Good morning everyone. Welcome to today's committee of the whole. It is 10:01. So we're going to go ahead and start as we wait for more folks to come in. So um first of all I
want to thank um everyone our staff, educators, families, everyone here present and watching us remotely to the committee of the whole. This is our final committee of the whole for the 2526 school year. And I want to thank everyone who's contributed and
I'll be giving more thanks throughout the meeting because uh there's a lot that goes behind putting not only the board meetings but also the committee of the whole. So there's a lot of work that goes behind putting um these meetings together. So today's items reflect some
of the most important conversations facing public education right now. The long-term fiscal outlook for our schools, the role of technology should play and students daily learning experiences and how we align district procurement practices with our values
and commitments to immigrant families and human dignity. Today's presentations are connected by a broader question about governance, responsibility, and how we make thoughtful decisions that protect students, strengthen trust and ensure district systems reflect both
educational priorities and community values. So, we appreciate the continued collaboration across departments and look forward to a very productive discussion today. Uh and now before our presentation um I see we have some labor
partners present if they want to come up and um to the podium. We have Mr. Alex Orosco from UTLA and some special guests. >> Carla is going to be signing. She's sick.
>> Good morning everyone. Um my name is Alex Rosco. I'm the UTLA secondary vice president. I have some very important guests here from Recita High School. They'll be speaking in just one moment. Um, but before I yield my time to our friends from Brita and students and
parents, I want to just speak on the screen time resolution that you all are going to be hearing more about today. Um, obviously we support it absolutely in spirit. We think it's a great, you know, uh, move, but I I do want to raise
some concerns about the implementation and recommend that you all roll it out, phase it in, thinking about possible issues. We did meet with your team, your ED team. We identify some issues. We've yet to really hear about possible
solutions. So thinking about the roll out, we want it to be collaborative, strategic, and thoughtful so that it's successful. So we ask that you guys really think about a phase in, a pilot, some sort of way to really roll it out
so it's not, you know, so so that it actually has a chance to to be successful. Uh I know that Maria Nichols is not here but we stand in solidarity with Allah making the same request to really again thoughtful collaborative and strategic and the way you phase this
in or roll it out. And with that I'm going to pass it over to our Recita staff. Good morning. I'm Peg Peg. Oh goodness. I'm Peg Hegel and I'm here to ask for a principal with the cap capability and interest in providing leadership to RECA
Charter, something we've lacked since spring of 2024. The current principal was unilaterally placed at RECA in violation of our local initiative school plan. And on arrival, she told us that she's a fixer and only placed at broken schools. She sequestered herself in her office, avoided interacting with faculty
and students, then engaged in illegal hirings and dismissals, including a case which resulted in a significant successful lawsuit against the district. Most egregious has been her disregard for the special demands of a span school, culminating this year in the death of a 12-year-old child. When previous principal Melanie Welsh
launched our middle school, she intentionally designated a distinct part of campus, scheduled separate middle and high school lunches, and vigilantly made hard decisions, performing due diligence to remove students who made campus unsafe. The current principal has acted with want and disregard of these issues
and worked intentionally to reverse these measures. Though LSLC has succeeded in preserving separate lunches, she's placed middle school classes throughout campus, including upper floors of high school buildings, and readmitted a student removed by Miss Welsh for safety reasons. That very same person, a leader of the bullies alleged
to have caused the death of our students. Just weeks before, safety concerns were raised at LSLC to address escalating incidents specific to the mixing of the 68 and 912 populations, especially during passing periods and school dismissals. Solutions were offered, but tabled by the principal as
topics to be discussed at some point in the future. Instead, a child had her future stolen following a fight during school dismissal. The exact issue raised by teachers and parents, but treated as neither grave nor urgent by the principal. But the district knows all of this and from the perspective of parents
and students has done nothing in response. From the perspective of the vast majority of our faculty, it has done something far more harmful. It has given cart blanch to the principal to access she chooses without regard for the physical, emotional or intellectual well-being of our school community or even the legal requirements of our
contracts. And her most recent actions reflect that she now feels empowered to do as she wishes, acting as a tyrant, not a leader. On behalf of the supermajority of our faculty who just recently voted a resounding no confidence, I implore you to do the right thing and remove the current
principal before she does any more harm to our school, our faculty, our staff, our community, and most importantly our students. Thank you for your attention. >> Uh good morning everyone. My name is Mija Sikova and as a member of our wonderful schools community, I want to
speak against the removal of French and theater program from our school. A lot of people in our school are different. We have a lot of diversity and I think that uh everyone uh learns differently and
everyone has a right to have access to a program they want they want to be in. Everyone has a right to for a program that they feel confident in. And a lot of people from our community had shared with me that
our principal is against uh against letting us students having something that we actually want and actually need. I enjoy French program and I I wanted to stay with me
till till the year I graduate and a lot of people share the same opinion as me. It's actually really nervous to stand right here. I'm sorry. So our school strengths is
our diversity, our wonderful members of our communities, someone who who's different, who has different ways of thinking. And what I think we should do is let them think differently. Let them
express their opinions and let them grow in the school. Let them grow in the safe community that our principle is ruining. Thank you. Thank you.
Okay. Um it's kind of nervous be here. Um so I ask very I'm sorry if sometimes I don't speak really well. Okay. My name is Luna Sophia and I'm a student
at Rita Chart High School. I would like to speak from my experience from my perspect perspective as a student in my honest way possible. I came to this country living behind my life, my family and friends and everything I knew
starting over was not easy for me. It was it took me time to adjust to feel safe and to believe again that I could build something stable. That is why I when I choose this school I did it with a lot of intention. I left other options
behind and also friendships I already had begun from because I felt that here I could find real opportunities to grow at this school. I'm not only in a regular classes. I'm also part of the police
academy magnet cadet. H I'm also part of the police academy. I'm part of Navy and I'm part of AP classes. And these activities have been so important to me. They taught me discipline and commitment and they have
made me feel I am part of something bigger. But mo one of the most important things for me has been French program. I already speak Spanish and English. I I learn French
and learning French was not just another class for me. It was something I truly excited about, something that made me feel proud of myself. I also have a have a teacher who truly inspires me. She she
makes me learn is something really exciting for me. Miss the France is not only a teacher, she's also like my best friend. Every time that I have a problem, I try to run and look for her
help. So it's kind of hard and it hurts me a lot and deeply to her that she could be go away for our principal. So, and it's difficult to me that I
already complete a year and this could be a stop just because the principal also what is important to me what is important to me is that some months ago um a student sadly
um died in our not in our campus but it was because some of the students in her and that makes that makes the people in the school even if we weren't close to
her and we didn't knew her. It left us with sadness and fear and really m and really a lot of questions that never those questions will answer. So
what I'm what I'm asking for is that Mrs. France and her class stay in our school. I'm also asking for students voice be here for our principal and not just us be traded as a students and just
kids that doesn't know what we want because we want that M friends and her classes day. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Daniel Ortiz. Um, for this time I gonna speak in Spanish because my English is not really
good. >> Okay. >> So, the speaker is going to speak in Spanish. So, if you'd like to hear what she's saying in English, please put your hands up and we will get you translation headsets. Our translation unit is running out right now to hand them out. >> Thank you so much.
>> One second, please. Thank you. >> Okay, gracias. >> Gracias. My name is Daniel. My name is Daniel Ortiz and I am here as a mother of Luna Sophia and she's at Rita Charter High School. My daughter came to this
country after after leaving her home, her friends and her life. >> When we find when she finally began to find stability, she chose this school to stay. In fact,
when other even when other schools had were open to her or she had other options, friends and what she had constructed here because this school offered other programs like
art and language and other schools here wouldn't do. She chose French because she wrote, spoke and understood Spanish. She wanted to keep growing academically. But besides the language, she found something very valuable in this class
as a a student that inspires her and something that teaches her to be do better. For my daughter and for many students that because of fear are not here. This class is not just an academic success. It's a space where we feel
motivated and want to grow. My daughter has had a year has been at this program for a year and several weeks ago I took the time to speak to the principal in which she assured me that the program would continue so that the students so that the students that were already
there would continue. In fact, she lied and French is was not included. She told me in a personal meeting that French would was going to be part of part of Pierce College and that is not true because
Pierce College does not offer this. Unfortunately, this is not just a class. Many families were uh living were living with opportunities being left out. And I've spoken to other parents that are bringing their children
and don't want to bring them because they feel like they're not giving the same safe space as before. After the tragic death of a student, many families are have a deep worry because of safety and the discipline inside the school. As
parents, we need to understand that and make sure that our students are in a safe place knowing that these decisions are being taken accordingly and make the students a priority because students do perceive the messages that we receive that they receive from us, the adults.
And when programs are eliminated, they're important and they have to give them the opportunities and the problems continue. We don't have a clear answer and we are seeing that excellence is not the priority. This affects their participation and their future. We're
talking about their future. I am not just here because of my daughter. I am here because of the students that need the schools to allow them to grow to protect to protect them and believe in them. I ask for you to consider this if it is possible for these programs not to
close for the excellence is not does not stay unseen. This is we want the schools to move forward so that we can fight and we believe that this principle besides lying to the parents, she's not fighting for the future of our students. Thank
you. >> Good morning. Just like my students, I'm a little nervous. Okay. My name is Stephanie Def France and I'm the French and psychology teacher at Recita Charter High School. I am also the UTLA representative who is
experiencing retaliation. I am being displaced because of my advocacy. Now no one ever feels safe. The principal who was hired in 2024 has decided to shut down the French theater
and psychology classes. This limits students choices. Over 700 signatures on a petition is evidence that the community sorry that this decision is not
supported by the community. It's it refuts the administration claim of lack of interest. Students who are taking the first year of French have not been informed how they will uh finish fulfill their two years of world language
requirement. So if one exam examines the first two years of this administration, there's a clear pattern emerging. program destruction, removal of staff, elimination of school traditions, and an
attempt to erase a long-standing culture that took many years to build. I want you all to know about the climate of fear and dread that now exists at Rita. Most teachers and staff members have
experienced low morale, fear of retaliation, lack of transparency, favoritism, and intimidation. Veterans educators who did did sorry dedicated years of their life to this
community feel silenced and marginalized. The recent tragedy with the death of a middle school student have been handled poorly. Many only learned what happened from social media.
Students reacted with protest and walk out. The principal response was to accuse and blame them, the teachers and parents for spreading rumors and creating disruption. Prior to my displacement, a vote of no
confidence were requested by staff. 72% of faculty expressed that they have no confidence in Principal Namonte's leadership. Board members, I'm urging you to
investigate what is going on at Rita High School. Removing a union representative while staff are calling for collaboration send an divisive message and intensify conflict within an already traumatized community.
Rita deserves a leadership that protects program instead of dismantling them. And Rita deserves leadership that honors our diverse culture of unity and belonging among staff and student. Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. So uh thank you Recita parents, students, uh staff. We have some uh documents here that will show you petitions, data, really highlighting everything you just heard
from these incredible speakers. And couple of weeks ago, we were listening to Wilshire Parks staff about the horrendous treatment by their principal uh and how they're handling tragedies. This is just another example of, you
know, that. So, we need to figure out, you know, what we need to do about those administrators and how they handle things like this. So, thank you. I'll leave this here. >> Thank you very much, Misimas. Gracias. You have been heard and u I'm sorry the
what you're experiencing as an alumnest of Rita High School. I graduated from Rita High School and took AP French for four years that I was there. Um, no, not with Yes, it was Miss Mendulsa. I remember her. It was Miss Mendulsa who was my teacher. Um so thank you for
being here and uh definitely somebody from the district will be reaching out. Okay. So now we will move on unless there are any other labor partners don't think is he we will move on to our um first presentation of the committee of the
whole which is an overview of the governor's may revision uh the and the potential implications for the district's budget outlook and advocacy priorities. We have Mr. San Bravo Karimi, Chief Financial
Officer, and Miss Martha Alvarez, Chief of Legislative Affairs and Government Relations. Uh, this conversation comes at an important moment as a district continues balancing fiscal stabilization efforts with the need to protect core services and investments that directly
impact students and school communities. So, thank you for being here, Miss Alvarez. Floor is yours. >> Good morning, board members, Dr. Rivas chairwoman and everyone else and acting superintendent Chait. Um I will be going through the first um maybe eight slides
and then Simon will be uh preceding me talking about what the May revision means for LUSD. Um I we welcome questions and I probably I would recommend that we would for Q&A at the end so we go through all of the content first. Um as the board so these are the topics for today. Um so again I will go
over the the first set of comments from the May revise. Um, I did want to first pause and see if acting superintendent Chay would like to make any comments. >> Thank you, Martha. Greatly appreciated. I want to kind of take us back to a couple of weeks ago when when some of us
were in Sacramento uh marshalling some advocacy to, you know, various uh elected officials, the governor's office themselves. I want to mark that I do think that some of the movement that we saw in the mayor revise can be attributed to the advocacy that folks that are that are sitting here and that
we partnered with uh visa v Labor um really did uh move the needle as it were. We're not in a place uh necessarily where we'd like to be. I'm I continue to be concerned about the the almost 4 billion that is being withheld uh in terms of Prop 98. Those are
dollars that are for today's kids and therefore should be allocated today so that they can go out and and serve our schools as needed. So there is still a significant amount of advocacy to come over the next few weeks. I wanted to mark that. Uh at the same time and and I you know I'll piggyback on on what uh
Dr. Revas shared. We we have to balance that advocacy that uh aspiration to get the dollars that frankly our students deserve um with being good fiscal stewards of our district, right? and ensuring that we have a plan uh that lays out a stable vision albeit a
painful vision in in all transparency for the next few years. And this is a starting point. The May revise gives us some of the fundamental data points that we need for that conversation. I know there will be more to come later this week. Um but again, in the spirit of transparency, I did want to lay out that foundation. Thank you, Martha.
>> Thank Thank you so much. Um so again, um thank you um for those comments. Um, I'll go through the May vision main proposals, both policy and funding. Um, then my colleague Seant will go through the district's general fund uh, revenue and our multi-year budget projections. And then he will also discuss the next
steps regarding the district's budget timeline over the next uh, five and a half weeks. Um, as uh, it's been publicly noted and also shared by our staff, uh, the governor released the May revision highly anticipated uh, last Thursday,
May 14. Um it is part of the annual process where and required by the constitution where the governor um comes back with revised revenue projections based on the April 15 tax collections and anything that has uh ensued since the general proposal came out uh up until middle of May. Um there were
positive very positive news uh as already um alluded to by our acting superintendent. Um this increase uh acknowledging that it had a significant increase to the Prop 98 guarantee. um as uh referenced um just to give you a little bit more color in those numbers.
Uh for bullet number two, uh Prop 98 again is a three-year um looking at three-year budget picture for the state um based on the revenues looking at the year before current fiscal year and looking at year one year ahead. Um and it's both for TK to 12 and community
colleges. um over that three-year period looking compared to last um in June 2025 when the state adopted the budget, there's been $28 billion more 28 billion more um in the revised three-year uh Prop 98 levels referenced in these three
cycles. Um of that um since January um the um the Prop 98 three-year level um increased by um 6.4 4 billion um than what was projected in January in the gener general proposal. Um and as
mentioned here just talking about the last bullet and I'll come back to the proposed cola. Um it's really important to underscore that of the increased revenue for Prop 98 um much of that has to be allocated to the state's uh Prop 98 reserve known as the public school stabilization account. Um so of the 6.4
billion increase since January um 4.6 6 billion of that has to be um is mandated to be deposited into the um to the Prop 98 reserve. Um so some some positive news, but again a bunch of a whole lot of that money will be going into the reserve. Um with the amount of money
that is available in in ongoing um Prop 98 revenues. The governor is proposing a higher cost of living adjustment. The statutory cola was increased to 2.87%. Um in January it was at 2.41%. So there was a a a minor modest increase. Um
however, the governor is further proposing to provide a what's we've been known over the last several years as a super cola that would make it into a 4.3 4.31% um cola. Um that would be for LCFF and also for all other categoricals with the
exception of the California state preschool program. Um the governor's office is ad uh proposing uh CSP the state preschool program gets a 2.01% 01% COLA to make it more consistent with the COLA that child care and other development providers uh receive. Um and this will be a point of advocacy that
you'll hear from me a little bit later. And then as I already mentioned um there's a significant increase to the uh Prop 98 reserve. Um it was nearly zeroed out last year. Um now because of the constitutional requirements uh for this rainy day fund, it has to be um
increased u by a significant amount. Um however the governor is proposing to provide an additional discretionary deposit is not a mandatory the 1.6 billion that is referenced here. So it's also a point of advocacy for us um that those revenues should be um put back
into uh schools now as opposed to into this deposit. what um some of the major changes um in the proposals compared to January to where we are now. Um the withholding that we had been advocating for um us and many others across the state. Um
there was a slight improvement in the reduction of that withholding um from 5.6 to 3.9 billion. Um there is still a concern that we have as already alluded by our acting superintendent that the money belongs to kids now and should not be um withheld. What the governor is
proposing is to uh even though he will not be in office past um December of this year as there'll be a new election a new governor um come know the November 2026 election uh he is proposing that based on uh spring 2027 revenues then at the time the new governor can um
appropriate the funds to schools uh next spring of 2027 uh should the money materialize um as part of the tax collection a year from now. uh discretionary blockant. He is also proposing to increase it. Um as you can see here um and I'll wait to talk about
our advocacy points um at a later slide. Community schools uh he is proposing to maintain the $1 billion ongoing appropriation from January. Um and there's an additional one-time reappropriation of uh money from community schools that um that was set aside for expansion grants that he wants
to rather um put them towards current schools and future community schools for them to apply and receive one-time money as they continue to build sustainability with the ongoing funding allocation. Um special education was a big um investment um that we are very pleased
to see and it was part of our advocacy um all along uh significantly as you can see increasing from the January proposal to where it is now at May Rivas of 2.4 billion. There's also new proposals that were not there in uh in January. Um the three main ones that you can see here is
literacy coaches which we have been recipients of the funding in the past um of a state one-time grant. uh also focusing around math um uh math uh teaching and professional development and then also uh one-time competitive grant of $30 million to augment the
McKinley Vento uh federal funds for homeless students. Um, and then there's a lot of other smaller pots of funding available for the teacher um, and administrator pipeline. Um, being able to continue to support teacher residency programs, administrator training programs um, and and a few other
categories, but they're much smaller in size. And for those, they're more competitive um, grants as opposed to an appropriation that we would be receiving. Um there are um some policy proposals, some that are new, some that are uh continue to be here from January. So
just for the the board's awareness and the public, um as you may have seen, the governor is um proposing to codify legislation uh AB65 that has been uh around uh tried for a number of years. Um in the budget proposal uh he is
proposing um up to 14 weeks that would be um available for all district employees uh for both um school districts and community colleges up to 14 weeks and it's for paid pregnancy leave um disability leave. uh the doctor
would have to sign off on the that um the number of time does not have to be the full 14 weeks. Um but it does require a doctor's note and it has to be specifically related to disability related um impacts from a a pregnancy, miscarriage um or other situations uh
for for a parent um prospective parent. Um the proposal includes besides the policy requirements um the super cola that I talked about in the prior slide the 4.31% um it is the intent that uh a portion of those increase funds would help offset
the cost of the of the uh paid uh disability leave. Um there's a lot of questions we have as we're reviewing the language about the implementation details as this would become effective on July 1st, 2026. Uh should the legislature agree um to keep it in the
final budget. Um and there's a good chance that that the proposal will remain in the final budget. The legislature has been supportive of the of this policy. Uh but the biggest barrier has been around the the cost of it, how to pay for it. Um and also impacts for substitute teachers and other staffing uh for students. Um the
governor continues to uh propose what was in January. Um this time adding some funding for the proposal to shift the respon many of the responsibilities from the state superintendent and department of education over to a newly created education commissioner. Um that would be
overseeing the department of education. Um and and again taking those responsibilities from the state superintendent. There's a legislative proposal uh trying to codify the governor's proposal. Um so again this is consistent with what we saw in January but this is providing some funding um to
make it clear that there would be two different office one for the state superintendent and one for the department of education that they will no longer be um overseen by the SPI teacher preparation there's quite a few again funding proposals but also on the policy side um there's a proposal that
would create a new um uh state um transcript review process uh to make it more easier for a teacher candidate to demonstrate their subject matter competency instead of them taking a a exam um which is costly and takes time for them to get through that process. Um
there's also a proposal to increase the uh fees for uh teacher candidates uh for their uh clear credential that they go back for renewal every five years. Currently they pay $100 every five years for the renewal uh in order to be able to uh offset the cost of um supporting
the trans transcript review. um it would be a fiveyear dollar per dollar fiveyear per um per year um increase for a total of $125 fee instead over the next five years. Uh there's a continued proposal, but this is refined from what it was in
January to change the definition of long-term English learners as you can see here to be a five years um instead of the current six years. And the whole uh premise about this proposal is trying to identify English learners much sooner rather than continuing to keep them um uh um not designated as an long-term e
um and therefore they're missing out on courses um to help as they get um into middle school and high school. Uh and then lastly, uh the other major proposals that continue to be here with some modifications are regarding the charter school oversight, um including chart non-cazerbased charter schools. Uh
verified data, it continues to be in the uh proposed trailer budget language. It would only be for two years, uh only through July 1st, 2028, not in permanent use. Um, and then there's also some modifications to the timeline for when some of those policy requirements would
go into effect uh to to July 1st, 2027 to allow charter authorizers, auditors, and others to um, of course, charter schools um, to um, get up to speed with the requirements and be in compliance by next year. um knowing that the board is interested
in uh given the resolution that the board adopted last week around creating a district um overseeing revenue generating task force to help inform our advocacy at the state and federal level. Uh this is a slide to just highlight some of the governor proposals we have
been advocating for um along with our labor partners uh since earlier this year um for looking at more revenues beyond what the state currently has. These are some proposals from the governor. um the first four uh five bullets uh four bullets um and we um are
uh supporting the the first two consistent with the goal um of the board again adopted last week with last week's border resolution. Um we included uh my my team and I a note about the uh proposed increase funding how much each of these tax proposals would result for the state. Um but again this still has
to be negotiated with the state legislature. Um and then the last one is uh one of the uh also revenue proposals from the Senate Democratic leadership that they had released in April. Um so this will also al also have to be negotiated over the coming uh week, four
weeks with the legislature and the governor. Um a few more slides and I'll turn over to someone to talk about what this all means for LUD and our our budget. Um I thought it would be important to talk about right now where the assembly and senate might be on the the governor's uh
budget. The Assembly Budget Committee started to meet this morning at 9:00 am. The subcommittee for education on the Senate side, um they will be meeting this afternoon. They have meetings tomorrow and Thursday. Um so we'll have a better sense in the coming days um any
any rejection uh support or or um approval of what the governor has in May revise. But based on what the assembly and senate uh democratic leadership released um in April, this is um just a quick um highlights of the specific references to education. Uh we
anticipate both the assembly and senate will reject um the at least in in in April they were rejecting the governor's proposal from uh from January. Now that it's only 3.9 billion, it's questionable whether they will continue to um to stand hard um with the education
community and and really push back on the governor's proposal or whether they will come up with a different alternative. Um, one recommendation that the LAO who advises the legislature um the legisl is that they deposit um any instead of withholding the funding that
they deposit the money into the state rainy day fund that it would be more prudent for the rainy day fund to be at um $10 billion or more. So we could see the legislature maybe going in that direction that that would be a a more prudent way to than withholding funding.
