All right. Room phone. Call to order. Where would you like to sit doctor Blasquez here? We are going to start the meeting. We're gonna start Jesus.
We're going to call the meeting to order. We're going to call the meeting to order. Jennifer Holly? Here. Mister Lisa Planko? Here. There are Maxi? What's around here? Okay. Okay. Thank you all for being here. Roll call. You did it? Yeah. Okay. Public comment on no. There's no public comment on closed session. Student board member is here. Okay. So if we have no public comment on closed session, we're going to recess to closed session at 05:07. 05:07.
We are recessing. Okay. Okay. Thank you all for being here. We're gonna start this meeting. A roll call. Here. Here. Presente. Here. Here. Here. Here. Okay. Now we're gonna do the pledge of allegiance. Scott Harden, please. Okay. So now we're gonna move to public comment. The board of education acknowledges receipt of public comments via email. These comments will be made part of the permanent record of this meeting. I will be calling the names three at a time. Tantum, Robinson, Maggie, Capuchin, Warren Bleecker.
You have two minutes for public comment. Thank you. Hello, everybody. My name is Hannah Robinson. I'm currently a senior at Marshall Fundamental. And for me, technically, these budget cuts don't affect me. But through ACI, I've been able to connect with so many people from the sixth graders to the freshmen, juniors, seniors, everybody who is a part of my school. And for me, it's really important to come and represent them and share my voice. I've been a part at Marshall since sixth grade. I was recruited for ACI the summer of my eighth grade year, and I joined because I'm incredibly passionate about the performing arts, and I have been since I was four. This is a way for me to be able to express myself and be able
to meet with great opportunities. I was able to do and meet so many amazing guest artists through Miss Nogganuma. We got to do things like dance with Diavolo, go do amazing performances at USC, UCLA, and meet so many amazing people. Through Miss B, we were able to go to events at Annoyes Within, and through Miss Johnson, we were able to go to the Japanese American National Museum. It's been such an incredible opportunity for me to be able to have this funding and be able to severely, like, be able to meet everybody and meet these amazing opportunities. HCI has extremely shaped my experience in high school, has helped me grow as a student and in my professional life, from job shadowing the summer of my sophomore year
to meeting an internship the summer of my senior year, for which I've been incredibly gracious for. And for this to now, I've been in contact with the leaders of my internship, and I still communicate with them and am involved in their program. For me, the internship was the most important part, especially for the people at my school when a lot of them don't have access to things like internships. And I really want to be able to keep this program at my school and help everybody have these same opportunities. Thank you. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Lyric Maves, and I'm a member of the ACI program at Marshall, the very program that showed me how to succeed. I'm assuming in every in almost every arts track at Marshall, but I started with
dance. This is my fifth year in dance and my third year taking it as an ACI track. This program hasn't just equipped me with a vital with vital life skills. It made me secure in who I was an artist and as a person. It's the reason I stayed at Marshall. Had I never joined ACI, I wouldn't know that all I wouldn't know all that I know. I wouldn't be the dancer I am. I wouldn't have been exposed to all that inspires me. I would never have done the POC All Star Musical, a highlight of my life. I wake up every day knowing that I can create something or at the very least engage in in this incredible community of artists. If you cut the district's academies, we're not just losing ACI. We're losing the experience.
We're losing all that we've worked for and all that could be. Hundreds of hours of work, years of progress, and an entire community goes down the drain. We lose all that makes our high school experience special. Please protect our programs. Thank you. Excuse me. I don't have a card for you, so can you please write a card? Yes. But, I I only have one name in the card. So can you please create a card? I'll send you my little names. Yeah. I'll grab you a card. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Maggie Kopushin, parent of two Webster students and the Armenian speaking community
assistant at Webster Elementary School. Thank you for your leadership during this challenging time for our district. I'm here because both my role and the Armenian Academy are deeply meaningful to our families. Many parents can only access their child's education through culturally informed language, specific support. From them, this role is not optional. It's essential. This position I'm humbled to hold is directly tied to attendance and student success. 25 out of our 46 English learners are Armenian families, and many more are not EL but still do not speak English.
They rely on this role to understand school information, meet expectations, and stay connected. When families feel supported in their language, children thrive. Webster is our community school, and it serves the largest Armenian community in Pasadena. Families, including my own, chose Webster because of the strong relationships and the welcoming environment that principal Forrest and our wonderful staff have created. My family, like many others, including chair of our school site council, we moved from private school because the Armenian Academy offers Armenian instruction and a diverse public school experience.
The program now enrolls 84 students and has tremendous potential to grow if we continue to strengthen it. The SBAC strategic plan calls for meaningful collaboration with families but that cannot happen without true language access. With so many Armenian only speaking families, rotating or removing support breaks trust. Equity, not seniority, must guide staffing. Thank you for your time. Hello. My name is Warren Bleecker. I was a representative, a parent representative on the superintendent's budget advisory committee. And I just wanted to comment briefly on on two items.
One is the funding cuts proposed for college and career readiness. As I'm sure the board is aware, it was two or three weeks ago, the board, voted on what its priorities, both short term and long term, would be. And one of the main priorities was college and career readiness for its POC students, which obviously, that's the whole point. We want students to come through the POC schools, graduate, and then be college and career ready. So So it's concerning that any of these proposed cuts would affect any of the college and career, programs.
Specifically, Marshall has won, the Academy for Creative Industries. It's an amazing program. The proposed cuts would take, one FTE and then another point five FTE, which would be grant funded. So really, you're only saving funds from one FTE. But because dance counts as a PE class, the district would then have to rehire a PE teacher to cover those classes. In addition, then Marshall would only have one CTE teacher. It's a graduation requirement, so they would have to hire somebody else to teach other CTE, classes for that graduation requirement.
So that program the the proposed cuts would end up costing the district more money than if they did not make those cuts. It makes no sense. The second thing I want to talk about in my limited time is athletics. A 50% cut or more to the high school athletics would be very detrimental to the district. Many students and many families put a high priority on sports, and it's such an important aspect of the district. If it gets cut at this level, our enrollment is going to decrease. That's one of the things the cuts should not do. It should not affect grant funding, and it should not lead to further decreases in enrollment because that will only lead to decreased revenue in the future, which will bring
us all back here again, which we want to avoid. Thank you. Danny Donabian, Luz Madera, Natalie Daley. Good evening, esteemed board members, esteemed superintendent Blanco. A couple of things. My name is Danny Donobelian, as the lady mentioned. I represent Army National Committee Pasadena. My committee and I have a couple of concerns. First of all, it saddens us to see the difficulties our beloved school district is going through. For myriad reasons, the school district had to close many of its schools over the
years, Chief among them, a lack of student enrollment in the district. In the past two decades, it's become a war of attrition. That made things untenable for the district. And unfortunately, something like that would not be sustainable. Under these circumstances and considering the challenges, the challenging financial circumstances the district faces, we would like to know if the Board of Education is open to or planning to sell any of its school properties to mitigate some of its financial burden it faces resulting in much needed relief?
And, secondly, what will be the fate of the Armenian Academies at Blair High and Webster Elementary? It's a credible and palpable concern for their students, their families, and the Armenian American community in Pasadena. Thank you. Got it. Alright. We have the translator version. I address this honorable assembly as representative of the E LEC from Blair School, as
the president of DELAC and as a member of the LCAP. As a member of the superintendent's budget committee, I come before this board of directors because the form the format of the budget committee did not allow a free expression and thorough analysis of each topic. Certainly, different scenarios focus on reducing spending through the elimination of positions, roles, and programs were analyzed, which will lead to lower operational capacity, but still wonder if this will allow us to to be efficient and financially healthy. 2025 has by far been I'm sorry.
2025 has by far been the most difficult year for our community and terrible for immigrants and their families whose children, when entering our classrooms, are left speechless, alone, and often invisible. Today, more than ever, we have felt orphaned. The teachers and staff of the school district represent the only embrace, the only support, the opportunity to integrate into a dignified life. We understand that these are difficult times, hard times, times have changed, but that is why we ask you to defend quality public education, which for us is the only path and often the only legacy we can leave our children.
Doctor Blanco, we want to continue being included in your phrase, the power of in your phrase, the power of us. We want to continue being embraced and considered if we can together build new and better horizons. My name is Natalie Davie, and I'm the librarian at the Octavia Butler Library, named after Opacity Mejiro, who credited libraries and librarians with her successful career. I was a member of the SBAC committee for two years. Please do not assume that the committee rankings are a consensus of cuts that a diverse group thinks should be done in the district. We voted on what we were given, which was in many ways limited information about services and how they benefit students. We were also forced to vote on services as a package even when the services
were unrelated to each other. Many of us wanted to vote on services separately and even reconsider our rankings from last year given the devastating cuts cuts before us during this year's committee. The process was particularly difficult for me as I learned early on that the program I have built over the past six years was under consideration for being cut. The committee never had the chance to learn about the dozens of kids who visit the library every day to spend their breaks playing games, making crafts, reading books, and making friends, and finding a safe place to land. Or the countless author visits, community partnerships, donations that the library has been able to accept through work to build relationships and get the outside community to care about the literacy of our students or about the increase in reading scores at our school, particularly
by the students of the teacher that most seriously highlights independent reading and reuse of the library with her students and with her students, and all about the support for the eighth grade portfolio program in a way that supports and enhances senior defenses. The committee never got a chance to learn about the activity about the library science fiction contest and festival in which students are able to walk in Butler's footsteps and create science fiction pieces for a contest and be published in a book each year. And then we celebrate at a festival that brings together elite science and art partners who donate their time and expertise along with generous donors from across the country to support the festival's free book fair to celebrate the Pasadena Hero and our students in
a great collaborative effort to enhance the culture of the school and broadcast a positive perception of the school and the community and far beyond. None of these programs are possible if the library services at middle schools are reduced to half time. A cut to the library is a cut to the classroom. The committee also never got to learn about how our MTSS coaches make kids feel like they belong at at school through wiffle ball games, at lunch, peer mediation, and countless other ways that connect with kids every day. Cutting them is a cut to the classroom. Cutting our community assistant and bilingual aid are cuts to the classroom. Everything that happens at a school affects the classroom. Tomer Polanski.
All day. There's a lot to say. My name is Nicole Issa, and each of my various roles have been or are currently threatened by the ongoing, ongoing ten years now in this district, financial crises. As a drama teacher and English teacher at Elliott in 2018, and now as a librarian and water polo coach at John Muir High School, all the programs I have been a part of are the reasons why children thrive in our schools. And without them, we are failing our students.
However, I am here today to speak specifically on the cuts to librarians. Our enriching books and learning resources but also the places of gathering, studying, creating and building connections. They are the silent gap filler for everything a school is supposed to do. You don't even know what we do, probably. And they are so crucial as a literacy resource.
In fact, according to the Center for American Progress, more than fifty years of research across more than 60 studies show that students with access to well resourced school libraries with certificate of librarians consistently perform better academically and score higher on standardized assessments. You are concerned about literacy rates and you are taking away access to a well documented answer to America's literacy problem.
Spending money on libraries and certificated librarians who are arguably some of the most specialized professionals in our entire district, whether it's on literacy, especially media literacy, research, and instructional design. You must prioritize us and not eliminate us. The research is clear and this is not the dispensable position you assume it is. Doctor. Blanco's announcement to reduce middle school librarians to 50% before there is even a vote is unacceptable. Middle school libraries and librarians are the literacy lifeline for our students as they prepare
for high school. These librarians, my esteemed colleagues and friends, provide students with learning and enrichment opportunities that wouldn't be possible without fully staffed libraries. We have spent time on vertical alignment for research expectations as well as collaborated on eighth without all of us working full time. And lastly, I'd like to circle back to the enrichment piece of this equation because
programs and services that give students a well rounded education, be it arts, sports, libraries that foster a love of reading and learning, clubs, and more should be protected as we descend further into fascism. This is the this is frankly the last time in children's lives that they get to be this free and you are stealing it from them. James Baldwin said that children are always ours. Every single one of them Do better. Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board. My name is Tomer Polonsky and I am a tenth grader at Thurgood Marshall.
I recently wrote a formal letter to doctor Blanco researching the details of your proposed cuts and proposed alternatives. Before I go into more detail, I would like to state that I am entirely in favor of keeping our CTE programs, namely the Academy for Creative Industries, ACI. Now while I am in full support of CTE programs' continuation, I see this crisis as concerning more than just our academies. You are proposing to cut everything from custodial staff to sports, and I know I'm not alone when I state that this is outrageous.
Five days a week, I spend my days at school from 08:15 to 05:30. I participate in more than just ACI. I'm involved in sports like cross country and track, as well as multiple clubs. I can't imagine my daily life without these activities. Now I cannot fully comprehend the difficulties you all must be facing trying to pull us out of this hole, but I genuinely fear for the future of our schools. I worry they may become soulless and unenjoyable places where we simply go to spend our time. Not only that, I fear for my future and the future of my peers.
I do not come from a wealthy family, and apart from enjoyment, these programs and activities are my pathway to achieve great things in this world. My extracurriculars, teachers, and coaches are some of the most crucial parts of my life. I do not mean to sound accusatory. I only wish to make this blunt and true. We, the members of the PSD community, the teachers, the staff, and us, the students, the hope for the future, should not be punished for these financial misjudgments. It's crucial that we preserve what makes our school days enjoyable and fuels our passion
for creativity and learning, as well as allows us to succeed in life. I urge you to explore alternative solutions that do not undermine the communities and relationships we have built with our peers, as well as destroy our passion and prosperity. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Maite Alday, and I'm a parent at Octavia e Belt and Magnet speaking to protect the more than 500 families at our school. Doctor Velasquez's op ed and the resolutions published in Pasadena Now finally begin to address the real issues. The optimal school size resolution proposes aligning schools with enrollment ranges that support equity and
academic programs. The maximizing the existing footprint resolution expands the district's asset management plan so that every district property must demonstrate a direct contribution to student learning or community benefit. In contrast, doctor Blanco and president Hawley's op ed was irresponsible. It makes promises the district likely cannot keep. It creates expectations without providing evidence or a clear plan. It quotes a student whose parent will be directly impacted by the cuts. We are asking you again to cut central first, not schools, not students, not teachers. There's still more to cut from central administration before touching our campuses, especially those that
are performing well and serving families. Octavia Butler has a waiting list. Our literacy scores have risen significantly in large part because of educators like Miss Daly. Our community cannot afford to lose her or any of our critical staff. The progress our students are making is real, and dismantling what works will set our students back. I understand the board has hard decisions to make, but those decisions must prioritize our students first, and that means cut central administration before cutting schools. Thank you. Matthew Loshager, Jonathan Furman, Arpa Abrahamian.
I'm good to go. My name is Matt Lorscheider. I'm a Jackson parent. You guys have heard from me before. I got an interesting text message today from doctor Blanco, and I wanna go through a few points on that. First, a student that was quoted, as someone just pointed out, her dad would be laid off if these, all these things are implemented. So the IB program will remain from elementary through high school. I looked at the SBAC cuts, proposed cuts. Massive cuts to IB elementary through middle school. Career technical education academies and pathways will continue to prepare students who've heard about planned cuts to CTE already. DLIP programs, I'll give you a pass on that one.
I didn't see too much about DLIP. Magnet programs, excluding STEM. My kid goes to a STEM magnet school. It's gonna lose its full time science teacher, and you have to split it with Washington. Elementary arts and music. You're laying off all but two elementary school music teachers according to the proposed cuts. CIF and extracurricular athletics will also stay strong by dividing the sports up between the four high schools. Right? So do we lose the Turkey Bowl? Is that what's gonna happen? It's absolutely obscene. And the fact that this was sent to parents today as an official district communication, while these things have not been voted on by this board as an insult to
everyone on the board, it's an insult to the parents. It's an insult to the teachers. It's obscene, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Alright? I'm usually a pretty patient guy, but this pisses me off. Alright? Now I understand as doctor Velasquez pointed out the last time I was here in this chamber. Right? There are going to be cuts, and I get it. The district's in deep shit, and I get it. Alright? But a milling in paper cuts is not gonna make the district stronger. Doctor Velasquez is right. We need to talk about consolidations. Everybody talking about cutting central office is right. We're way over the ratio for admin to teacher. I don't have the exact numbers in my head, but I'm sure Jonathan does.
Alright? We have tons of properties sitting empty, abandoned, burned down that we can sell, and we can get away from the county to get that money into the general fund. We haven't even talked about that. There are other ways to do this besides hacking the district into little pieces bit by bit. That's it. Good evening. My name is John Furman. I'd like to address the revenue side. I know you've got about 5 and a half million of revenue, but seem to me those are more cost avoidance. I'd like to suggest two major potential revenue streams. First, solar. Oh, you think of solar, put solar panels on your house, zero out your electricity
bill. No. I think you need to think about a way to generate 10 to $20,000,000 a year in revenue from electric buybacks by the utilities. You've got authorization in the bond money to use the bond money for solar. Put solar panels everywhere so you can generate 20,000,000 a year. Put them on every school on every school property, put them in every, the vacant schools, in the school yards, in the playgrounds, and if you run out of space
and you need more room, buy thirty year rights to put them on this rooftop of every commercial and residential property in the district. That'll generate ten to twenty million a year. Private investors put money into solar farms. They don't do it for a one or 2% return. Secondly, development. You've talked about doing workforce housing at Roselup. That's great. My question is, why stop there? Why not aim for a thousand units? A thousand new units, combination affordable and workforce housing.
Average rent, let's say low, $12.50 a month, that's 15,000 a year for a thousand units, that's 15,000,000. Private investors have costs that reduce that gross revenue. They pay property taxes. Oops, you don't pay property taxes. They would have financing costs, mortgages. Oops, you've got the bond money. No costs there. They pay corporate income taxes. Oops, you don't pay taxes. Your construction costs would be lower because you have the land, you won't pay permit fees, you don't need construction loans. I think we need to look at major mega revenue sources.
I know you can't turn around on a dime. I know you all hate this budget and I know you all know you pretty much have no choice. But at least start now, set up some working groups inside to find ways to generate major new revenue streams. I think solar and development are the best ways to go. Thank you. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Arpa Abrahamian, and I'm a parent at a at Daniel Webster Elementary School, home of the first elementary level Armenian Academy in Pasadena Unified.
My son went to a private Armenian school. However, I Webster because I believe in public education and because of the Armenian Academy. I want my son to grow up connected to his culture and language. Our school has something truly special, a program that brings together families, many of whom are new to this country and helps them feel part of the Pasadena community. If the Armenian Academy is significantly reduced or lost, many of us have to strongly consider pulling our children out of PUSD.
