they will vote two years from now,
whether the special education department has truly improved.
Item nine,
certificate of management appointment.
I'll kill it for you.
Her board approval, a certificate of management
appointment of Stephanie Andrews Velasquez,
her assistant principal at Walnut Creek Intermediate School.
Miss Andrews Velasquez brings 15 years of experience
in public education, including her current role
as assistant principal at South San Francisco High School,
her background in instructional leadership,
student support system for restorative practices
and middle school teaching experience
make her an excellent fit for WCI in our district.
We are excited to welcome her to the Walnut Creek School District leadership team and I respectfully ask for the board to approve her appointment.
I know someone approves.
Okay I have a motion and a second to approve the certificate of management appointment of the recommended candidate for assistant principal at Walnut Creek.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Post, abstention, motion carries.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Congratulations.
I'd like to say thank you so much for this opportunity.
My name is Stephanie Andrews Velasquez.
I have my family here.
You heard my one-month-old just joining us.
And then my son, Burton, my husband, Burton, my brother-in-law,
and my mom.
And I'm just absolutely excited to join this community.
I believe, really when we've got my mom's crying,
So I'm sorry, I am, I'm so passionate about the work
that this community and Walnut Creek Intermediate
is already doing around literacy,
teacher support with PLCs, MTSS,
and really supporting our students
to do the very best work that they know how to do.
So, I'd like to just say thank you for this opportunity
and I'm so excited to join this meeting.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We're gonna give them a minute to,
we're gonna pick the babies to pick.
Oh, okay.
Good evening, obviously busy wait for teachers and everybody on campus is open house is happening
this week.
So I think people are excited to welcome parents on the campus to see all our amazing work
that teachers and students have been doing all year.
Also I don't want to step on one of our hidden items but I'm happy to report that we have
a ratified contract for WCTA with the district at 95% of staff in approval. So we're really
excited about that. It was a long process and I want to say that I'm really proud of
our negotiating team for working really hard over our sessions to make sure that they best
served our members' needs in collaboration with the district. Also, the site reps, you
know, they have to hold meetings and get information to their members so that they can vote with
the best information they have available and make a decision based off that so
we're really proud of the work with the reps and the negotiating team. Also a
week from tomorrow night, 26 I believe it is, teachers across our district are
going to set up in two different spots in the city in support of the parcel
tax so we're going to invite anybody who wants to come out, parents, staff, board
members that joined us out there will be have the intersection up here of
Naisho in North Main on the target side and then Olympic and South California
across from all the park over there with signs in support of our parcel tax I
know would mean a lot to the teachers to see you know more people come out and
support that effort because I think you know not that it's super rare but you
know we're I think everybody across our district whether it's board members
staff CSEA, WCTA and the district and parents alike are really in support of
the parcel tax so the more people that want to come out and join us the better
like I said it will be there from 3.30 to 5 come out for 10 minutes 15 minutes
or stay the whole time we'd love to see you out there and hopefully we'll have
We've got some good news coming up here in June.
Thank you.
Thank you.
10.2, CSEA, Carla.
Good evening, everyone.
I am here to give the report from CSEA.
The reason the CSEA negotiated with the district,
the MOU regarding the effects of the reduction in force.
The MOU has gone through the 610 process,
has been voted and ratified by the membership,
and is now part of the Knights of General.
At this point, I would like to talk about the MOU regarding
benefits for CSEA members.
A few weeks back, Superintendent Morgan assured me
that regardless of where the negotiation process was
to take us, her priority was to reach an extension
of the current MOU regarding benefits for the CSEA
membership, and that she was ready to do whatever
necessary to make that happen, so that no member of our CSEA
should have to go into financial strife.
And to that regard, I am happy to communicate
on the first day of negotiations the district team presented that item as the first order of business.