Um there's also a possibility that we that the legislature may continue to underscore the need for more additional onetime funding as the governor had in the May revise. Um and this will be all contingent on the revenue projections that they land on. The Senate does estimate that they that the state could
have higher revenues. However, the LAO is more consistent with the governor's uh revenue um projections for next year. So this will ultimately be the um the underlying uh data point that will help um the legislature and the governor uh come up with the architecture for the
state budget. What is the final dollar amount that they they believe will materialize in the next year and then that will come help inform um where they where they land on some of this revenue um and appropriations. And there's also a possibility that either the assembly and or senate as
referenced here um there's been already some uh reports about this um there's an interest possibly moving child care or uh state preschool funded slots for community based u organizations into Prop 98. um for over 10 years it's been
funded out of the general fund. But given that the general fund has a lot of cost pressure because of the uh HR1 and medical uh medic uh Medicare um cost onto the state for healthcare cost, the legislature might see more room on the Prop 98 side to um offset the cost of
preschool that our nonprofit providers um currently offer. Um so that would be I believe it's $180 million um that could be taken from general fund and instead put it into the Prop 98. So means reducing the general Prop 98 funds for schools.
Um key funding bills uh very quickly, these are bills all that we're supporting. Um these are all bills that are still contingent on budget appropriations. They're still alive. Um they're moving along. uh if there's no money for them in the May revise uh the discussion between now and the budget
adoption in June, then it's very likely that these bills will not get signed by the governor if they get to to his desk by September. Um but LCFF, this would be an increase to to the district's funding if it was to be signed into law. Uh 2526 about special education. Um we would
have uh over 7,000 kids with disabilities um that would be eligible for this increased funding under the the proposal. Um and then there are two bills that are part of the SEIU state cal SIU state council um co-sponsored
bill 1790 and 1349 that is um the Enri campaign that we are um supporting. So we're supporting these two bills as well and this would be aligned with my prior slide about other ways to think about generating more revenues for the state. Um before I turn it over to Simone um uh
and talking about what you all want to know which is uh the impacts of the district, I'll just underscore these will be some of our advocacy priorities leading up to the final budget adoption. Um we will continue to advocate for full funding of Prop 98 which means opposing the proposed withholding of $3.9
billion. Uh we support the proposed uh super cola um but again urging that at a minimum they provide um the statutory cola to the state preschool programs. Um we support the governor's $5 billion discretionary block grant. But a really really key important distinction in our
advocacy that for anyone watching this and our board and everyone who wants to support this effort or labor partners is we are urging that the allocation for that one-time money be given on a more equitable basis um instead on a per pupil basis. um given that we have significantly more um diverse student
population that we serve and also the fact that we are are disproportionately impacted by declining enrollment in the state compared to other school districts. Um so there's there's a a need for us to have additional onetime funding allocated a more equitable basis like LCFF. Um we support the governor's
u proposal for special ed um the community schools funding. Um this is one that the LAO is still recommending for the legislature to reject the ongoing proposal. Uh so we're not out of the woodworks. Um there's that ongoing funding has not been um confirmed because again the the LAO is advising
the legislature to make that into a one-time grant and put the onus on school districts to to figure out how to pay it in a more sustainable way. Um so we will continue to advocate for the ongoing appropriation. And then lastly, I already referenced some of the tax revenue proposals. Um for what's next,
we have a community legislative briefing tomorrow with our community based partners and urging them to help with their advocacy. We have uh we're updating um hopefully again we'll be available by tomorrow. Uh advocacy toolkit for our families and parents who wish to also help advocate primarily on
the withholding piece and on the onetime discretionary block grant. And then lastly, we are sending this afternoon a letter with our labor partners um to the legislature and the governor um with our shared priorities as listed here. Um with that, I'll turn it over to Son and
I'll be happy to answer questions later. Thank you and good morning. So here are updated estimates, preliminary estimates of the additional revenue from the May revis. additional
revenue specifically for LA Unified. And then at the at the very end, you'll see two columns and they indicate whether this revenue would be reflected in our official multi-year projection or instead whether it can and will be reflected in the district's fiscal
stabilization plan uh to be approved by the board in June. So, the first item is the COLA. Uh, as Martha mentioned, there is a super cola, which means the total amount year-over-year increase would be 4.31%.
And that is the fiscal impact of the COLA being higher in 2627. You do see a revenue amount in each fiscal year because a higher COLA in one year has an ongoing effect. It raises the baseline in an ongoing way. So that's why the
cola being 4.31% for 2627 has an approximately 12 $112 million benefit to the district every year thereafter including 2627 the discretionary block grant now the
statewide total being $5 billion you'll see that LUSD's estimated share of that $5 billion is $328 million you might remember that as of the January proposed budget The statewide total was $2.8
billion and instead the LUSD's share was estimated to be about $184 million. So this is a substantial increase in the discretionary block grant. You'll see $68 million is the estimated revenue from learning recover emergency block
grant. This is a one-time grant. This is unchanged from the January proposed budget. this allocation. Um, next is the special education base rate which is also an ongoing increase. This is a very substantial increase in
funding for special education. I should note that um what we're highlighting here are revenues that are for the most part general fund unrestricted. There are funds that can be used to address the fiscal challenges
we're facing within our unrestricted general fund. However, special education is a good example of while the revenues are restricted because the district and most districts spend substantially more
for special education services than the revenue we receive. and that therefore necessitates a very substantial contribution from the unrestricted general fund into the restricted general fund. When we receive additional special
education restricted revenues, it means that that contribution from unrestricted to restricted is much smaller. Of course, we continue to provide those important and necessary services for our students, but it does mean that the contribution from unrestricted to
restricted becomes smaller. So this is a very substantial increase estimated to be between$187 million to $190 million per year depending on the year. Next are home to school transportation ongoing and one time. You'll see those
last two rows. Um these also are unchanged from the January proposed budget. They are still proposed to be funded by the state. And there at the bottom you'll see those grand total. So $740 million estimated for 2627
about $321 million 2728 $322 million 2829. The reason why the 2627 number is so much larger is because of the significant one-time funds being al proposed to be allocated in 2627.
So the guidance from from LEO is is to in that we can include the cola in our official multi-year projection. Uh those other proposed revenues, they're not final yet, but uh they can instead be included in the required fiscal stabilization plan, which means that
they can be used to offset cuts that otherwise would have needed to have been identified in the fiscal stabilization plan. So the fiscal stabilization plan will of course as I mentioned consider these revenues. Um but as super as acting superintendent mentioned uh the
district will still need to identify very significant reductions in the budget for next year for 2728 and for 2829. So the next couple slides I'll provide some updated projections on our
general fund unassigned unappropriated ending balance balances. So first before going through those multi-year projections notable factors uh the projections are based on the current 2526 estimated actuals. What's estimated actuals refers to is just our updated
estimates for both revenues but primarily expenditures. So the last time we updated these projections was at second interim in March. uh we then update them again with additional information on expenditures and revenues to have a more accurate look at what we expect this year's ending balances to
be. And then of course those assumptions impact the additional years beyond 2526. Also importantly, what are included are the estimated cost of the collective bargaining agreements for UTLA, SEIU and ALA teamsters as well as the projected
cost of uh corresponding agreements for CSCA teamsters, LASPA and LASPMA. So those costs, those estimated costs, not just in the short term, but all the way through 2829 are reflected in the preliminary
multi-year projection as we are required to. So first you'll see that um there's the sequence as we typically try to show is how these projected negative balances or ending balances change over time. In blue you'll see where we were projecting
as a first interim. in green where we were projecting as of second interim and then finally in orange what the preliminary multi-year projection uh for the June adopted budget which will be coming before the board in June. So again in summary what is included here
are the estimated cost of all of those labor agreements. This does include the over $300 million cumulatively from the higher cost of living adjustment that higher cola but it does not include the other proposed
revenues. I will show on the next slide what impact those additional revenues have. So this is just the multi-year projection for our ending balances for general fund unrestricted. And we've talked about this a lot in the past. The reason why we focus so heavily
on general fund unrestricted is because it's the best indicator of a district's financial health. Uh they're the funds that can be used for any educational purpose. Uh they're the the balances that that the county and the state look most closely at. And so that is why we
discuss uh them so often. I should note that the labor agreements also have cost against other funds. They have cost of course against general fund restricted and there are cost also against all of our other operating funds. Those
operating funds importantly include adult education, our cafeteria fund and our our early child development fund, our child development fund. And so it's going to be important in the coming weeks and months that we also pay very close attention to projected balances in
those other funds as they uh absorb the higher costs of of these labor agreements. So over the last several months, we have shown kind of updated versions of of this multi-year projection showing at
different points in time the impact of certain offers that had been made at those points in time. Now that we have tenative agreements for for nearly all of our labor partners, uh we can show kind of the full impact of the costs
that ultimately uh resulted in those tenative agreements. So right now in orange we are projecting in though we are including those revenues from the cola a negative projected ending balance by the end of
the 2829 school of uh almost $3.6 billion. The reason why it's substantially higher than where we were at first and second interim is of course the the the tenative agreements and the associated costs.
The second interim and first interim projections already include the savings from the first fiscal stabilization plan. The fiscal stabilization plan that was approved by the board last June and that was begun to be implemented for the
2627 school year. those savings, not just for 2627, but the plan savings in additional years are already fully reflected in all of the balances that you see here. And so what the district is required to do in June is
identify additional reductions, and we're going to include those proposed revenues, but additional strategies and solutions through 2829 that address that projected negative $3.6 $6 billion ending balance.
The um those cost-saving measures for the district uh are going to be necessary also for the district to be able to certify as part of the collective bargaining agreements that we can u meet those commitments. We can cover the cost of the agreements uh that
are being approved later in June. So, as I mentioned before, there were several proposed revenues. Everything but the colas, those higher colas, everything but those colas are not included in the multi-year projection, but they are included here in the final lighter blue series of bar graphs. And
so you'll see that they do make a very material difference in our ending balances. Going from left to right, starting in the 2728 school year, you'll see that the official preliminary multi-year projection has us negative uh projected to be negative $1.35 billion.
With those additional proposed revenues, we would instead be negative by about half a billion dollars. And then looking at the 2829 school year, it takes us from a projected negative $3.6 billion in that preliminary multi-year projection to -2.5
billion in by the end of the 2829 school year. So those revenues are are very material. They're very welcome u and they're extremely helpful in addressing the fiscal challenges that we're facing. But even with those additional proposed
revenues, we are facing a very significant negative projected ending balance by the end of the 2829 school year's school year. Those revenues are not sufficient to prevent the district from needing to make very substantial
reductions starting as early as the 2627 school year and beyond. And you'll probably note that the fiscal stabilization plan, which again is going to be $3.6 billion, but will include those proposed
revenues, is very substantially larger than the fiscal stabilization plan that was approved by the board last June. The last fiscal stabilization plan was approved by the board was $1.6 billion. The latest update at second interim had
those savings cumulatively at a little bit over $1.3 billion. So just in terms of order of magnitude, this is very substantially larger. Uh and the cuts that will need to be identified uh are going to need to be
much much larger. So next steps kind of you'll see in that bar uh the that that rectangle what's coming up is uh we have the May revised presentation today. Uh we are tenatively scheduled to come back to the board on
Thursday. Two very important items on Thursday's agenda. Uh first is a uh presentation on the draft fiscal stabilization plan that will outline the reductions through 28-29 to address that substantial projected negative ending
balance as well as the final board action on the reduction in force process that began back in February. Then in June, two really important board meetings. 1st, June 16th, there's the budget and LCAP hearing as well as board
action on that fiscal stabilization plan as well as the bargaining agreements. And then finally on June 23rd, board action on the budget for next year and the LCAP for next year. >> Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. Um so now we'll open it up open the floor for any questions from my colleagues >> Carla and Kelly >> and then we do have um board member Grego and board member Gonz who would like to start miss okay Miss
Franklin sure just a couple quick ones for me um thanks for some good news from the state but also the sobering reality that we're dealing with here I guess my questions are mostly about slide 13 um even if we get the best case scenario from the governor's uh budget, we still
have to make um really hard cuts in the coming years. So, I wanted to ask um when is the retropay going into effect for all the collecting bargaining agreements that we just landed? >> When will the expenditures be recognized?
>> So, retropay for 2425 and 2526 are both going to be reflected as expenditures in the 2526 school year. Okay. Where we're still above the line uh in the blue, the the best case
scenario on the far right. Um okay, great. And then I don't I don't know if the team is ready to talk about this yet, but on Thursday we expect to vote on the final riffs that we preliminary voted on in February. At that time it was 650 or so. Um do we have an updated
number or when will we? So the board action on Thursday is the last step in the process that was initiated in February and so is the final board action in order to complete the implementation of those. And so the total numbers of positions that were
closed as well as had changes in basis and hours in the authorization on Thursday will be the same as February. So the numbers in the resolution are going to be the same >> even though uh with SEIU we agreed um to
drop 200 or so of those layoffs. >> Yeah. So that tenative agreement is being voted on on June 16th. And so that board action would then authorize that that change to those positions. >> Okay. So this is another good timing
question for the budget. in June, we'll be getting all of the collective bargaining agreements with the AB1200s that will say how much they will cost us. Is that reflected in what we're seeing today on slide 13? >> Yes. >> Okay. Um and so that's why you're saying the FSP will still be $3 something
billion dollars. Um that will be voted on on Thursday as well or >> That's right. >> previewed on or sorry >> previewed on Thursday, voted on on June 16th. I should also note um these projections assume that the
reduction in force that was initiated in February is does receive the final authorization on Thursday. To the extent that those that final authorization is not approved, then the costs associated
with restoring the positions would need to be added to our multi-year projection as well as additional savings identified in the fiscal stabilization plan beyond what I what is being shown here that negative3.581
billion. >> Okay? because the savings would be reflected over each of the following years. If if it goes through and if it doesn't go through then we have to make adjustments to be able to realize those savings in future years. >> We we would exactly so if the if the
authorization is not approved then the district would have to continue to employ the impacted employees. The cost associated with that would need to be added to our projected cost here. they would lower our projected negative ending balance by a corresponding amount
and then we'd have to identify additional reductions in the fiscal stabilization plan by that same corresponding amount. >> That makes sense. Um, one last question and I'll turn it back to my colleagues on the timing. Um, you know, something we hear a lot from families is the role
of the LCAP engagement or advisory groups, the CAC, the PAC, the DAC. Um, and we normally get a presentation from them at some point. When is that happening and how are we lining up the LCAP with um you know the budget approval over the next few weeks?
>> I'll confirm. >> Okay. So the LCAP will come in June that we'll have a initial reading and then a final reading with the strategic plan in the budget. Um and then in terms of the the this is the final year of the three-year LCAP. So, it's using the
budget that we have projected in the current budget. For the next three years is when we'll do a lot more um rejiggering of the LCAP, but that's going to come in June to the board. >> Okay? Because you know, sometimes the the the various committees will come and present and sometimes we're able to take their committees comments into account
and other times we've had some disagreements about the timing of things. So, just wondering >> my my expectation I believe is that the committees will present on June 12th. Um and they will be providing that space. I believe it's 30 minutes per committee that will be presenting on their
comments and feedback on the LCAP. >> Okay, great. Thank you. >> I should also note that the fiscal stabilization plan, the new fiscal stabilization plan, while there will be some identified strategies including some of those proposed revenues for 2627 largely, it's going to identify
reductions in 2728 and 2829. whereas the LCAP and budgets that are being presented and then voted on in June are for the 26 27 school year. And so um there is a lot of work to do moving forward as we implement this new
FSP and the potential impacts that would have on the LCAP. Uh but again the the this new FSP is largely going to be identifying reductions beyond 26 27. >> Thank you. Who would like Yes, Mr. So, uh, this year I believe we're moving
almost $2 billion of, uh, general fund to special ed to make up the difference of, uh, keeping our special ed programs working as they are. So, next year, uh, the governor is proposing 2.4 billion in
increased special ed funding. So any idea how much we're going to have to spend out of pocket for gen ed to uh make it work? >> So the the expected revenues from the higher base rate and this is again just the increase not the total. The increase
that LUSD is estimated to receive in those special education funds is about 187 to $190 million per year of additional revenues from the state for special education. So put another way that is by how much smaller the
contribution from unrestricted to restricted would be again by about right now our estimates are 187 to $190 million. Now these are this this proposed budget was just released last Thursday. Of course there's always additional information provided by the state. A lot more detail that will allow
us to refine these estimates but we did want to provide some early estimates as as quickly as possible. Uh today I think the next one I have maybe for Martha and it's about home to school transportation ongoing um
19 uh uh million and there's also one-time home to school transportation for 26 million. Why are they given at the same time? >> What were you supposed to do with the $26 million? They they are just and
someone can clarify from his understanding, but they're just um they are just helping us uh with a higher reimbursement. Uh so we get reimbursed by the state up to 60% of our cost for for home school transportation. They're just increasing the reimbursement amount. um the one-time dollars, I don't
recall the rational from the state as to why they were putting more money, but I think it had to do, my recollection is it had to do with um higher cost um of of operating homes program than uh what they they anticipated at the state level. Um but
anything else you want to add, Simone? Yeah, just kind of uh uh expanding a little bit because they are reimbursements. The revenues are unrestricted and so they can be used for any educational purpose. They just are called home to school transportation because what triggers the reimbursement
is the spending that we do for transportation. >> Okay, got that. My last question is has the LAO released their projections or the statement regarding the governor's uh budget? >> What what did they say? Yes. Uh thank you for the question. They actually uh
released it yesterday afternoon. Uh the overall um uh governor's budget may revise uh analysis and then this morning the prop 98 specific um uh proposals um big picture um and I appreciate the question. I feel like I almost whispered in the year. Please ask me this
question. No, you didn't whisper. >> I did not whisper. I'm over here but you read my mind. Um I because I did want to make a comment about the LAOO. Um so they indicate that the revenue estimates are consistent with the current econom uh economic um performance. However,
they also note that the risk remains for the volatility of the stock market and that it because it might be overvalued especially on the um AI technologies. um if um those revenues did not materialize because there was a downturn in the in the uh stock market then it could be
tens of billions of dollars that the state would be facing in a new deficit. Um, so they are more cautious. Um, and that's why they continue to underscore that instead of giving schools a 3.9 billion that the governor wants to withhold, they should put it back into the Prop 98 reserve to um, enhance the
the state re uh, rainy day fund. So it would mitigate future cut to schools in future years because we would have a cushion for any reduction in in the state budget. Um the other piece they also advise the legislature that if they um and other ways to uh appropriate the
$3.9 billion or if there's more revenues from the as the Senate proposes that perhaps they um they uh do a reversal of a deferral by paying districts a month earlier. So typically the fiscal year begins always begins July 1, but in
order for the state to score it as part of the current 2526 budget, they would give us an advanced payment in June. For us locally, the money doesn't really mounting purpose. It helps them um score it as Prop 98 money in the current fiscal year. So it's more of a um the state
accounting mechanism and and how that works out. Um and they've never done this advanced payment. They do deferrals where they pay us late um by a month late. But um this would be a new new mechanism. They also advise um the legislature uh should they be uh
interested in using one-time money um to help districts offset the pension contribution cost. Um the district LA Unified is paying now close to 28 29% I think for Kalpers and then for um uh certificated through Kalpers we pay
19.1% of an employes salary into the pension system. So the um LAO may be recommending that the legislature could um put onetime money to help offset our cost um so it frees up more of our general fund. Um and lastly in this um
um interest about not just the LAO, the governor has also underscored his interest in not leaving the next governor uh with the deficit. So his commitment is to um have a balanced budget. So that will all be uh considered as part of the negotiations between the governor and leadership in the assembly and senate over the next
four weeks. >> Thank you. I will remain optimistic. Thank you. Thank you. That's it, Rosio. Thank you. >> Anyone else? Mr. Move. >> Thank you. Thank you both. Um, thanks to my colleagues for their questions. Um,
what proposals in the May revise are not incorporated in the presentation. >> So, we don't yet know the full impact of the cost of the 14 week leave. Um, those costs will of course ultimately need to
be reflected in our multi-year projection, the financial cost of it. Um, and then there's >> based on our negotiate on our recent negotiation because the state I thought the state 14week leave is just like we we're giving you the super cola, use that for your paid leave,
>> right? So, we're reflecting the revenue from the super cola, but there's also going to be a cost associated with it. It's not going to be the full >> I guess my question is what's what shouldn't we have already baked in the cost based on our recent round of negotiations and the paid leave? Well,
there's a lot of details that we're still waiting for clarification on. Um, >> it's my understanding. Um, just a few examples how the local CBA differs from the state proposal. Uh, one, the local proposal was four weeks and it was only
for certificated employees. Uh, whereas the state proposals for all employees. Um the state proposal is for disability pregnancy leave whereas management or local CBA for certificate employ or teachers was um I do believe for more family bonding and maybe other more more
um uh broader or generous proposal in the state. The state is only for disability pregnancy disability and that disability is really underscoring from the department of finance. Um and then the other major change between the state proposal and the RCBA is 14 weeks versus
four weeks. So, so they're quite different. >> Okay. So, we have to work that one out. >> Additionally, there are several restricted the relatively smaller restricted grants for uh very specific uses that since they won't benefit the
unassigned ending balances. They won't help address the financial challenges we're facing specifically in in our unassigned ending balances that are not included in this in this graph in this table, excuse me. Do we know Martha anything more about these reading and
literacy coaches? Like how much we'd be getting of this funding and also I assume it's one time but like these are you know unless we're uh hiring you know contracting services these would be ongoing costs I assume.