That is how deeply we feel about the Armenian Academy. Our community assistant plays a critical role serving as a bridge for non English speaking parents, helping them understand the system, participate, and support their children's success. Our principal, mister for miss Forrest, though not Armenian herself, has been committed to this program since its inception. Her leadership, compassion, and dedication has made Webster what it is today, a place of
learning, inclusion, and pride. I understand the difficult decisions facing the district, but I also but I ask that you protect what we have built at Webster. The academy, the community assistant position, and the stability of our leadership are not just important to Armenian families here in Pasadena. They are essential to the fabric and success of our entire school community. Please do not let the cuts undo years of progress and trust we have built together. Thank you. Jonathan Gardner, Sandy Ruffman, doctor Jennifer Miyake Trapp.
Alright. Good evening, community. PSD has a values crisis, not just a spending problem. Moving forward with the SBAC site cuts, even those in the lower end will harm our student experience. There's been a decided refusal to consider fully rightsizing central office, cutting outside contractors to reduce actual spending away from the student experience, both of which together would result in at least 20,000,000 in cuts. In addition, there are at least 10,000,000 in budget savings available from inflated budget numbers,
which are now a ten year trend, including last year with the September unearned actuals we just got. This is without tapping into community partnerships to fix up our fields, to increase fees, or implementing the Saturday school attendance recovery that can recover up to $15,000,000 a year. If you care about students first, you must cut and reallocate away from the classrooms and our schools. Measure j and e e were ways we were trusted with voter funds to solidify and enhance our programs. Do not disappoint our students, staff, or the Pasadena voters.
Make the student experience your priority, and have the courage to make the cuts the community is counting on you to make to preserve our amazing schools and school experiences. Thank you. I'm Sandy Rothman, the parent of a student at OEB, member of the PTSA, and a founding member of the Northwest Parent Coalition. In an effort to be fully informed on current issues, I have sat in a lot of these meetings, spoken to a lot of people, and done a lot of reading on districts facing receivership. It's been a full time job. It's a complex situation, and I do not envy anyone tasked with these decisions.
But time and time again, I have come to the same conclusion. When student experience is negatively impacted, rates of attrition go up, and in most cases, accelerated takeover. Declining enrollment isn't unique to PUSD, but now we have a much greater adversary, displacement. Of the 14,000 students enrolled, 10,000 live in fire impacted areas. If more than two thirds of the student and students enrolled live in above the fire line, how many are still displaced? And what is keeping them here? The programs offered in PUSD are second to none.
But the student experience is not just the program, it is also the educators that make it possible. These are not positions, these are people. I have serious concerns that the impact these cuts will have to the student experience will have an even greater impact on our enrollment numbers and the ability to retain qualified, motivated teachers and staff. Given the unknown implications of cutting at a classroom level while two thirds of our district are reeling from an unprecedented disaster, I believe the district cannot, in good faith, make these cuts without first addressing overstaffing at central office, school consolidation, and proper capital
asset management. Doing so without first performing this due diligence will cause irreparable harm to the most vulnerable students in this district. We have an opportunity here for long term success, which will infuse schools and cut excess spending. But I am very concerned that we will be right back here next year. Thank you. Alex Gergosian, Frank Acevedo, and one more time, doctor Jennifer Miyake Trepp. Honorable board, my name is Alex Girodossian. I'm here to speak in support of both, Blair and Webster's Armenian Academies.
I'm actually the board chair of the of a private Armenian school here in Pasadena. I'm not coming here speaking on behalf of the board itself. I'm coming here speaking on my own behalf. First, I just wanted to make the point that Webster's Armenian program provides a real service for our community. Not everyone can afford Armenian school. It's expensive. It's private, and we don't have enough scholarships to go around. So their their program offers, a real benefit so members of the community that don't have those funds can learn Armenian. Second, at least our schools have maximum capacity under the conditional use permit, so we
couldn't take more students even if we wanted to. So all those Armenian students coming up in the program or in in the community, it'd be great if they have a place to go, either Webster or Blair. Lastly, just recently, within the past two years, the private Armenian schools and Blair and Webster have begun developing relationships and, trying to create, like, a mutual support system. The program is pretty nascent as I understand it, and these relationships are developing, and we're trying to figure out ways to support each other. So, anyway, I just hope I know you guys have a difficult decision, but I hope you take that into consideration. Thank you. Frank Acevedo.
Good evening, board members. My name is Frank Acevedo. I'm a proud parent. Children that have graduated from San Rafael and have gone on to, OEB and Pasadena High School. I'm here, to remind us that the voters of Pasadena voted, for, bond measure a, which, gave the school district much needed facilities, half a billion dollars, half a billion dollars, and much needed facilities and improvements. So we applaud ourselves and the school district for that.
But now we have to think about how those facilities and these, improvements are gonna be used. It would be a shame for the Pasadena High School new track to not have a track team. It would be a shame for OEB to have cut, arts and dance programs. It would be a shame for this for the other schools around the district to have their athletics and arts programs cut. And so we're seeking working at you and we're hoping for you all in your wise ways to find the necessary funds to do this.
Sports and arts plays a huge part in the spirit of community and Pasadena and Altadena both need that right now and we have to consider that. Imagine a world can you imagine a world where Jackie Robinson in baseball had limited or no athletics or world where James Sanford in track and field had no athletics? All you need to do is look at the Pasadena Hall of Fame to see the many athletes that have come from Pasadena and remember the importance of athletics in community, the importance of athletics and deterrence in yangs and youth activities that are not
good for Pasadena. We seek you to find the necessary funding to do to be able to do this and most importantly to consider the possibility that having cut this funding will have long term negative effects to Pasadena, Altadena and the surrounding communities. Thank you so much. Dominique Ponce. Hi. I'm Dominic Ponce. I'm a freshman at John oh, no. Third Good Marshall Fundamental Secondary School. Also a former student of the closed down school, Benjamin Franklin Elementary School.
I just want to say that, the lack of funding that y'all not y'all, but all of you guys are gonna be doing to these schools is just like how you guys did to Franklin, and I kind of personal to me because y'all you guys are trying to do it again, and that's like a fenced in me, stab in the leg. And you guys are trying to like build new stuff and like not looking out for the little guys because Franklin was a little guy. He kinda didn't care. Our community, us, the people who were in that school, the parents who couldn't get
too much and like gave up their money to support that school while you guys barely did anything, I think that's some baloney farts right there, and I don't like that at all. And I just want you guys to see that we're more than what's just a small school with students and just, like, the lack of, funding. I just want you guys to know that that's not what I thought this, I say, district is. I thought it was, like, supportive. I really thought this was a place that we can have everything to be safe
and, like, Kosherd, and I want I want you guys to know really is that I just really wanna know that I think you guys are not seeing the bigger picture in this scenario, that you're only looking at one perspective, but you're not looking at the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and all the perspectives of where these people come from. And you're just ignoring that and thinking that it's a small part of it's a big well, to the thing. It's a smart part to a bigger puzzle. Right? And you're not looking at that stuff and you're not you're not you're just ignoring the fact that this is gonna happen again.
I don't want another school or anything else to happen and like that stuff. I want more stuff to happen. I want better stuff to happen, not just bad stuff to happen. And, sports and you guys shutting that down, that's that's pretty bad because that's also people coming together and having a community and, you know, putting their shares and funds into things just to support, and if that's taken away, then that community is gonna crumble. There's no structure to that anymore. There's no concrete. And concrete is our foundation to build, like, a bigger home, a bigger building. If, like, well, a big tower is not supported by anything, that's anything, that's gonna
fall. So I just want that I need you guys to give us, you know, the support and help Thank you. So that we can Thank you. Have a better place in the city. Okay, we're going to move on to the special presentation. Superintendent's leadership team, please. Okay. Good evening. Are we ready to begin? Do you wanna break or do you want clear out? No. I don't it's I've already already called them up. I'm ready. There on their way. Oh, I'm speaking. Alright. Then you need to start. Oh, I'm trying to. Okay. Good evening, everyone.
Thank you for being here. We are going to present to you information and be able to give the board an opportunity to ask clarifying questions, go over the process that we've gone through with our SBAC and other work streams. So we're going to begin by framing our priorities with our strategic plan. So we do try to, start all meetings that we talk about with the pillars and what our board has come together with much community input.
And this is what we framed the decisions we're making in to have learner focused instruction, outstanding and respected employees, quality learning environments, effective organization, responsible and accountable, and then involvement with purposeful collaboration with our community. So these are the, board goals. And it's been mentioned here, this evening about things that, will support the board goals
and for us to consider the board goals when we're making decisions. So all work streams were given this as a framework as well as the SBAC. So these are our goals for improving student achievement. Going to go over our fiscal outlook. So this is what we spend money on. What we're looking at this evening are reductions in general education, unrestricted general fund expenditures. You could see that the majority of this money is spent on our employees. Some of it is spent on special education services and salaries, benefits, supplies.
We do receive a lot of other, funding from the district, which is called categorical money and is not part of these decisions that we're making, this evening. This is our basic general fund. So this was a, slide that was showed many presentations that we've done throughout the SBAC that shows our money with, our fire funds without our fire funds. And you can see that we do decrease for this year. And this is why we had to form the SBAC.
And with that, I will turn it over to Doctor. Kanell. Thank you, doctor Blanco. Yes. Today's session focuses on the district's fiscal challenges and the all required stabilization actions. We will be in the projections, the uncertainties, and the steps already taken into reducing the spending. The goal to maintain a clear path towards long term financial health. At the same time, considering student impact and service preservation remains central to every decision. As you mentioned, POC faces a growing structural deficit driven by rising costs and declining revenue.
One time federal and state funds are ending, removing temporary relief that has been used in previous years. Enrollment fluctuations with declining enrollment, especially after fire the fire impacts, adds financial unpredictability. Without corrective action, deficits widen, significantly over the next several years. On the next slide, we discussed, you can see some of the economic uncertainties, and some of the random venue enhancements. We do consider the LCFF, revenue and the declining enrollment for unduplicated people percentage has
a significant impact on the overall budget. We have unexpected litigation. There's been several conversations regarding, AB two eighteen that poses a risk to the district in the outgoing years. There are state regulations to unfunded mandates and potential reductions in state and federal funding. Again, once again, the unpredictable, changes in enrollment, is something that needs to be considered for our future. In terms of revenue enhancement, we do now see the student, support and professional development block grant for approximately $4,000,000 and considerations given to the asset management and increases on
lease and facility rentals, which we discussed a little bit further. Reductions thus far. In twenty twenty four, twenty five reductions focus on central office positions and operational functions as determined by the SLT. In 2526, reductions in gain from central office via the SBAC rankings, adjustments to central office and department budgets was occurred. Now in 2627, the budget reductions target, PUSD is pursuing, 30 to 35,000,000 reductions for the 2627 to maintain fiscal solvency. Reduction spans to central office, school site, contractor service, and operations.
Savings are subject to change as factors like enrollment, unduplicated people, and inflation shifts. Today's presentation outlines both completed and upcoming reductions in areas. These actions though are not easy, will help align our resources to ensuring a healthier financial outlook and continued support for students. This last slide is a slide that, we have mentioned several times that it is, continuously being updated through the work of the different, streams. From the superintendent SBAC, the central office reductions, contracts, and as such. You'll notice that the total impact on this would be, recommendation is the 30,000,000 and
a half dollars, to move forward, to assist in stabilizing the district moving forward. So this is one of the most updated slides in terms of the different, work streams that have, accomplished. A lot of work went into, determining and trying to reach the goals that were set from the beginning, whether it was from central office reductions, contracts, again, also with staffing of vacancies, and also considering the economic uncertainties and any potential revenue. In grant maximization, considerations for the 2526 school year, several things, occurred in order to
maximize. We moved salary and benefits from special ed personnel to medical billing, often referred to as mom options, to the tune of $1,200,000. The sub bullets provide you the actual FTEs, that were moved. Moving expenditures from unrestricted general fund to ELAP, $1,200,000, and below that provides the details on how that was accomplished. Other grants, equity multiply and CTE grants, are still we're still working through the cost, of moving those funds, but that is additional movement to maximize the grants.
A change in workers' comp contribution change rate from a three to 2%, yield yields a $1,500,000 reduction, and this has, is being, put into the budget for this year and the two out years. And I mentioned earlier the one time revenue for student professional development discretionary block grant, $4,000,000. Final expenditure, for that is expected. It needs to complete by 09/30/2029. So see there's some of the considerations, to move forward. And that's just an image of the slide previously in terms of the grant maximization
and the NYP savings that go along with with those. Special education. This is broken into two different, areas in terms of more of immediate and ongoing. For the immediate, we looked at, maximizing in terms of, aids, compared to having agency aids and having hired, PUSD aids. We've done, as most of you know, two fairs. We've invited our labor partners to be able to participate in that, and to move from, relying on agency personnel.
I did provide to the board, the different in terms of expenditures from, agency, paraprofessionals as well as BIs, when it comes to, that change. In addition to that, elimination of vacant and closed positions, reduction of extra hours certificated, and strategic realignment of expenditures, reallocating certain expenditures from a b six zero two to other available state and federal, special ed funding sources. We, business department has partnered with, school services, to assist in really maximizing and looking
to see where we can leverage, some of that expenditure and make making sure that we reallocated that expenditure appropriately. The shift allows to fully utilize existing grant funds and reduce the district contribution to the a b six zero two resource. So we're really, grateful for the work that we were doing with school services on that front. Ongoing, implementation of findings for special ed fiscal analysis, the the draft will be provided in December '25. There's quarterly budget alignment meetings, maintaining collaboration between the business, HR and business to monitor
the budget impacts and staffing needs. An example of that that I can provide would be as we're hiring, folks, any of the personnel when we're shifting from agency to hiring them as personnel, we need to make sure that, there's budget alignment to ensure that as we're hiring our personnel, we're reducing, the budget that has been done for agencies, which is the several millions of dollars that have occurred to ensure that we're not double budgeting for both the the vacancies that we wanna hire for PUSD and for budgeting for the agency staff.
So we wanna make sure that, there's alignment with those. So that's what those meetings are about. Continually position monitoring, that's part of the position control. Reviewing non public agency contracts annually to audit the NPA utilization to ensure that no only necessary and cost effective payments, implementing the multi geo projection, partnering with school services I mentioned earlier to develop a rolling three year sped budget plan to anticipate enrollment and service trends. Once again, analyzing all of the contracts, and as we move away from agency and making sure that, we recognize that, from special ed, business, and in HR.
In transportation, exploring some cost saving opportunities, there. We reviewed several ways to make the transportation programs more efficient while continuing to meet the student needs, whether it's parent mileage, reimbursements, targeted ride share options. There's a new RFP for contracted services with a mission, for contracts ending this year. Parking lot leases at Muir and route optimizations are different ways that we're looking to exploring the cost opportunity savings when it comes to transportation. Staffing for vacancies. For for this, a couple of things mentioned earlier is not only aligning between agency
and staff that we hire for, PUSD, but in addition to that, ensuring that, staffing and vacancies are aligned, between business and HR to ensure that positions that are closed, that are recognized on the budget side as well as in the HR side, that's part of the position control. In ensuring that, positions that have been closed or are no longer, considered, are recognized on the budget side. But in addition to that, ensuring that, part of the position control, ensuring that, personnel requests to replace positions, there's first an analysis to to ensure that there's a continued
need to replace, positions. So in other words, so if we have, through a normal attrition and we have, resignations and retirements throughout the year, recognizing whether or not there's a need to replace those positions even in the middle of the year as part of that process. Asset management is a strategic initiative, to manage, PUSD owned properties by prioritizing the education of the common use, preserving long term ownership, and identifying sustainable revenue, and there'll be more information to come. Yeah. This is on. Good good evening.
As for asset management, we're looking to preserve long term district ownership of our land and facilities, generating sustainable revenue through compliant lease and joint use partnerships, improving efficiency of existing facilities, so civic center cost recovery, align property reuse with Measure O and Measure R bond funded improvements and facilities master plan, advance projects and support for staff retention,
community access, and local partnerships. Why this matters? The review of the PUSD owned properties include, closed school sites aligned with the AMP for facilities have staff housing through workforce housing initiatives, comparing measure o or, sorry, complements measure o and r projects for strategic properties, moves lease before our lease portfolio towards market rate aligned structures, increasing financial returns while re while serving community I'm sorry, community
goals. It ensures efficient use of district facilities supports long term fiscal stability. The timeline, we started this initiative in 2324 as presented to the board. We moved through, and we've identified and started a package for, our, works for workforce housing over at Roosevelt. We're getting very close to having that ready. The asset management process has been going through major evaluations on all of our current
projects. It's getting very small. Asset management plan was presented to the board again in October in August '25. We provided a resolution, authorizing staff to issue the RFP for Linda Vista on the August 28 in '25. In October, adjusting Civic Center facility rental fees and evaluating current space use and revenue, alignment with existing agreements, we're updating and looking at all of our use agreements currently and making sure that we're getting, the max the most we can out of those
agreements. Our real property assessments and civic center program revamp structure is important as we move forward. Notices will be going out soon to all of our partners, revolving around that. Standardizing the reporting and lease framework, standardizing agreements. We're looking at both citywide, with our partners in both Sierra Madre and Pasadena agreements. Future planning would be, district wide city energy audit and master plan, which was brought up earlier.
We are looking to take advantage as much as we can with working with Pasadena Water and Power, and Edison. We're already in conversations around that. Government grants to state, state initiatives and federal programs to help pay for it, will be aligning with our capital planning, and that will be through our new, facilities agreement or facilities committee. This is a table that shows what we've seen in the past, for 2324. We know that we had a a bit of a hit during the fires.
This is what we realized, and for about a $172,000 in loss of total revenue, in 2425. We're currently on pace to, pick up that lost revenue, mostly here. Civic center permits are also being realigned to be making sure that we're looking for the full cost recovery. We are seeing a potential increase in 2627. Some of the current projects in progress, as we talked about, Roosevelt's for workforce housing, that's a 110 unit residential project.