Together we were able to reach an agreement on a one-year extension of that MOU. The MOU is now
going through the 6-10 process and will be voted on our next chapter meeting and subsequently
presented to the board for approval. So on my behalf as an employee of the district I should say
as a long, long time employing leadership.
And also, as acting president, on behalf of the membership
that we represent, I'd like to thank each and every one
of you who make that possible.
Thank you, Marie.
Thank you, Heidi.
Thank you, Sarah.
Thank you, L.A.
Thank you, Amy.
Thank you, Sarah.
And thank you to the members of the administrative negotiations
team.
CLCA remains in conversations with the D.C.
with the district and their council seeking to find a path forward to the
pending negotiation items. It's all for now and thank you again.
First of all, I want to say to Michael and Carlos and our CTA and CFTA
negotiating teams and on behalf of the district team thank you for your
collaboration. You'll see many items on the agenda today of us moving forward for
working together collaboratively in the best interests of our employees and it
has been an absolute pleasure working with both of you and I much appreciate
that. I want to report some incredible news on education from the Education
Foundation and that is for the first time we've reached our 1.6 million
dollar goal actually exceeded our 1.6 million dollar goal thanks to the
generosity of our community both in volunteering for the hours that they
spend volunteering in our schools and the financial impact that is made across our district.
Our students, I think, are so fortunate to benefit from amazing enrichment programs across
this district.
Art, music, electives, a credentialed librarian thanks to the generosity of our families.
And so huge congratulations.
There were lots of congratulatory emails coming from the Education Foundation today.
I would like to invite all of you in our community
to open house this week.
Tomorrow, we will celebrate elementary schools,
Tice Creek on Wednesday at Coyote Fest
and WCI on Thursday.
I sent an email to all staff this morning
saying that it was my goal to be in every classroom
this week across the district.
And so far, Jam and I made it to a few today,
including an amazing art, math, lab classroom demonstration
that was happening this morning.
And so it's exciting, and I'm excited
to get to greet all of the teachers across the district.
And I thank them for their contributions
to the district and for all the work
that they do to prepare their students
to display their learning.
And finally I would just like to give a shout out to,
this week is Classified Employees Week.
And so you know that we celebrate
staff appreciation in our district
and all of our employees together on one week.
But I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout out
to our classified employees
who are just an incredible support across our district.
They are the power behind our classrooms
and everything that happens.
So cheers to our classified employees.
Thank you for all that you do.
That's it.
Thank you.
Item 12, 12.1, LCAP.
Our annual LCAP presentation.
And this is where we review the process
that we went through across the year to gather input
so that if there are any modifications we
need to make to our LCAP, we are doing those.
And we're in the second of our third year of this LCAP.
And just remembering that the LCAP really
guides that supplemental funding that we get.
That's for our unduplicated account students.
And just making sure that we're watching that opportunity gap
and putting all the things in place
so that all of our students can achieve at high levels.
And we have just in April, or it was March.
I'm losing track of the month.
We did our strategic planning session.
And then all along the year, we've come to you
and given you updates, looked at our data.
We're so happy with the results that we're seeing
in our California School Dashboard this year.
And then tonight, I'm gonna show you
some of the local indicator data
and some of our survey data as well.
That is a piece of the metrics
that are required to go into our LCAP.
So I'm going to start with just the local indicators.
These we put into the California School Dashboard,
and they are just any of the metrics
that we don't have California State like CASP and LPAT.
Those are very clearly delineated in our California School
Dashboard.
Then there's a section for these local indicators.
And so these are things that the state gives us rubrics.
We rate ourselves.
This is an area saying that our facilities are in good repair.
We aren't having any complaints about any of our facilities.
As you know, we have really top-notch facilities
to be very proud of.
So we get a check mark for our basic school conditions.
Here are the implementation of state academic standards.
Do we have curriculum that aligns to the standards?
And do we have professional development to support that
and all of those things?
So that's priority two.
And then priority three,
we rate ourselves on our parent engagement
based on the rubric that the state provides.