>> So um I'll differentiate them and I want to acknowledge my team in Sacramento for helping with this details. So, there are um I'll mention the ones here, the leaders coach that you see here, the biggest bulk of the one-time money, it would be given on every school district. Um, but we don't there's no way for us
to be able to calculate because there's no per employee amount or per student amount. It just subject to the overall state numbers and then they they have to see, you know, how many students are per each LEA. Um, so we don't have that number of details to be able to do the calculation ourselves internally. Um, so
that is uh going out to all LEAs. um the Golden State teacher uh program that also appears to be non-competitive. Um so we might be able to get a portion of that, but again um there's no way for us to calculate the dollar amount. The there's um also um kitchen
infrastructure training grants that I don't think we included here that may also be in the budget about $100 million that's non-competitive. Um, the math professional one is also non-competitive, $60 million, but a a portion of that money is going to current county office of vet for them to
help administer the PD. Um, so again, we may not see the money for someone else to do the training of the training model. Um, and then there's, for example, even a Holocaust and genocide education grant program that is 10 million one time that is also non-competitive, but there's no not may not mean a dollar for us, but we just
get resources um from that program. Uh and then there's about four uh competitive programs that I don't think we included here. Um and through the grants office that I help oversee, uh we would be uh looking to apply for them if they mean they stay in the final budget. Um there's $30 million for state teacher
residency technical assistance program there. Um and the homelessness $30 million competitive grant program. There's an additional $11 million for literacy coaches and reading specialist educator training program. Um and then uh there's a small portion for just county office of education to apply for
>> and all the things you just listed some those aren't projected in the end those aren't incorporated into projections because we don't know yet. So like for the 40 four9 million it could be we get about 43 million but we so that's none of that is incorporated.
>> No it is a restricted grant and so uh it has to be used for literacy coaches and reading specialists. There's a little bit more to it than that, but um I should note that while always following the eligibility rules for restricted grants, we always
seek to use it to fund and maintain pro important existing programs that are benefiting students. So, we'll always explore that option first. Um but given its restricted nature, it is not something that for example we would include in our fiscal stabilization plan
because it cannot be used to cover the cost of uh our our labor agreements. >> And if I may just another point of context um just to underscore um the legislature still has to negotiate as you all know with the governor. Uh, one example that the at least the Latino
legislative caucus have indicated of interest of one-time money or ongoing funds is for the ethnic studies mandate that has not gone into effect. We have a local graduation requirement mandate, but the state's mandate has not gone into effect because it's not has not been funded. And so, as I understand that Latino caucus still wants to get
this done this year. So, it could be the case that there will be negotiations to reappropriate some of this one-time or ongoing funding for other legislative priorities. Um I mentioned before and the LEO is recommending that they use onetime money to offset the pension obligation for school districts. So we
may not get money for literacy coaches because they want to reappropriate it for some other purpose. So the color of the money might look different for the purpose of of what it would look and also the final dollar amount >> on. Thank you. That's helpful. And
obviously more to explore on slide um on slide 11. What is not so that's kind of on the not incorporated in the revenue side. What's not included in the labor cost? I mean I know we don't have district represented here. Are there any other metos or like what's what's not
included >> to the extent that we don't have tenative agreements or final resolution of certain um labor costs. We are assigning those funds so that we are setting them aside knowing that those funds are those expenses are almost certainly to happen and so they are
included in the multi-year projection. >> The um district represented and all. >> Yeah. So the like the details may end up changing slightly. These are estimates at this point in time but we are trying to reflect the full cost of increased labor costs moving forward. And then for
slides 12 and 13, it's showing general fund uh unrestricted unassigned. Can you just share what the balances look like for the entire budget? >> Uh we don't have updated uh estimates for every operating fund at this time, but there will be an impact uh on the
costs and expenditures in those multi-year projections for the other operating funds. But we we are >> and will we have that in coming weeks as we're getting ready to adopt the budget? >> Yeah, they'll be part of the uh the June adopted budget. And then I know Mr. Ortiz Franklin was asking similar questions, but can you remind us what
actions from this year's FSP that were already approved um are assumed in the balances on these two slides 12 and 13? Uh sure. So the strategies that were implemented for the 2627 school year were the substantial
reductions to central office budgets. Uh that of course was uh what was included in the RIFF authorization the board approved back in February were those reductions to central office positions. It also included an update to the carryover policy for SENI uh student
equity needs index and the general fund school program. Uh those programs no longer carry over. The impact the financial impact of that was implemented and is reflected already here. The reduction of SENI in the 2627 school year from $700 million to $61 million is
already reflected here. And the previous FSP also assumed that Senny would then go down further to $500 million in the 2728 school year. That is already reflected here. There were another there
were a number of other uh strategies uh you know using releasing assigned balances um school consolidation and the potential savings from those starting in the 2728 school year were in that updated FSP and second interim um but
the big ones were the ones that I mentioned that that largely were implemented but it's important to note that there were also assumptions about additional reductions that were happening in the 2728 school year that were part of that previous FSP which are already assumed here. That's why what we
show you on Thursday with the new FSP, all of the reductions identified in that new FSP are above and beyond what was in the last FSP. So every reduction on Thursday in the kind of first uh presentation on the new fiscal
stabilization plan are above and beyond what was already assumed in the last fiscal stabilization plan. And what contributions to OPED are included in the projections? >> So currently the OPED contributions are all funds kind of in total estimated to
be about $143 million per year. I say all funds because not all of the contribution comes from even though the vast majority comes from general fund unrestricted not all of it does. And then my last question is just because we heard a lot you know in in prior months about the $5 billion reserve $5 billion
reserve. Can you just update us on where that stands as of now or where it will stand when we adopt the budget in a few weeks? >> Yeah, we'll have more updates as we continue to refine the all of the estimates beyond general fund unrestricted. We wanted to give you a first look right after the May revise
was released last Thursday. Um, but of course these higher costs are going to impact all of the other funds and the $5 billion was principally general fund unrestricted restricted and fund 17. I should note that fund 17 was already released as part of a board action at
first interim. Um those funds are no longer going to be available. It was about $500 million. Um and so while I don't have the the exact figures of the corresponding balances comparing that $5 billion to today, I think you can see here just in the unassigned ending balances alone uh that we are projected
to be negative almost $3.6 billion by the end of the 2829 school year. So put another way, the reserves that we had at that time, those were at the end of last year. Last year we had an operating deficit. We spent more than we brought in. That $5 billion was higher the year
before. We were already before these labor agreements projected to continue to spend more than we brought in. The fiscal stabilization plan from last June made us a significant dent into that. Meaning it didn't eliminate our operating deficit. It didn't eliminate
the fact that we were spending more than we were bringing in, but it made that deficit smaller, which meant our reserves were still going to be depleted, but a little bit more slowly. Now, obviously, as we're taking on significant additional labor costs, even
with the proposed revenues from the May revise, that operating deficit is moving in the other direction. We are spending substantially projected to spend substantially more than we bring in. And those reserves are projected to not only be depleted by the end of the 2829
school year, but actually by the end of the 2728 school year or the second year of our new multi-year projection. In June, we're required to add the 2829 school year. So the fiscal stabilization plan has to address more than just the
projected negative balance in 2829. It has to address the projected negative ending balance in 2728 which means that we will have to identify cuts before 2829. We cannot wait until 2829 to make the necessary
reductions. >> And I guess I said that was my last question. My actual last question is, you know, I know that we you're you're fixally prudent when it comes to our predictions and stuff that's not in hand, but given the last few years, what is our slightly more generous assumption
of a discretionary block grant? Like I know it's 300 something 20 million this year and then 0, but like that has been a historical practice at least recently. So what do we have the average of the last few years or is there any way to predict? No, I wouldn't I wouldn't
predict nor would I include those revenues beyond what's been proposed in the May revise. It is true that we have received substantial onetime grants over the last many years. The state economy has been performing very well over the
last many years. Even during the pandemic, the economy was running really hot. And so that resulted in the Prop 98 guarantee being really high. the Prop 98 guarantee, they were able, the state was able to fund the CO the statutory COLA, which is done by some formula. You know, it takes into account inflation, all
these different measures. And there were still additional guaranteed funds in Prop 98 to go beyond funding the COLA and existing programs. And so what the state did is they provided a lot of one-time grants. It is not guaranteed that the state economy will continue to
perform as it has in the past. The Prop 98 guarantee in the future, we don't know what it'll be. It might be only sufficient to fund existing funds, existing programs plus the cola. It might not. It might fund zero one-time funds. It might fund a much smaller
amount of one-time funds. I don't believe that we can assume or expect that we're going to continue to get the same level of funding from the state because the risks to the economy are very real. Tariffs are continuing to have a drag on the economy. The national
and especially the state economy is being boedued by technology growth. Growth in artificial intelligence that companies many many of which are based in California that is not guaranteed to continue.
The wars in the Middle East, the shock that is is happening in the oil markets which may not be fully realized in the price of oil and other commodities could also have a very negative substantial impact on our our economy. And our state revenues in California
rely very heavily on income taxes and sales taxes and capital gains taxes. Other states are able to rely much more heavily on property taxes. A lot more stable. Education funding goes as the state economy goes and it's very volatile because of our reliance on
those types of taxes. >> Just but how many of the prior years have we had discuss discretionary block grants? specifically the discretionary block grant. I I'd have to check. I think it's been at least the last couple years. We received some this year. I believe we received some the prior year.
In years before that, we received similar grants that had different names. There was the arts, music, instructional material block grant. I think it was about 200 million plus. We've received learning recovery emergency block grants. And several times those are restricted, but there is some discretion on using it for things that we're
already investing funds in. So, I don't have the average off the top of my head, but um but we have again been receiving substantial onetime grants, but they're not guaranteed to be allocated in the future. >> Understood. Thank you. >> Do you mind if I go with Miss Gonz and
I'll go to you and then uh Miss Gregel. Go ahead, Miss Gonz. >> Thank you so much. um appreciate the presentation and um obviously it's it's positive to hear that there's more revenue for education um in the May revise and definitely appreciate the
progress and and our collective efforts with labor to push for the funding that we know that our schools uh need and deserve. Um a few of us I think already touched on the continued costs and increased costs that we're facing including due to recently approved or
recently agreed to um labor agreements. I wonder if there's anything more you can share about what's driving our continued deficits and and leading to the extremely large gap that we're seeing um in 2728 and 2829. And I mentioned it because you know I was a
part of the delegation to Sacramento and this was actually a question that we got from legislators was you know uh LCFF um Prop 98 funding has been going up every year. Why is LA Unified facing a challenge in terms of its of its cost
and balancing its budget? Why is there a need for increased investments? So, anything you can share on that would be helpful. >> Yes. So, one long-term trend that LA Unified and many districts have been facing is of course declining enrollment. So we have had declining
enrollment for over two decades and our funding the virtually all of our funding is provided based on the number of students that we serve. And so that impacts of course the local control funding formula LCFF but it really affects virtually every source of revenue that we receive. So that has a
very profound effect on the district's finances. our declining enrollment. Uh all of our co our costs don't go down commensurate with our enrollment decline. There are certain fixed costs that we have. An example would be, you know, based on the
number of schools we have. We have the same number of of administrators. We have the same amount of buildings that we're paying utilities on and property insurance on. And so there are a lot of costs that are somewhat fixed that don't go down as our enrollment goes down. So that's one big big impact. Another more
recent impact that we've talked a lot about in over the last couple years is the expiration of those very significant COVID relief funds. The biggest being esser received like $5.6 billion of COVID relief funds. They were used to
safely reopen our schools to invest in strategies to mitigate the learning loss suffered by our students, the social emotional well-being of our students. and many of those programs and investments continue even though the funding has been fully spent. So that's
another huge impact that is affecting not just LA Unified but others. But additionally, we've had substantial increase in in other costs. Our utility costs have gone up even though we've had a lot of important strategies to to mitigate those costs like greening projects.
um the cost of insurance, the cost of certain legal settlements have gone up very substantially because of changes in state law. So there are a lot of different costs that have gone substantially up. >> That's helpful. And then oh sorry to cut you off and then and then no and then
and then of course our our labor costs. We we have had um substantial increases investments in our valued employees, investments in in their compensation as well as investments in in resources for our students and schools.
So the recent agreements uh included very important investments in psychiatric social workers, in community representatives representatives, in school psychiatrists, uh psychologists, excuse me, uh and and many other
examples. And so these programs and investments are very important for serving our students, but but they do have a very substantial impact on on the district's finances. >> Thank you for walking through all of that. Um, I was just going to follow up on the enrollment decline because we
know that that is a trend that has accelerated in recent years and that there is a it's very top of mind because there was an an ICE enforcement activity in right by one of my elementary schools this morning. And we know that that is accelerating the trend of enrollment
decline, necessitating both additional services, but also meaning that we're we're not getting the type of revenue that we would have otherwise received because families are afraid and they're staying home or they're leaving our communities because they don't feel safe here. Could you speak at all Simon as or
Mr. Bravo Karimi, excuse me, um about the ways in which enrollment decline has has accelerated within the past year since the rates have begun? So, we did see a larger decline in enrollment from last year into this year than we were previously anticipating and it's largely
because of the the impacts that you described. Um, we we have seen an over 3% decline in enrollment whereas in the past we might have been more two two and a half%. Um, historically obviously there are certain outlier outlier years
during the pandemic where we had very substantial declines and then a some somewhat rebound. Um but because of that recent year decline in enrollment we are projecting moving forward based on uh how enrollment declined from last year into this year. So very
>> and that has an impact not just on this fiscal year but the out the outy years as well. It has a continued effect. >> That's exactly right. So because of the increased or accelerated decline in enrollment we experienced this year for the reasons you said um it has an impact
on revenue for the future and that's kind of how the local control funding formula the biggest source of our revenue works is we're funded based on the average of the prior three years ADA average daily attendance you know the the attendance and the enrollment and so it's going to have a very lasting impact
on our revenue now while it's already reflected in the multi-year projection it does mean a loss of revenue that we would have otherwise received. >> And as I articulated with our our legislators in Sacramento and we'll continue to do so, what it means is that the communities that are being hardest
hit by ICE right now are the ones that are suffering uh a punishment due to not having the right >> if if I may add to that point and I appreciate your question tying connecting to man's comments about our our reality and our advocacy. Um that that's one of the reasons why we are
asking the legislature to and the governor uh to agree to release the one-time discretionary block grant on a more equitable basis. Uh specifically for uh declining enrollment, there's really three important data points. Uh L USD score to 4.5 uh% um in declining
enrollment when we take out the uh charter school declining enrollment. So it doesn't uh mask the the true declining enrollment in our uh students that we serve. um uh countywide LA is 2.6% and state of California average is 1.4%.
So LA Unified is more than three times um declining compared to the state average of 1.4%. So this is one of our rationale for urging the legislature to not give the onetime money on a per student basis because some of our districts are impacted more disproportionately than others and that would more equitable for us to get more
um chair of the pie to allow us to have a gradual um hold harmless uh to make up for those loss of of students that we don't have no longer serve. Um and specifically I think of the 74,000 declining enrollment total statewide LA unified had close to 22 23%. uh count
the county of LA was more around uh 44% of the statewide declining enrollment. So we are our communities these numbers speak to that uh reality that you're referring to and that will help inform our advocacy and our messaging to legislators. >> Thank you. Um and we know continued advocacy is essential. It's something
I'm continuing with legislators in my district um you know this week with labor partners. I wonder about opportunities to include our parents and students because they will be directly impacted by reductions that we have to make here locally in order to balance our budget in order to account for these
structural challenges um that are impacting our ability to continue services for students and families. Um have we thought about or are we thinking about ways to include student and family voices as part of this advocacy campaign? >> Thank you for the question. Um so happy
to look more into it. Uh what I'll say two pieces. One, I mentioned that we do have advocate toolkits that we will be updating and both in English and Spanish. Uh the English version is ready. We're just waiting for the Spanish translation. Uh but those should be available for you all to help disseminate to your families uh through
newsletters or other means that you communicate with families. Uh we will also be doing it through the district's um uh SFACE office and other means. Uh the district's newsletter, the family the new family newsletter. Um the meetings that we have um that are uh coming up with elected officials, some
of them are 15, 20, 30 minutes long. Um and they will be pretty um like justifying the piece about the methodology, the 3.9 billion. Um the meetings uh we have already um board members and leadership, district leadership, labor partners have been
invited. Um we'll explore the possibility of inviting um parent or students. They are meetings during the student hours when students are in class um not after hours. So we would want to be mindful about any impacts to students. Um but I'll look into it further um just knowing that there's um
you know uh a lot of people that will be part of those conversations and only limited amount of time with with discussions with the legislators. >> Absolutely. And maybe there's other ways you know our students are active um in in other ways. You know they could do videos they could send them to
legislators etc. I think that the voices of our community really need to be heard in terms of what will the material impacts of this be um at our schools locally. Um two questions um more mathematical questions. Um I was wondering if we have a sense of the
dollar equivalent of if the 3.9 billion that's currently being withheld were to be released, what what does that mean in terms of a gain for LUSD? >> Just very very back of the envelope. Um, if the 3.9 billion were to be released
in full to K12 education, I need to kind of qualify this to K12 education in the form of a discretionary block grant and it was allocated the same way as the proposed $5 billion. It would be over $200 million for LUSD.
U maybe even close to $250 million, but that's a very rough estimate of of what the impact would be under those assumptions. the full release of it fully discretionary and allocated in the same way as the $5 billion. >> And just to clarify that 3.9 billion is
also for community colleges. Community colleges get about 11% share of the Prop 98, >> right? Okay. Does that affect the figure that you provided? >> Well, that's why I kind of said between 200 and 250 at the >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. And then what
about if uh the California State Preschool program had the 2.8% 2.87% 87% cola instead of the 2.01%. >> I'm I'm not sure. I'd have to follow up. I We can certainly provide >> that.
>> Yeah, that would be great if you wouldn't mind. Um and then uh on the special education funding, I I'm obviously really excited. I think that this is a huge need um for us in LUSD and it's great to see um the governor responding to I think some of the advocacy um that we have led on as well
as other school districts. Um, are there any other ways that we might um maximize the positive impacts of this additional special education investment um for our students here in LUSD? Does it address in any way the disproportionate needs of
our students with moderate to severe disabilities um who we know we have a larger population of here in LUSD than other comparable school districts? Is your question about expanding programs >> or like is there more that we could do
to get maybe even more funding through the special education proposal and then does it in any way address the um the uniquely higher needs of students with moderate to severe disabilities which has been one of our advocacy points is around we we serve a very large
population of students with moderate to severe disabilities. >> So I I'll tee it up with the team as sort of a two-part question. you know what we're doing or what we could potentially do more of and then speak to the advocacy piece and if there's additional dollars that can be brought into the system. The the fact of the
matter is that we are already fully committed to meeting the needs of our students with IEPs. And so on a daily basis via obviously decisions made by IEP teams. We already fully implement students IEPs. We already meet the needs of the learners so that they can engage
in the least restrictive environment possible. What these new dollars do is create an offset to those dollars that come out of general fund to meet those needs. We will never abandon that commitment. That is something that is a northstar if I can say really for all of us here in the board and and myself of
course. So it's really just again about offsetting that general fund impact specific to advocacy for additional dollars because board member Gomez obviously your point is very well taken. These dollars are frankly necessary and we need more of them. Uh I'll now defer to Martha and Simon around that piece.
>> Sure. Thank you for that question. So um in one of the slides I included um the Mercuchi bill. Uh let's see if I can go back here. Uh which we are supporting AB2526. Um this bill would do um address more of the macho severe population that we're
talking about. Um we have an estimate that it would be about 7,800 LA Unified students um that currently take the CAA that for an alternative assessment for kids with disabilities. Um it's only can only be up to 1% of kids in California. So it's significantly um kids with
significant mod to severe um disabilities. um because of of this proposal, we could have around 1,700 students more getting additional funding through the low incidence funding formula that right now is very limiting in how they reimburse this this population of higher needs. Um this bill
is contingent on a budget appropriation. So that's why I mentioned beforehand that these bills if they get to the governor, he will not sign them if they're not part of the budget. Um so we are continuing our messaging point or our advocacy letters uh continuing to underscore that we are appreciate the 2.4 4 billion investment in special ed.