We expect that to be somewhere between 1 and 1,500,000.0 in revenue, conservatively. Linda Vista is currently under an RFQP process where we're, releasing soon. Developers I'm sorry. Apparently, I'm not talented at clicking and advancing forward. So the Linda Vista property is currently going under the RQP process. We're reviewing that, and it should be released soon. Peoria Place in Hodges, Madison bus or I'm sorry, the Mission Bus Lot at John Muir, Linda Vista Child Development Center are all under review for realignment for, our total
square foot cost regeneration. Citywide use agreement, as I talked about with Pasadena and Sierra Madre and the energy partnerships. Energy master plan is what we're really, seeing quite a bit of potential on, meeting just our title 24 efficiencies and everything that's currently already approved. In the bond. We know it will reduce cost, but we know there's plenty of extra, opportunities out there. Energy investigation, again, this is a high level estimate, but just, talking about the systems at our 12 sites that do not have solar generation currently, this is what we're
seeing. PUSD, we know spends about 6,000,000 between electric and gas every year. That's a rough estimate, but that's about what we're spending. We're exploring battery, battery backup systems, storage systems for we're considering most of our campuses are open till six or later. There's a lot of initiatives with the city that can continue that. Rough potential of a $30.30 to $35,000,000 investment, and the initial savings that we're seeing is is somewhere around 2,000,000
with a payback time of between twelve and fifteen years. Leveraging the federal grant, state utility initiatives to reduce the bond impact, it could be reduced from what we're actually planning on or what we've stated from the $30,000,000 to $35,000,000 cost. And the goal is to cut energy cost between 4050% and meet along with meeting 20 Title 24 compliance. Are we doing questions? So the questions now are for all of the work streams that were just presented. So the way we're presenting is breaking up in chunks after sections so you'll have
a chance to ask questions, so you don't forget your questions. So for any of the work streams. We're going to break all that up in chunks. The questions for what you just saw up to what you just saw. That was one chunk, work stream. Got it. These are work streams that the board is not voting on. They were informational work streams. Hi. I have two questions. The first question has to do with our existing our our properties where we have
schools functioning right now. Are those included in our asset plan? They are included in our asset plan for any properties that are currently under any kind of lease. That's what we're looking at. No. No. No. Let's say schools that are currently in use by PUSD students. So I think that one of the things that I'm interested is in maximizing square footage and also exploring where a school can continue to operate, but we can maximize
the revenue on that excess square footage. Okay. And then the second question is in relation to all of the current projects and projects in progress. And it's actually not for you. It's for doctor Blanco. Doctor Blanco, I think that we have an opportunity here, and, again, I'm not gonna dictate a topic, but I wanna suggest the topic, for our joint meeting for this upcoming year with the city. And that has to do with how do we negotiate and work together in understanding
zoning. Because, we need to come to an agreement with the city about how we're gonna deal with zoning issues when we go into projects because that will impact the revenue and the type of bids that we have. And so I think that it is a good opportunity to work with them as partners. I know that they are equally invested in the success of public schools as we all are and the entire city is.
But, I think that they could be real partners in revising and rewriting. And how do we deal with zoning in a way that we can obtain the best possible negotiations when we go out? So is the question whether that could be a joint use I mean, a joint city meeting topic? Yes. And have you had some of these conversations? Yes. We have on the projects that we're working on, we meet with the planning group,
the planning department in the city and the city manager. And we we have, you know, information on each of our properties that we have been studying in asset management that talks about what they're zoned for. So if we have to ask the city to change any type of zoning or, work with us, we do do that through the planning department. What I would say is a missing piece where we've tried to take care of that now is making sure that there's messages to also the elected officials in the
city and not just the planning department. So they probably would have to take care of it. Issue. Yeah. And so they're gonna have to work with us in revising the policy in support of POSD. Yes. And we have, we presented the, idea of having a, facilities committee, superintendent advisory committee, and we definitely wanted to invite city partners to be part of that. So I think it's very possible to have that as a topic. It's usually planned with, I forgot if it's the big five or the big eight.
I can't remember the number. But it would include you and missus Fredericks as the president and vice president to, help design the agenda with them. Scott Harding. I'm I'm in particularly intrigued about the energy master plan. I think there's a huge untapped potential there. We've heard some, from the community about it. And so, in terms of developing those partnerships with PWP and CE, I think is important. Is was there an identified sort of time frame on the energy master plan and
how how quickly that would come about, you know, and what success looks like when that's done? We do have a pretty good idea because of the surveys that were done before. We did look at more than just 12 campuses during the original survey, so we know where the solar can go. We have lots of land, and it doesn't necessarily need to be just for our consumption. It can be for others, and that can help us in credits. And ultimately, Pasadena Water Empower has already come to us and said, that they are trying to meet their goals for the city, and they're very, very eager to partner
with us. So, I think that the time frame, if we make decisions quickly and start moving, I think that, the goal for for for facilities would be to have, starting regaining some of that that cost in about two years. And and and from my, you know, research that I've done, it's there is some upfront potential, PWP, for instance, you know, is has been has a program that provides upfront, revenue that, you know, that that, generate and generate energy is leveraged against, there
might be some opportunities for us to get to see that money sooner than we need. Mhmm. Yeah. I think they're currently being offering very generous offers Yeah. Which we should take advantage of, yes. So I have a question. I'll turn around this way. Since this is the first time our district has had an asset manager for closed sites, it's the first time, so are we going to be getting, and I know that we're in this process, we're in this process, the beginning are we going to be getting regular reports to watch the revenue? And will we be clearly are and clearly, we've been starting to raise rates.
I saw that it said pending, things are pending. So on raising rates to market value, which is essential, are we getting reports on that? And how do we monitor that best? Because it is incredibly important that we do this because we have had so many sites that have been underutilized, and this is the first time we're going to start seeing revenue. No. I I think that, a big portion of this is a revamp of our systems to make sure that we're reporting on a regular basis.
And that will very likely become a a facilities, our regular facilities committee report that comes in to show, potential, as it's realized and actual, realization of the profits. Thank you, mister Dunning. To the point about potential opportunities for energy revenue, have we explored, any possibilities to align our proposed projects with, proposition four funds that were passed in November 2024?
That is the climate, bond of the states. What was it drafted? $3,000,000,000 so far? That's a good point. We are currently in the process of, bringing on a grants fund manager that would help us look for all opportunities. Right? And make sure that we're utilizing them at at the at the highest capacity that we can. That will include prop two, and every available funds and grants and incentives and all of those things that are available to us. An expert in the field would come in full time. Thank you. There's also some specific bills that are, allocated for, those are, allocated for, qualified mentioned
in reduction. So I imagine that we'd probably be able to qualify for those dollars too. Yes. Tina. Thank you for presenting. So what I heard was the, 6,000,000 that you mentioned will be coming start coming in until two years from now. Is that what you said? So the 6,000,000 is the total that we spend on energy now. We're looking to reduce that, as soon as possible, obviously. But we would start to realize some of those savings if we made decisions quickly
in about two years, we believe. And how does this section on the energy master plan, is there any of that part of the fiscal stabilization plan? Does this help make the case for our, you know, contribute to our fiscal solvency? Is I mean, are we planning to include that? And how is that interpreted by the group? So in the FSP that was presented with budget adoption, there was a $1,000,000 realization
planned for next year. So whether or not that can happen, we're working on that. And if not, we have to make up the $1,000,000 in another place. But in the fiscal stabilization plan, it did project $1,000,000 savings in energy for next year, but we might make up that in leases because we might be able to recoup it. And then we're submitting a revised fiscal stabilization plan to LACOE in December, and that's
when we'll balance what we projected to do over three years, what we're actually doing, and some changes may occur. So we're always working with a fluid set of numbers and predictions that change at each each interim, right, and then the, audited and unaudited and audited actuals. That makes school finance a little bit complicated because it's like balancing your checkbook. But in response to your question, we did hope to get this energy thing started
a little sooner, but I think we may be able to cover it with our leases. So you had the $1,000,000 estimate and you said that we could probably cover it. I guess I wasn't sure how we give confidence about our numbers when they are sort of projected in estimates. I don't know if they expect that to be more solid, because if it's not
really being realized till later, that's why I wonder if it has any, you know, weight to it. I just want a solid fiscal stabilization plan. I want to make sure all the components are concrete, so that's why I'm asking. Miss Kenny. Sorry, having technical difficulties with these microphones. So I didn't realize we were going quite so into so many different categories, so I have several questions just overall. One of the questions I asked prior to the meeting was whether we are, accounting
for the cuts in 2627 funds. And what I meant by that is in our budget and projections for 2627, we have counted our employees with step and column and with increased pensions potentially and increased health and welfare. So when we say this is what this person, a cut of this personnel will save us, are we using that future cost, or are we using the current cost, which might be undercounting? Also having technical difficulties with these mics.
So in the looking at the staff and part of the answer is the the teams when they were doing working on these work streams, did account and tried to take into account, one of the things that's challenging for most folks is to to figure out, how much. Because the staff, for example, if you see something, on one of the work streams and they designate a particular job title in a particular place, we have to go
based on seniority. So while eventually you can move staff around, it may not be the person that's sitting in that position because of seniority. Right? We would need to, go through the process. We will need to figure out who's the least senior in that particular position, to be able to identify the actual cost of of that particular, position. So it isn't necessarily, when you see in in a PowerPoint a a particular position, a particular location, it doesn't mean that it's that necessary person.
So the dollars may not match, with, with that particular. So they typically will look at, the average cost of that position, to try to factor out in terms of the cost that savings that are gonna be aligned to it. I think the question, you're asking is in in the f 38 before someone left, my understanding is that what was provided to the managers in terms of when looking, it was an f 38 of this school year. So, in the consideration of in terms of the, when folks were looking at the
work streams, they weren't in fact looking at, f 30 eight's from this school year. So they were not looking in terms of rolling over that f 38 to see what that potential person would be, or that position would be making in the next school year. So they were looking at the this school year, when we, when the f 30 eights were provided to staff to look through those work streams. Okay. So the position file, the f 38, we're using current cost, and future cost might be slightly higher. That's correct. That could help us not have to make as many cuts.
So that's something that we could consider. And I understand the push in the other way of we might think a person is the person who's being laid off and it's someone senior I'm sorry, or junior who costs less. So there's push and pull. Yes. I understand. Okay. Since I just wanted to mention that I know that on one of the slides, we talked about how the SBAC of last year was mainly focused on, central office. And I just wanna remind us that there were a few CTE courses cut that
were at sites. We did, reduce an IB coach at Blair. We did reduce some arts and music vacancies and five school community assistants. So we did last year also do, some things that touch school sites. As we one of the things that the board, gave feedback on from last year's process is that we really wanted to understand the impact of the of the cuts. And a lot of the answers we received to, well, what will the impact of this be, was that there will be a reduction in services, but someone else will
pick up the work. And at some point, that's not gonna be possible. And so I just wasn't clear we got as much of here are the services that will go away because it's not in we can't indefinitely just say the remaining two people will do all the work of 20. So that's a reflection, because I think we wanna be really straightforward on the impact. So people are gonna feel them. They're not gonna you know, they're gonna come whether we tell them or not, but it'd be nice to, at least for us as the decision makers, to really understand
what the impacts are. On one of the slides, you had a 3,500,000.0 in reduced revenue. I think it was the summary of all the work streams. I don't know if we can go back to that slide. And I could try and tell you the number. It is 10. So it's estimated loss on unduplicated people count and grant expiration. Could you just give us a little more is it two different things that are added together? Is it it one thing? Because there was a following slide where it said that the change in the unduplicated
rate was a loss of 1.2, but this is a bigger number, the 3.5. It was it's a combination of the two things. So one was, one we something below the line, the grant was going to expire, So we couldn't count it for all three years in the multiyear projection. We could only count it for, one. And then the other was the unduplicated count was coming in lower than we had projected in the multiyear projection, but we are working and we have hope that maybe
it is going to come back up a little bit. But until we have the numbers in for sure, we didn't wanna take that out. Alright. So there's a chance that could increase. I don't know where are we with the numbers. Did you wanna add? So at first interim, we'll see something more definitive on that line. Yes. Alright. Lovely. We'll definitely know by first interim. The staff is currently working on it. We should I'm trying to remember what date it is today. The staff has until the fourteenth, which I think is tomorrow, and then we're grouping together on Monday, all in preparation for the first interim.
But, yes, we'll definitely have that by then. Alright. A next kind of overall concern of mine is that we are freeing up a considerable amounts of supplemental and concentration funds that we receive as part of LCFF for our unduplicated students, for, our low income English learners and foster youth that is we are directed to use to increase and improve services, for those students. And I know that the dashboard came out today, and I think while there's some
bright spots with our graduation rate, yay, first time over 90%, you know, I think, especially, mathematics was looking a little grimmer. My concern is that we are saying that we're saving this money, and it is the money that is to be used for these students and to help them, with greater academic achievement. And so I'm not sure what we're gonna replace, what items we're going to use
that money. And if we're just going to use that money for, you know, custodians and classroom teachers, things that are not above and beyond and are not going to be something extra for the students who need more, that's a big concern for me. So I I understand they are considered unrestricted, but they do have some limitations about how we're gonna use them. And it we're not really kind of seeing the differentiation about what's being cut of which are, you know, which things are funneled with that money.
So that's a concern that I wanted to express. We'd seen some chatter out about that if we had Saturday school, we could say we could have a lot more income, and I don't know if someone can speak to whether that is something that can happen. I mean, I did see that our chronic absenteeism rate is not making, you know, I think we went I think we're higher this year than last year, so that is hurting us on revenue just in in our regular, base revenue.
Is Saturday something school something that could generate significant funds? And I'm hearing the number 15,000,000 bandied about. That's a great question. We did do a deep dive into that last year, and we actually even worked with, a company who kinda came alongside to guide us on how to do this before it became policy because now it's a policy for us. But we were more interested in what do we do to recoup, opportunity for students. And when we did the deep dive analysis, I also presented to doctor Tan Hill. It would actually, unfortunately cost us money because what you make is only a small
percentage. You have to pay teachers for four and a half hours of instruction. And, you have to provide two meals. You have to provide a health clerk. You have to provide there's a lot of staff, and staff is expensive, to do that. What we are exploring, unfortunately, mister Stanley, took the lead on this and he's not here. So, I've made a due note of what else can we do. He was working with our, after school programs with, miss Harmony Carno to see what we could do in the after school hours because that now is acceptable as as well.
Blair and PHF have had very profitable programs, and we have been able to recoup with them. So we're using them as our exemplars and we will be expanding this year. And does that just gets added into our attendance rate. So we won't see it, like, as a separate line item per se. Okay. Yeah. But it's it's happening. But we are we are trying to expand, on what we're doing just in a more creative way because after school hours is still students are still participating in something beyond the school day. Lovely. Okay. Question on staffing. I read in the Pasadena Now, and it could have been a mistake, it it
seemed to imply that when we do the staffing staffing to ratio and and closing vacancies that no layoffs would result. And I don't know where that idea came from, but I wanted to clarify that. I don't know where that came from, but that would not be accurate. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. And I think you said that the 3,000,000 or someone said was about 26 STEs, which some are vacancies. Yes. Okay. But some will some are people. Yes. On the grants, can we change our worker comp percentage?
So I don't know if everyone understands the whole worker comp thing. So we pick a percentage, and we accumulate we take that on everyone's payroll. Yes. And then we put that money aside and we use it to pay our workers' comp, expenses. Can we switch from three to two in the middle of this fiscal year? So that is, being proposed, in terms of doing so the short answer is yes, but I'm proposing that for to be this year and for the next two years. I've done some communication to the board in terms of some of the efforts.
We switched the workers' comp from the business side to the HR side, two and a half years ago, I wanna say. It feels like five, but I've only been here three. So but it's a a few years ago. And in doing so, we've limited our liabilities when it comes to our workers' comp where we've had a mass number of of staff on personnel. There's a limit in terms of how long a someone can be on workers' comp, for example. When we obtained it, we had folks that were on there for four or six years, which said it's early. You can't be on workers' comp for that long. So there was a lot of, oversight that needed to be done.
And, with that oversight has come our ability to feel comfortable enough to say, and for there being enough money there to say we do for the time being, we do not no longer need to do that. That liability that was there once is not there today. It requires a lot of oversight, but, thankfully for a lot of staff, you know, team in HR, they have been able to manage, that liability much better to be able to allow us the ability to do so. Okay. So that we feel comfortable that we won't need to spend more than that. And, again, that is just a change we make internally that saves us $1,500,000 a
year. So that's great. I have another grant. I just want to clarify. Someone, I think, in an answer said that the learning block, learning recovery block grant sorry, I wrote the initials wrong expires this year. But it expires in '27, '28? The 4,000,000 that I mentioned, you have to expend it by, and I wrote it in the slide. I won't That's the other one. I'm talking about the old one, the learning recovery lottery. So supposedly, according to the website, expires in 2728.
I know that the state took some back from us and then gave us some of it this year. Are they giving us any next year is my question. In other words, they took a chunk, and I don't know if they paid it all back this year. So that's just a question of could there be more of that coming? Because we do have till 2728 suspended. At this time, we're, not expecting to receive any back based on the notices on the CD website. So that's why we had to account for, positions paid out of there that are
on the reduction list, not moving out into the future years as precautionary. But, you know, like you said, they're good miracle could happen. They could give us some money back. Alright. So we're gonna need to move to the next you wanna wrap it up? Oh, I just I have SPED and s there's a lot of there's a lot of items under that category. Right. Special education. Which other special ed funds were not being utilized? It said we're moving things out of AB six zero two into other special ed funds to free up AB six zero two, and I wasn't clear that we hadn't
used other SPED resources. And I don't know who knows the answer. I can provide you with more information on that. Alright. On transportation, I just wanted to better understand in route maximization, is this the kind of area where we would have to think about changing start times of schools so that we could use a bus for two trips or relocating some of our special day classes so that the trips weren't so long or that students were at their home school and didn't need transportation is and that would be not for not for
2627. We would not be able to make those at this point. We would do them for 2728. Is that part of the consideration? I think that we'll be looking at all aspects of our transportation plan. Right? I think it's been two years where it's been very, very similar. And it's time to take a very close look and reevaluate all parts and pieces. And, unfortunately, we don't have time for that to happen right away. On asset management, I think the board received a letter from someone we'd worked with on the past on doing the swap of this building.
Did the board decide not to do the swap of 351 Hudson for a commercial property? Yeah. Well, I know he said he was led to believe that, and I don't remember the board making that decision. So that's why I was wondering if anyone else remembered us making that decision. We were here then. Yeah. You were here somehow. I don't think I don't think we made that decision, but it did stop happening and so I seem to recall a conversation about a swap that it wouldn't work out in our favor. Yes, miss Patrice? Just a point of information.