And so you can see those ratings there.
And then a piece of this
is that we give a family survey every year
and we use the Youth Truth Family Survey to do that.
And so we're just starting here
by showing you the participation.
We're up a little bit of participation in the elementary
and then we're staying the same, the middle school,
even though we do lots of shout outs
and really trying to encourage folks to take that survey.
And so here is a summary of the elementary family survey.
If you look at each of the areas, engagement,
culture, relationships, school safety,
communication and feedback and resources and you can see over time our percent positives and
Then in the far right you can see the typical California youth true school
so it's always kind of nice to to look at that as well and
Relationships being our strongest area on our elementary family survey and
You know just lots of positive growth there and then if you take engagement
These are a subset of questions that are in the engagement
category.
And so this aligns with that local indicator.
So that's why we're pulling out this engagement section.
And so you can see over three years of time the percent
positives.
And then also, again, you can see the typical California
school.
And now we'll shift to the middle school family
survey in the same areas that we're looking at.
again very strong relationships and then going into those questions the
engagement questions and looking at three years of time there. An area of
growth for us is for our middle school families to really feel empowered that
they're making a meaningful role in decision-making at the school level and
then you can see that we are in the ballpark for a touch higher than the
typical California youth tree school.
And then this is showing you our students.
So all of our middle school students
take the youth tree survey.
And so 49% of middle school students
report enjoying coming to school most of the time,
which is an increase from last year
and 3% higher than the typical California schools.
And then 67% report feeling that most adults
in the school treats students with respect,
which is also 3% higher than reported.
And then you could just see here's four more areas.
And so we were pulling these areas out
and putting them in LCAP and also sharing them with staff
as they look at their results.
So this is the Tyce Creek and the WCI student results
altogether, but then we are able to take them apart
and for each school staff to look at them.
And I'm just so happy to report that in every area,
we're seeing an increase from our students
and their perceptions.
And then this was a year that we were able
to take the California Healthy Kids Survey.
We give that every other year.
And we give that to our fifth and our seventh graders.
And we saw tremendous gains here
in the student perceptions.
Really look at those seventh graders
on school connectedness and meaningful participation
be up 12 percentage points. That's pretty astounding. And then I think this is our
last local indicator just where look at our master schedule, make sure all
students get you know access to all of the school classes and so that wraps up
the local indicators and now we'll jump into our three LCAP goals. Goal one
academic excellence and global competencies and with the funding that we
get our supplemental funding that aligns to this area. We're using that for
instructional coaching, professional learning, our multi-tiered system of
support, and our English learner and long-term English learner support. And
this year, after we looked at all the feedback for this area, we have made a
few modifications. And so we've decided to take the ELA-NWA map assessment and
just use the winter data from that in our LCAP rather than leading to the
spring. Our seventh and eighth grade teachers really asked would it be
possible to not give that assessment to all students at the end of the year
because they've just come off of taking tasks and it's a 45-minute assessment
and we said well sure if you don't need that for anything at the end of the year
we can use the winter score and then for students who we want to give that
assessment? Like right now we're just getting our LPAC data back and we're
finding a bunch of our students are going to be able to reclassify and so we
do want to do this math assessment and so they're able to. So we're able to give
it to the students who we're going to do something with that data but not just to
report it in the LPAC. So I'm glad that the LPAC has given us a way to make
that modification and the teachers were really happy about that. And so also in
In this area for action, we decided to really focus our Ed Services teacher on special assignment
to really be thinking about MTSS, and so she's meeting with our MTSS coordinators and really
looking at the process that sites go through, so this really made sense, and this is one
of our goals anyway, so we just aligned some dollars there for her support.
And then, the expected outcomes, since we moved the MAP assessment to the winter, we
just changed that proficiency target thinking that 75% in the winter would be a reasonable
target.
So that was goal one.
Goal two, emotional wellness and equity and belonging.