Um but as as already noted by Son previously and our acting superintendent um the $2.4 billion statewide investment for special ed um that is only for the base rate for special reimbursement. It does not differentiate the allocation based on disability or need type. Um so
so quite frankly um I I don't foresee that there will be room in negotiations with the legislature and the governor in the next four weeks to redirect more money for Mont to severe. This would be at the top of the list for priorities for the new administration for the next governor in 2027 of what what was left
that um did not get to get resolved in the in the current budget situation. >> Okay. Thank you. And apologies if my question was confusingly worded. I didn't mean of course we provide all of the required services for students with disabilities as they are as we are
required to do by federal law. I meant for the proposal if there were ways that we could advocate for it to more directly respond to the unique needs that we see um with our students and families here in LUSD. Um I'll ask just one more question around the the impacts
of the potential of child care being included in Prop 98. Um it it looks like from the slide that child care is a top priority for um the Senate and the Assembly. Um and and obviously that's a big need for our families as well. So,
you know, I recognize the critical importance of that. Um if you can speak to any unintended consequences that that might have or are there other ways to address those child care needs that we could help encourage the legislature to take a look at? Well, unfortunately, um
the the real impact to the on the nonch child care side on the TK through 12 um and community college side, uh it would be less money for those priorities um because the PAIA Prop 98 is only so big. Um, so with the money that we're talking about, more money for, you know, the 3.9
billion being released or uh more money for one-time purposes or whatever else with more money for special education, it just means that there's less funding available uh for those other priorities because now you're paying for child care or the community- based preschool programs um out of Prop 98 and Prop 98
is fine amount of resources as well. So it just creates more pressure on the Prop 98 side for all the other priorities that we've already discussed. uh it would set a precedent and which has happened in the past um prior to the 0 uh 0809 recession. Um child care used
to be within Prop 98. Um but then during the recession as I recall it got moved out of Prop 98 given the budget reductions. Um in the past the legislature has what is referred to as rebench Prop 98. So they would um add a general fund um dollar per dollar
augmentation to Prop 98 to um be consistent with the amount that would have otherwise been spent out of the general fund for child care. Um but the concern is that then they could always walk away from that commitment in future years when they have to keep making cuts to general fund. Then they may just put
the ongoing responsibility for Prop 98 to keep paying for it. Thank you, Miss Hendi. New bill. >> Thank you so much for providing us this information. So, quickly, I know we've
been waiting on just some updates and some of my questions have been asked, but wanted to just ask, I know you mentioned about the Super COLA. Um, when is the hearing? What is the timeline for the hearing for the Super Coola across multiple years to be expected? So the
assembly budget subcommittee on school finance uh committee number three they met this morning starting at 9:00 am uh one of our advocates from LA Unified member of my team on IO committees she's been the committee hearing this morning to provide a public comment and underscore priorities I outlined today
the Senate budget subcommittee on school finance for the Senate um their meeting is this afternoon they'll keep discussions open through tomorrow and Thursday um there might be a chance that um they could uh one of two things could those subcommittees could um approve or
reject the governor's proposals for a revise or they could leave the issue open meaning that they don't feel strongly at this point and then they'll have to ne negotiate that behind the scenes. The full committees budget committees most likely will be meeting next week. Um, so then as they start
behind the scenes, the governor, the assembly speaker and the senate prom as they continue to negotiate behind the scenes publicly, the committees are still meeting um and taking again a position whether they're going to approve, reject or keep issues open. Um
something that we don't know yet um is in the past uh maybe two or three years uh since co the assembly and senate leadership come together um to do a joint budget compromise between the assembly and senate democratic leadership um so they can go stronger in
negotiations with the governor now the assembly and senator are aligning their priorities um the revenue amount um and also the more of the uh other proposals um prior prior to co the assembly Senate used to have what they're called conference committees where they would
each independently adopt their own budget um uh priorities and then the three of them would negotiate. That will all start happening the end of May, beginning of June and they have to get a budget um over to uh out of the legislature by June 15, but they can still make additional tweaks between
June 15 and July 1st when the new fiscal year begins. >> Got it. That was very clear. So, I know we mentioned some advocacy. um what does the future advocacy currently look like uh to free up the almost $4 billion that's withheld as we look for us to
become fiscally stable. >> So um current advocacy I'll underscore a few points beforehand really appreciate the question just to make sure that that um that I'm clear in in those next steps. Um first I mentioned already in in committee hearings in Sacramento our
staff from our office governmental relations they will be there uh today tomorrow Thursday providing public comment so legislators hear about it. Um my team is amazing and I already heard from one of them that one of the assembly committee members uh Patel from San Diego area uh she brought up to the
in the discussion this morning in the assembly committee um the question why is the one-time dollars being given out on a per student basis instead of the LCFA methodology. That's one of our advocacy points. So, we'll be able to underscore and say, "Yes, we align with the assembly's interest in in more equitable distribution." So, those
budget discussions, we will have staff there who will be providing those public comments. Um, this afternoon, uh, I will be aiming to send out a letter with along with their labor partners, just waiting to hear from a couple that we've invited to sign on to the letter. And this letter will be, um, a followup to
the prior labor LA Unified letter that we sent out two weeks ago, three weeks ago now. but it'll be out underscoring um our shared priorities which I discussed here today. Um tomorrow acting superintendent Chate, myself uh and labor partners from SEIU Local 99 and uh
UTLA. We will be in Sacramento meeting with legislators. Um it's a follow-up to a joint advocacy day that we did on May 7th and also on May 5th with other urban superintendent. Um so labor partners letter and meetings and then we also have virtual meetings coming up over the next two weeks with key members of the
budget and leadership for the assembly and senate. Um in addition to that um we're meeting with the urban district colleagues um I'm meeting with them this afternoon and just to underscore and understand where might be shared priorities um that we can continue to advocate together as urban as an urban
coalition. Um, tomorrow I mentioned we have a community legislative briefing at 11 am um where our community partners have been invited to uh much of it will be consistent with what you hear he heard this today in case they they don't know what it means for LA Unified and how they can support our advocacy efforts. Um so that will be with
community partners. We have an advocate toolkit for families that will be available in English and Spanish that will be released in the coming days. We'll public it through the family newsletter and also urging any of the board members to also include in your own newsletters to families. Um, so that would be inclusive of parent engagement.
Um, and uh, and then next week we have um, a community uh, not community a government staff briefing on Tuesday the 26th uh, where we'll just be underscoring to the staff of governmental officials our priorities and why we need them. Just a preview. I'm probably forgetting other areas in
between of what we're working on. Um, but that will include uh, the calling out for the 3.9 billion to be released along with other priorities mentioned today. And if you have other ideas, by all means, we welcome them. >> Well, thank you. I mean, that definitely gives us a direction on how we can within the next couple weeks. Um, as
mentioned, I know special ed has increased and and PD funding. Would this fund be able to save any positions that were under special ed? >> The >> if there were any positions that were rifted under special ed, would this
funding be able to save it? Um I'm not aware of riffs in the special education program. I know the are you referring to the reduction in force >> because the reduction in force was only for um central office positions, central
office classified positions. Um I don't believe there were impacts but other than within the special education division and not so much student supports. Um what we're reflecting here though is the financial impact of these dollars, every single
dollar being used to lower the contribution from unrestricted to restricted. To the extent it's instead used in part or in full to restore positions or to expand programs, it is possible to answer your question, but it would mean that the multi-year
projection that I showed which is kind of assuming this is helping us uh chip away at the negative balance that that those numbers would change. >> Got it. And then as we increase the slots as mentioned for professional development opportunities
including like our district BIS um maybe PBIS training would that be able to be funded from these dollars as well? >> Yeah. So the these funds can be used for those for those purposes. And then as we talk about professional development and I know it wasn't mentioned as far as you
know I know a colleague mentioned how do we implement programs or development consider over periods of time with one-time money and not necessarily for personnel but for programs is that possible so that we can get longevity
for the dollars that we have because personnel would come and go but programming like I know I've worked with a lot of folks from UCLA center X, you know, programs of that matter that would be able to be sustained. >> Yeah, I think you're right that
generally the best practice is for one-time funds to be used for one-time programs and and vice versa, ongoing funds to be the source for ongoing costs. That that is definitely the best practice. Um, it's not always followed just because sometimes like in the pandemic, we receive a very substantial
influx of of one-time funds, but that is kind of like the the best practice. And so, um, but right now I think we're assuming that all of these revenues that are able to be either directly deposited deposited into general fund unrestricted
or used to offset costs that otherwise would impact general fund unrestricted are being used to cover partially the cost of of our labor agreements as well as the to address the projected negative ending balance.
>> Thank you. I believe we have Miss um board member GGO. >> Yes, thank you um for that. Uh thank you Martha and Simon for the report. Um
you know it's I receive this with mixed feelings right on the one hand I am so glad to see that there have been increases in very important areas that we have been advocating for. Um and on
the other hand, we also see that a lot of the money is not going to be um sent to the students, right? And um and like the super the acting superintendent said, you know, these are the funds that
our students need right now. And I've heard a lot of folks um advocate that the rainy day is now. It's not in the future. And um so I I have a few questions, but um I also want to lead
with, you know, we've we've been asking questions about why is it that um we're in a deficit and declining enrollment is the response that we get, right? Um legislators are asking us, why is it that, you know, we keep giving you guys
money, LA USD, and yet you you're still in a deficit and you still want more, more, more. And I feel like sometimes we as a district react with like, oh, but look, this thing is happening right now. Immigration is happening and it's impacting enrollment. All true. But the
fact of the matter is that we are a high need district that has not been invested in for a lot of years. And when we finally got some funding during COVID, even then we we were struggling because
it was so quick. We couldn't even get all the personnel that we needed, right? Even though the money was there, it happened so quickly. We couldn't get enough PSWs uh to to service all of our students. And then we lost the money. And now
we're expected to continue doing things, you know, great things for our students with, you know, less funding and and or more funding. But because of our enrollment, we get less. And I feel like
we're always trying to um or we're being encouraged to rightsize. Um and when we talk like that, we really miss out on on responding to the needs of our students
because numbers show one thing, but the stories tell something different. I have been getting so much advocacy for uh teachers who are in temporary contracts that who are being lost and parents and
community members are are like what's going on here? We need these people. It's not like our needs have are gone, right? Um, we heard at last week's meeting, board meeting, PSWs and PSAs advocating for their um their positions,
not because of them as individuals, but because the need is still there. And so I feel like as a district, we need to start changing the narrative a around enrollment. Yeah, we know there's declining enrollment and right now immigration is one of them. But a few
years ago it was COVID and before that it was something else. The fact is that PE we are not investing enough in education and the needs are great and so the the what our students need are still
there and even greater now. So, we need I I want to encourage us as a board to start speaking to that to the stories and the realities of our students and not shy away from that because um yeah, we have less students, but their needs
are great and we know that because we hear it from our our uh constituents. And um so I um when we're talking to legislators, let's paint that picture that we hear
from the school sites that we visit. Um, and I agree with board member Gonees on um working to train or to support our parents and our students to be advocates
um and attend these u legislative trips with us because they are the ones who share the story. I know I'm deeply impacted by their stories. So I think that we should have them um also be the voice of the realities that our students
are facing. Um and the other thing I want to uh speak to is you know we talk about the collective bargaining agreements and that you know there's all these increases. Well once again it's the same thing. It's many years of disinvestment in um in our personnel.
And so yeah, now we have to do this and we should be proud that we're doing this that we are um we are respecting and valuing the people who serve our students so much that we believe we need to make this investment. Um, one thing I
want to point out, um, Simon that you said that the reason why we cannot make the cuts in 2829 is because we don't know what the outlook looks like, right? Um, we cannot include one-time funds in the multi-year projection. But um, but
if we look at it, I mean, we have had one-time funds for a long time. So, we know that's going to come. In fact, even right now, we look at what we the May revis shows is higher than what was projected in January. And I'm just
wondering, is that normally the trend or has there been a year where the um indeed we we said, you know what, May revice is going to be awful and indeed it came back awful and it was less than
the um than the January projection. So, I just want to know if that has happened or when it happened before in the past and um uh because what I'm looking at the uh table that you showed us where it shows
what the um January projections were and then what we received, it looks like it's higher in a lot of areas and um and there were some one-time grants that we were not even expecting it seems like and then we did get. So, can you let me
know um what when was it that we we projected a May revice to be worse than the um the January projection or even like the January projection? And the January projection was horrible. Can you >> Yeah, I'd have to I'd have to do a
little a little research to to to identify the last year where the May revise was worse than the January proposed budget. Um it it's definitely happened just because the state economy changes, the revenue projections change. So I can certainly get back to you on maybe the the
specific uh fiscal year in which which we last saw it happen. But you're right that the trend more recently has been that the state economy has been performing very well and that this year is a good example where the May revise
did result in more revenues than than even the January proposed budget. and that the January proposed budget was higher in terms of revenue than the estimates before that. Um the point though that I think is is really important for us to make is that while
that might have been the the trend more recently that it's not guaranteed to happen uh in the future and that right now in the outy years for beyond 2627 so right now there's this super cola of combined impact of 4.31%.
In the years after 2627, the projections for cola are, you know, they're they're projections. They're they're they're what's anticipated for the future. They're all over above 3%. Um there is no guarantee that the colas
for 27,28, 28, 29, and every year thereafter will be more than 3%. three three plus percent is actually higher than we've historically gotten in in in the past. COVID kind of reset the bar. It was a bit anomalous where we got in
one year like 8% uh some years like 6% really really high colas but the norm is closer to like the rate of economic growth which is two 2% 2 and a half%. For example 2425 was just barely above 1% that was just last school year. So
these colas in the future that we're basing our projections on of 3% and more are not guaranteed to happen when the economy slows which we have a lot of reasons to fear that it might then those colas could be back to historical norms
or even like it was last year 1%. So we are of course you're absolutely right the advocacy that we've done which includes a lot of the the messaging that you mentioned about the impact on our students how we are serving a very high need population um that advocacy I think
was very effective and is it resulted in in some of the improvement that you've seen from January to May that the advocacy works it's important and highlighting the the the stories of our of our students and families is is very important because it's
Um, but we already receive more revenue because we serve a high need population. Now, we're going to continue to advocate like Martha mentioned that the discretionary block grant be also allocated on an equity based model instead of a certain amount per every
student. That's very, very important. Um, and we need to continue to advocate for even more equitable funding because you're right, the needs of our students are are are very substantial and and growing. The challenge is and and I agree I mean and I agree that we we
highlighted earlier that that the investments that we're making in our workforce, our valued workforce are important. The services for students like psychiatric social workers and community reps are very important. But whenever we do more of one thing, we
spend more money in one area, we have to spend less in another area when we're facing the forecast that we are. Because even after all of that very effective advocacy, we're still left with a certain amount of revenue. Even after all of that very successful advocacy,
there's only so much that we're allocated in each fiscal year. And so these are very difficult trade-offs. It's going to be a very difficult discussion later this week where we talk about how we're going to need to address these projected negative ending balances. And as I mentioned earlier,
it's not just a negative projection for the 2829 school year. It's also in in 2728. So these are these are going to be very difficult discussions, very difficult decisions um because you're right that the needs far exceed the amount of
funding that that we receive. >> Thank you. Yes. And um and I think if you ask parents in any community in LA USD, they will say that they are underst staffed, that they are lacking programs.
We heard it from the uh nonprofits partners that came last week also um that they're receiving less funding and therefore afterchool programs are going to hurt for our students. So, I mean, that's just the reality. And I really do
think that um Martha, this goes to you. I mean, I really do think that this um means that we have to do a lot of this advocacy and and just not accept that that we are
we are are living beyond our means or that um that are um uh what is it that we need to rightsize things. You know, our students they they don't need that. They need more. In fact, we need more.
And so, um, I'm glad, uh, that you did put in this, um, in this slideshow that we are going to advocate for that $5.6 billion to be released now, right, for the whole thing, not just part of it, but the whole thing. And I think we need
to continue with that. Um, and thank you. I I I want to also acknowledge and thank you for all the work that you've done, Martha, because you have really uh done a lot to bring labor and and uh community partners and our board
members, all these folks that needed to advocate for this funding. So, I want to appreciate the work that you've done in that area and I know that you're going to continue doing it. Um and um so yeah, I think that those things are very important. And I would like to know
though when are we going to start also advocating that hey guess what COVID funds were actually pretty close to what we really need? So why take something away, right? Um, so when are we going to
start bringing that narrative to that story of how the COVID funds should not have been one-time funds or just, you know, for a moment of very deep deep crisis. I mean, it it's what our students need actually. And if we only
had more time, maybe we would have been able to fully fund I mean to fully staff our schools with that co funds because I know my school did not get a PSW because we didn't have enough PSWs to hire. So
um this is another question now just more um about these block grants and how they connect to our school sites and what they expect to see and receive. So, I saw the literacy block grant and I got
very excited because there's been a lot of advocacy from my schools around maintaining their interventionists, right? And partly because it really supported their test scores and you know, we were celebrating high test scores, but now a lot of our schools
don't have the funding for literacy um interventionists and math interventionists. So, I'm wondering, are these um grants uh going to be able to support the continued funding for those interventionists?
>> Uh potentially. I mean, more in detail to come. This is something that was new as as Martha noted in this slide that was not in the January proposed budget, but is now in the May revise that was released on Thursday. So um we expect that the funds are largely going to be
allowed to be used in the way previous similar grants were were provided. Um but but more more to come on the specifics of the literacy coaches and reading specialist grant >> and we still have time to advocate for that >> of course >> that we are able to continue using them in that manner.
>> Yes. >> Okay. Yeah. And I would urge you to please advocate because the schools and this may be happening in other districts as well. the schools who are losing the funding are really distressed because they made such progress. We have schools
who moved from uh priority to uh the tier 2 and some that actually came out of priority because of this support that they got. And so schools are very anxious about how this this uh cut will impact their test scores next year and
the supports that students will receive next year. So, I I want to urge you to please please um uh you know advocate so that we can continue using it and our schools are able to keep those um those interventionists.
>> Thank you, Miss Ggo, for raising those important points and discussion. I really do appreciate I I know Mr. uh acting superintendent Jay wanted to respond to one of your um previous questions. Go ahead. >> Sure. Actually, I just wanted to say a couple things as we kind of close this
this item on the agenda today. Um, one, specific to the the comment from from board member Gurgo around the advocacy around, you know, COVID dollars, if you want to look at it that way, being the really the the true baseline of funding that schools should receive. So that, you know, that
advocacy in fact has already begun. when we were up there about two weeks ago in Sacramento, that was actually one of the points that I made directly, you know, to the legislators that we met with. And the way that I framed it is, and I say this again as a someone who's been with the district for 30 years, been an
educator basically for more than half of my life at this point. Many of us during that period took it almost as proof of concept. If you give us the funding that we've all always advocated for, that those of us that have worked at schools have always said if we had this resource
and this resource and this position and this position, we could do amazing things, right? And for that very brief window of time. We came close to that. We weren't there. We came close. We also had some staffing challenges. We we have the results. We have the proof of
concept. If you look at ESPA testing results, if you look at our graduation rates, we actually yielded the outcomes that again many of us as educators thought we could get to if we had that level of funding. So, we're very much in that same space. The the last thing I'll
say is also in in response to a comment that you made uh at the end of your questions and remarks, and that's about always making sure that our decisions are school centered. you know, as we go forward over the next few years and we do have to navigate uh this period of time where we are called upon to to look
at, you know, fiscal stabilization, which is kind of a euphemism for reductions if we're being really transparent. Um, we do have to make sure that we're putting schools at the center and mitigating the impact of them, and that's something that you can count on from us. >> Thank you, um, Superintendent. really
appreciate um also your comments because you said it right like the funds are needed now and our students deserve this right now. Um just one last thing I want to say is the and ask Simon to clarify.
So these CBAs are going to be paid with both restricted and unrestricted funds. Correct. >> Correct. And then another thing, I thought I was the last one, but I have something else. Um, regarding the community schools extra fund, the um
one-time uh money that they're giving, how is that are we going to be able to use that fund um for the current schools that we have? And are there possibilities to use that fund to support the MTL coaches that currently right now it seems we're struggling to
find the funding for? Um, so there's for the through $485 million of one-time reappropriation that the governor is proposing for community schools. $41 million of that would be for community schools one-time grants. Um, it would be eligible um eligible
schools would be the current community schools and also new schools that are not currently community schools. Um, so it would be both both current and new ones. Um, it specifies a list of um ways that the money could be spent through those one-time resources. Um and theoretically if both the one-time and
the ongoing sustainable funding moves forward in the final budget adoption, they would be concurrent appropriations. Um and and the current community schools that are interested again if it becomes part of the final negotiations and in the final budget from the state come June 15, July 1st. Um and schools that
are interested in those one-time resources. Uh my recollection is um it would be by November 2026 that we would need to let the state know that we are interested in the one-time money and then whatever is left over from the $41 million would be eligible for new
schools to uh pursue those resources. Um, but the the language does prescribe the use of the money. Um, I I can look up at the M MTL coaches questions that you have and and follow up to clarify if that would be an eligible use of the funds. >> Yes. >> Okay, that's good. All right, I think
I'm done for now. Next time I think I better start earlier commenting. Thank you so much for the report. >> Yes, thank you for the discussion and thank you for the questions. I have some questions but they were mainly already asked. So um I know we still have two
more presentations so we're going to move on. So thank you so much and this discussion is not over. There will be more opportunities to ask more questions on budget and priorities. Thank you so much. So now we are going to move to our next
item um an update presentation with district's uh draft on screen time policy and guidance around technology use in schools. Uh we are welcoming forward Dr. Francis Bayas, chief academic officer, and Mr. Douglas Lee,
interim chief information officer. Thank you to staff, educators, students, families, and um everyone who helped inform this work uh and participated in engagement efforts thus far. My understanding is this engagement process will continue so that we can ensure the
feedback received is representative of the diversity of perspectives and experiences across our district. And we appreciate this presentation today and look forward to um learning what has been um discussed and and discoveries great
>> as of now. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Good morning or good afternoon board members Rivas board of education acting superintendent chate super deputy superintendent I'm happy to be here to provide you an update on the board resolution titled using technology with intention establishing guidelines
for student screen time from um that the board adopted on April 21st 2026. I want to begin by sharing a QR code for students um and families and the community members to share their feedback on the screen time policy. The
feedback is very important to develop the district's policy. What we're going to present today is very preliminary. Uh we have engaged with a lot of stakeholders though since the um approval of this resolution and we'll be sharing some of their feedback here. Um but we would like to open this up for
the next two weeks to gather as much feedback from as possible um so that it can um help us craft the final um policy that will be presented to the board in June. In this update, I will share the draft screen time policy with instruction and
technical considerations and then we will conclude with feedback and questions. The screen time policy has been in draft form since April when the board passed the resolution. And first I will share a timeline of the work that spans before this resolution was adopted up to this
point. In 2018, the board passed a resolution focusing on the following. The district will consider options such as future bonds to ensure digital tools, eliminating the digital divide, computer education, science for all, and
increasing technology and access to high quality instruction that leverages technology. And of course, we've made a lot of progress in that and implemented many po many initiatives based on that 2018 resolution. In 2024, the board passed resolutions
that focused on acknowledgement of digital citizenship week October 14th through the 18th. All students would complete digital citizenship week. Students would discern online scams, AI manipulation, and forms of digital misinformation and cyber bullying. There
was a family participation in digital citizenship week and a presentation in May about its progress. And we followed all of those steps. uh and then we've revised the responsible use policy and issued artificial intelligence guidance before the peak of its use in this
country. The district has provided digital citizenship lessons in grades K through 12. We've also presented content for the media media literacy lessons uh where students had to identify authentic sources of information and discern between AI and nonAI generated content.