Is this level of real estate conversation such that should be held in closed session versus something that should be discussed in open? Just asking for clarification. I think there was a mixture of open and closed, and it I think the only real estate transactions that can happen in closed are when you're actually discussing the price. Everything else is technically open. So Also depends on if potential litigation is involved in it, but, we can get into more detail with that, later. I also recall with the property swap that it was not gonna be feasible the way that we had hoped for the district and we are looking at, you know,
other opportunities to make money. And in response to, doctor Velasquez's original question, we do have the value of every property, in the district as part of our, CBRE reports, which are under protection for the reasons that we don't wanna talk about real estate sometimes in public. And I guess I just wanna reflect that we talk about asset management, and I hope that we can do it and not just talk about it, that we can actually make it come to fruition.
Well, I think we've made more progress than we have in, many decades. And we have our staff housing project on the line for entitlement and we have Linda Vista going out for RFQ, we're working with the city, the neighbors and, you know, we have that ready to go. So, unfortunately the Eaton Fire slowed our processes and we have a new idea on the table about, some considering different joint use agreements. So I think we're going to get there. This is also the first time we've had an asset manager, so this is all
new for this district. So I think we'll get there too. So do we want to move on to the next so we can look at the next presentation? Anybody? Alright. Let's move on. I think so. So let's move on. That's why we're breaking it into chunks. So the next area is that we're going to talk about our areas that the board is going to vote on, next week. So I'm gonna be talking about central office services. I'd like to say that everybody at the central office exists to serve the schools. That's our role. Yes, doctor Velasquez. I just have a very quick question because I'm really confused.
I thought our goal was 35. Our goal is 30? It was 30 to 35 and, I think we're feeling comfortable with 30 based on information that we have been studying up to four thirty today. And, you know, doctor Kanal has been searching for money. So I think with the ending balances that we had in our, audited actuals or unaudited actuals. Sorry. Do you wanna speak to that about why you're comfortable with the 30?
Or Yes. Yes. The do you want to? It doesn't sound like I had a You didn't ask that. Yes. If you're if you're asking, then Just tell. I think the the one of the things that I would just remind the board is when when when the CBO, put the slide there, when when it was doing the adopted budget, it was always gonna be a target in terms of what the information that they knew at that time. So at that time, given that the, unaudited actions hadn't happened, they were preparing for the closing of of year end.
Typically, a CBO will backwards map and looking at the NYP and backwards map what, what the cuts are going to be. The year end closed. We had the unaudited actuals. The goal remained the same to cut between 30 and 35,000,000. The initial, thought process was, again, not knowing, what the year was to come. They provided put together an FSP of what, the board and the district should consider in terms of cuts. If I remember his presentation correctly, he mentioned that these are the suggestions, in terms of, work streams that we should do and that we should consider.
But it also mentioned that, there's adjustments that are gonna have to be made along the way, and it could be different, reductions or eliminations that had did not have to be those specifically. Looking at the unaudited actuals, starting to look at, reconciling the f 38, with, HCM with the budget and looking at all of that information. Yes. I'm comfortable with the $30,000,000 given, in fund balance and audited actuals, but also the reconciling of the f 38 in positions. Window to that is looking at the vacancies and looking at, a lot of the
positions that were being funded, and reconciling that information. And that's the the reason why, my advice to doctor Blanco, was that, we should that I do foresee the NYP, be where it needs to be by that. Obviously, once we do the first interim, then it'll provide the district and the county with a very clear picture on where we need to be, and that will be coming in the next couple of weeks because it'll be here before we know it. I appreciate it. Thank you for the explanation. It was very comprehensive, but I also wanna say that it makes me a little
uncomfortable to move forward with the 30 rather than the 35. And I can go into explanation of why, but for the matter of brevity, I just want to make the statement that I am a little uncomfortable with moving forward with 30. And the board still has the opportunity to move the line, right? We've been trying to really find uncertainties that come up and study them and make sure that we're we didn't want to get right down to the wire and that's
why we had 35 in case, we weren't able to identify all the uncertainties, one being the unduplicate account. But we're feeling very confident in the preliminary numbers now that they have raised back up to what was in the MYP. So that helps us, right, if it's another $1,200,000 So it's not something that we can take to the exact penny, but we want to make sure that there is buffers for the things that are being considered. But you certainly have the option to be more cautious and then bring back things
later. That's always easier to do. We just can't bring back everything because that's what we usually do because we love everything we have. So going next to our central office services, you know, we our first year where we really started looking taking a very hard look at the budget and trying to stabilize the district fiscally, we did look at central office reductions, which some are services to school sites but out of central office budgets. Without the super and budget superintendent's budget advisory committee.
And that year we were able to cut $13,800,000 in centralized services, some being services to school but all out of centralized budgets. The next year, we studied the packages, with the SBAC of centralized services and departments, again, trying to keep the reductions as far away from our schools as possible. But because we exist to serve schools, many things that we put into our budget are services to schools. Right? We have no intention of serving each other up here, or at our DSC.
So, that's where sometimes I think when we say we're cutting central, it does they do feel it at the schools, right, because that's why we exist. So our recommendation because of the two prior years of reductions, is that the board considers a reduction of tier one positions only. We did look at other layers of reduction to give options for you because that was something that was requested by the board, not to just come with only one
recommendation and not give you the chance to make changes if you wanted to, which is the same with the SBAC, why we went so deep in the packages. So tier two and tier three positions, you know, will result in less support to school sites. Even tier one is gonna result in less support to school sites, but we feel that this would be you know, have significant impacts. You know, I've been in education thirty seven years. We've talked a lot about centralized versus decentralized. I've lived in both systems.
Somebody has to do the work. So, when there isn't central office support, it's pushed as to our school sites. Right? When there aren't central office administrators, the principals have to do the work. I've been a principal in a district that had a leaner central office and we had to do the work. So that takes away from students, right, and we have a lot of specialized programs where we get specialized grants, and they have compliance reports and requirements, and the people need a network and support and that's what a lot of the central office people
do, right? They do the arranging and organizing and they help our schools and our principals. So, you know, that's our recommendation to you, but you certainly have, a choice to look at the other tiers as well. We did meet the target of, we had a 3 to $5,000,000 range because we didn't know what was going to happen with the $30,000,000 versus the $35,000,000 and we wanted to make sure there was a buffer of taking more central positions and then also moving the line on the, SBAC.
So this is what we're looking at right now in tier one. There is, sensitivity, of course, in the people's positions. Every person who works here, whether they work at a school site or here, are valued, right? This is a very hard process to be going through, and it's not a value statement about anyone or the job that they do. But these are the, departments and operations and the total certificated and classified positions cut. If you look at operations, most of the jobs are classified so that's why they
have a higher number of reductions. In academics, you can see that certificated personnel is definitely higher because we have more certificated people in academics and classified is a little lower. So the grand total of tier one is like $3,600,000 and 28.25 FT feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet Es. So tier two, moving on, would include tier one and then additional positions, for each
of the areas. And then tier three, would end up with 38.25 positions and, you could see the FTEs there. So this is the, more detailed versions of the positions and the impacts. I don't know if you want to discuss each position or if you've had enough time to study this and can ask questions about the information that's provided here. I just have a question about the process of defining the tiers.
So I understand that for SBAC, it was a 25, fifty, seventy fiveone 100. Did that also apply for the central office positions? Wasn't it wasn't it wasn't applied in the same way because of the, previous two years of cuts. So it, some of the departments don't have enough people left to do that kind of reduction. Doctor Hill? Sorry. I just wanna add, we did have to apply. So, if you'll recall last year's superintendent's budget advisory committee reviewed central services.
So they provided us a prioritized ranking list of all of the departments that you see included here. At that time, we did the packages in increments of 10%. So there so no no package I think went below 60% or something that in terms of what was actually ended ended up saving. So this year, because we're peeling back every sector, there are areas where we could potentially reduce to 0% but we had to keep in mind just the compliance factors,
and some of the the general management and operations. So that's really what was the defining factor But the rankings that were produced from last year's committee work is what we followed as a framework. The compliance delineation, is that, following the tier numbers or no? Not necessarily. No. There are some fact there are compliance factors in each of the tiers depending on how much of it could be taken on by another team or team member. So in in some cases, we had discussions around when people are gonna pick up
other people's workload, what their job, their job skill allows them to do or their job description allows them to do. Because like in the classified world, there's a such thing as working out of class. Right? So we also looked at classifications that could absorb more of the work when, maybe a less classification was going to be reduced. But I don't know is there a desire that I read through each one and
talk about it or have you had enough time to look at this and ask questions? I've had enough time. Does anybody have any thoughts and questions? Kim? Kim? Alright. Central. So sorry. They occurred to me not in not in a nice order. For special education, it mentions a redesign, and we were given a little more information and the answers to our questions. So, so there'll be a certain number of new positions versus the positions we have now. Are the cost of the new positions reflected in the savings of the positions that
are going away? Yes. That's what changed, if you remember, on the blue table the first time that we brought it out to just present to the SBAC, the number was a little higher, because, we had not factored that in. And then we realized the work stream realized they gave us numbers that included the positions, like five positions, but not the redesign cost. So that's why I think it went down, a little over a million dollars in the central office reduction in tier one. So the redesign will happen for next year.
Is it is it still something that you are not making public or the specifics of I think you have to vote on it then. I mean, are you want you want to see the org chart first? Is that what you're asking? Oh, I'm just asking if the people involved know, can we talk about it, or is this still somewhat in progress? Yes. Sorry to interrupt. Everyone who appears on any of these lists, has been notified by their supervisor that it it would appear.
In terms of the redesign, that has been shared that we are, closing positions that exist for administration this year and, coming back with a more efficient structure. They do not necessarily know if that purse that position would be theirs that it would have to be an application process. So it's kinda like the TOSAs who Yep. Okay. Last year, where they the TOSAs at the sites who positions closed, but new positions opened and they were able to apply. And then I noticed that we didn't say we were going to be spending less
on the SPED item in that work stream, but there are SPED reductions here in central. So I guess what I'm trying to understand is, do we think we will overall, in 2627 spend the same amount on special education that we were planning to, which means that when we cut this money here in Central, we will be spending more somewhere else in special education, say, on services? Or is there really an overall reduction in special education? Because if there isn't, I'm just I'm not clear we can count them here in
Central. Does that make sense? Maybe? No. But well, I'm we can't serve you. Yes. As any good person would say, it depends. But the short answer is yes. The example that I can give you is, you know, maybe one of the silver linings of, having me wear, you know, additional hats would be looking at, what we have been funding for. So using special ed as an example as you're talking is typically we were, budgeting for a lot of the vacancies that we have, like, the and I'll just use one group as the perils and the BIs as an example.
So, actually, two groups. And it's not a small group. It's a couple of 100 of just, of that group. So it's we're not talking about a few FTEs. And looking to and noticing that while we're funding for the vacancies and encumbering money, we are also paying for all the agency folks, and we're budgeting for all the agency staff, the couple of 100, on the other side. So, and I know one of one of the designs that that has changed, for example, was using the staff that were supporting, fiscally on the special ed side instead of being housed in special ed department are now down in business, there.
So being able to look at how while it is a reduction, it is it isn't in terms of you mentioned services. I wanna clarify that this would be where the district was encumbering funds for the same position, twice. Right? Once for the for the vacancy, it's for when HR would, post and recruits and find someone. But at the same time, budgeting for the, agency staff, that personnel that were in there. And that's what the earlier slide I was mentioning that, in speaking with staff was
it wasn't something that was typically looked at in terms of, the budget adjustment on the agency side when we were bringing on staff on the HR side. So that's, was a big example, for example, of where there is you'll see a reduction, but it isn't necessarily because of the services that we're providing. It isn't services. It's just in terms of how we're recruiting, how we're budgeting for positions as an example. So these five line items will reduce the amount that we thought we were going to spend spend on special education in 2627, which is still significantly higher than we
spent last year, so we won't have a maintenance of effort problem. Correct. Okay. Because I just wanted to make sure we weren't then going to spend this money elsewhere in sped, in which case saving zero while thinking that we were okay. That's that was just a check. Yes. Thank you for I asked a question on the alternative to suspension. I think I said, would this hurt us from an average daily attendance perspective? And the answer was is that the need for ATS has gone down quite a bit, and I thought that was good news that we should share. I saw that the induction the TOSA that does induction, so for our beginning teachers
to clear their credential, that we were gonna eliminate that position. So I guess the impact to teachers will be that they will have to go outside Pasadena Unified and and pay for those services. And I just wondered, you know, is there kind of a estimate of what that will cost each individual teacher? I think it depends on where they seek to clear that credential. As you know, there is different, avenues, whether it's a university, whether it's the county, whether it's another, consortium. It really depends on where they go. Each consortium, for example, has a different requirements and the different costs associated with it.
So it'll be an out of pocket expense though for teachers? Yes. Okay. And then I noticed that there's quite a bit budgeted for, the beginning teacher in that category because I think we pay the mentors. I'm not sure if there's other expenses. So Yes. We will save all that other money as well, and I just didn't see it listed here because it's not a person. Yes. Okay. So that that actually could be a higher amount. Yes. Good to know. I think that's it. Thank you. Just hand that over. In tier two, can you dive a little bit into the real compliance risks that
we would have if if we were to elect to cut tier two, or, you know, things that may put us in legal jeopardy if we weren't out of compliance because we didn't have these resources. I mean, there's a little bit in the description, but it doesn't go too far. I don't know who wants to speak to that. I think each manager will have to speak to their own department, so you'll have to be specific on what positions you're requesting. I think that the ROE 31, the academics, SWSS, SPED program assistant, there's talk about
compliance issues there. So maybe we start start with that one. I don't know if he wants to. For the program assistants in special education, they do they cross train on a lot of things. But there are, individuals dedicated to, intake in our pre k programs, managing any records requests, managing any, parent communication, managing, settlements as well as legal files, providing us data points that are required for us to do our caseload, distributions, and any updates on
that, managing the substitute system for aids when they are out, and, contracted, services doing the communication and drafting of any of those reports. And then maybe I would also ask about the, row 27, which is the health, administrative assistant, in terms of responding to school health needs. What what real risks do we face with regards to that? That is in actually our health programs. Yeah. That particular staff is the one who coordinates everything through that program at this time.
So it it would be difficult. But if we choose to go that route, I would have to work with the director there and see what, other staff in student wellness and support support services could, handle. But it does risk compliance driven type items. Okay. That's good. I'm good on those. Yeah. I just have a question about, these proposed cuts for the special ed department, given
the fact that there are already some issues there, with efficiency and whatnot, how are you gonna mitigate those issues if you cut the support staff and and shift their,
duties on the other staff that I mean, that system is already very burdened. So I'm really interested to hear how that's going to work for us because right now, it's not working for us. That's part of the reason why we're doing a, redesign and changing some of the positions, in special ed. But again, when the central office is reduced, work shifts to schools. That's what happens in districts that have less central office people. So I'm not going to say that that's not what's gonna happen with some of
the special ed stuff. I have a question. So if we dip into tier two, are these school sites prepared to take this on? I would say that, it will be a hardship, right, for anybody to take on more work, but our, staff has shown over and over again their resilience, whether they're central or site. Right? And, we'll do the best very best that we can, to make the system the best system for children. But it is a benefit to having people at the central office help our school
sites. You know, It does give administrators more time to focus on instruction if they're not trying to do compliance and operations. Right? And that's the kind of support we provide for them. It helps our our teachers, right, when they have, special education trained experts be able to help them in areas of, learning and just like every academic person. So, it's none of these reductions are easy. We do believe that we have cut significantly from our central office over the last
two years, and we are very down to, a skeleton, crew in many areas. You know, countless popular opinion. Like I said, that has been the long standing discussion in every school system, central versus decentralized, systems. But what what happens when there's not a centralized system is it does become decentralized at the school site. Yeah. My next question is about the communications, department. And so, it looks like the TV producer director.
So, I mean, that's a a huge benefit to the district is that something that we're willing to forego. It's one of those positions that's responsible for getting information out to the community via video, like our board meeting, like, right now. So I'm just concerned about I know that the cuts are necessary, but we also need to keep our ability to be out there in the community.
There's also cuts being made in the communications department that does our print media. So, what what are what are the plans for that? I'm just concerned that, you know, we're not going to have a way to really communicate to the greater community If we eliminate the communications department, I'm just concerned with that. So is there a plan?
They'll be coming in to address that now. So the impact of cutting the second or the full time, producer means that we will not be able to cover as many, remote events, that we're known for. So for instance, instance, arts events, out in the field, sports sports events.
It would reduce our capacity to, to to produce and, show those. It would also, place a greater workload on the remaining staff, and reduce our our photography services. That's for tier two. That's for tier two. Yeah. Tier one, also has an impact. Looking at tier two. Right. And two. Yeah. You're both I'm sorry. Oh, okay. Okay. So while these positions say one point zero, is is there such thing as a
partial, or they just go away? You know, like, all or nothing kind of thing. Because, you know, librarians point five, but then these are just one point zero or nothing. Sure. In terms of classified positions, if you're referring to so for certificate, yes. For classified, no. In terms of reductions, it would be eliminations. I provided the board with information regarding recent PERF case, with the USD and CSEA. So because of that, it would not be, you would not be able the board would not be able to reduce.
We can't reduce the So you can share. So you can't reduce a person's position to 50% or 75% because we lost the PERB case. Right? But you can share schools. Sure. If you have a full FTE, and so perhaps I didn't understand the complete question. Can you have a point five at one site and a point five at another where a full FTE is shared with two two sites? Yes. So is that what you were asking? I'm looking at the the central positions. Yes. So but sometimes, for example, Which are all shared, I guess.
Yes. So managers will sometimes decide, for example, to have one FTE shared between two sites. So you'll see point five and point five, but the FTE or the position is still full time. But they're spending their time half at one location and half at another location, as an example. Okay. And then my other question, thank you, is, what defines a level that the tier one versus two, two, versus two, three of the central positions?
So say we don't feel we could live without any of them, but it's based on the risk level for compliance and service to schools and students gets greater at each level. And the department directors define that themselves? The, SLT working with managers, yes, director did help define it. Mhmm. Alright. Thank you. Could I just clarify when we there was a risk there that we would lose revenue from our EBS license, do we know how much revenue we're dealing with in that case?
That's our emergency broadcast system. Right? Is that what it is? Is that what EBS means? EBS is the, educational broadband service. So, yeah. It is, PUSD is one of the few school districts in the country to have, an EBS license from the Federal Communications Commission. It is it does generate through excess capacity of our digital spectrum, about $2,000,000 in
revenue for the district. So it's a yes. Question about process. If we move to tier one if we move to tier two, do we have to take the entire tier two or we can take five things of tier two? Can we mix the match? No. No. No. We would take tier one completely and then uh-huh. You're the board. You could do what you want. Anybody else on this? Nothing? Alright. We're gonna move on. Just to clarify, so you said we can never cut a classified position again.