Here is where we have our professional learning for equity, restorative practices, and our
wellness program.
And we didn't make any changes to metrics.
we did in our action was change our budget because as you know we're at the
end of our three-year partnership with NEP and so now we just need to come up
with a sustainability plan and so we think that that is going to take a lot
less budget dollars to keep that professional learning going because we
can use the in-house training of our staff. And then LPAP Goal 3 family and
community connection. Here's where the funding for the Youth Truth Survey and
then also Parent's Square, a portion of Parent's Square, and there were no changes.
Goal three. Here is when I invite Mr. Morales to come up and do a budget overview.
The purpose of this slide is to surface how much supplemental dollars that the
district is receiving. We call that a heavy student that is an English learner.
socioeconomic disadvantage, far fewer than homeless.
The district receives an additional 20% in base funding.
And that is folded in with our LCFF funding.
And that's why you will not be able to see that number called
out in the state accounting forms.
And this is why we are required to do this form.
So the big pie shows you the total revenue
that the district is projecting to receive for next year.
That includes LCFF, our federal funds, state and local donors.
And then from that, we zero into the smaller part chart
out of that LCFF funds, because we also
get LCFF funds for special education.
So we have to call out some part of that
is only for our base funding.
And that's the $43,213,945.
And out of that pie, that little blue sliver of $1,855,908
is what we're projecting to receive for those students
that are applying the service system.
The next chart shows that out of the $1.8 million
that they're receiving, how much are we spending
into the LCAP, how much are we putting into the LCAP?
It is gonna be higher because we actually have $1.9 million
because this also includes the leftover money
from our learning recovery emergency law grant
for the last two years.
The green box shows you how much our total expenditure is and that 1.9 was the living in our in the health app document
which will be tracked throughout
throughout next year
right and
We'll be asking for you
So if you might go back to what you just said about the budgeted expenditures and
The money I want to make sure that I understood correctly. So some of the money that we're planning to spend
Isn't new money. We've received it as part of
emergence is block grants
Our supplemental grant mixture is 140 million, but we have additional dollars that were left over from
recovery of emergency
And there was the time during COVID years when the government clogged back some of that money and they give it back to us
last year. So, not only do we have existing money from the prior years, but we also got new money last year for the learning recovery and emergency law grant.
The only condition is it must now be included in your LCAP. And this is why that number is 1.9 million, because it includes those findings as well.
It's not a forever grant. It will run out in about a year or two, and then we'll have to determine how we're going to fund those items in the LCAP.
I hope I answered your question.
Yeah, thank you for clarifying.
I was thinking, I've read a bunch of the May drives coming up.
There's a lot of talk right now about the governor's proposals.
And there was some talk about money that was promised before
and whether or not he was going to read it.
He was trying to figure out the same money that we're talking about.
It's a little bit fun to May revise this, more about the Prop 98.
This will be roughly touched.
Then we'll cover each other.
And probably we'll see them in the supplemental.
Sorry, it's like a table the middle school family survey summary of a percent positives
Please yeah
And so really I can give you some sample questions
I'll get to you know in a board update but really the spirit of it is do families feel like
We are providing resources to help them
help their students in learning are we a district that has plenty of resources both in the school and also
to help
after school
Okay, so is that curriculum is that like I'm just trying to understand what resources mean is it?
the materials or
actual physical materials Chromebooks
It's all of those things
But then it's very specific to the question and the way it's worded and I don't have those questions in front of me right now
So I think it'll make more sense to you when I share the specific questions. Okay. Yeah, I was just trying to understand why
a little bit off of the typical California school at the 61%
The same thing with the middle school survey is only 25% of our families are responding
Also think about that
Overall we see an increase in our data over the past couple of years we've really been watching it and I think our principals have done a really good job of having families understand like this is an opportunity for you to be able to tell us and get their input along with our strategic planning sessions.
We're really taking a look at that data.
I would say this year in particular, you know through our work that we've done.