The district's procurement of digital solutions includes a vetting that reviews protocols for safety of student information. In August of 2025, we provided the board uh an informative about screen value and digital balance to show the efforts made
to provide purposeful and healthy technology use in our schools. In February 2026, we updated our guidance so that educators avoided overprescribing digital tools and limit the use of the recommended times.
We also uh shared guidance for addressing requests to opt out of the use of digital tools. The new office of educational technology and innovation led by Dominic Kagiwa conducted listening sessions at regions to hear the glows and grows on the use
of technology. Professional development was conducted on screen value, digital citizenship and digital literacy. We also engaged parents and established a system for approval of school identified digital application tools before they were used schoolwide. A month ago, the
board approved the resolution on using technology with the intention establishing uh guidelines for student screen time. And so this timeline demonstrates the work that this district has been doing regarding technology, devices, digital tools, artificial
intelligence for a number of years. And at this point, um after a month of having this resolution passed, I'm going to be sharing how the district plans to move forward. The district's screen time policy is based on research uh external collaboration and ongoing stakeholder
engagement. We collaborated with the office of research and program evaluation who conducted thorough research on the topic of student screen time engagement. The recommendations will be shared in the next slide. External collaboration included industry professionals, higher
education, nonprofit organizations, California Department of Education, and the American Pediatric Society. The first round of stakeholder engagement began in November when the director of educational technology innovation convened meetings with the regions.
Since the passing of the resolution, we added more stakeholders such as principles at elementary principal organization meetings, assistant principles, UTLA, ALA, uh, elected parent advisory groups, and we also engage with the superintendent student
advisory committee to receive input on the resolution goals. And thus the reason for providing the thought exchange QR code because we re recognize that there are um more voices that need to be heard so that we get a a
representative sample of LAUSD who can give us input on how to best craft the policy that meets the needs of the schools with the spirit and intention of the policy to provide that balance between use of digital tools, devices, but allowing students to have a a whole
child approach to learning. The research office conducted a literature review which yielded these top five recommendations. Limiting the take-home device prior to high school and preserve meaningful parent choice. Designing policies and configure devices to maximize
intentional educationonly use. I think that the screen there we go. Uh ensuring technology supplements and rather than replaces any teacherled instruction and then managing cumulative screen exposure across the school day uh including homework and applying age appropriate
guardrails and continuously evaluating technology impacts and these recommendations support the policy development. Now we know there's a lot of research that is um new and continues to um be introduced into the system. uh and we know that recommendations will be
coming out uh from the state sometime in 2027. We also know there'll be recommendations coming out in October. So, as this policy evolves and as we're getting new information, we want to be able to um update uh our our guidance to
the schools as necessary. The resolution calls for these principles to shape the policy versus including first good instruction and then screen value over screen time. So ensuring that what the students are seeing and consuming uh in their digital
devices are related to students creating uh learning collaborating versus passive consumption of videos. Uh and then also developmentally appropriate use. and then tools that focus on education and a balanced technology with the needs of
the whole child consisting of social interaction, inquiry, play and more. And again, this is a draft of what we've um uh come up with uh respect to the policy and this will be something that we'll continue to get feedback on. As we
met with different stakeholders, they did give us feedback on this and there were some concerns that we want to be able to hear uh regarding the minutes that are being recommended. Um the resolution calls for the district to establish minutes for screen time and these are the proposed minutes. Starting
in August 2026, grades early ed through first grade will have zero minutes per day on screen time. The classroom will have access to device carts as needed for assessments and to meet student IEP goals. um because the resolution said no devices that means um that there would
be no screen time and of course no use of digital tools beginning in November of 2026 in grades 2 through three 20 minutes will be allocated for this grade level and for grades four through five we'll have 30 minutes allocated per day
uh in these grade level classrooms will operate using either a onetoone device model uh with parent opt out options and shared device model or a computer lab model. Beginning in January 2027, grades 6 through 8 will have 120 minutes per
day maximum, while 9 through 12th grade will have an 180 minute maximum per day on the screen. Uh these grade levels have will have a onetoone device model for all grades. The default is no to one
to one take-home devices. Parents will need to opt into students taking home a device based on the availability of take-home devices at the school site. I want to note the exemptions apply. So, the exemption is for um state and district mandated assessments, students
with an IEP, and students in virtual academy. And the reason why we're phasing in uh the minutes uh beginning in third grade and above is because we will need to procure uh a tool that uh will allow us to monitor um the minutes and and to address the u items in the
resolution that we do not have in effect right now to be able to allow for those grade levels to engage with the technology. Now you may be asking how can we ensure that we lead with instruction first using technology
intentionally when it meaningfully strengthens and supports highquality teaching and learning. Technology is intended for standards aligned lessons designed by the teacher balanced with paper and pencil task hands-on learning and discussion and social interaction
and real world application. teacher pri what teacher will prioritize student needs, instructional purpose and meaningful use of technology. Now these are things that teachers are already doing in the classroom. They balance uh instruction with these activities uh and
include the digital tools as as needed. Um but we want to be able to provide those those guard rails that the policy provides. So while there's things that have been in place, this resolution calls for additional elements that will be forthcoming as we implement the
resolution. It's important that we are aware that students with an IEP, students who are deaf and heart of hearing or multilingual learners, and emergent bilingual will need certain exemptions to the policy to meet programmatic needs. For example, students with
disabilities may need communication devices, reading and writing access, and accommodations bas based on their IEP or their 504 plans. While students who are deaf and heart of hearing may need captions and live transcription, simultaneous interpreters, and visual
access, accessibility is not optional, it's foundational. Students who are emergent bilingual learners or multilingual learners will need translation, access to grade level content and other tools required for language development. And this is the triple track agenda that
we are following in terms of the uh the implementation of these uh of this policy. Schools will align instruction to policy expectations. Uh there will be schoolwide coordination and cumulative screen time will be monitored. The district will provide guidance and best
practices. Um they will track the uh data usage and support continuous improvement. Then annually annually we will review an update on policy implementation to the board and we will also update the policy when new research is introduced or if the California
Department of Education provides guidance. And here is the timeline for continued engagement and policy implementation. So beginning in the year of 2026 27 uh we will communicate the new policy districtwide. We will also provide
professional development and training. Uh we'll distribute toolkits, reference guides, bulletins, and resources to guide the schools. Uh there will be a tiered access to platforms which teachers can provide. Uh in the fall of 2026, screen time limits for 2 through
8th grade uh will be second through fifth grade, pardon me, will be implemented. New device access models will appear and screen time data access will be made available to schools. And in the spring of 2627, screen time guidance for middle and high
schools will be implemented. Throughout this time, there will be ongoing professional development for school administrators and teachers. And along the way, stakeholder feedback and engagement will take place. So while we are we will be we have been engaging stakeholders. We're going to start once
again from this today up until June. As this policy continues to evolve, we'll continue to get feedback as well. Now we'll hand it over to Douglas Lee to share more on the um technical considerations. >> Thank you Dr. Bias. Good afternoon board
members. Superintendent Chait, my name is Douglas Lee, interim CIO. I'm here to talk about the technical considerations or impact of this uh board resolution. There are basically four areas that um impacts the technology for this resolution. One is infrastructure. This
is our network filtering and configuration. The device management at the student level, their Chromebooks, iPads, uh device level filtering, screen data capturing. Third is the instructional apps. What l apps or websites that we're going to allow and
what we're going to block. And the third one would be the analytics, right? The data that's going to be presented at the parent level, at the student level, grade level, and even at the district level. Okay. The student device policy is going to
align to the screen time policy that's uh being finalized and ultimately adopted. uh for early at to one no device other than for assessments grades two to five they is encouraged to use a laptop uh
model I'm sorry a lap a cart model um so in April when this resol resolution was passed we made an assessment to grades you know K through five to see um how many laptop cards we need um assuming
that all the classroom opting into the laptop cart model. Uh we know we know that the teachers require in the classroom is about 4,500. Okay. But the the other number is teacher needing a card in the classroom is about 3,100.
Right? We're doing a solicitation on this. Um I'm guessing the um average cost about 1300, right? So hopefully the solicitation would drive the the price down. So if you do the math, 3100 laptop
cart needed times the uh unit price is about $4 million. Okay, for grade 6 to 12, we can we're going to stay with the one to one uh device model. Okay, the second I want to point out is the um restriction of use of
devices during passing periods, lunch, recess, right? this would have to be um governed or controlled at the school level. I cannot shut down the Wi-Fi at the school, right? It's the same Wi-Fi that's being used for students and teachers and even the front office. And
talking to um student board member Yang uh last week he noted a use case where oftentimes teacher provide the makeup test during lunch periods. So we need the Wi-Fi up and you know often time that the teacher also allow the lunch
period to do uh late assignment as well. So there are use cases where is it really impossible to shut down the Wi-Fi. Okay. Next is the how we're controlling it. Um I want to talk about the current process
right now. The current process would we block a lot of these sites by category. These are gaming, adult, online streaming. So we block them. But there are a big list that's uh that it's what they would call it unlisted. It's not
categorized whether it's intentional, intentional by the vendor. And often times they're open and we would get report that something uh inappropriate as a type and we go block it. as uh my colleague would put it, uh this is
playing whack-a-ole, right? A site pops up, we block it, and a site pops up and we block that. Um it's not efficient. So with this, uh we're going to do the other way around. In addition to blocking by category, we're going to block pretty much um all the
non-educational sites, be more restrictive, right? So this is going to be a big change. Now the question is what if a teacher or administrator want to allow a site to be whitel list a site. So we have a process currently we call
it the UDIP that something needs to be be allowed it goes through a process. So we have that we're going to leverage that process. It's vetted by our IT security by DOI as well as uh uh ODA. So
so we do have a process going forward. Um YouTube right now YouTube is um is is by is controlled by the students Gmail account right by default is blocked but
through the parent portal teach uh parents can opt into that we found out students have found a ways around this right it's easy using I'm not going to say it here because they'll they'll hear it but they found a
But they found a way around it. So what we're going to do once this policy is implemented is block it at the device level at the student device level with this new procurement tool that we're going to with this new procurement we're going to do. Okay. And so that's one.
And the second one we also recognize um we need to be restrictive but also be flexible. Right? What if the teacher needs to um whitelist something, unblock something for that period, for that time? So this tool will also have a feature what we call classroom
management that allows the teacher to unblock a site for instruction use for that period right and we also need to be flexible at the student level for reasons that Dr. her bias stated earlier in her presentation. So this tool will allow one, two, and three access by
role. Okay. Screen time monitoring, right? Given the uh talking to board members and parent engagement and student board member Yang, we have yet we have to determine what data to present at the right at the
parent community. We still need to what data you want to see, right? I'm proposing probably in a weekly cadence. A daily daily cadence would be probably too much because I know some days it would be a spike in in screen time and some data will be lower but over a week
average it may be within our limit or recommendation. Right? So that's one the parent the student data will be pushed out to the parents via the parent portal and the executive we have executive dashboard. We can certainly build a dashboard on that that we can slice in
data by classroom level, school level, by grade, uh by region, by board district. Uh once we have the data, we could uh develop the requirement and present the dashboard. Okay. Um
one question I I got asked uh during the uh briefing is like what happens when the student reach the limit or reach the recommendation, right? The question is for the device, nothing. I'm not going to shut down the device once they hit it because they might be in the middle of
something important like taking a test or something. There's no red sirens going to, you know, go off on the machine or anything like that. It'll just be reported after the fact. We might have a traffic light to indicate red, yellow, or green, right? But those requirements will be determined at a
later date. Okay. Updates to the RUP, the responsible use policy. Couple of the key items obviously is the guideline on the student screen time, the device access model by grade level that will be updated there. We're going to have
language to formalize the parental opin and opout out process on the uh non- Googlele apps and I'll talk more about that in next slide. Um we added language around ensure technology is used for educational purpose restriction on
non-instructional platforms. Uh this includes uh social media, gaming and uh video streaming and we added language and prohibit use of um electronic device during non-instructional times such as lunch and recess. So those will updates
will be made to the RUP. Going back to the what I mentioned about the uh formalizing the parent opin process, currently Google has 13 non-core applications, right? In the future there will be more as they
evolve their product. So it'll be to simplify the process or parent. I don't want to check and uncheck 13 apps or maybe more. We're going to have it in groupings. Right? This is a proposed grouping. It could be enhanced. You could add more per right now. We just
come up with three. The first one would be under curriculum and cultural learning. The second would be research and reference. These are your Google maps, Google Earth, Google translates. And the third one we don't feel like student have any business using, right?
These are obviously YouTube, web store and Google photos. So those are the categories that to make it simplify for parents to opt in or opt out. Okay. The timeline uh Dr. Bayas presented a
timeline earlier. This is kind of like the for the five major work streams we have going. One of uh Dr. Bayas mentioned the professional development and training going on uh procurement uh she alluded to. There's two procurement we uh were having in place. One of them
is the laptop cart. The other one is this tool that will enhance the uh filtering on the student device as well as uh capture the screen data and analytics. Okay. updating the RUP. We're going to
uh start the ad hoc committee as stipulated in the board resolution and next there'll be a timeline to gather the requirements for the dashboards and pushing out to the dashboards. Yeah, I would reiterate the QR code um
for the community to provide their feedback on the resolution as well as this presentation. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for the presentation. Uh so now I will open the floor uh to questions.
>> Mr. Melvin. >> Sure. Um thank you uh and thanks to all the teams who've been working on this even before the resolution was passed. just kind of leading up to its expected passage and the work the district was thinking about um prior. It's been a massive undertaking and I really do
appreciate the updates and the iterative process. Thanks. I know we're going to hear from our parent advocates. We heard from our labor partners. I met with my teacher advisory group yesterday who had feedback I think in general very excited but just kind of some of the questions that we're we're I'm sure going to hear from the board as well about what this
looks like in practice. So, you know, I have tons of questions but I I'll limit it knowing I want to hear from my colleagues too. I guess the two big ones that I have are around um secondary um limits or recommendations as we're calling them and also the AI piece which
is kind of missing so far in terms of the guidance I guess. Can you explain Dr. vis a little bit on so one I mean there's a lot here that we're excited about obviously the zero minutes per day prior to second grade the kind of default away from take-home devices the
laptop carts and again this has been reinforced by a lot of the teachers I've been talking to who are appreciative as well secondary gets a little more complicated one because we're preparing students for a world that is quite digital two you have different subjects um so it's harder for teachers to
coordinate three there are some courses like a computer science or a graphic design where you might have to be on your, you know, even back when I was in middle school, I remember doing layout for the newspaper and you're on a computer most of the time. So, can you just explain kind of why we right now in the draft policy, it's recommendations
versus limits, why it's daily, not weekly, why it's not subject based. Like, those are some of the things I'll follow up on, but could see us kind of honing in a little more. >> That's a preliminary recommendation. It's very much a draft form. And what we used to guide us in that space is we looked at a a current um screener or not
screener current tool that we use to um track minutes. And we noticed that in grades 9 through 12 students are on the uh screen time about 91.2 minutes a day. And so um we do we do know that a problem we'll need to solve for is how
we uh we support each teacher. Sixth period teacher understanding how many minutes the student has already been on the device since first period. That's a problem we'll need to solve for. So that we're not there yet. Um but we've based it on what we've already we're capturing data based on the screen time. Um it's
called light speeded. It's what we've been using just to see what um how much how many minutes they have been on the screen. Uh with regards to artificial intelligence, we definitely have policy around it. Reference guides, digital citizenship, lots of professional development in the summer throughout the
year. Um, and it's something that we can definitely add to this policy and how we will continue to do that. Uh, and so, um, that's definitely something we can add, but that's how we determine the minutes. >> Got it. And that's helpful. I mean, I think that's one where, you know, I'm curious. I know we're going to hear
feedback from others, but thinking through subjectbased limits or weekly limits, even thinking about as a first step kind of recommended limits as opposed to recommendations. I could also see a world where you know a recommendation would be zero and then
you know you you understand that there's going to be a need but c in certain subjects not in others. So that will be helpful and I know one of the questions was how we're going to track this. Mr. Lee was um indicating some of that but but that's one area where I kind I think further
honing and feedback is going to be important. And then yeah thank you for acknowledging kind of the guidance we have out. I know that there's kind of the board has now received a preview of of the various AI frameworks that the district's been working on. Um curious and I don't know if that's something that you can uh speak to or someone else
about when that when we'll be publicizing those frameworks that we've been working on the various task forces on on AI. >> I believe that was released uh last Friday. The >> Oh, it is public. >> Yes. >> At least two board members. Yes. Not I'm
not sure it's public but >> Right. So I guess that's my question. Do we know when that because I don't these aren't these are public facing documents. I know they were released to the board for feedback. There's the path forward for education and then for kind of operations. Just curious on the time frame >> team is still finalizing the timeline. You know we wanted to of course make
sure that the board had eyes on it before anything went out publicly. And obviously we want to make sure that there's clear alignment between those policies and what we're bringing forth today. I would anticipate that it would be released before the end of the school year. >> Great. Great. And I will say at least my I had a cursory glance when it came out.
I mean it's I think it's um they're a strong starting point and like head in the right direction. Very responsive to the resolution to the feedback we're hearing. So um excited for it to kind of for us to get public feedback on it as well. Um and I will say too uh uh this is one
where um you know since the resolution was passed we've been hearing from districts of all sizes, urban, rural, red states, blue states like everyone you know. So just like the cell phone policy, I know we're first adopters and that means there's more on your shoulders, but there's so much interest and I think it's an idea whose time has
come. So I understand too that as we put this out like we'll be we'll be getting a lot of feedback. Um but I do think kind of putting this all in one place like the kind of what you're proposing here and the policy but also the AI framework. One of the questions was around parent opt-in to apps. I think
simplifying it to those three buckets that you talked about Douglas is helpful. Um, it also the draft policy also mentions district approved devices and digital tools. This is also a question I got from teachers yesterday. Like when will that list become public
in terms of the district approved um I I guess I'm thinking more of the software than hardware, but the digital tools. >> So, we're anticipating that we'll inform the schools in June um so that they're aware of what that is. um since um the past few years, we've narrowed down that
list. Um and at this point, we're we'll be ready to provide them that list um by the end of June. >> Got it. And again, I know this will all I mean, maybe it's kind of the one tab on the website or putting this all in one place because there's a lot to uh sift through. I guess my last question
at least for now or for round one is around the um the kind of auditing of tech contracts that was also part of this just looking at the return on investment. I didn't see that in the presentation. Can someone speak to the time frame for that? >> Yeah. Um, so that is being worked on
with its and procurement as well. Uh, we need to uh validate the data before sharing to the board to make sure everything's accurate. >> And the time frame for that is are we just talking weeks or >> uh maybe two weeks, two, three weeks. Yeah. And then it'll be presented to the
board and the public in terms of the spend on various tech vendors and contracts. >> Yeah. >> Um >> it may be part of a board report too. So you'll be getting that in in June. >> Great. Uh I'll think that's it for now.