We can never reduce, sorry, an hour as a classified position again, or we have to bargain it. Maybe I misunderstood the No. You're correct. You have to, in the case of, say, say, bargain the decision. Yes. Okay. So we can reduce a position from a one point o to a point seven five or a point five. So you have the bargain yes. We have the bargain the decision, not just the facts. Bargain the decision. So when you say bargain the decision, unless both sides agree, we can't. So we will be cutting Unless you like to invest in litigation So instead of
reducing library coordinators or health clerks or community assistants at our schools, we will be eliminating them instead because of this decision. Yes. Just wanted to make sure. I also want to add that, the cost of benefits is so high right now. It makes more sense for us to hire all positions eight hours even than point seven fives because the hourly rates are negligible compared to the benefit cost. Okay. So what's expensive for us right now is the benefits.
And you have received some confidential analysis of those information about that, right? Benefits are negotiated. But now benefits have gone beyond you know, so much that it makes sense if not to hire people part time. If you're paying their benefits, you might as well get a full eight hours of work because the offset of the two extra hours is such a little amount. So, actually, that's kinda for you because what we're operating with is with the current costs. But if the federal policy impacts even further the cost of benefits, then what?
Because we have a goal right now, but if federal if if if the cost increase to higher levels than we are projecting, then what? I'm assuming it's not the question is not in terms of premiums. Just had a, conversation yesterday. I'm forgetting what day of the week we're in. We had had a conversation just yesterday and researching that and talking to a couple of other districts and talking to Alliance and, reaching out to SIS to have a
conversation about how, current premiums and the potential impact of what's happening at the federal level to anticipate what may or may not happen at the local level here. So it's new information. Everyone I reach out to is still working through that, but it is something that we are discussing and exploring to see what, if any, impact the decisions at the federal level will have at the site. But I I I guess my question is, our goal is to meet our current goal based on the information that we have right now.
And then if the information changes, then adapt or I think I understand. So, it's difficult to to anticipate what's gonna happen at the federal level. But in terms of here, in terms of premiums, we are anticipating we are putting into the NYP the premiums increase, year over year. So that we have to get into consideration just as we would step and column and other the statutory requirements. So into the NYP, baked in is or, health and welfare benefits cost increase that
have happened traditionally, which is different than what may happen at the federal level. K. You wanna move on? Yes. Next up is Doctor. Reynoso. Okay. Oh, they don't do a very good job of doing both of these things. Okay. Alright. We're gonna talk about contracted services. As previously noted, we had a larger, kind of pie. So I'm gonna skip ahead and then talk to it. The contracted services in unrestricted is approximately 29, million dollars. At this time, staff is recommending the tier one contracts.
And, how that was determined was through all the program managers, assessing, what is largely provided and what is essential to our district. Tier two and tier three are primarily represent our kinda system based contracts, things things like that that we we need to have, our our website, our phones, and such. And if we didn't have those types of things, it definitely would, cause some, challenges
in our district. And I do wanna note we did have an aim of 3.5, for, this objective, but we did not meet it for tonight's meeting. So I wanna be really clear. We're still working on that. And the reason for that is I'll use, my department as an example, that when we're weighing the odds of if we're gonna eliminate a particular staff member that does a particular service for schools, then what happens with that service? Right? And then let's say I, have a corresponding contract with a vendor that also offers
a similar type of service, but it helps the school site with doing that work. If I eliminate both, the burden on the school site is too significant, at least at this time. So you would wanna think about a gradual over time, how do you build the infrastructure at a school site? So, in that case, what it take it takes time to go back to your vendors. You can't just break contract. You have to go back. You have to amend. Sometimes, you might be in a year of having to put out a request for proposal and starting over. And in that case, you can negotiate and that works well.
That takes about three to four months to do. So in this particular case, it'll allow all of us as program managers to negotiate that, which is why not meeting that tonight is why we wanna point that out. But it is still being worked on and is something that is, very important to all of us. And really making sure, again, is, when when, miss Kenny, you talk about the impacts and the effects of all of this, this is where that comes into play. So we have to weigh those odds over service versus personnel. And if those things go away, how do we still provide quality service, to our
staff and our students? On this next one, we'll, just kind of point out, as we mentioned earlier, they're tier one. These contract, lists, are within the zero, the one, and the two. And for our public, and for the board, zero means to completely eliminate. And then the one and the two would be a pretty significant reduction to that particular contract. So we are making that recommendation of 2.7 at this time of the 3,500,000.0 that our aim is still at. Four, as you get to tier three is where it would be something that is
just you can't live without. We need to empty the trashes. We have to pay the water bill. We need to have lights on, things like that. So, and they are still being, assessed at this time. Any questions? Questions? Michelle? So I'm looking at the, contract list from tier three. How often do we use school services, for instance? How often do we use them? We're gonna be using them to recruit the CBO and probably the, special education position.
Right now, we have a contract with them to do the analysis of special education services. They're doing the audit, the fiscal audit that won't be done until December. So it just depends. And one of the things that we found was that we had to use our contract list from last year because something is budgeted this year doesn't mean it's going to be used. So we did eliminate some contracts that we know the managers already didn't want to
use this year. And then we also, took into consideration, our consultation with UTP and things they told us the teachers really value and use or there are other members. So there might be some, like, adjustments that were made to keep something that we might have thought they could live without, but we were given feedback that that's really important to the instructional program or the wellness program, so we kept it in. This is really just specific.
So in score four the score four list, there's WEX for thirteen two and it's so the description is retiree. And I just was curious what that was. Everything was very clear and then I got to that one and then I had no idea what that meant. No details. We could hold till doctor Kanell returns, but, my guess is that maybe it is, something that we give the retirees when they leave. I'm just making a guess, though. As a contract? I don't know. Yeah. So we'll find out later, I guess. We'll hold on to that question. Thank you. Anybody else? Miss Kenny? One of the things that I noticed was, we were taking off the board election
as an expense. It said not needed. Do I need to find I didn't print these out, so I would have to scroll around online. But I just wanna remind us that there will be a board election in 2627. Maybe that's a hit. Yes. I think we took it out. We took it out for this year. Anything Okay. But these lists are for 2627 that we're so when it says not needed, I'm assuming we're saying it's not needed for 2627. I'm saying it will be needed. It is not needed for this year, but, again, these contract changes are for 2627. Right? Let's ask them that one too. We need these two. Fatima can respond.
So, this comes to kind of like a perfect example when I sent an email to some of you and said that staff was making adjustment all the time because, this is a lot of work. So we had a conversation with business services, and originally, we had that as a write off for 2627. But when they contacted me, I told them, no.
You can write it off for 2526, but in 2627, I'm gonna need it back. So they are putting it back. It's just those are some of the items that we just didn't have time to get it updated and send it to you guys. But it is there for 2627. And for some reason, we always pay the bills a year late, so maybe we don't need it till 2720. Just kidding. Tina Fredericks. That's true. Put me on your claim for you later. There's some items that say the service is no longer needed. Is that a like, is it because we thought about it, we don't need it,
or really don't need it, or we it's sort of clean up. Oh, we realize we we're paying for this, and we don't actually don't need it. Like, are there multiple reasons? Do you have an example of this fabric so I can look at it? It? There is. I may not be able to answer it, but I might be able to. Okay. I was just, like, randomly The mouth by Benjamin was It says Child Welfare and Safety Public Works, Inc. Right. So that was a carryover from a grant that we had. That so this was '24 or '25, contract.
We had a grant with, Learning Works and Public Works. They were our attendance chasers. Our grant ended mid year last year, and so we don't have the grants any longer nor did we get a re app on it. So it's no longer needed. I guess my question is, was this a cleanup that we were forced to do and we just, like, oh, that's nice. We found those things? Or do we kinda regularly audit our own expenses and find these items that we could save?
It was a midyear grant. It's hard to identify that midyear. Year. So it's in the cost of how we assessed it for this year. So I think they thought it may have still been a part I have another grant that just ended in September. So it may have been, an oversight. But we know that it ended. I'm I'm talking about this general contract. Oh, I can't answer that overall. But In general, contracts are, reviewed every year because we actually have to renew them yearly. We don't do even if there's a multiyear agreement, you still have to do the re you have to redo the contract each year.
Meaning that that nothing really rolls over without your consent or your knowledge. So were there items where you were overlooked when we when you made this list? Like, we didn't realize we were paying this item. No. We had to look at last year's list because this year, if something's in the budget, it might not be used. Right? And we couldn't pull out what the cost was because it could be budgeted for,
more money than will actually be spent, especially when we're looking at contracted services for students with disabilities or, you know, another another service of a student. We do a projection in the budget where looking at the actual cost from last year would give us more accurate numbers of what we'd be saving. So oh, I'm sorry. You just pointed this way, so I thought you were Okay.
So what it's so confusing to me about tier two contracts is that you have well, I have my own opinion about some of of these things. I think that there should be a travel freeze. But so in in that sense, it's not that those there's things that are not big amounts that we should not be doing as a matter of fact. And even if it's just a gesture, we shouldn't be doing them right now. Right? So the conferences, the associations, all of that, you know, we should have, this is
kind of like austerity measures one zero one. Like, these are some of the first things that people do when they enter into a store. Right? Let's freeze travel. Let's freeze like, you know, those things. But then you also have here things like Aries that we but but like different cause for Aries. So I you have some of the cause for Aries divided into different things and so I I don't fully understand. And honestly, Granicus is not that useful from my perspective as a board member but,
you know, that's that's just that. But so so some of the things don't seem to have the same level of need or urgency. And so can you help us help me understand the this tier two because it's so confusing. I can speak to one of those and maybe you can piggyback. I'll use, a colleague of mine. He is the only SARB, registered, employee in the PUSD. And every year he has to have an annual renewal, which requires him to go
to LACOE for a week. It's LACOE, but I have to pay for his, you know, his driving, his mileage. He's a UTP member, and he also, has to have the registration in order to authorize those types of meetings. So although it's local and, like, in my department, we only do local, but I have to, as a requirement, to stay in compliance with those things. That would be an example of even though we're gonna restrict that and cut it in our department, I still have to save some of that because I still have
to ensure that for our district. Can we request fee waivers from LACO for those kinds of expenses? You have not because you ask not. That's brilliant. The Ares, contracts, there are two in level three or tier two or ranked three. And then there's one in tier three ranked four. The one that's ranked four in tier three, meaning it's not recommended for elimination, is our SIS system. So the entire the entirety of the student information system.
The two contracts that are in that were ranked three, were training services. One is for a module that was, provided for a new employee, and the other, is the conference budget. It just seems like this particular tier two, it's all it's not it it doesn't make as much sense as some of the other tier twos that we've seen. I think you'd have to ask, and that's why we have this nice audience of managers here for you, so that they can answer, any very specific questions, that you
have because with all of these, work streams, we ran processes. Right? And then we came back and told people, like, you're saying, do you really need that? And then they might be giving us an answer like Julie. Right? Like that I have to send the person to the Ares training because they learn updates. I'm just making this up. And, you know, so we have been scrutinizing new positions. We have been scrutinizing travel that's out of general fund. There are, grants that we have still allowed people to do professional development on, and
some are requirements of the grant to be able to implement the grant. You know, one example is we have a Freedom Schools program every summer. We have to send the people to that training in order to run the program. So there are grants that have requirements, and there are also operation processes where we have found that when we don't send the people to the LACOE trainings from our business department and our human resources department or the state trainings that it does impact
operational processes in the school district. So it's really worth the return on investment to have, you know, them have the latest training, the same with the special education information system. They're, you know, security that protects our schools, Gaggle that protects our students. So the managers are most familiar with, what each of the contract does. So if you have a question about a specific one, we could have them answer. Since you are I'm so sorry. Since you are looking at tier, two, I did wanna bring attention to one contract
that, we need to fix. It was labeled as a rank of four. It's the Western Association Schools. That's our accreditation. That is not something that we were recommending for reduction. So it's Mhmm. Incorrectly in that column. So my question is tier one academics. So, actually, when I got on the board in 2017, I couldn't understand why we were paying Reading Partners $75,000 to come in and teach our students to read.
I had even seen their program. But when I was in school, I'm thinking, wait. My my classroom teachers taught me to read. Is there any reason why our teachers are not teaching our students to read? Why are we paying an outside vendor to come in and teach. And I couldn't be saying this wrong, but this vendor has taken up some space somewhere, a need addressing a need somewhere. So where that need is being addressed then let me rephrase it.
Where that need is being addressed by this outside vendor who we're now paying $91,000 according to this list, is there any reason why the teachers in those grade levels have a need for this service? Yes. So thank you for the the rephrase. Our teachers absolutely teach children to read. So, I wanna make sure that that's that's clear. And I do believe that. So, Reading Partners provides a service that is above and beyond. So their intent is to create one on one or one to two very small,
sort of groups for students who are either struggling in reading or have some affective, you know, concerns, to be able to give them a reading buddy and focus on the joy of reading. Their service is sometimes provided after school, sometimes provided outside of the the instructional time period with, teachers, but sometimes they are pulled out from class to give an additional sort of intervention. So these are targeted students that are specially selected. What I do wanna say is that that contract with the feedback that was one
of the contracts that we did get feedback from our labor partners on, in particular the UTP, noted that they they felt that that contract was worthwhile. It's, yes, it has increased in price over the years because, the org Reading Partners organization themselves have changed their rates. We are in every year an annual conversation about how much we can afford, and they are reducing the number of schools that they can serve, with that price point. But we are able to fund it, through categorical funds so that's going to be
grant maximized because, you know, definitely hearing from our teachers that they do appreciate that intervention support above and beyond what they do in the classroom, was important for us to to understand. Yeah. My concern, with this But it won't be in the general fund is what I'm saying. Okay. My concern with this though is to the tune of 91,000 when we're having to literally cut positions, some that don't cost as much.
So I'm just concerned when we're looking at, you know, the whole pie, when you when you're talking about reducing cost and to the extreme that we have to reduce cost, just concerned that you guys this is in the tier where you're making the recommendation. And from what I've, observed, it's one of the higher contracts, in this in this
tier outside of the organizations that provide other services that you would expect to cost more. But, just I'm just concerned about that. My my other question is, have have you all listed all of the contracts that we have in the district in this space? Or are you gonna make revisions and add more? What should do we need to expect something in addition to what what is in
front of us? So we have listed all of the contracts that are in general fund. Okay. So that was the goal. There might be school based contracts, you know, that they decided with the school site council or there could be categorical funded contracts, but these are the the general fund contracts including, supplemental and concentration funding. And I think that's what missus Kenny was asking asking about, earlier. Like, if you free up supplemental and concentration funding, what are you gonna spend it
on that's still gonna be contributing to the students? Right? So, the in in just response to Reading Partners, and I'm not defending Reading Partners in any way, but some organizations come they're charging 91,000, but they're serving, like, five schools and they're bringing 25 people with them. So it's because they get donations from other places and they charge us a portion of it. So the academic return on investment is much greater than if we we would only
be able to maybe have a portion of a reading teacher. Right? And then they couldn't serve that many students at the same time. So it's a system and I think that's why, UTP held it in a higher value because kids that need, one on one instruction, they're getting it from another adult and they might not be able to do that every single day, you know, so they want the kids to get additional supports. So don't get me wrong because back when my kids were in school, I was even considering being a volunteer with Reading Partners.
And I do appreciate the work that they do with our students, but it's just that every year that I've been on the board where we've had to make cuts, they seem to just find a way to stay in there. We we move them around. We we keep holding on to them while we're literally, cutting other services to other programs. And so, you know, it is very important that our students learn how to read. But I'm just wondering when we're cutting programs and saying other staff is gonna absorb the work from, you know, this and that, we're not saying the same thing when
it comes to working on reading proficiency with our students. So that's my concern. Miss Kenny and then miss McKenzie. So just to clarify, so we're seeing the 10,000,000 on this slide of contracted services. But on the slide at the very beginning of the PowerPoint, it said there was 29,000,000. So I think to, board member Bailey's question, there are some things that aren't here, and I'm assuming that is utilities, special education.
Okay. So there are things that aren't here that fall into certain buckets. Utility That's kind of nonnegotiables, but they were they're looked at. They just weren't. You're right. It's the So there's 19,000,000 that's not here. Approximately. This is the 10,000,000. So if you're thinking of some of, special education services, right, it wouldn't be there because we can't take them away. Well, it's the transportation. Mhmm. The speaker will it's the transportation and the SNC money that's paying for s for special ed. That's what's coming out of unrestricted. So, yeah, I just wanted to clarify that this isn't all I just wanted to
for people who are like, well, how did it go from '29 to 10? Where where did the other 19 go? It is it was something that was not included here. So if this is based on 2425 contracts, what if there are new contracts for '25, '26 that we didn't have in 2425? How are we capturing them as part of this process? I think doctor Blanco has made it clear to SLT that anything moving forward, we do need to bring to SLT to recommend, because at this point, we're making eliminations
and or reductions. So anything that you would want to bring more attention to would mean then, as Doctor. Blanco always says, well, then what do you what else are you getting rid of? So there we do not wanna incur more cost. We would need to make sure that we stay at our threshold of what whatever the board decides to agree to, and then we will have to negotiate from there. For example, like, we have an RFP up with City Guard right now. So, we have put it down as a reduction, not an elimination. But we will work with them because that still seems to be a value of
keeping everyone safe. But we can negotiate that, but we're not gonna ask for more. Okay. And then one of the items that I saw that I think was on tier two was everyday labs, which is our vendor for attendance. I have thought in the past, it's run across my mind that Ares says that it will support attendance and letters to parents, etcetera. But tell us more. Yes. So that would require staff. And as you can see on tier one, that staff is being eliminated, or being
suggested to be eliminated, for your review. Let me take that back. And very important, staff member. However, if we eliminate that person, we now don't have the service. Everyday Labs actually has been an incredible partner. Everything they've built, they've been building with us. We know that, through our contracts, they will be happy to amend. And what we'll probably ask for, because we will be asking for a reduction in their contract for next year, is that one of the areas that we, as you pointed out miss earlier, is our chronic absenteeism. So we would want them to help us focus on the truancy letters, especially as
you'll hear momentarily about, possible reductions in clerical at our school sites which then, I guess, impacts our school sites. So we're, again, we're trying to temper, what we can do for our school sites and still truly be, as doctor Blanco keeps mentioning, a true service to our schools. So we are really having to to manage that so the impact isn't such a, a huge burden on our schools. So there was a contract question for doctor Kanell, but I'm not sure if I said the name of the contract correctly. It's WEX. WEX. Oh, I said when? WEX. Says retiree. It said retiree.
Just checking. It's all the way in tier four, but it it was '15 and it was for WEX. And the only word description that said retiree. So does anyone I think I think that yeah. Yeah. Fatima, I think, had a a theory on it, but I wanted to the public to know what it was. So so just check yeah. We'll we'll find out. We'll update that. So to the point that we're raising about the services that we have to continue to maintain on an ongoing basis, is there an opportunity for us to look at
what those services are, work with legal to identify if there are are piggyback contracts available so we can get better pricing for those services. Is there a way to create kind of consortiums of, like, small ditches that are prying the same services? Can we sort of create some economy of scale there so that AirPlay gets a better price and is able to save money? Are those things that are opportunities that are, possible, feasible? Can that be done in some way? Because I imagine that with 80 school districts you all have some competitive pricing in contract services. Oh, you sat on the side where you get to answer questions. I'm just I'm not an expert in contracts, but I do know enough that, a
piggybackable contract is not just with LACO. If LACO has a scope of work that you're looking for that's similar, and the contract is piggybackable, it's piggybackable. And you can do you can do so. But it's not just limited to LACO. It's within a municipality or any anybody who doesn't like service. I I do understand, but there are some contracts that are gonna be very specific to LEAs that the state may not have a piggyback contract for. So such as Ares. We're not the only ditches buying Ares. Is there a way for us to sort of kinda create a consortium, like, much like we have SELPAs to sort of maximize services to make sure that everyone's getting
a competitive price on Ares, for example? Well, that's the intent of a piggybackable contract, to make sure the economy is at scales, to make sure that you're not using the you're not going through the arduous process of doing an RFP, but rather it's to expedite. So if you look at you can reach out to your neighboring certain neighboring districts. You can reach out to our county office to see if we have a contract within that scope of work, and if it's piggybackable, it's piggybackable to you. And if your neighboring South Pasadena has one, San Marino has something in similar scope of work and it's piggybackable, then by all means, your your superintendent and your appropriate
staff will make sure it's piggybackable and within the confines of the law and the scope of work, and it could be issued. Thank you. Okay. Before we go on, do we want to take consensus to extend the meeting and then just take a ten minute break? We have yeah. What do you think? So it's I just need a consensus to extend the meeting with to, 10:30. Alright. Let's go 10:30. Oh, do we have that +1, 23? No. Well, I I don't know. Yep. I I can't confirm that.
Yes. Sergio has something. Doctor Canel has something. The intent was not to go slide by slide, unless you want otherwise, but that was not the intent, for tonight. And the WEX is the app in order for a retirement for a retiree to pay for their benefits. So it's an app. Alright. Okay. So are we going to take a consensus to go to 10:30? Do I have 10:30? Do I have an agreement? 1234. Okay. Ten minute break? Ten minutes. Let's get up. Okay. Thanks. Alright. We're coming back to the meeting.
Welcome back. Alright. How are you? Would you like a top corner? Yes. Okay. Alright. We're back at the meeting now. Miss, can you please sit down? I want some water. Okay. We wanna start now. Board president Lee Yeah. Ask a question. You bet? Okay. So I wanted to ask about, the budget cuts being directed toward the, the athletics.
And I was wondering, how do you plan on choosing which two schools athletic programs are being cut from? Because if it's due to their enrollment number, how is that fair to all the students who may go to a smaller school? And, will they just stop doing sports? A lot of students rely on sports to help them with extracurriculars. So I don't really think it would be fair to just cut from two schools just because they may go to I mean, just because their, school population is smaller. And, why isn't it, why aren't they able to, go to one school and do
sports at another school if it's being cut? I feel like they should have the opportunity to still do it even if it's being cut. Do you have a question? Yeah. Thank you. Who wants to answer that? Superintendent? Helen. Helen. Doctor Hill. If it gets super detailed, mister Abhart is in the room. But, I'll go ahead and take thank you, trustee Maxey. So the this one was a tricky one, right, because this this particular package had an or. So we could either do a percentage cut equitably every single or equally at every school or we could, consolidate sports at two campuses or, you know, x campuses depending
on the level of the package. It was complex enough that we gathered the high school principals together to come to an agreement. And what I will say, just front loading for all of these packages, these are all difficult agreements. These are not any agreements that everyone feels is ideal, but it's what they're, that, you know, we're we're coming to agreement on based on what we know we have to reduce. So, the decision was actually not to cut sports at, particular schools. So we're not gonna go with the two school consolidation. We will be doing, reductions by school, so everyone will still maintain some sports.
But the reductions are this is a shift going to be proportional to the student population of the school. There might be more Oh, sorry. And you can just keep it on. Go ahead. So each school will be reduced? Their percentage will be reduced? Yes. Okay. And it's just based on the student enrollment. So I can go a little faster on the athletics package now that we've kind of talked about that part. Okay. Do you have another question, Jermaine, that no. Not at this current moment. No. Miss Kenny. On the athletics, my impression was that if school a gets rid of a sport
and a student ends school, attends school a, and school b will have the sport, that the student would have to leave school a to go to school b to play that sport if we keep athletics at all of the four high schools but limit the number of sports at each. Is that true? So thank you because that was the other half of your question that I forgot. Sorry. My brain. So we actually had hoped we have to work with CIF on that type of agreement. We had hoped to maybe do a multiscool agreement so that you could be, for
example, enrolled at Muir, but you could go play, whatever sport at Blair that Muir doesn't have. It turns out that that it won't be the case. They would have to actually go and enroll, but they would have no penalty on, sitting out the playing time. So if we had athletics at two schools and none of the other two, students could remain at their school to do whatever program they were interested in and still play sports without transferring schools? No. They would have to transfer schools. That's not what I was told.
We that was by who? Alfredo. Alfredo? Resendiz. Oh, mister Resendiz. Yes. Mister Resendiz. David, would you like to come to the podium and respond to the question? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, they would have to go to the school that would be offering that sport or athletics if they were or school was not to offer athletics. CAF does have very specific rules of, transferring and how that works. And the other layer to that is part of the multi school agreement, the specific
league has to agree to that. So for example, using your since it was brought up, they're in the Pacific League. The league has to vote to allow what is known as a multiscool agreement, meaning a school a student can be at another school but still play sports with that school. And without that in place, that wouldn't be allowed through the either CIF or the league. Alright. So to clarify, so if a high school has zero sports, you have to transfer to another school to play sports?
Correct. Okay. Or it'll be a multiscool agreement, which would also be discussed with the league, but as of now, there's not that in play. Can I just confirm, doctor Gray, that that is the understanding of mister Resendiz as well? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Just wanna make sure No. I'm just trying to differentiate between whether a a site has zero sports or just doesn't have some sports. And if there is no distinction The distinction is you have a sorry to interrupt you. Multi agreement if it has no sports. I don't think you can have a multi agreement if the school still has sports,
can you? Correct. Yeah. It would have it would CIF, I think, would would require that that school offer no athletics. Okay. So if a school offers no athletics, there's a chance to have a multischool Agreements. Agreement. Otherwise, there is not. Correct. Okay. So it is correct in saying once you get that agreement, you would not have to transfer schools. The caveat with that is a multiscool agreement is not necessarily something the league is wanting to do, but definitely it'd be a proposal. Miss McKenzie, What are the parameters for being able to secure a multiyear agreement?
What kind of things has CIF been willing to approve? And what kind of, conditions exist for CIF to consider approving that kind of an agreement? So when it comes to multiscool agreement, CIF technically isn't the one that's gonna approve it. It's gonna be the league. So the CIF will say, yes, if the league approves that. So that it's gonna be more of a league. But that's when the league follow the jurisdiction of CIF? So it's still ultimately CIF approving it. Yes. But the the way the rules work, it's the league has to vote because it
does the competitive balance is there as a safety measure. They don't want kids that don't go to that school playing for that school. So with us being part of a league, we would have to get the rest of the league members to approve that, to allow and CIF will decide whatever the league votes even though we're all under CIF. The league schools have that power to say yes or to say no. Okay. So here's a question. If in fact there's an adjustment made to competitive athletics, so if I'm gonna use
a really bad example. Let's say school a has a pickleball team. And if, for some reason, school A no longer has a competitive pickleball team, could we find a could it possibly be that it is something akin to a intramural league that is introduced at the school so that there's some athletics even though it's not competitive? Yeah. I mean, I think the challenge then becomes, that there wouldn't be a it's not a CIF competition at that point and finding other schools that only have intramural, I
think will be the challenge because, right now it's competitive sports that all of them offer. So I think it's on the table, but it'll be hard to find other, opponents or games to to schedule. But, yeah, that could be something that we could offer. I mean, I I'm not suggesting that this is the ideal path. I'm just thinking about how do we find a way to meet the need if we're going to have to make significant reductions to athletics to competitive athletics that we can't afford to fund it? How do we still provide students with some opportunity to compete and or have the
experience? And kinda to piggyback off what doctor Hill was mentioning earlier, we brought the high school, principals and the athletic directors together to be strategic on how to account for some of the cuts, and so some of the ideas that are the schools will be putting into place is potentially less away games during non league season so that lowers cost of transportation, potentially some sports not offering a soft rush level and only
JV and a varsity level. Also looking at the number of stipends that are allocated to each school, creating like a cap saying, okay you can have so many stipends to pay for all your head coaches, your assistant coaches, knowing it's going to be lower than what they're currently offering and kind of putting that puzzle together. So I think with that, one of the good things that's come out of this is no sport that is offered this year will be completely eliminated by all four
schools, so there will be every sport that's offered this year. One of the schools will offer it, next year and two, more sports than I think we thought going into will still be offered. Some schools will have to lose some sports because of the cuts, but not as much as I think potentially we thought it was going to be because of the other reasons, ways that we can reduce, the cost associated with athletics. Okay. So I have a couple of questions about the experience for different levels of students.
So if you are an incoming first year an incoming I don't like to use the fresh word. But, an incoming first year, will there be a list before enrollment or your sport will be offered here Yeah. So that families can make that decision. Technically, the high schools have already kinda put something together based off the allocation that they would receive for next year. So that is definitely something that's And and is that public?
Not yet. I don't think because until the vote is official, I think we're waiting to see, then I think at that point it would become public. Okay. And then, I wanted to say number two. You know, I was To some of my friends, and I know that there's a school district that some people love to, love to refer to. Here, it starts with an a and it learns with and has a couple of shows that rhyme with it. Yeah.
Anyway, and, so my friend's children are in that that that high school. Okay. And, her son is an athlete and he got, it's not cast. How do you say when you in sports? Drafted. Thank you. He got drafted in the soccer team and they said, okay. Thank you. Welcome to the soccer team. It's $800. $800 per kid in the team to pay for transportation.
And, I'm saying this just because they had been in PUSD. They did PUSD as elementary and middle school, and they were so surprised at how many of the costs associated with everyday schooling are out of pocket, including athletics. Right? This is not an advocacy. It's just a point of information for all of the families in USD. Mhmm. Right? That's that. And I don't know how they get away with it, but they they said welcome to the team.
Give us a check for $800 or your kid cannot go to the games. Yeah. You you can a school district can or a school can, in theory, ask for, let's say, a spare pack, kind of what you're saying. But if a family, can't afford that, they can't deny the kid from playing on the sport. Right. Alright. And then, you know, I'm interested in college applications. So if you are, a student that is interested in top tier program.
That means that you need to have, resume you have to have athletics. You have to have arts. You have to have APs. You have to have all of these things in order to even be competitive to go to a program. You're in eleventh grade, and your sport is eliminated from your school. Like, what are we doing for those students? Yeah. What does that mean for that college transcript? Yeah. I definitely think the, doing that analyzation of exactly, what school and potentially what sport
might be eliminated. I think that becomes kind of a case by case scenario until we have a formal vote to know exactly what that is. I do think, those are gonna be some of the challenges that we're gonna have to have and work with CIF, to allow, if we close a certain school or a sport, to work with kind of that transfer portal, but yeah, that definitely will be, a case not as many, like I said, teams are being eliminated as potentially,
the whatever that cut becomes is going to look like. Because if you're going to that competitive program, it's not enough to be in volleyball. You have to be the captain of the volleyball team. And there might be another captain already in the other school, and so you do not have the gravitas and the relationships For sure. In it to transfer in that. Right? So I think that in many ways, incoming freshmen are in a better I used that word.
Incoming first year students are in a better position, but it gets a little complicated in terms of logistics especially for, you know, like So the relationship with the coach isn't there, knowing the other teammates. So, yeah, definitely that will be part of the discussion and the And the transcript. I'm interested in the transcript for that college application. Yeah. Definitely. That'll be something that have to be looked at. I think once, knowing what I know of the potential cuts of sports, it's not
as many. Obviously, it will have an impact, and I think we'll have to go on a case by case scenario to figure out how to best support that student and that family through this process. Okay. So Tina Fredericks is nice and then Scott Harden and then mister Maxey. So we also have to go through we Yeah. I would just like to excuse myself. Oh. So that that that's it. Yeah. Well, we'll miss you. Thank you all. Have a nice night. Thank you for being here. You too. See you again. Alright. So Thank you, trustee Maxey, for your question.
And doctor Ibarra, you know I've already asked these questions, but I just I think these are important. So the scenario where you've accounted for all of the schools are off we're offering at least every sport. No one sport is below the net. Offering that sport. Yes. Every sport. And is that with the 50% cut scenario or which scenario are we talking about? We as a as a team, we worked with what this would look like if it was 50%.
Okay. And so knowing that each of the schools kinda work with the athletic directors to make kinda that decision. And as of now, with the 50%, no one sport will be completely eliminated. Okay. Thank you. Are we at are we at risk if a sport altogether is dropped such that it's somewhere across our our schools that that's what a particular sport is no no longer offered next year. Are we at risk for are are is that a releasable criteria if someone leaves
the wants to leave the district and go to another? Yeah. It's a process, you know, obviously CIF has a say in protocols of what that looks like but, yeah, that could be the case. But as of now But we might have to release that student. Yes. If they. Yes. Well, we probably would not because our principals agreed to make sure that the sports were offered at least one of our schools, so we would release them to go to another school. Another school. We're not losing any Right. Sport is being complete. Anything that's offered this year will one of the schools will offer If we approve
it as If we approve it as Yes. Got it. Thank you. I I want I want to just have two of my principals out there, so I'm gonna take a risk here. But, we, you know, we have had abundance in a lot of things, right, at PUSD. We've been very fortunate, because we have extra revenue streams and, we we now are having an opportunity to put some control on sports, right, and have a formula based, a way of distributing the money. And I think even though the principals weren't necessarily in favor of losing 50% of
the sports budget, they quickly figured out how they could accommodate students and make sure that sports weren't lost at PUSD. What would be good for us to do is further analysis, you know, and see what is a reasonable amount for a district our size to spend on sports. And, maybe we might have to look at changing some priorities and increasing it, you know, the next year if we're actually underfunding for schools our size. But, like many things that we do, we do them exponentially.
And I think offering as many sports as we did could be one of those cases. And in the point, that I was trying to make in letting the families know what would remain in writing was so they understand that everything isn't gone. Right? That came up a lot at the town hall about we don't know what's left. And so I know it's important as soon as we, have that finalized with the principals that we're able to get that message out to the community about what sports
are where in case they do wanna make different choices within the school district. But it sounds like that, most of the sports are still gonna be offered. Yeah. As of now, based off what the analysis that we have done, total, we're looking at about 65 to 70 sports that are for teens across the district that are still going to be offered. And this is boys and girls. Okay. So, Kim is next. Just to clarify that I think a couple people said, so open enrollment starts in
January. So by that point, people will have the information to know. We're ready to go. Yeah. For sure. I have a icky question. Can annual fund pay to phase out a sport in a school? Not to continue it, but to phase it out so that those students graduate with whatever they've already started. Yeah. I definitely think that's an option for us to explore once we know what the official cut is, and I think those are the type of, case by case analysis that we will start to, implement.
Boosters do play a big role in sports. Right? And so, hopefully, the district that you're mentioning is going through booster process and covering students who can't afford to pay. Right? So did you wanna say something, doctor Kanell? Go ahead. I always feel like the question has to be a yes a response has to be a yes. I just wanted to say, just for the sake of whatever district that is, there are some, permissible fees when it comes, to students paying when it comes to school districts. That's typically governed, by ECCODE, but there are some the law has to specifically allow
it to occur. So, you can look a lot of districts were having their, to the PIPA personnel office, only because that was one of the hats I wore once upon a time, dealing with the states. So but permissible fees are are permissible when allowed specifically by by law and transportation is one of them, just for clarity on that. So So are you ready to move on to this presentation? Okay. I just remembered another question I asked you previously, which is, with the 50% level
cut, I was worried that it would be cut so much that it would be, undermining a score, and you had what was your response? Response? Yeah. So the, kind of the most common, strategies to kinda offset the cost were less away games for non league games, so that transportation, the number of stipends, that each school would get. So for example, if a school had one sport, 10, head coach and assistant coach,
that might drop to six or seven depending. So there was a lot of thought put into it by the principals, and I know it's extremely difficult task, but, and potentially, the soft rush level maybe not being offered as much, so that way is another way to save cost. So you put implementing that, most schools, were able to put some type of semblance of what they currently have. Obviously, there's gonna be some cuts with that, 50%, but there was a lot of
thought put into minimizing the impact. I wasn't gonna prolong this one but, since we're gonna transition out, I did wanna disclose because, with just a clarification, that for graduation, every year, our schools update something called the school profile that is attached to college applications. Students are judged against what they choose to do based on what the school provides. So if the school is not listing certain sports on their school profile, it wouldn't be held against them that they didn't participate in that because it's not present on
their their annually updated school profile. More questions can be directed at school counselors and Doctor. Turley for that one but I just wanna reassure folks that that's that's not, the main consideration around some of these reductions. I do think that this is giving me a good level set for how we're gonna pace through the rest of the packages. But it was obviously important enough that the student, assembly chose to ask their question on this. So I think that might be more of a defining factor for us in terms of, yes, we could figure it out.
We can make things work across the four schools, but what is the impact in the student experience and things like that. So that's thank you very much, mister Abar, for the details. So with that, I'll transition to sort of the overview of what we're gonna do, and how we would walk you through it. If you want to do it differently, just tell me. So, essentially, I wanted to give some context to the committee itself. So of the three areas that we are voting on, obviously, the committee, got to
see and weigh in on the majority of the, of our services. It was a representative group of participants. You can see their their makeup here. But I wanna, give two sort of contextual, statements about them. One, we it was important to us that this was a continuation of what the committee determined last year. Last year when, this group of people convened, they ranked and prioritized services that are centrally, produced.