Thank and again thank thank you to all of you for the hard work. >> Thank you. Um I'll ask some of my questions since the last part I I wasn't able to. So um on um slide six um external collaboration, can you expand
more on the inter industry professionals who um identify some of those higher education and also some of the nonprofit organizations that you've been working with? >> Sure. I'd like to invite Dominic to come on up as he's been um the main driver in meeting. I've been collaborating with
him, but he has a list of every single one. He has perfect attendance in all of them. >> Great. Just curious of which ones Good afternoon board member Rivas, members of the board. Uh in terms of slide six around state uh expert and
external collaborations, first and foremost as uh similar to the board informative we provided to the board in August. Uh we've been in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics uh from the very get-go. uh back in March uh when the initial introduction
of the resolution was uh done here at the board we already also reconnected with American Academy of Pediatrics Southern California chapter and we've started to look at some of the guidance uh they were providing one of their updates which came out in October 2025
just a few months ago was really to uh look at their initial guidance from 2016 and from there they really reiterated less than an hour for primary grade students and then also looking at uh elementary and secondary students talking more about again the quality and purpose of
their instru of what they're doing online than the actual minutes but even with that we continued working with uh AAP American Academy of Pediatrics as well as the California Department of Education in fact uh right before uh
April right after April 21st the unanimously uh approval of this board resolution uh Senate uh has convened and they started talking about this. Prior to that, there was no movement nor any conversation around screen time. So uh to the point of the
phase implementation, that's also why we're looking to make sure that we're waiting for state guidance and what that could look like in October and uh and beyond. Uh in terms of higher education institutions, UCLA Children's Digital Media Center is one of our collaborators
in this work. We've met with Dr. for Patricia Greenfield and advised she advised on the screen time limits as well as the quality of what we're proposing which again to the primary grades is the zero minutes and what that could look like progressively towards uh
the the grade bands. uh consistent with our previous work around digital citizenship, there's also uh ongoing work with common sense education, nonprofit around uh digital citizenship, family engagement, digital well-being and balance as well as curricular
support and instruction and so many of those work are uh continuing to be uh informing the external collaboration we're doing with them. >> Thank you so much. Um, my next question is, how is the district thinking about equity implications for students and
families, particularly communities of color, who have historically faced barriers to technology access and worked hard to close that digital divide? And how do we ensure the policy balances healthy screen use while also maintaining student access to digital
literacy and technology skills uh needed to remain competitive academically and also professionally? >> Absolutely. So, I just want to um just confirm that technology will continue to be a tool that is used by all of our students so that they're prepared to
compete with the world. Um I'm so proud that we're able to see our students compete internationally. They were just in Switzerland. Um just competing internationally because they had those those foundational skills and can compete with uh with regards to robotics, computer science and other
ways. And we want to continue to offer students that technology. So all of our students will have access to technology. Um our students will continue to have access to um digital tools and programs that help them to advance in their learning. uh and with respect to
students um with disabilities um English learners multilingual learners um students who are deaf and heart of hearing they will also have exemptions to the policy not to the policy but to the minutes because they will require u more use of screen time and devices um
so um we want to continue the spirit of this resolution which is balance not overusing not replacing our teachers and that's the premise behind all of this but we understand there's going to be variability because some classes will require more use of technology than others because that's the nature of
their course. Um so with respect to our students of color, there's a firm commitment to ensuring that they have the technology that they need to continue to be competitive. >> And then oh did you want to say something? >> Yes. Um one one thing I like to add what's not changing in the RUP is
parents have the option for a take-home device across all grades. >> Great. Yes. Thank you for that. Um and in terms of I Ready, how how is I ready going to be impacted um particularly with the um the limited use on screen
time because I know there's 45 minutes certain minutes that have to be uh completed in I already so what is the impact on I Ready and all of this. Sure. >> Sure. So um the I Ready personalized learning is intended for students who are below grade level. Uh it's not for all of our students. It's for students
who are at below grade level and through over time we've been able to see that it has supported um the improvement of students because teachers use it in the classroom and small group instruction. The teacher leads a small group with the most intensive students and then later
the ones that are maybe um a tier two or maybe one grade level below they work with the students who are on grade level. So while the teacher's working with those students in small groups, other students are maybe working uh using the personalized learning. So again, not replacing our teacher but
providing that additional support to close the gaps more quickly um so that they can get two doses. The personalized learning through I Ready and instruction with the teacher. What we know is that the students uh are currently getting same kinder through first grade are
spending approximately 32 minutes um in the math personalized learning and approximately 32 minutes in reading. In second through third grade they're spending approximately 35 minutes in math, 35 minutes in reading. In grades fourth through fifth we have about 37
minutes in um math and about 34 minutes in um in reading. So the minutes that we are p that we are recommending for this policy on screen time wouldn't affect that use um because it's this is again this is something that we're doing once
a week once in reading once in math not every single day. So that provides the teacher flexibility to bring in other tools or maybe they're all going to work on a project together and and they're looking at using their devices. It allows them that ability to do so. Again, these minutes are recommended
based on what we've been seeing in the use of of um looking at screen time uh this year. And then also looking at the minutes on the personalized learning that's personalized learning and I Ready. Now when it comes to the assessment, the diagnostic assessment happens at the beginning of the year in
the middle of the year and for grades uh through through 8th and 11th grade which are the testing grades. Those grades are exempt from taking the end of year on the I Ready. >> Go ahead. >> Sorry, just a clarifying on what we just heard, Francis. On the 32 to 35 minutes,
was that daily or weekly that you were just describing on the I Ready my uh personalized learning >> that is uh each time they've been on personalized learning for reading and math. >> So, because they don't they're not on I Ready every single day. So, a student in kinder first grade. Yeah, it's a weekly.
Weekly. Weekly. Thank you. >> Okay. Okay. Even though the recommendation was 45, we're finding that students are generally on it closer to 30 minutes. Okay. I just want to make sure I understood that correctly. >> On average, >> and for now, right at this moment, we're at the end of the year. Um, and the di
and the and the assessments. So, are those minutes also being factored in? You mentioned the beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of year. >> The minutes I just provided you are for personalized learning. they don't include the minutes uh for the diagnostic assessment.
>> How many do approximately how many minutes are in the um the the assessments that >> I don't have that but there the students are we're recommending that students take breaks that they don't do this all at once. 20 minute chunks are recommended. We have a very long runway
in terms of an assessment administration window for students to take the assessment in reading and math. Um, so it's really going to vary, but we provided them a lot of time so students don't sit on the in front of the screen until they're done. No, it's going to be with breaks and expanded over a number
of days. Would you mind um could could you do um analysis a check-in if that's taking place um in particular in our high schools? So, I know some high schools are it's continuous until they finish. I don't know if they're doing
20-minute checks. You can check that >> board member. If if I may, this is Carla. I I would also say that um we have gotten from the the curriculum associates folks by grade level how much time how many questions and how much time it should take to complete the
diagnostic. We will add that to the actual assessment memo that we send every year. That way, if there's any student or any teacher or principal who's seeing that someone's struggling with staying within that time frame that they know to reach out and get some extra support because maybe folks aren't
using it correctly because it's not meant to it's meant to be a response to the question and if the student's struggling that gives us an answer move on and so we we were tightening our guidance as well around that. Thank you. And my last question um before I hand it
over to another colleague, how will homework platforms like Excel or other adaptive learning programs be factored into the guidance particularly when assignments may require students to remain online longer in order to get that targeted score um complete repet uh
complete repetitions or finish uh progress benchmarks. So I know you know some students or you know at least in EXL you know if a student gets one wrong it takes them back and then you know they they're trying to get that that score. Yeah. So we definitely also
encourage our students to not stay too long on the device even though is require is there's a particular goal or target. It's the same idea. We don't want them to stay on the on the device for too long or in that particular program. Um the policy does also call for a balanced approach during the day
after school and at home. It also calls for parent engagement, parent workshops, parent training, just um socializing about what is recommended at the home um in the policy. We're not there yet. We know it's coming. That's an area that we still need to look at. So, it's balanced across the instructional day, during
enrichment, after school programs, at home. All of these all need to be taken into consideration. Um because it's it's really the whole day that the student needs to be needs to be monitored and with guardrails in place. >> Okay. Thank you for that. Who would like to go? Yes, Miss Ortiz Franklin.
>> Uh, thank you for this and um for the preview with board members. It always helps so that we can, you know, zero in on our questions. Um, I love slide 20 being very clear about what's permitted and and not on the Google apps because that was a big request from our families. Will we get something similar
for different products like gaming has come up and there's like a Minecraft education but Minecraft not education is not approved. Will we get something like this for like gaming or the AI? um specific platforms that they may use on campus or may not use on campus.
>> We want to make things as explicit as possible so people understand what is allowed and not allowed and the purpose for the use. So we have esports courses in our high schools that may use a particular program that if it wasn't just for that program then we would say no it's not usable. It's not something that you should engage in during the
instructional days. So we'll definitely add additional language to the policy. And of course that's always evolving. It's it's it's uh changing rapidly. So, we'll definitely update that in a in a website or so so that people have that information. >> It is changing and and I appreciate you
uh we had a a chat recently about um how things shifted from what was permitted automatically to now needing requests. And we're getting a lot of requests from young people and from teachers saying, "We used to use these websites for research, but now they're blocked and they're having a difficult time getting them approved." So, my hope is that when
this gets all clarified, that will be a little quicker. um depending on if the the teacher will be able to approve a website versus having to wait for central office to approve it. So my hope is that that's what will be included and I just want to flag that for you all. >> That's the goal. So the app um that the teachers will have access to is
something that where they can unblock um and so but we will also be work looking at that from the central level as well. >> Great. Um, and then how will teachers know who has opted out of particular platforms or one-on-one devices for
their own roster of students? >> We would present that um information um in in the classroom roster in >> they'll be able to see in MSIs for example like who so it's easy for for teachers. Okay. >> Great. Um and then I I have a
recommendation that I'm not sure the the resolution fully contemplated. It's very small, but could we ask that um when music is being played, for example, from an interactive display, if screens could be turned off because I'm in a lot of classrooms where it just seems like the screen is on for no reason. Kind of
like, you know, when people leave TV on for the background noise. Um, but we don't want that in classrooms, right? So, I don't know if that can be explicit in in the uh recommendations. >> Thank you. >> That's it for me now. Thanks, Rosen. Some of my questions have been partially
answered I guess. So this one is for um assisting teachers. So it says it states that certain websites including social media and video streaming services will not be accessible on district devices unless teacher directed. And you kind of
hinted with the app, right? So, I was going to say, can you tell us the process for giving um our teachers seamless access so we don't waste time, you know, trying to get access onto a to a program. How will that happen?
>> So, we're not there yet. Um that's the goal. So, that's the tool we need to procure and then we need to provide professional development orientation to teachers so they're aware of what to do. That's something that um is a goal of ours and that's but that's not currently in place and the goal is for it to be seamless. >> Okay.
And you know, in elementary school in a self-contained classroom, you know how many minutes you'll be done. But when you're in a secondary school and you're going from teacher to teacher to teacher to teacher, I can see people saying, "You're using too many minutes and you're taking the minutes away from my class because you're breaking the policy
of how many minutes per day." So I don't want to have teachers fighting over minutes, you know? So somehow they're going to have to coordinate that they will stick to the uh prescribed number of minutes. So the way we plan to address that, of course, we we use baseline data to make a recommendation
and the recommendation is actually much higher than the baseline that we see students on the device. Um, but because we'll be engaging secondary level teachers, we're really going to follow their lead in terms of what is uh most appropriate. And if there's a tool that
actually tracks period by period, we'll go that route. But if not, we'll just need to provide um just a range so that uh there's not a we don't uh go we don't over we don't go over the minutes that everybody >> Yeah, I could see a little more complicated in secondary than in elementary because you really have
control over the minutes in your classroom. Um this is partially Tanya's question too. Is there or will there be a list available for the board and the public to view so then everyone is aware of which software is accessible on district devices? Will parents be able
to know that or eventually? >> We will look into providing that. >> Yeah, because I think they would like to know. Um AI is it going to be banned on the uh >> so artificial
>> laptops, computers? >> Artificial intelligence is um a technology that is available to students in ages 13 and above after they complete the digital citizenship course and then we enter that information on MSIs. So students get access to it. Um the
teachers are the ones who decide which ones. We have a website in the education technology innovation website where we have a list of those um tools and they're really for efficiency. They're for lesson planning. Um they can help the teacher with providing feedback. And
there's also tools that are u for students to use where students are also understanding what is uh original source and what is created through AI so students can discern. Um, it's about media literacy. Uh, and they use it for many other types of activities, but it's
really driven by teacher decision on which tool to use. >> Hey, thank you. And you know, on your phone when it tells you your battery is running low on your on your cell phone, I just wondering if the teachers are going to get a message, you're you're overdoing your minutes in your classroom. Who knows? Who knows? A
little reminder. Thank you. >> Thank you, >> Miss Handy Nebo. >> Uh, thank you. Um yeah, I had a few questions and some have been touched on and I know appreciate just now that the
efforts and I know as you opened up that we are continuing to take in data and wanting to make sure that people's voices are heard because as you know this district is very large and I appreciate the question Dr. Rivas um making sure that we close that gap
because our families are not the same. our families encounter very different circumstances. Um, and as we know with delete the divide that many of our families did not have internet um, and wanted to ask, do we have the data that's related to that? Do we know how
many of our families do have devices at home? >> I'll hand it over to Doug to answer that question. >> I do not have the data with me today how many parents have optin to take home a device, but I can provide that. And when I say, you know, because schools and
then I appreciate you saying opt out, opt in. Can you explain to us exactly how that would function for our parents? Because as a parent right now, when you go to the portal, it's certain things you can do on a device and there's certain things you can do on your phone.
How does opt out opt in work for our families? um for for a device or for uh >> for device for I mean is it going to be different for a device than it is for another area within the district or is it going to be synonymous? How do we know when we say did you opt in? Did you
opt out? How would a family know what what that means? >> Well, the device right now is part of the responsible use policy where they default is no until they say yes, I want a take-home device. So, that's there. Um we have to put that in the parent
portal. The other opt in op out is for apps the Google apps right now that it's going to appear portal they select yes or no the Google apps and specifically YouTube and so would we have I mean our faith they'll be able to go around to
our parents to help educate them on this because this would be a new way of how to get to certain apps within these devices. Correct. >> Correct. That would be the the parent engagement that we're going. Once we finalize the groupings, we can educate
them um what grouping contains what apps so they can uh make their choice. Yeah. >> Got it. And then um when we do and can you repeat for me how many devices we're planning to purchase and what that cost is?
>> This is um what I mentioned is the laptop cart, right? uh assuming that grade K excuse me K through five have opt in to um use a laptop cart model versus uh u oneonone uh I'm short of
3100 laptop carts because we did a initial survey for all the teachers and classrooms I know from um K through one we it's no devices other than assessments but K u but grades two to
five, it's encouraged to use laptop card. So, it's a choice in the classroom whether they continue with one-on-one or a laptop card, right? >> And then with that, um because our first graders, some of them, they're learning how to use the device, right? They won't
be exposed, some of them until they take an assessment. >> Is that how this would happen? Oh, >> I I think um we they need to be exposed uh just to have some laptop literacy. out the keyboard screen uh before the
assessment or else they'll be you know not able to it'll be a hard time navigating. I think there was so there's some uh pre-work that needs to be done before the assessment. >> So will there be curriculum and I know we're talking a lot about the device right? So, what is the curriculum that
we're using and professional development for our teachers and educators? Cuz it's, you know, it's like, you know, we're talking all about the ball and it's the reason why I can't score, but is it really that reason? So, what is the curriculum that our educators can
use? because if they're, you know, fantastic with sharing our with our students and exposing them to places that some of them may never get to travel to and be able to learn these things, what is the curriculum that enhances the use of the device? So are
you respect uh so with respect to K through 12 uh in terms of the technology that's available it will vary schools because it varies from the use of robotics coding um computer science esports um your regular um software that
you will use Microsoft um email um typing it really there's quite a range every curricula that we have adopted includes a digital component to it and the students often will access their textbook uh on schooly or learning
management system. Um students u can do a variety of things with technology and it's in the curriculum and it's also if they've attended trainings or we provided trainings uh regarding edtech edtech training has been going on for a number of years and so they would be incorporating those pieces if they have
an esports for good club if they have a if they're a practitioner school. Um it just there's just a lot of ways that schools can uh use uh the curricula to help students engage and learn the technology. >> So will we be able to help our
practitioners with that? Because we all know when 2020 came, we all learned Zoom. We all had to figure it out. I remember teachers were getting locked out the class. The students were controlling the class. They were like, I don't know how to do this. Um and then
there was a learning curve that you know many got and some still did not. Some of our educators were like I don't know how to use a computer. I don't understand this. So what are we putting in place to help them so that all of our students
it's equitable that they're all getting the training so that they can have the f the the tech literacy and tech educational components to be able to compete later. How do we know and guarantee that? >> So, there are some specific things we
want our students to know and be able to do grade by grade when it comes to technology. While the computer science and technology standards are pretty old from the state of California, there are certain things we want our students to know and be able to do and we provide them with those skills. And I'm going to
bring Dominic up to provide us a little bit more about how we provide the professional development to ensure that every student in our system has a level of um skills uh related to technology use. >> Thank you Dr. Bis. Uh the work that my
department is already doing is exactly that which is to prepare the system in the change management aspect of this. First and foremost is the standards. Uh there's currently uh in our work around educational technology and innovation there's the EST standards there's the
computer science standards but there's really not one place for LA USD to have a sequence or a scope and sequence a progression of digital learning competencies and skills and that's what my department is doing now so that we launch in the summer during the PD and
the uh ongoing professional development not only during uh summer PD but also title 4 PD that we go back to the basic what do we prescribe are the actual learning skills standards from early ed all the way through 12th grade that is uh crosswalking all these different
technology standards from different organizations and consorcia and we're going to provide that to LUSD educators as part of our work along with that is also to work on the uh teaching and learning framework currently the teaching and learning framework only speaks about technology in a very broad
way which is appropriate use of technology ology. Our work will be to unpack that and provide different ways where any teacher regardless of what content or grade level you're teaching. You are able to see yourself intentionally using technology for a
purpose that is instructional and that is going to come in the way of uh instructional look force in the classroom as well as reference guides and toolkits that is going to basically uh frame the work that is going to be our PD for title 4 and ongoing my PPL PD.
>> Thank you. Um, have we identified some schools that are exhibiting balance with use of technology with active teacher-led instruction to increase student thinking and learning? Have we identified those already? We do. Uh, during our work uh in this
stakeholder engagement, I've visited some schools. Uh, many schools have been doing technology integration such as Melose Technology Magnet. uh so I have gone and spoke to principal Jackson and look at the way she's already doing this for example like uh in those passing
periods that we spoke about she already has her own uh device free non-instructional times where they get to uh encourage students to not bring a device during recess and lunch and how uh those kinds of works are already in place uh we've also met with uh Dr.
Stratus principal advisory council and uh the principal from Royal also spoke about how they already work with content area teachers like history teachers when you're asking your students to read books or literacy teachers is go read an actual book instead of reading it
digitally and so there are already schools tech magnet schools uh computer science elementary schools magnets such as Maywood Academy who are doing some of this work as early as kinder and first grade and the idea Maybe now that we are
zero minutes in primary grades, we can still also be able to teach computer science in an unplugged or analog ways. And there are some of these models that we can also uh incorporate at scale. >> Got it. And do we have data on how many
of our families uh have internet access? I know that was something early on. Do we have that data as well? Um I don't have it with me today but I have data on um family who required a
hotspot for internet or but we can provide that data. I >> think you raised an important point under the ECF program that is no longer funded by the federal government um FCC um we used to do a needs assessment um where folks would demonstrate a need for
connectivity or a device and we had a process in place. Unfortunately, we don't have that today. Um, but we are at at the school level making that determination through the RUP where families demonstrate the need and we provide a device for take-home purposes.
>> Got it. Thank you. Um, and then I I know we've mentioned secondary and I'm a secondary person. So, will devices just automatically shut off if they've gone over the time limit or if they're using the device at school
and then they have to do work at home? I was the coach, so I know I didn't make that class, so now I have to make it up at home or whenever I could. I mean, those were probably my best students were the ones that had to they had to do extra work and they knew it and that was
their job. they was like, I'm going to get it done because I've played and now I got to get my work done. So, what's going to happen for those students? >> The answer is no. The device will not be shut off. There's no alarm going off on their device itself. Um, it will be all
reported after the fact to the parents and to the uh school level. That's how we're approaching it. Yeah. >> Thanks. >> I have a quick thought. Will there be I know you mentioned that the um the the
minutes will be available for parents on parent portal. Will they could you develop or is there a thinking of developing a dashboard so that principles could also I mean I don't want to add more work to principles but somewhere where you know anyone wanted
to check to see where the the you know um the minutes were or there's a trend or some kind of report maybe that will come in at the end that can you know so you know so the regions can check in. Yes, that's in the scope uh to have
dashboards uh in executive dashboard uh that you board members have access to. >> Oh, that that was where you mentioned. Okay, great. Gotcha. Okay. >> And >> and I have Miss G Miss Grego who's waiting. Is that okay? You want to come
back to you? >> Okay, Miss Ggo, I know you've been waiting patiently. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. Um thanks for this um presentation. Um it's it really has sparked a lot of conversation among educators
um as well as parents and students right so um I want to acknowledge that this is pretty big and it's really shifting the culture that we're in right now um you know we were we've been moving as um I
wouldn't even say just nationwide but worldwide we're moving toward more technology and here we are trying to put brakes on it at least for our youngest ones. And so I want to acknowledge that whenever there's a cultural shift, it takes a lot of time and it also takes a
lot of engagement. And so my question is we started some of this shift with the cell phone ban and uh the implementation of the use of the pouches. I've been hearing a lot from my uh district uh parents and um
and even students about um the fact that it's very difficult to enforce. And so as you've been doing the research on um to develop this uh new um policy, what have you uh incorporated that you have
learned from our implementation of a cell phone ban? Um for the cell phone lab um Brad it's pretty much procedurally done at school right some school use a yonder power some school just you know like uh police
like procedurally no cell phone uh in class and passing period and what have you uh with the laptop uh during the passing period. It has to be done the same way. Um but we with with with this different in this policies we have the
analytics on screen time usage right and all the across all student devices. We're going to have enhanced filtering on all student devices uh because they're all locked into our network. So we can see how many minutes on their screen, what app they use most often uh
across all students. So that's that's the main difference. Whereas a cell phone is a personal device. uh we're just not preventing it in school. They don't get into the network as they use the mobile data and they could pretty much go anywhere they want. So that's a huge difference.