This year, they ranked and prioritized services that are school based. The reason why we wanted that continuity is so that the same individuals could weigh in with the same, you know, historical knowledge on both of the major areas of service of service. Right? So central and school. What we have from their work is now priorities for all of these things that could be applied in the need of any type of reduction. So understand that what we'll see tonight is not any individual member's rank.
It is not their direct, this is exactly how I wish for it to happen. But essentially their votes cast on, all of the categories that were put forth for them. Last year it was I think 10 central categories because that was how it was divided. This year it's 14 school vote is what what the rent, I'm sorry, the prioritized list, is produced by. So, in this process, program managers were tasked with, providing the information and the details
on what exists in each of these service categories. The program managers we've already referred to are sitting over here. We asked them to come tonight to be able to answer any questions in detail as we just kind of saw fishbowled out here with athletics. Again, bearing in mind, I have a huge gratitude for the committee coming to do hard decision making that is not appealing or ideal for anyone, but they're willing to put forth that time and energy to help us make these difficult decisions. Likewise, our program managers are the champions for every package that you're seeing and it's
very difficult for them to stand before you and attempt to be objective and discussion about it. So, that is an appreciation for that leadership. Once those packages were produced, the committee, had presentations, conducted questions asked, in a repeated process over several weeks until leading up to the final vote. They were able to take each of the categories by package and cast an individual
vote of a rank from zero to four following the same voting process that we used last year with the central packages. Zero meaning likely the the easiest to to reduce and four being something that would be most difficult to reduce. And so, scores that you see with lower numbers, were ranked essentially easier to reduce. Scores that were higher were are going to be more difficult to implement.
What you're gonna see now is or what you can see in the attachment is the ranked list, and it is hyperlinked so you can see the entirety of it. This is just a screenshot shot of what fits someone's slide. So as I mentioned, those average ranks that you see, in, on the right side show you what collectively the group, averaged out their vote to. It was also listed in stand with standard deviation in mind to see how much agreement the group had if there was a tie in any of the scores.
The running total that you see all the way to the right indicates to you how much, if each of those packages is reduced, cumulatively, we are reducing overall in the budget expenditures. Anything that you see with a bright yellow highlight on the right side is something that, resulted in an alteration made by the superintendent's leadership team. So I wanted to share why that would have been done. So we did have oh, I'm sorry.
I'm gonna skip to this so you can see it. We did have a series of feedback rounds with our principals, with our labor partners, and we also took the, questions that were submitted through the the town hall, form that, and and town hall questions that were asked at the virtual town hall, to consider and weigh things that, folks felt would destabilize things if we did, reduce. And so therefore, there are three packages, that had, some shifts that we had to
make so that the ranking list sort of protects anything that would have been destabilized. That includes clerical at our school sites, school administrators, our principals or APs, and, one package or one category package in the superintendent's school, school success zone, which are the four schools that have the greatest needs and, therefore, had been receiving additional funding. Bless you. Alright. So let me go back now to how we can view this information.
So again, bearing in mind that what I'm about to cover, all of these cuts are obviously very personal. They're obviously, you know, colleagues that we that we respect, students, and families that we serve, etcetera. So, nothing here is intended to be, a recommendation from us in terms of, I think, collectively that, there's, less value. But we just wanna be able to provide actually what is included in each of these packages, how it ranks among the collective committee, and therefore be able to answer
any questions that you might have or nuances. So there's two ways that we're going to be able to look up information. The first is we have summarized it by, grade span. So you can see what is the collective reduction for elementary schools, for middle schools, and for high schools. That's, a more detailed summary. Thank you so much, doctor Mumilow, for putting all that together. Then the second way that we can look at it is a little bit of what we just did right here, which is we can go by the category. There are 14 categories.
So So we can do a quick overview of each of those and then provide you some detail based on your questions. K? So if you don't mind, I can do the grade span summary first, and then you let me know how deep you want us to go in each of the packages. Okay. Forty five minutes. I will okay. Alright. Let me move fast then. Okay. At elementary school, I won't read anything to you then. Those are the summarized reductions. We have keep in mind we have 14 elementary schools. These are the collective reductions across all 14.
So an example, we will reduce custodial by four FTE across 14 elementary schools. There are a few more custodial reductions that you'll see in middle school, a few more that you'll see in high school, netting us actually, did not count it because I'm gonna go slide by slide. But, but, netting us a a a total reduction of custodians that still leaves us with 97.5 custodians system wide. Wide. K? So that's kind of how we're reading each of these.
Any questions across the elementary school? Sort of. Okay. No. Can you just do elementary, middle, high school and then we just do all of the questions together? Okay. Okay. Alright. So at middle school, this is the list of everything collectively from all of the categories that would be reduced. We have this includes the three comprehensive middle schools as well as the three SPAN middle schools, McKinley, Blair, and Marshall, that happen to be at a SPAN school. K. I'm gonna move on to high school. At high school, this actually it our reductions across the four comprehensive as an in
addition Rose City CIS campus. So I know CIS serves k, TK twelve, but we put them in here. K. I think the only difference the change that I wanna bring your attention last bullet point for high school is it does say that it would be a shared library service. It is not. At high school, within the packages, every high school would still maintain a full time library. But the career financial aid advisors would, be shared. Alright. And then the final slide demonstrates the system wide impacts.
That means any service that serves all of the grades spans together. So that would be your gardening and landscaping, team, your health programs, mental and physical health, providers, and then the, computer technology technicians who help us with repair and, tech support. Questions now? Okay. Oh, yes. Go ahead. Okay. So here's if we look at slides 56, which is a summary, but then if
we look at slide 75, 76, ninety, ninety one, 98, and a 102, all of those slides talk about administrative consolidation in two middle schools. So I am very confused because we keep saying that there are no real advantages to the savings of consolidation. But when you read at these slides, in effect, there's the elimination of one middle
school principal. There like, all of these slides list the consolidation of staff between these two schools. So so, like, I feel like making a TikTok of, like, tell me you're consolidating schools without telling me you're consolidating schools because this is what this presentation says. And so, like, I'm not sure how this is very student centered because my concern
is that you're doing you're reducing all of the positions as if you're consolidating this administrative staff for these two schools without any of the benefits of sharing the resources that you have left. Meaning, you know, how how is the staffing to ratio impact the class offering at both campuses? We're not sharing these teachers, and that could be a substantial actual benefit from this
administrative merger to the offering of the students in both campuses. Right? So the way that we're making these choices have the disadvantages but no clear benefits in terms of academic programming. So I I really have a hard time understanding that. I have some questions, but I will say that when looking at these, it did these cuts seem to say, we're saying we can afford to have this many schools,
but we can't because we're taking away, needed staff from each one of them. So it is a little there's a little dissonance there. I did wanna ask some questions very specifically about special programs. Can you clarify IB? Because I think I heard we're not eliminating primary years, but then the slides still say eliminating the primary years, especially because we're doing both package a, b, and c, I think, in that area. So I think there's confusion about will we have IB primary, will we have IB
middle years, and what will we have for diploma programs? And I can clarify. Okay. Well and if we're saying we're not gonna have what some of us thought were required staff, Is that staff was that staff never required, or how are we working through that? Because I thought I saw something that said other staff at Willard will start teaching Spanish. So wait. For reference, I thought you were responding, but I do have other questions once you're
done. Okay. Sorry. Should I respond? So I actually just spoke with the IB today. I spoke with our representative there just to clarify that because sometimes they tell us different things because of what they highly recommend versus what is absolutely bare bones required. And as they've seen us go through this process, the last thing they want us to do is not have the programs. So, we have retained the program fees, those were not in the consultant contracts development that's required. For the primary years program and the middle years program, we are allowed to assign
staff as the coordinator who already has another role in the school. So in the primary years program, which is another role in the school. So in the primary years program, which is very established at Willard, a classroom teacher could be assigned as the coordinator. And through distributed leadership processes, they could still keep up with the requirements of IB because they're such a well established program. And they would help us with that process because they don't want us to not do that. They have their units developed, everything is very well established there. The language component, we had the luxury of having a separate Spanish teacher there.
The language component would be integrated in in different ways so that needs to be reimagined so that the students have the requirement of the amount of language classes that are needed. And with the current staff at Willard and with that language teacher possibly integrating back into the current staff at Willard, we should be able to figure that out. In the middle years program, it's a little bit more challenging just because there's more turnover. So we still have to evaluate that with the staff at Blair to think about the distributive leadership process because, there's still work to be done, in the middle years
program, and and how exactly that would work. We're also looking at maybe there's other sources of funding to cover that other 40% to help support a coordinator there. So there's still some unanswered questions in terms of middle year program. In terms of the diploma program, we still would have the coordination needs and all of the course needs that we have because we are retaining one additional staff in special programs D, meaning that it's still there.
However, the master schedule would be better served with more course offerings if the special program C were retained because that would mean one additional FTE, and it would mean the middle years program would still have the coordinator. So there is, it's it's definitely more challenging with special program c not being there for the middle years program. So what I'll say is that right now, c says, MYP and CP, career program,
is eliminated. Right. So if that's not true, it's confusing for people who are reading it and talking about it to understand. And package b says primary year's program at Willard is eliminated. So again And I think that was reworded, and maybe the newest version of the wording didn't get into there. So there's been a lot of different drafts of it. So I know that was because the understanding that we had from IB was absolutely no matter what, you have to have out of the classroom coordinator And then that has kind of changed as we've talked to them further.
And she said, well, you can do this. And and she wants us to definitely retain the programs as best we can. If we can update the slides, I think that would be helpful to people or however however you wanna help, you know, communicate because I think I think we changed the support for the primary years program would be The program is support is eliminated. I'm just looking at the ones that are attached tonight. So Yeah. Understood. So, yeah, that And then my other special programs was we didn't we heard some public comment tonight about the Armenian academies. We didn't talk about math academy, or storytelling.
So I think when I've asked this question, I've been told we will be staffing to ratio. Looking at not so much Webster, because it sounds like there's 83 students for that extra teacher at at Webster. But at Blair and for Math Academy, we have more current staff teaching than we have per our staffing ratios. So it's not that I'm saying these are the programs we should be doing something about. I just I'm trying to understand why they aren't here.
And if we are going to overstaff them, we should acknowledge that, I think. So, I don't know if there's a response for that. We're, planning not to overstaff the majority of our programs. We did, in particular, the storytelling academy put money in a different type of grant for a certain number of years. So I would have to talk with, doctor Chan Hill and see if that money is still available. And when we have done inaugural classes in the past, we have given them some
leeway to build up. But, in terms of the other programs, why we didn't put each program out there is because we feel the programs can remain with staffing to ratio for the majority of programs, just done in a different way. And again, I'm happy to staff to ratio, but math academy with a 144 students with one period a day divided by six is 24 students. So that's one teacher. We fully understand that. Thank you. And median with 41 students, again, we're going down in at Blair in the Armenian
Academy not increasing. That's a point two. So again That's why we have Sergio to tell us and look at their credentials and see what else they can teach. Yes. Wearing the HR hat. I think there's a couple of different ways you can you can look at it. I'll use the the math as an example. You can still maintain, having high achieving students, in those middle school years. What most what other districts do, for example, is they'll actually have the middle school students go to the high schools to take those sections of math.
So typically, high achieving students in the middle schools, at least in the five other districts that I've been at, all send those middle school students over to the high school for for example, whether it's zero period or seventh period or part of, the the school in the first period, so they still get the benefit of taking whether it's precalculus. So there's different so they're still being served, but they're being served in a different format. Students folks that are teaching, another world language, you would have to do one of two things, whether it's to, obviously, recruit more students, to to go into a program
or seeing whether or not leverage the credentials that folks are teaching and provide them with other assignments in addition to that assignment, such as the Armenian. So you would, although I know that there's some resistance or there's some concerns, for example, if you have different levels of of Armenian, I know that we've met with families to have that discussion. Other sites, other districts groups, to be able to leverage. So still offer it, but they offer it within a section as opposed to offering it throughout the day, and then use other sections to have them teach other things
that they're credentialed with. So those are some there's some challenges, but there are some solutions that other districts do. And if, you know, there's a desire to keep them, then we have to be able to think about how we can still meet those needs but in a different way. So I just wanna request that if there was going to be any changes to math academy that you're suggesting that we do it very quickly before open enrollment. K. So that we can make changes. Before we continue, I I wanna extend the meeting one more time because I don't think we're gonna make it. It's 10:00 already. Far too much as I could.
She's telling me I can. I already asked this. So do we want to extend this meeting? It's 10:00 now. Eleven? Okay. Consensus. We got to eleven. Thank you, Fatima. Alright. Let's continue. Go ahead. I apologize. Okay. So again, this is I have a similar concern I have a similar concern when it comes to athletics as when it comes to academics. Right? So okay. And and and, again, in order to go to a competitive university, you need three
year two years of language, three years recommended. If you've been in dual immersion, French, Mandarin, Spanish, that means that you need a particular level and you need three years of that particular level. If you're a beginner and you're in high school, you need a completely different level. And so are we going to be able to provide the curriculum that we need so that students can meet all of these benchmarks that they need to do meet in order to go to a competitive university?
I am concerned about this. I am concerned about our ability to disclose that. If we cannot continue to staff a program, like, we've been well renowned for our math academy. It is one of the top programs in the nation. Right? I think that there was an article but whatever. That's not the point. My point is you cannot drop math academy for the students that are already in math academy. You have to phase it out. So you have to keep the students until they graduate and not add new students.
But these require a lot of organization and a lot of conversations with the parents about exactly what our and the kids about exactly how we are impacting their academic outlook. I am concerned about our ability to provide that type of opportunity to students. And I have to insist in being honest about not being able to meet that
expectation. K. I I think that at some point, somebody mentioned, well, they can go to PCC. But, I mean, if that's the if that's the option, we also have to be clear that that is going to be the the expectation. Right? Can we get an answer for that first before you go on? Sure. So there are several, school districts in the area that have small high schools that I've been investigating and then some in some high school districts. And they still give the students the full experience, and they're still going to university.
So I'm not saying that your concerns are not real in terms of us offering everything everywhere, but we will still be able to offer students an experience where they can go to four year high schools. So I think we need to do further analysis before we jump to conclusions that we're not gonna be able to get them what they need for a through g and, you know, other things just because they they're a certain size. It's my understanding that Long Beach intentionally built some smaller high schools, and I would
be thinking they would want all the kids to still go through a through g. They did mention that the kids at those schools are not all they don't have CIF sports. Right? That's a trade off that they made. So, there's a lot of schools in Los Angeles that area that we can, you know, get more information on and and see the best way to move forward on that. I wanna respond to your other question about saying that we're, actually recommending consolidation without actually consolidating. The two schools that are on the proposals before you, if there's no changes, one
of them is sharing a, principal with the it's gonna be a director principal position, and the other one, it's a location issue in terms of the number of administrators that are gonna be there. But in this school district, before in history, we have shared principles between elementary and middle school sites at several sites. And the Sierra Madres being one, the Washingtons being another. There's a third one that I oh, San Rafael and Allendale. So some of the proposals that we are making are not ideal, but they're they've
been done before in Pasadena Unified, and they've been done with, success. We even did a proposal with, you know, Elliot and Altadena, right, where we had a model where we want and they were not even in close proximity. So the administrative changes this evening that you're going to vote on are in proximity, so it's a little different than even that situation. Can I ask I would just try to make our questions truncate them? Pithi's Pithi's speaking tonight. Okay. Can I I just wanna clarify for the example on college a through g with
language and math, those two programs you talked there one of the gaps in this process is we talked so much about what we're reducing to be transparent about what would go away that we didn't really talk a lot about what is actually still here? We are still able to provide world language so that every student can get the three or more years if they wanted to, and math as well. The difference is that we are talking about ways to do it. So you you will still meet your math requirements by taking math in high school.
Do you have to do it through math academy? No. But math Academy is a program that we provide so that students can achieve that while doing it in accelerated rate that meets their their learning needs. Same thing with dual language. Dual language students will have matriculated classes that they can, enter into in high school. They may enter at freshman first year. At their first year, they could take an AP or a level four class in that language because we will have it offered at the high schools, or they could start a new language and start again at level one if they wanted to.
So either way, those world language classes are baked into our master schedules and our staffing because they are graduation requirements. And so those are things that I just wanna reassure folks that they'll exist. I think that the other half of what doctor Velasquez Vargas is saying is if we have specialized programs that we've been providing that sort of flourish this experience in a different way. Those are the things that we have to be more transparent about if we're gonna change the way that program operates or if we're going to shift anybody off. Currently, nothing in any of the plans that we've done removes any of these programs.
There may be fewer sections being offered so that we can right size classes. But at this time, our academic program efficiency review will be sending you results in the spring for us to consider any sort of, if we're going to reduce any programs entirely. I am concerned about this. I think that that list needs to be just like athletics by January at the latest so that people have time during open enrollment to make choices.
And as far as universities, that's not the issue. There are more university seats than there are children in California. But we're not talking about universities. I'm talking about the more competitive programs. And if we're not sending students to competitive programs, then that's something we need to be transparent about. Mister Harden? I I Yes. What's that? Oh, did did I did you have were you first? I I'm sorry. I I may have screwed that up. No. It's okay. Go ahead. Oh, okay. Briefly about CTE, I'm I'm, you know, I'm very mindful of the cuts that we're
proposing to make to CTE because, we have a board goal centered around college and career readiness. And so, do we have a sense of there's a lot of redesign and language in these packages, I think for the similar concerns that my colleagues are expressing about open enrollment and and and things like that. Do we have any further information about what redesign looks like in these specific instances where we, marshal, for instances, re oh, I'm sorry.
Re reimagining the ACI Academy and then mirror, rethink the offerings at mirror and and things like that. Any more precise language around that? So no more precise language at this time, because we are waiting for the action of the board in order to work with site administrators to come up with a a plan that serves students, gives them the the same experiences, they would get, prior to these cuts. I think for Muir in particular, the cuts would mean that John Muir is no
longer a wall to wall, academy model. Students would have a choice whether they want to be in the academy, or not at Muir. I think that that is the that would be the biggest change with the package that, is provided to you. I think at at and Marshall, we would, definitely work with they have a very robust, arts program there, so we would work within the the arts program that is offered and the teachers that remain. We have a lot of great core academic, teachers at Marshall that are participating in
the academy. So we just have to, potentially work with some of the teachers to get their CTE credential if that's a necessary component. And we think we would have that out outlined in a similar time frame by January Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. Miss Fredericks. Kind of going by. I'm trying to remember what I originally, I was gonna ask about IV. So it's good to know that IV is not going away. My daughters went to Willard, and my one of my daughters had went to Math Academy, so I can appreciate those programs.