>> Um but have we had any learnings from the implementation of the cell phone ban and have we applied any of those learnings to this new one? Um I think the cell phone band for uh school that use the yonder pouches it's
quite effective because they don't get it until the end whereas other school um it's being done procedurally like just keep it in your backpack don't take it out. Um, you know, I I have I don't haven't have any indication that it's uh
abusive. >> I I can interject here because I think as as >> you know, superintendent and I executed on implementing this over the last year and a half um has been an ongoing learning and there's continues to be a
deeper analysis on just the impact and what we're learning from I would say students in terms of the implementation. But in general, what we have seen is a culture shift in terms of adoption of the practice of putting down their cell phones, especially during, I say,
communal time, whether it's at lunch hour or passing period. Um, which I would say was the biggest shift from the district's uh 2011 policy. Um, but we have seen general adoption. Is there
ongoing challenges in terms of being on top of every student? Um, yes, that happens from time to time, but there is a certain level of community adoption, meaning that there's almost like self policing amongst peers. Um, that has has
occurred. Um, we know that it as part of school-based adoption, especially at middle school and high school, that students are the ones that actually kind of regulate themselves. Meaning that once you actually develop the behavior and adopt it in a way where it's almost
just an accepted practice and policy, um, they hold each other accountable and it's not as dependent on a teacher or administrator um, enforcing the rules. Um and so that that's been the success of the cell phone um limitations at
school sites is that it has been embraced by students themselves and they have seen the value and benefit and that benefit proposition is one that you we would expect as part of the screen time adoption is that there be ongoing education on the need for limit limiting
screen time and that students actually adopt it from their own lens. >> Okay, thank you for that Pedro. Um, yeah, because one of the things that I've been hearing is that a lot of the enforcement falls on the school site administrator. And so I think that it
would be great if we could have administrators be able to have conversations about their best practices for enforcing any policy, right? So, not just any, but like the cell phone policy and then of course now as we're going
into the screen use policy, maybe having administrators at their administrative meetings be able to share their best practices so that they can learn and also giving especially at the secondary level where the number of minutes might
be uh difficult to track um from teacher to teacher. giving teachers the time to be able to talk about these things to collaborate about these um how they're going to be using technology in the class so everybody is in the loop um
about what's going on and how we're implementing and and uh enforcing I I mean I I understand that we hold each other accountable and we want to make sure we do that. We definitely don't want to be policing one another, right? accountability and uh is good. Uh but
policing kind of uh worries me a little bit if students are going to be doing that with each other. But um the other thing I want to say is how are we communicating this to parents and how are we communicating this to students and then to the educators including and
I don't mean just classroom teachers but just about everybody you know supervision aids, campus aids. If we're expecting people not to use it during nutrition and lunch, well, you know, they usually it's the classified staff as well as out of classroom staff who uh
supervise. So, I know you said you're doing engagement, you're doing thought exchange, but what are the other ways that we're going to engage folks in these conversations? >> Sure. So the question is how are we going to uh engage um the stakeholders at the school site so that they're
familiar about this policy and how we're going to implement it. And so that is part of the work ahead. Uh and uh the benefit of phasing in the grade levels is being able to reach all of the teachers and parents and community. Um
while uh our goal will be to reach 100% I'm sure that there will be some places and what we'll need to do even more um professional development workshops orientation socialization um putting things on social media putting them on our websites using all communication
methods uh to ensure that all of our um our community members our school community members uh are familiar with this policy and understand the the spirit of it and also what um they will need to be partners. The the policy
calls for us to have this balance throughout the day after school and at home. So, we'll need to engage parents as well because if a student ha uh had a certain a number of minutes during the day uh and they are going to engage in more minutes after school or through
enrichment, then there's some considerations for what that's going to look like in the home. So that will also be will be required that we we uh uh include every single member of the school community in understanding the policy and the role everyone will play and what it means and how to
operationalize it. >> All right. Thank you for that Dr. Bias. The other um one last thing about I Ready for the little ones. So just to clarify, I ready personalized learning system will still be used by TK and K
and therefore they will still have access to to technology to do that as well as for testing. When it comes to I Ready and the personalized learning, it's been used in kinder and first grade with this new policy and where we won't
have screen time. that personalized learning is not going to be on the device. It's going to look differently. Um so the personalized learning is going to come from the teacher. the teacher is going to have to do all the intervention and catch up the students
catch up the students when they're when they don't have the grade level skills that will and so um we had provided teachers those tools months ago when um te when um teachers or schools uh were encountered with parents wanting to opt
out of using these tools. they were to engage in a solutionoriented approach and then we provided them the multi-tered system of support resources tools what's in the curricula what to use in small groupoup instruction uh instead of using um the device um with
respect to the diagnostic our kinder and first grade students would use the device for the diagnostic assessment via i ready so that's the distinction there between the personalized learning and the i ready >> all right thank you I look forward to um
you know hearing more about how this uh how the roll out happens and how people are responding when you engage them in these conversations. Thank you. >> Thank you. Yes. Thank you. This is just preliminary. There's more to come. Uh Miss Gonz
um thank you chair. Just a few additional questions. Appreciate um the time that we've spent on this. It's obviously very important. Thank you for circling back on the I Ready question because I was unclear and I appreciate you clarifying. I also look forward to, you know, an intentional effort to hear
from our teachers, our students and families about I Ready specifically and to what extent are we seeing benefits and to what extent are we seeing impacts that may not be the most positive for students. Um I wanted to also ask about you know in some cases the curriculum
that we have is mostly digital in nature. Um I was just curious about when the default curriculum or program for a certain class is exclusively or mostly digital. How are we taking that into account? What are our efforts to work
with publishers to ensure that we're getting uh physical curricula so that we have um analog alternatives to turn to? >> Yep. So, um, as you know, we have the Williams, um, policy that calls for every student to have a textbook in the core, um, content. And so, they do. And
so, every year, our schools will, uh, place an order if they need additional books or, uh, there they don't have enough for the following year. Um, but the school should have a textbook for the core core content. Um students will
often choose to use the digital version for example for homework instead of having to carry all of their textbooks from school to home um because it makes their backpacks pretty heavy. So instead they decide to use it on the learning management system. So with every um
publisher that has provided us a textbook, there's a digital component and um teachers will also also often will say open uh your learning management system. Let's take a look at this particular text and then they'll engage in the learning that way. But we
have textbooks. Every student has a textbook in the content areas and the publishers often offer a digital component um to that to that textbook. Gotcha. Just maybe it would be helpful at some point to get some more
information about to what extent um our is our use of screen time in in some cases because that's the main mode of accessing the curricular text. One example I'd give is just for our students in our option schools. I know a
lot of them utilize egeneuity for their coursework. I'm curious about if that is the main way that they're catching up on credits if they'll be able to adhere to the, you know, recommended limit within grades 9 through 12.
So, one of the things that we'll be using is um when we get that app and um one of the area of um one item in the scope that we're requesting is to be able to see when the students are on the screen, what is it that they're engaging in? Is it the learning management
system? Is it their textbook? Is it? And then we'll be able to dis to discern what that is. We definitely don't want to prevent our students from accessing egeneuity or accessing the way that it helps them recover um uh recover credits
because that has been one of um the ways but it does not replace the teacher. The teacher comes first and uh all the interventions, supports and credit recovery efforts come from the teacher first. >> Yes. I think my point and I I appreciate you know knowing that I do have
questions about the the tech monitoring tool um that I will get to but I think my point is that it's a procurement issue in some cases rather than a monitoring issue exclusively and to whatever extent that like we need to utilize our procurement powers
differently to ensure that we have access to sufficient digital text or um that teachers you know know that they can make copies of the relevant sections of a textbook. So, a student may not need to take the entire text home, but could use those sections instead. Um, I think there might be more to get to like
the root cause of that particular issue, but um, thank you. Um, I also was wondering, um, I know we've been talking a little bit about the AI framework. I didn't get a chance to look at it in great detail. What I will say is that my amendments to the resolution call for a
board ad hoc committee. So, I think for that to happen, we need our board president to create a committee. And I think that that should happen very soon. I think the framework that um as far as I've taken a look at it, it's not objectionable, but AI is a very significant uh force in the world in
general. It uh there are a lot of questions ethical, moral, environmental, uh healthwise for students. And this is a policy issue. So, I really believe that the board needs to be weighing in explicitly on this policy issue and
would just ask that that ad hoc committee be named and informed as soon as possible so that we can start digging in um to this important issue because there's going to be an absence of clear direction until the board takes that step. So, I don't think that's
necessarily for the staff, but I'm just uh uplifting that as something that's important. Um, also in terms of AI access, I I know that there was a mention of, you know, secondary students or I guess it's ages 13 and up, I believe, in terms of access to AI tools.
Um, from what I've observed, students with access to a Chromebook below that age can access Google Gemini because it's embedded in um like in the search engine. Is that something that we're
looking at, considering, could do something about um for the future? Dominic, the use of Gemini. >> Uh yes, uh board member Gonz, in fact, that is one of the resolves of the resolution is to also be uh clear about
the AI uh parent consent form. Uh that's going to also require the decision from that ad hoc committee that the board is going to uh put together. I do want to uh also go back to those uh emerging technologies framework and AI uh
documents uh know that those um documents align to the screen time policy which is really to center the work around AI on that human- centered approach putting people first and what is the learning target around this. Uh so to your point uh in addition to the
current guardrails we have which is the mandatory digital citizenship and the responsible use policy completion there's also some work that needs to be done around that consent form for AI use. Uh Google being uh one of our uh enterprise accounts uh that's already
been vetted. It is uh important to note that the Google that we do have access in our schools is not the same Google that is consumer technology available to the public. So this has gone through rigorous vetting process and while that uh Google Gemini has also been uh
blocked for me many of our students. Okay, that's helpful. I I I mean I agree that more work needs to be done on those on the consent to to the AI tools. Um I I will just say like if our policy is no students should not be accessing AI
components until they are 13 or older. If there if because it's a part of default tools students are doing that in in contradiction to our existing policy we need to remedy that because we we have to stick to the policy that we have.
>> Um the last question I had was just around um the monitoring tool. Um, so did we consider whether there were other ways to monitor minutes that did not rely on like a technology or a digital
application. I um I can see the benefits, but I wasn't for one like I didn't read the resolution's passage as requiring the procurement of something. So um just trying to weigh the costs of having to procure something over what
whatever its benefits might be. The procurement will serve two things. One of them is the screen time capture uh total usage and the app level and but also offers the enhanced uh content filtering on the student device itself
um because at the network itself um I don't believe is sufficient because there's some stuff that is um allow for teachers but not allow for students. So we want that extra filtering at the student device level. So this tool will
provide both. It really have like three component the analytics, the classroom and then the uh filtering >> and and was any other approach considered to be able to achieve those ends or did we feel that this was the only way to be able to achieve those
things? >> Um probably technology wise this is the only way. um to get um to provide the the filtering that we need but give also the flexibility at the classroom level as well at the student level, right?
Student with IEPs and such. >> Okay, thank you. >> And we have one more question from Miss um Handy Newell and before I move on to our last presentation. >> Yes. Uh just for clarification, I know you told me that you needed 3,100 devices.
>> Is that carts? >> Carts. >> Yes. >> What is the cost for that? I didn't get that piece. >> We're doing a procurement. Uh I'm estimating about 1,300 each. >> Each cart. >> Okay. And then >> each cart host about I think different
models about uh 30 to 36 devices charging at the same time. >> Okay. And then with distributing each of those devices, will our SENI model be used to consider prioritization? >> That's something to consider.
>> Yeah. >> So you're asking if we would use the SENI model to prioritize which schools would receive that and that's definitely something we'll look into. >> Okay. And then just as we've been talking about, you know, data collection and making sure that's driving the work,
will we be able to get the data as mentioned on, you know, the curriculum we're using and what, you know, how we came to this curriculum as well as what we're already doing within the district. I appreciate um GGO talking about the cell phone. We haven't seen an update on
that because that is technology. How we how is it working in our schools? How were we able to monitor that? Do we have the data from our own district to be able to compare as we go into this model with the larger device but same parameters? Are we able to be able to
see that to be able to see what's working, what's not working and as well as achievement with the data that devices that we're using now, the students that are at, you know, opting in, opting out, they're using I ready. Do we will we be able to use that to be
able to see a start point and move forward to see where we've progressed or not progressed, what's working, what's not working, what communities, you know, actually, you know, need this and some communities may not, but are we able to track that information as we do this? I
think given um the the app that we hope to procure that will be able to help us with filtering disagregation of data without it we wouldn't be able to do that and of course we have enough data at this point for this year in terms of usage in terms of achievement how many
students have been able to improve as a result of our our um entire multi-tered system of support that includes the digital tools. Uh and then in the upcoming year with this implemented, we'll be able to now gather data on the use of the different um different
applications or um how the students have been engaging in screen time, whether it's been in a textbook, whether it's been in an online um lesson, whether it's been on um an application. And so based on all of that, we'll be able to provide more disagregation, but at this time it's not possible. So um we're
hoping to give you that type of information. >> Got it. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for answering all of our questions and also in follow-ups on some of um what was requested from board members. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Very well. So
now we are moving on to our final presentation and after that we have uh public comment. So if um Mr. Yes, Mr. Freriedman comes forward. This is in regards is an update on um
leveraging district purchasing power to defend immigrant families and human dignity. Um so we have here our chief procurement officer, Mr. Matthew Freriedman. So thank you. So the floor is yours, Mr. Freeman. >> Good afternoon. Thank you. Um today we are presenting on an update uh in
relation to the March resolution of leveraging purchasing power to defend immigrant families and human dignity. So we want to discuss initially just uh reintroducing some of the resolution language along with some assumptions as
far as how we implement the resolution then going into how we're going to address disclosures the assessment frame framework and then following up with next steps. So, I won't read this verbatim, but we captured this from the resolution, and it really captures the spirit of the
resolution as far as using the district's purchasing power consistent with its educational mission. And then very specifically around the disclosures and narrowly focused on direct engagement or the provision of material services.
So the two items that we're going to discuss today are how we're going to address vendor disclosures and then the assessment framework that comes afterwards. And before we start, there's going to be some foundational assumptions that we want to highlight. Um two very specific
ones is that we're going to follow all applicable laws as well as public contracting requirements. And then as part of the assessment framework, we're going to consider all operational impacts as as a result of the the framework.
So this is essentially the the beginning as far as vendor disclosures. So we'll discuss how we're going about vendor disclosures and then what we'll do with that information. So specific to the the question, it's in relation to work being performed by DHS, ICE or CBP. Again,
I won't read this verbatim, but these are the exact disclosure statements that will be introduced via survey. So, this will be released to all current vendors of the district as well as included in all future solicitations to understand uh in responses to to who is and who
isn't uh performing work for um those government entities. And once we receive those responses, any vendor that responds with a yes will then be prompted to follow up with additional responses as far as where their engagement involves as well as the
ability to upload documents to their uh choosing. And as soon as we receive all that information, the intent is to uh gauge the scope of their engagement. So that's via publicly available information, any documents that they provide as well as
potential discussions with those vendors and then taking it and looking at it from two different aspects. One as far as their engagement um outside of the district and then uh putting them into tiers. So tier one would be a a critical
or direct engagement. A tier two would be an indirect or incidental or tangent tangential engagement. Um an example of that may be um the type of car that they purchase is similar to a district car
that we purchase. Uh or tier three being no credible involvement. And then very similarly internally within the district, we're we're going to put them into uh different tiers. Tier one being a critical or statutoily required service or good. Um tier two being a
service or good that has student impact but isn't statutoily required. or tier three. It's a district choice. So, we have the choice to use something A or B as a tier three and then followed up with a mitigation or reasonable
alternatives recommendation. So, we provided a couple of examples. Um, example one being a software platform where data is being stored. uh we would consider that a tier one um as
far as the the vendor and their engagement outside of the district um and a tier two as far as the the work that's being performed in the district. So it may not be statutoily required but it is storing data that that directly impacts students
and our recommendation would be that um there's no reasonable cost or cost-effective alternative and that relates to the time that it would take to implement along with the cost associated with that especially given the district's financial position. All those considerations and nuance needs to
to be contemplated. Another example would be uh a company that offers almost as a retailer a number of products that the DHS also uh provides. We would consider that a tier 2. So indirect or tangential
and in the district it's a tier three. In essence, the district's choosing to buy products from that that provider as opposed to somebody else. And our recommendation would be that there's a possible or reasonable cost-effective alternative where we may be able to find those products elsewhere u by using um
procurement methods that are uh reasonably available and next steps. So we want to incorporate the disclosure survey to start uh no later than June 15th. We want to include uh the survey both within our solicitations as well as
going out to all uh district vendors, registered vendors. Uh we also want to take any feedback from today and try to incorporate that into the disclosures followed up with an assessment u framework and the feedback uh coming in the by the end of the third quarter as
well as uh part of that resolution was also to also to include all contracts and agreements. uh we intend to provide that no later than the end of the third quarter as well. >> On the last one on the list is that the dashboard is that in reference to the
dashboard that we >> uh not included in there but yes the the dashboard as well. So just to clarify the the resolution asked for a list of all contracts and agreements that would be provided to the board that will be done as well as a
public facing dashboard. Yep. >> And then we'll have a presentation once that is finalized. >> Correct. >> Okay. Thank you. Um I have a few questions. So thank you for um providing this up uh the implementation update. So you know the resolution emphasizes
mitigation and reasonable alternatives were feasible and cost effective. How will the staff evaluate what constitutes a reasonable alternative and what criteria will be used to determine when a vendor or system may be considered uh
too operationally disruptive, costly or complex to replace? For example, with factors such as implementation timelines, payroll and HR continuity, um student data migration or integration
with other district systems or transition costs be part of that analysis. Um, I think all of those uh in in essence there's so much nuance to each individual contract or vendor that we're using that each one needs to be almost
looked at independently from one another to take into account cost of of implementation. Um, you know, how it impacts students, how it impacts the district. Um, I think it's really important um to highlight that there are a number of contracts in the district
that are so operationally sensitive or important to the district that any recommendation outside of of maintaining the status quo could have significant impact to the district. Um, and and I think we we want to be objective in that
but also share why um why those impacts are so significant >> and um in In a situation where that may uh occur in the board book, would you be able to specify why this contract is um is
needed and you know how it would impact the district >> to to the to the extent that legally allowable? Yes, we'll share as much information as we can. Um, and for my next question, more broadly, how is the district thinking
about the issue of vendor lock in or long-term dependency on certain enterprise systems or vendors? Are there strategies being considered how on how to improve future flexibility, leverage or alternatives over time?
Um, typically vendor lockin occurs when the district enters into agreements for software or services that um are so ingrained into the operation either by customization or otherwise that it requires enough planning for us to get
ourselves out of that. Um, an example may be the district's operating system. Um, we've used the same operating system since 2005. um and to um to navigate away from that is going to take time um and resources.
And I think as as a whole, the district's discipline around that could be better. Um and I think we're focused on trying to to um implement structure around that as far as um notifying divisions and sponsors within the district that contracts that have that
significant impact um you know, multiple years in advance to be able to plan for it. Um because if you think of something like the district's operating system, it may take two or three years for us to to go out and solicit then actually implement new software including the
customization. And so I think from a procurement perspective, our job is to keep everybody a breast of where they are within their contractual terms, but also allow them to think strategically around how they may implement something new with enough time to be able to make
that effective um and um and uh achieve the results that they're looking for. And for my next question, what accountability or enforcement mechanisms will exist if a vendor does not fully or truthfully disclose information related
to disclosure requirements? For example, were there could there be consequences tied to future contract eligibility or renewals or amendments or additional review processes? U I I think our anticipation is that
there may be scenarios where vendors do not respond to our surveyor request and the district's our our approach to it is that our assumption is that a non-response is a yes and therefore the the background
research that we we do is under the the pretense that there is potential um engagement. um we have to follow all applicable laws as it relates to to procurement and and the district's kind of purchasing and
there's no scenario where we could preclude a vendor from bidding um and potentially winning an award solely based on their work being done with with a federal government. And so I think there's a you know we have to be able to navigate that um with intent um
intention and uh you know it's something that we have to look at in collaboration with OGC. >> Yeah. And my last question is it um as a district develops this framework is staff also considering a broader third-party risk management approach
that examines operational cyber security, privacy, governance, uh reputational and um vendor dependency risks together rather than in isolation. and how might that help strengthen
consistency and long-term oversight across district contracting practices? >> Um, so in the background, there's a number of uh firms that we've spoken to around kind of risk assessment scores and looking at it from a holistic
perspective. Uh again, that going back to the the idea of following applicable laws and procurement um codes, uh we certainly could uh look at or or take that back and find out if it's something that could be implemented
within the district, but still maintaining the or adhering to the codes and laws that we have to follow. Well, there's still more to come, so I'll leave my questions there. And any other of my colleagues that have any
questions? Yes. No questions. Okay. Well, thank you and uh we look forward to more updates moving forward. Yes, I guess I asked all my questions. All the questions you had. Um, no. So now we will move on to public
comment. So Mr. McClean, that is your area. >> All right. I'll call on the folks who listed themselves as speaking in person first and then we'll call on those who are listed as speaking remotely. So the first speaker is Takur. I see you're in
the room. Please press uh come on up. You'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Then after Takur is Bridey Lee and uh Chelsea C. Good afternoon members of the board. Um
I'm the core Singh. I'm a high school student and I'm again here today speaking with my peers about a matter that has concerned students and parents in our community and that is the matter of Jesus and Gulo and Maria Sotomayor in the recent comments by Latasha Buck.
Jesus Angulo is director of operations for virtual academy and in 2007 he pled no contest to covering up the rape of a minor. Maria Sotoayor, who did the same, has since been promoted to human resources and and Gulo has been promoted
to uh virtual academy. They earn over $200,000 of your tax dollars and my tax dollars, too. Is that right for these child predators to earn this money? I I mean, I think we all would agree that it's improper. And then Latasha Buck, director of instruction for the virtual
academy, was recently questioned about the same. And again, her response was that it was 20 years ago. Does it make it okay that a student was raped just because it was 20 years ago? I would be curious to hear what Thank you, Mr. Mullvoy. Thank you. I would be curious to hear what Latasha Buck says about
Epstein or Cesar Chavez. Is it okay that Cesar Chavez did his acts allegedly? 40 years ago. And Epstein, when was he convicted? 2006. Does that make it okay? It does not. So, please, members of the board, we ask that you please address this. These people should be terminated.
In an ideal world, they would not be working for LUSD. They would be fired today, just like the board was proactive about Cesar Chavez. But if they don't, if they aren't terminated, at least they should resign. You know, make them resign. And no golden handshake, please. And I appreciate uh board presidentson,
your recent updates. Thank you. I I know I emailed and you provided some updates. Um, and I ask, you know, that we all can receive more detailed updates about what is being done to address again these child predators who are working on the taxpayers's dime. Jesus Angulo, Maria
Sotomayor, Latasha Buck, if you're listening, I ask that you resign today. Thank you. >> Thank you for your time. Bry Lee, come on up. You have two minutes to speak. Why don't you begin? >> Okay. So, come on up. Uh, Miss Lee has given
her time to the gentleman coming up. So, you have two minutes to speak. Why don't you begin? >> All right. Hello, board members. I'm Will Mau. I'm the executive director of the Children's Media Research and Reform Lab. For two decades, I worked as an executive inside the media industry. I
spent the past five years studying how tech and media products shape children's development and how they make their way into our classrooms. After reviewing this policy draft, I've identified more than two dozen loopholes, vague terms, and unidentified concepts that hand tech and media companies a direct line to our
children. I want to take a second to just name a few. Can anyone on this board provide an evidence-based definition for the term screen value? How about an evidence-based definition of what counts as educational content specific enough
that a teacher could use it to define whether a Roblox game, a brain break video, or an AI tutoring tool belongs in a in a classroom? What about the term independent experts? Where's the definition and where's the list so we can check for conflicts of
interest? When we let industry language define our standards, it makes us question who is actually drafting these policies. I don't have time today to walk walk through all two dozen of these um issues, but they'll be included in a copy that will be submitted to the
board. My hope is that you'll close these egregious loopholes quickly and effectively before passing any policies that affect the health and well-being of the children that you're meant to protect. I have four simple requests. Define
every term in this policy using independent research and peerreed evidence and remove the industry talking points. Publish the names and affiliations of every expert who consulted on this and require independent conflict of interest disclosures. Require independent
efficacy and safety vetting for every product before it enters classroom. And lastly, require digital literacy training for any staff that has the authority to make screen and techbased decisions in the classroom. Children deserve a policy
that's is written for them. Thank you. >> Thank you for your time. Chelsea C, why not? You have two minutes to speak. Why don't you begin? >> Hi, thank you. Um, I'm Dr. Chelsea Confalone. I am a teacher. I'm also a parent at LUSD and a member of schools
beyond screens. Um I wanted to note that Dr. uh Rivas had asked about uh who the industry professionals were and I don't think that we got a satisfactory answer. No one on the list that the uh LUSD provided uh was an industry professional
and I think it's critical to know who the industry professionals shaping this policy actually are. Also wanted to thank um Melo for raising the tech audit. I think given the budget constraints that have been brought up today, I hope that you'll keep pushing for that. Uh the resolution you passed
specifically called for collaboration with independent experts. As we saw in the presentation, this proposal quietly swapped that for indep uh for input from industry professionals who by definition represent companies whose primary obligation is to profits and market
growth, not students. This is an inherent conflict of interest and it has no business near decisions about curriculum, classroom technology, and procurement. The recent scandals over tech company contracts should make it clear that we need to do things differently. Independent, as called for
in the resolution that was unanimously passed, means researchers, educators, nonprofits, LUSD teachers, child development specialists, and public health experts, not people with financial stake in selling more tech to our schools. Consider the example that was raised by board member Gonz that the
need to procure tech to track screen minutes. As we all know, there's teachers are happy to have guidelines put on them. They don't need to be tracked by some new expensive procurement. And this is exactly the kind of thing that's going to be
suggested when the only people in the room are industry professionals who want to sell our school's products. So today I'm asking the board require LUSD disclose which industry professionals have already weighed in, strike industry professionals from all future decisions related to this proposal and replace
them with the independent experts that the resolution called for. We've uh Okay, that's enough. Thank you. >> Thank you for your time. The next speaker is Rachel Zernick and then after Miss Zernick is Ana Mixon.
Hi, good afternoon. Uh, my name is Rachel Zernick. My son is starting TK at Mitchell Trina this fall. First, I want to sincerely thank you for your commitment to restricting device use in elementary school. Last fall, my husband and I toured multiple LA USD elementary
schools where we saw kindergarteners wearing headphones all sitting around their individual tablets. Uh administrators told us the district mandated weekly I Ready minutes and that's why we were seeing all this tablet use. Uh we were not told about our right to opt out and it made us
hesitant about enrolling him and you know banning devices through first is a promising start but it's not enough. I would ask the board to consider extending the device ban through fifth grade and at the very least through second grade. Has the district been presented any independent research
indicating that it's either effective or developmentally appropriate for seven-year-olds to be spending time on gamified apps? Second, I want to stress the importance of a clear, meaningful optout process and significant changes to the district's responsible use policy. Despite the expected device ban,
I was given the RUP as part of my son's enrollment packet. I was disturbed to see that it requires me as the parent to wave all my legal claims um for my son's use of technology while explicitly acknowledging the many potential harms that were could result
from that use. It also makes my son, who will turn four next month, personally responsible for things like not sharing personal information over the internet, being aware of the privacy settings of the websites he uses, and direct quote for not meeting anyone in person whom he
has only met on the internet. As far as I can tell, even with the proposed updates, the RUP would continue to both require parents to wave their rights and make even very young children responsible for their own online safety. I sincerely question the equity of
forcing the RUP on parents um and ask the board to consider drastically changed language, including clearly communicated and comprehensive optout rights. Thank you very much. >> Thank you for your time. Anya Mex to Andrea,
>> come on down. Uh, Andrea, >> you have two minutes to speak. Why don't you begin? >> Anya, thank you. Board members, my name is Andrea Uruchia and I'm a credentialed substitute teacher for kindergarten through 12th grade and a mother of two.
As a sub, the permanent teachers often leave me lesson plans for the kids to work on assignments on their computers. What I consistently find, especially in grades 6 through 12, is that kids figure out ways to navigate to other sites to play games, watch music videos, and they
need to be redirected often. This results in fragmented attention, disjointed learning. So, the proposed daily limits for grades 6 through 12 are excessive and jeopardize learning and should be at zero minutes up to grade two. Second, in his book, Glow Kids, Dr.
Dr. Nicholas Cardaras describes how video games deliver dopamine to children as they play. Due to its game-like format, I Ready does the same thing. Pointclick, instant celebration. So, this wires a child's brain for low
effort and high reward. But this doesn't serve them when it comes time for high effort, low reward, like homework, writing a paragraph, writing an essay. So kids get extremely frustrated and it takes an excessive amount of time to complete homework and even more so with
a neurode divergent child. Third, Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath was recently interviewed on the scrolling to death podcast and discussed his findings on I Ready, he found that a in the 15 years I Ready has been around, there have been only two lower tier studies published in
academic papers. One found its quality as a diagnostic tool to be less than that of standardized state tests. The second in-house study on it being a learning tool compared kids who use I Ready to kids who do nothing, which is not really a valid comparator. You need to compare 30 minutes of math done on I
Ready versus 30 minutes of math done in person with a teacher to see if the digital tool is better. That was not done. When students work on math problems on paper, I can see where they're getting stuck and then I can help address the disconnect in their process. I really can't do that. It's
just multiple choice and it just shows them if they got right or wrong. So, the contract should just be cancelled. Thank you for being a trailblazer. >> Thank you for your time. Uh, Maria Louisa Palma and then Katie Pace. Come on down. Miss Palma, you'll have
two minutes to speak once you begin. Well, good afternoon. My name is Marisa Palma speaking on behalf of Olada. And today I'm here, I'm sure you know, to talk about the financial realities and the only one I'm gonna bet who is here today to speak about the five alarm fire
that you have on your hands with your financial statements, with your projections. But I'm looking here at everything that was discussed today and I never heard the word whether or not any questions about whether programs that you're spending money on are effective or
ineffective. All the discussion was that I heard was about magical thinking that this is the money that you need, but are the funds being used effective or not? And in the meantime, you also have this little witch hunt here for
political appearances. So instead of spending uh more taxpayer money on this futile futile exercise in this procurement um scheme that you choose to waste uh staff time on to paraphrase what procurement just told you I think
what they're telling you is what you're asking for is illegal. I don't know legal counsel what do they think about this? So you're trying to create a a list of vendors to out people that are working with ICE, but come on man, instead of talking about what you are
spending money on and whether or not it's effective and so we don't have any AB1200 documents today and it begs the question, well why not? My guess is that because with the f without the financial stability plan, you can't approve those uh collective bargaining agreements. But
no one here asked if based on the projections you have here today, will your budgets be classified as qualified or negative? And I think it's negative, but why didn't anybody ask? So, I see this as a dereliction of your duty as
trustees of the financial status of this school district. You're not considering inefficiencies. You're not considering overhead. You're not considering consolidations or closures. I can't wait to see what the financial stability plan draft looks like, but man, you got some serious problems on your hands, and no
one is really talking about them. That's absurd. >> Thank you for your time. Katie Pace, come on up. Uh after Miss Pace is uh uh Kate Brody. So, come on up. You'll have two minutes to speak. Why don't you begin? >> Yesterday at 11:00 a.m., my teenager
emailed me a series of three emails in 30 minutes, each filled with links to different outfits across various websites. she wanted me to look at for an upcoming school event. She sent me these from her schoolisssued device during her algebra 1 class. Schools Beyond Screens has been coming to you in hopes that you would address tech issues
for all ages. But looking at the draft of the new policy, it seems as though 6 through 12 students are just an afterthought. While I appreciate the changes that have been written into policy, we need you to go further. As elementary schoolers have devices removed, high schoolers are being given a very loose three-hour a day limit
without any plan on how to enforce it. There is no current guidance for teachers on how to divide these minutes among four to eight periods a day. Teachers cannot be asked to coordinate their minutes together. These are huge gaps in the policy that will take away some teacher autonomy and leave them struggling to enforce the limits. We
need middle and high schoolers to have minute restrictions based on academic subject and for the minutes to include I Ready and for time for homework. The endless afterchool web surfing while pretending to do homework with parents left to police it has to stop. And most
significantly, three hours a day of class time spent on a screen is simply too much. That's allowing for 75 to 80% of their statemandated instructional time to be spent on a screen. A drastic reduction in these minutes is imperative. Lastly, we need a strategic tech optout procedure for all grades
clarified in the policy. The top private schools in LA, as well as prestigious universities across the country, have or are moving to completely screenfree classrooms. But last week at a top LA USD high school, there was a coffee with the principal meeting to discuss low attendance. The administration said they
realized it was easy to not come to school because everything was digital. I do not doubt that low attendance in high school may be due to the ability to still pass without actually being there. But that is getting a grade. This is not getting an education. We need you to make it essential and worthwhile for 6 through 12 students to be sitting in
their seats with screens closed and learning from a human teacher doing algebra on paper instead of on Amazon. Thank you for your time. Kate Brody, come on up. >> I'm gonna >> Okay. Donation to Brighty Lee.
>> It's been amazing to witness the title wave of positive responses to the board's historic resolution. from countless media outlets praising LUSD's decision to a huge spike in parent and teacher organizing with schools beyond screens now represented in over 100 districts nationwide. The following
policy areas need to be addressed to accurately align with resolution language, limit harms of excessive device use, and reflect the current research and legal landscape. The resolution states, "The district shall develop a screen time policy to be implemented by school year 2026 27, but
only early ed through first grade are scheduled as stated. The timeline for all other students 2 through 12th is not in alignment with the resolution." The resolution states the policy shall quote provide screen time limits for students, but screen time limits are only established for early ad through fifth
grade. Then the word limits is inexplicably replaced with the word recommendations for 6th through 12th. LUSD stated that the upper range of screen use based on district tracking was up to two hours for high school age kids and as we heard today 91 minutes but the policy draft actually increases
this to three hours. It should also be noted that a rapidly expanding AI private school with no teachers is now explicitly marketing its two hours of screen time as the antidote to the overuse of screens in public school. The Google consent form is for apps that are
designed for users above 18 years old. Google also defines these additional services as consu as designed for consumer users. This is fundamentally at odds with the policies guiding principles of developmentally appropriate use and educationonly use by
design. Half of the resolution is not included in the policy draft, including I Ready, which is also excluded from the presentation and does not offer quote valuable learning experiences that cannot be replicated offline. Other missing language regarding professional development, generative AI, student privacy, the responsible use policy,
screen time usage reporting to parents and teachers, parent resources regarding screen addiction, and more are critical to the successful implementation and need to be outlined in the screen time policy. I have more to say, but I will follow up by email. Thank you. >> Thank you for your time. Uh Lindseay
Boyd. Lindsay Boyd, are you here? >> After uh Lindsay Boyd is Amber Miles. Good afternoon. My name is Lindseay Boyd and I'm a parent with Schools Beyond Screens. I want to talk today about the creep of AI in our schools and why it's an emerging threat to our learners. This
is not something that's coming down the pipeline. It's happening now. Our students are reporting that Google Gemini interrupts their research and writing and even their art projects prompting them, do you need help with the challenging homework or ask Gemini? And I would note that this is not
because there's a demonstrated ped pedagogical benefit to Gemini. It's because Google wants our students to use Gemini and not Claude or any of the competitors. I would also note that common sense media has rated even the educational version of Google Gemini as
high risk. We already know that AI is detrimental to human brains. MIT researchers found that users of LLM consistently underperformed at neural linguistic and behavioral levels. When they published their findings, these researchers sounded alarm bells about K through2 specifically, noting that
developing brains are at the highest risk. Research shows that middle schoolers with access to LLMs report using AI even when they don't need it. Over time, they lose confidence in their ability to start and their fear they fear their own answers are simply not good enough. They develop symptoms like
dependency, apathy, anxiety, and cognitive decline. We heard a lot in the budget uh presentation about the the problem of declining enrollment. If we reduce education to two computers talking to each other, what is the point of me bringing my child to school
anyway? Tools that are designed for cognitive offloading have no place in LAD and they were introduced without parent, teacher, or student consent. We need a moratorum. We need, as I think uh board member Gonz's comments touched upon, why don't we have the policy and
have the actual working group to decide what's the appropriate use of these tools before we enable them on our students laptops. We need an AI AI memoratorium at least until LA USD's ad hoc AI committee can develop guidelines and recommendations. First, do no harm.
Please do no harm. Thank you for your time. The next speaker is Amber Miles. Amber, are you here? Amber Miles. Desan, are you here? Some of these folks may be online and I
will come back to them. All right, Desan is online. Please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Desan, Desan, you're uh you're up. Please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin.
>> Hey, good afternoon. My name is De Sun with Catalyst California and the Equity Alliance for LA's Kids. We call on LA USC to not compromise on its equity commitment at a time when our communities are facing violence and inhumane cuts to basic needs. Recently
during the May revision announcement, Governor Newsome lauded LA USD for its progress in student outcome gains, particularly for black and brown students. We know that this progress is partly driven from equity investments like Sunny and Visa. And yet the
district's proposal to cut 299 million from Sunny across the next two years directly contradicts what we know is most needed and working for our most vulnerable students. What's more, these reductions disproportionately harm high and highest need schools, the very
opposite of the district's equity values. We recognize that your role as the board and superintendent is to be responsible fiscal stewards. But what comes before that is your duty to be stewards of our students and their ability to thrive and succeed. With the
May revise with additional funds, we urge the district to protect Senny's 700 million investment, BSAP, and other equity programs and resist any measure that leaves our highest need students and families even more vulnerable. Further, we call on the district to
realize its commitment to transparency and authentic community engagement. When the district presents its updated FST, it must provide comprehensive disagregated data of the equity impact on our different student populations. something that we in fact have yet to see. The district should make this
information and data available well in advance of budget votes with opportunities for communities to meaningfully engage with the district. True equity means equity in the process and equity in the outcome. Protect Fenny, protect our equity investments, and partner with community in the
decision-making process. Thank you. >> Thank you for your time. Uh Jamila, I see you're on the line. Please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Jamila. Hello. Can you hear me? >> We sure can. Please go ahead. >> Okay. Good afternoon, school board
members. My name is Jamal Santo and I and I am here today to speak on an important issue that has concerning students, parents, and faculty with the star vulture academy. In 2017 in 2017, Mara Tamar and Jus Aguilera were administrators at Southeast High School.
A 17-y old a 17-y old girl came up to them trusting them about the adult airport that she was raped by a teacher. Instead of following protocol on or informing authorities of the accusations, Hudus and Moria responded by locking her in room for hours until she was counselored a story. They then
put no contest to covering up the straits. After this, they retaliated against the student. She wasn't even allowed to go to her own graduation. In 2023, LUC had to pay a settlement of 6.5 million to the former student who was abused and then further victimized by Maria and Jesus. Luc tried to write its
wrongs back in 2008 by letting it go, but they were then reay has since been aborted has since been promoted. Board members, I realized you were also paying these people through your taxes states that it wants the students to grow safe and respected in school. I think you all agree with that mission have positive
intentions. However, it is very questionable that these to administrators pled no contest edit and would then promoted academy director Wachi Buck was recently questioned about this and said that it wasn't her concern since it was 20 years ago. Is that appropriate? Is that appropriate for her
to say is that right? As somebody who has a friend who who was a victim of grooming, how was she as a student supposed to feel safe enough to talk about her experience? How are other students who might be survivor supposed to feel safe? You cannot openly claim to care about her or any other student when you allow people who openly cover up who openly cover up child abuse to continue
to work on your district. Many students are scared to speak up about their experience already and fall in allowing these two to continue working on your stars more experience to those students feel like they shouldn't have. I hope that you take rapid action against all three of of these individuals and provide us with quick updates. Thank you
for your time. >> Thank you for your time. The next speaker is Christopher E. Christopher, I see you're on the line. Please press star six to unmute yourself and you have two minutes to speak once you begin. Christopher >> uh hello. Can you hear me?
>> Yes, we can. Please go ahead. >> Okay. Dear members of the school board, my name is Christopher Cellator. In the past, I've come to speak here about other less serious subjects, but this is a very traumatizing subject today. Um, as my ether my other peers have noted,
it has been recently exposed that Jesus Sangu and Natasha Buck, who are in charge of virtual academy, were questioned in public about the case of Angulo, who pled no contest to failing to report the rape of a student. Angulo allegedly responded while being visibly
upset and distraught. He said it was a personal matter and walked away. Is student safety now a personal matter? Lakasha Buffs was asked now. Her response was that it does not concern her since it was 20 years ago. How is this at all an appropriate response from
the student and f student and family concerns with sexual abuse? When Miss Buck was asked about Caesar Chavez's allegations coming from 40 years ago, she had no answer and angrily hung up. Of course, Angala was promoted after he pled no contest along with
Maria Sotomire. Both were administrators at Southeast High School at the time. Now they make over $200,000 a year. They only got a slap on the wrist for the trauma they inflicted on a powerless and scared student. We are asking that you please take action. Do something about
his son or Maria Stoay. They shouldn't have ever even been allowed to be in L USD and take take action against Natasha Buck as well for her irresponsible answer. Once again, we are hoping to hear from you as quickly as we did about Caesar Chavez in which L USD was
properly proactive. Thank you. >> Thank you for your time. Ecatina, are you on the line? I don't have you on the line. Are you in the room, Eaterina? Okay, you are in person. Come on down. You'll have two minutes to speak once you begin.
>> Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for opportunity to be here and to talk with you. I want to support uh LUSD students as a parents of Takur and Tatiana Singh and uh as you aware previously my son Takur was talking about this incident uh
involving uh Isus and Maria Sotoair. I feel that um it's need to be addressed because um I recently got my MPA from Cal State Dominguez Hills and I have previously law degree from Russia. I was
accepted to Lyola Law School. I will start my education in this coming falls. And I feel something not right here. How it's possible that two people who were convicted in such a horrible crime as a
student rape who was assistants in this type of incident. they still working with LA USD board system and as a parent I have a safety concern and many other concerns.
I feel that in 21st century in United States of America justice should be dominate and all aspects of our life and those two individuals must resign. Thank you. Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your time. Isabella Tez, are you in the room? Isabella Telz, you're signed up to speak remotely, but I do not have you online. Not here. And Amber Miles, you are online. Amber Miles, please press star six to unmute
yourself. And you have two minutes to speak once you begin. Amber Miles. >> Hi. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? >> Yes, we can. Please go ahead. >> Okay. Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Amber Miles and I am a
teacher in local district south. I'm here today to urge the board to release the fiscal stabilization plan immediately and to ensure that our highest need schools are fully protected from cuts. I urge the board to prioritize the release of the fiscal stabilization plan as soon as possible
and ensure that our highest need schools are fully protected from impending budget budget cuts. Educators and community members want to meaningfully engage in the process and the sooner we have clarity on the fiscal landscape for the next couple of years. The sooner we
can provide feedback that can be reflected in the final FSP in June. Every day that the stabilization plan remains unreleased. Our schools are left in a state of crippling uncertainty. We need the details of this plan out in the open as soon as possible. Delays in this
plan prolong the uncertainty of for our most vulnerable students, making immediate transparency and equity focused budgeting essential. More importantly, as the board makes these difficult financial decisions, we must draw a hard line in the sand to protect
our highest need schools. These campuses rely on essential funding to provide critical services like smaller class sizes, specialized reading program, and wraparound mental health support. If we balance our budget on the backs of these students, we are not solving our fiscal
problems. We are simply passing the cost on to the children who can least afford it. I ask that you prioritize transparency and use an equity first approach when executing the stabilization plan. Thank you for your time and your continued dedication to
all of our students. >> Thank you for your time. That concludes public comment for the committee of the whole. >> Thank you so much. uh to all our public commenters. Um I want to end by saying that you know today's presentations
reflected the complexity of the work ahead from navigating fiscal uncertainty and supporting student well-being in the in a digital age to ensuring the district systems and procurement practices remain aligned with our values and responsibilities to students and
families. Um also thank you to everyone who participated in today's discussion throughout the and al also throughout the year's committee of the whole meetings. I want to end by again showing appreciation as this is the final committee of the whole for this academic
year. Appreciation to all who work to make sure that this um committee runs smoothly. Particularly, I want to start with my staff, uh, my policy director, Alejandra Ramirez Sarate, who works diligently
with district leadership, especially Miss Amanda Wearret, and want to thank all the staff that, uh, supports her work as well, and also board secretariat staff, everyone. Um, I would love to name all of the folks who uh from the
board secretariat's office who make sure the agendas and the presentations are distributed from Myra, Myra, Lisa, Ebony, James, Raina, and Alex. Thank you all so much. And also for all the staff in KCS who are in the back um you know
making sure that um all whoever speaking is focused and that the cameras are working. um and also for our tech support and also our translation staff. So, thank you to all of them and also to all of our school operations who are
here also making sure that and thank you and then in the back as well. Thank you for all the support you provide here in in the boardroom and everyone who has presented every single division or or department that has been here in the podium answering very tough questions
and presenting very uh important information. Thank you all and you all know who you are. Thank you for being here present. and also to our labor partners who come here, our public comment uh those who provide public comment and to my colleagues for very
thoughtful uh questions, conversations, collaboration and and also to continuing and uh focusing on supporting our students, our school communities through very challenging and important time in public education. So we appreciate all
of you and for me much gracias for making my work um easy. Not easy but at least um looks easy but it's not. And uh so thank you and then with that I adjourn this final committee of the whole meeting. Thank you all so much.