And I could appreciate, you know, if any of those programs were at risk. You know, I can kind of understand what that means. So I am kind of thinking about what I think I I understand Doctor Velasquez is saying is, you know, whatever program or specialized program a student is in, they're on a trajectory. And I know that we have to balance our budget right now and that we're just looking at the bottom line and cutting a certain amount, but we're maybe this
is happening, but I don't see the planning for, well, if this gets cut in half, what are the implications of that program? Is it is that student on that trajectory going to continue successfully on that path? And I had not seen, you know, disconnected to the programmatic impact for the specific paths. And that goes you know, you could draw the analogy with athletics. You It's like, okay.
Maybe there's a girl's soccer team that's, like, really successful, and now it's gonna be another school. And so, you know, there's a path, a plan for that. But, you know, ultimately, we wanna educate and get kids to their career or their college, and I feel like, yeah, we're just kind of frantically trying to meet this deadline. But what about, yeah, when doctor Velasquez says, well, let's get going on the program too. You know? Like, what is the implication? What is our plan? You know, Math Academy, for example, doctor, Kunal was saying, like, there could be other
options, offerings to, meet the calculus requirement, but, like, that's an idea that we're not implementing yet. And, you know, we're already maybe cutting some things or anyway, there could be risks in the future. So, I feel like we we have the financial responsibility, but also the programmatic. And I think that we're not sure what's gonna happen next year. A lot of people think, is this gonna be another series of cuts?
And that's the thing. I would really want to make this temporary and restore, you know, we're gonna be we're gonna have this behind us and then, you know, next year we'll start the path to restoring. That's what I see. When I hear about, well, we can get by, we can get by. No. I I really want this to be temporary, you know. I want this to be temporary, and, I don't want us to make this normal. You know, I don't want this to make this normal.
This is temporary, and I wanna see us planning the path out of this. So do you have a question? I don't know what what the question was. I think, it used to be IP. Yeah. So I I guess it wasn't a question. It's really just to You can think about a question. Well, I was I would I do want to, reiterate what, trustee Kenny said about just making sure we're communicating about we're not losing IV. Like, that's Alright. So we have forty five minutes left.
So we're gonna keep this questioning going here. Alright. So, I know that we have a considerable number of computer repair techs decreasing, and I remember being on the board when there were requests from ITS to beef up. And so back before the pandemic, we had about five computer repair techs. And then I don't know exactly when we added them, and I don't know that the board decided to added them. But somewhere, we adopted a budget that had more computer repair techs.
And, obviously, after the pandemic, we went much more into one to one with a lot more Chromebooks going home, devices going home. So as we are losing or going back to what we had before in computer repair techs, I guess I'm wondering, will we be doing further changes besides the k three that we did this year for fewer Chromebooks or devices going home with students, perhaps fourth, fifth, maybe even extending into middle school.
I don't know. So that's a question when we don't have the staff to really handle that much. Is that something you see happening? Alright. So, to the first question, when we added the text, I believe it was two years ago, but we added another eight, I believe, eight staff. There was originally five technicians and then one, lead. So we added a lead and then, like, seven more techs. Some of the changes that we made going k to k to three for the
carts, were to help with, you know, repairs. They can take them home, but, you know, most of them stay in the classroom because that's what was happening anyway. A lot of them were just, you know, collecting them in the classroom. Whether or not we would have to, you know, discuss with academics and ed tech, whether, you know, moving that model up, to fourth and fifth grade, would be something that we can do. But, you know, we're we're gonna, Okay. I mean, again, you know, when you have fewer staff that may be you know,
again, we were technically one to one before the pandemic, but they weren't going home. So I think they tended to get broken a lot less, somewhat less at least, I think. Alright, second question. It helps them that new ones are not cool. Sorry. The career financial advisors, I believe all four of them are going away with the packages that have been chosen. I believe there's, two left, so they share point five. Christina's coming up or doctor Trostin. Because under CTE package b, under grants, it says to go away.
And then under student services package b, it says to go away. That's the same thing. Unless it's the same two. It's the same two. They're grant funded, so we would be relieving some of those grant funds that they're currently paid out of, to support potentially add additional counselors or additional CTE, FTEs. Are four of them grant funded or two of them are? All four are grant funded. Then how are they on the package in student services to reduce? Because I thought we were only including unrestricted in the package.
It was included in order to free up additional funding where SNC folks could potentially, move into that funding spot. Okay. So into one of your CTE grants or etcetera? Correct. So potentially, portion of counselors can move into that space or portions of CTE teachers can move into that space eliminating the expenditure in, SNC. Well, if we are retaining two, I guess my question would be, do we need them? Yes. So in the past, we've had they were called CTE technicians.
We had them in the past, and they were split at each of our high schools. And right now, they were added, due to the fact that financial aid is a graduation requirement that or the opt out form. So they are at the sites primarily to support with the financial aid, application process, which is very detailed and very cumbersome. And we've incurred many, many difficulties from the federal government over the past few years with the new rollout of their Sure.
Of their platform. But, yes, they also support, you know, work based learning and academy, academy endeavors. They They also support with, the community, community service. I'm I'm not asking if they don't do great things. I'm saying do we need do we need the two of them? Although I hear that you're saying they're grant funded. Is this the same well, the answer is yes to everything that we're cutting. So, are they the same level and, salary and comp total compensation as the CTE
technicians, or did that change? That changed as well because there is a degree. Yeah. It went up. There's a degree that's required for this, this position. That change happened, I think, seven years ago. Alright. I I mean, I I understand that there's new needs, although I know the FAFSA is due somewhere between October and December, and so I don't know what happens the rest of the year. I guess they're doing other things. So financial aid is rolling. For our community college, students, it's a rolling application that could be completed up until
June. And we do, track our numbers up until June of every year. I I have a question. And then I'm so sorry. I just have one more. Okay. Well, so this is a So in the safety package, there are project aids. And I was trying to clarify if there are project aids who are paid out of central unrestricted funds or school site council allocated funds because we're cutting them.
But I still understand if we're cutting site council funds or if we're cutting something else. And if they aren't site council funds, what funds are they that we're hiring project aids for? Or Well, they're not school site Okay. Funded. Some of them were used in supplemental situations, but everything that we were provided was with, SNC or unrestricted. So they're not school site council. Okay. So they are centrally, somehow designated project aids that somebody in this office assigned to
certain school sites. At some point in time. They could be part of the superintendent's zone? Yeah. They're in a different package. They're in the safety package. So alright. Well and then the larger question then that comes out of that is, what will be the allocations to site councils of S and C and Title I? Because as we move things like reading partners to Title I, it means it's not going to a school site. When will the site councils know what those are? And really, you know, will it be more or less than last year?
And I think I've made this comment once before is that some of the SBACs, there was a, like, oh, well, if we don't have this position from the district office, can we use our site council funds? And it's like, well, it depends on what's happening with site council council funds? And it's like, well, it depends on what's happening with site council funds. But there are decisions that site councils will have to make in January and February, and I don't know when we're planning to tell them and what we're planning to tell them. I think you have a board policy of when we have to tell them by, so I don't think that's changing. And then if we have additional money after we get done balancing this, I've said
several times the priority is for it to go to schools if there is additional money, and then we'll do another allocation, adjusted allocation when we find that out. So we're hoping to at least maintain even though we're losing SNC money with unduplicated rate going down, we're hoping to maintain Might really be up. Remember? Hope that it's up. We're still balancing. It might be at 69%. We gotta verify. Okay. And Christina's shaking her head yes on the deadline and staying the same. Sometimes the deadline isn't met, so I'm that's all I'm gonna say about that.
K. I have a quest two questions. One is CTE, and it has to do with Rose City because I saw up there reducing Rose City by CTE. Can you just answer that? And then I have a sports question. So the reduction of CTE at Rose City is, due to the fact that potentially if they wanted to keep the CTE aspect of their program, they do have, grant funding for for that purpose. So they have equity multiplier and they have CSI funding that could potentially be used,
to continue to support CTE. Additionally, students can take, CTE through the online program that they have. So they they can take, business finance classes using, what we're using now, which is Imagine Learning, Edgenuity. So there are still options for our students at Rose City to complete that CTE requirement. Okay. Good. Thank you. That's what I needed. Okay. So now my next question is is on sports. Now I know, you know, you all do the how.
We're the what. A little bit of how in this question. Okay. So what if somebody wants to do baseball at Sunnyside High and leaves, you know, eggs up high to go to Sunnyside because they want to do the baseball And then but they love their school, but they really want to go, so they go and they try out and they get it and then they get cut. Can they go back? To their original school?
Yeah. What if they're just leaving because they really wanna do the sport and it doesn't work out? Yeah. I would I would assume it would just be the same process of a student going They're not stuck at the place. Yeah. No. They're not stuck. No. Well, I mean, that's going in between the schools. It's going in between the schools. I mean, sometimes, you know. Do you mean what is our enrollment policy? Are we doing an an ability for them to move mid year? Some yes. Some people are are concerned about this because sports is a really big part of their life.
And so if there's something happens but they they miss their friends and it didn't work out, I mean, that's what I'm saying. It's a how. Yeah. I think that's more of an enrollment what our enrollment policy question is. Not enrollment. I'm sorry. In moving schools, that goes through the enrollment office. So I yeah. So if it's Were you saying another district or our district? Our district. Meaning between school a and school b? B. In between their homeschool. Correct. Because they wanna do the sport, but then it doesn't work out. Are they stuck there? Yeah. Oh, good. I thought you were gonna Just to make sure I understand the question, you're wondering,
can students transfer mid year because we're moving where work out. If it doesn't work out. Generally, no. When school starts, students stay where they are. But the next year Next year, they can move. Right? Next year they can move? Oh, absolutely. So they can submit open enrollment applications. We just completed sibling priority. We reopen the lottery application in January. That stays open until two weeks before school starts. So what is the what is the reason? What is the reason? Right. We wouldn't want students switching to schools.
So what is the reason for not what is the reason for not being able to leave mid year? Why can't students transfer mid year? Actually, that's a great question for human resources. Okay. It's also a great question for CIF. I'm wearing a different hat right now. So, one of them is actually would be staffing. Right? The projections for staffing that we do, and there's always a concern about shifting staff in midyear. So you would not want to allow folks to then start moving between campuses during the midyear, or else you will be affecting those all those involuntary transfers that none
of us would like to deal with if we don't have to. But staffing is a predominant reason. Okay. Hey. If you have a fall sport or a spring sport, you have to decide which one you like better and then choose. Okay. Miss Bailey. Okay. I have a question about three different components here. I wanna start with the gardeners. And I just I'm really concerned that we maintain at least two mores in this
district because there was a time when we only had one, and the curve appeal of our schools would turn a squirrel away. And it rained a lot that year. It was really bad. Is there I mean, the right now, the packages that have been presented keep two. Okay. Because I can't tell by just looking at the numbers. I don't know how many we have now. So we have three, right, which keeps us on schedule for any anyone who's taking a day off, that type of thing.
Without that, we'll have extended for sure. Okay. I'm good with that. Next, the office staff. Having worked in the office at a school site and at a district level, it is really hard if there's one person in the office. And it's the same with if there's no attendance clerk, someone has to know how to do that job. And I I didn't work at the elementary level when I worked, but I know that at the high school level where I worked, we did not know everyone's job.
It was not in the secretary job description to know attendance or registration. So I'm concerned about that, where your your senior clerk typist or your clerk typist could sometimes step in. But I'm just concerned about the impact of whether or not those job description descriptions crossover. I know if the person who does payroll is out the way we were set up, you would need someone remember, at Blair, But I can remember, at Blair when
I worked at Blair and the the, attendance clerk retired and was never replaced. The data clerk actually started doing that job. So I'm just concerned about the fact that we should be careful. We also have staff who go on vacation, jury duty. They go out sick, bereavement, whatever takes them out of the office. If you don't have staff that can adequately fill in for another position based on
their job descriptions, then we'll get into having to pay staff to work out of class. So, we should just be mindful of that when we're talking about looking at how we're going to staff the offices or where we're going to cut. That's important to look at. And I know the senior clerk job descriptions are closest to the secretary and the office managers, but again, I don't know elementary that well. So you're talking about sites? I'm talking about sites. We we did put 10.75
back to the elementary schools because both the elementary and secondary principals voiced a concern that it would be difficult to only have one person in the office. What site clerical are still a reduction? Are still a reduction? Mhmm. So for clerical package, we ended up going only to, 8.1 or 8.2. I'll put it right there. So you can see that that the yellow highlight is what was put back in based on the feedback that we received. So we're eliminating seven clerical in the first, package.
It's listed there as one, secretary two, two senior clerks, one data control clerk, and three clerks. And then in a second, if we go all the way to a two, you're eliminating three additional clerks and one senior clerk, but those would be at the middle school. If you want, I can also because we are preparing what is still remaining at the school sites, I do have that preliminarily if you wanna hear it. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That's what it is. It says it right there. So sites will continue to have, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, sites will continue to also have, other clerical.
District wide, there will be three clerical at each high school, one at Rose City, two ASB bookkeepers, seven registrars, three data control clerks, one senior clerk typist, 13 office managers, seven secretary twos, and three registrars. Doctor Mumilow, is that I don't think those are, redundant. Okay. Okay. Because you've got 10 registered seven or Mhmm. In those events. Yeah. She's gonna check it right now. High school. Thank you. Yeah. She'll check it right now. Is there another we can get out of the meantime? So my other question is is about the, health clerks and and nurses at the
school sites. I wasn't clear exactly I guess it's hard for me not seeing exactly what schools, but not that that matters. My concern is that we're making cuts and look. I had to administer insulin when I had no idea what I was doing. Trained on the spot. Trained on the spot. Someone had to come and show me because we had a nurse. We had no nurse, and we had a clerk who was going to be out.
I was in the office. Now it becomes my job. So I have to be trained. That is not a good look. I am concerned with the cuts to our health clerks and our health nurses that our school sites will not be adequately staffed. And sometimes emergency happens. One time we had no no nursing staff at all, and a kid sliced their finger, and they're standing at my door just bleeding to my office, and I have to jump into action.
I wasn't trained for that. It was being the mother that I am that helped me know how to handle that situation. But, again, emergencies happen on campuses every day, health emergencies. And I just wanna make sure that we have the staff there who are trained, who know how to administer medication other than someone who is just an office staff, who has to go and do it because no one else is there to do it from health programs.
So good evening. So the question that I'm pulling out of what you said is just to make sure we have enough registered nurses that can provide the training for staff. And right now, Whether it's nurses or health clerks, I know they kinda doubled their their jobs, what they did, because we went without a nurse for a while at Bel Air. Right. Right. So, the arrangement that depending on what the decision is being made, where it's made,
then I'll just have to work with the team to create a schedule that would allow, the licensed or unlicensed but trained, staff to be present. The if we are, depending on what you decide, nurses and health clerks could share between one to four schools. So we'd have a rotating schedule. We also have some LVNs on staff who do support students, but they don't have to be right next to them the entire time.
So there's some flexibility in their schedule as well. I'm just saying I saw one emergency happen while the nurse is at this point. She's gotta drop this to run over here to this emergency. And let me clarify for everyone. The one student that I had to learn was my own child. So I don't want you guys to think that that I was poking on somebody else's kid. No. I was not. It was my own. Right. So I hope every you guys can relax. I saw everybody go like this when I said that, but it was mine. So but I I just living it.
I mean, I was there for how long? You know? At PHS, they were always covered. There were two clerks there and one nurse. But, you know, at Blair, even with the high school and the middle school being on separate campuses, you already have the health staff going between campuses. So it's really hard there when something happens. So and we probably, I'm hoping that you take that into consideration as as well. The makeup of these campuses, even with security, I saw the cuts for security staff.
I have no idea what school you could be cutting security staff. I can't believe that we're we're having to cut security staff because the makeup of some of these schools require that you have two and three security staff. Some could even use more. These high schools are huge. And and the middle schools, so they have really good hiding places. I know because I went to some of them. So so, you know, we just have to be careful because there is a lot that happens on a campus during the day.
Every day is different. No two days are alike. And every day is a different challenge. So, I hope you all are taking all that into consideration and listening to the principals when they're telling you what they really need or really don't want to have to do with that when it comes to, you know, the the office nurses and security. Because that is so real. So that's I really didn't have a question, but thank you. Thank you. Mister Hart. I kinda clicked around, and I think I may have a handle on it, but
I'll ask anyway. The superintendent zone, cuts, you know, were divided into d one, d two. So at the end of the day, if we if we cut down to D 1, what does what does soup zone look like? It's two I think you I think the other slide said it's two FTE. Okay. Anything? It will be we'll return two MTSS coaches, so that means each school will get a half time MTSS coach. Okay. Any anybody else, miss Kenny? At one point during the SBEC meeting, I think I remember seeing that there were
two data MTS, two data coaches and maybe two interventions, But I don't know that the package actually reduced all of them. So is one staying behind? We used to have two data TOSAs for the soup zone. One was one position was never filled. That was the elementary position and so it just doesn't exist. But the middle school did fill their positions, so there is a data toaster there that is included in the packages. You said intervention teacher or you said data to Tosa?
Now I can't remember which was which. And I just remember saying, oh, no. There's an extra person here who's not on anyone on the list. There were three intervention TOSAs, two for Madison. I guess Marshall's paying for one, maybe out of their sight money. There's currently yeah. There's only one intervention teacher in SEWP's own being paid out of our, centralized unrestricted. Okay. Alright. Are there any other questions at this juncture? Somebody have something? Were we going to talk about the next steps at the end of tonight or
not really? Yeah. I think we should. Yeah. Let's talk about the next steps at this point. Alright. I'm ready to So, I think oh. Oh, okay. I think you skipped the slide that said what the recommendation was for the SBAC. So if we could go back to that. Slide 62 is the recommendation. So the recommendation was to, reduce at the ranking line 24, including the SLT modifications, which were bringing back the clerks, the soup zone, and one, middle school AP.
So in the reductions for, middle schools we felt that after further analysis the drive would be too far for those two schools to share a person so those were the only, adjustments that we made, in the rankings and we want, you know, we wanted to show the rankings the way they came out to the committee, but then also, as doctor Chan Hill said, talk to our principals and other, people that had good input for us to listen to.
And we wish we could have made all of the adjustments they suggested, but we felt that these were the critical ones. And when we found that we had, special education built into the multi year projection, that was about the money we had to restore, back some of the things that we, had put in the rankings. So next week, you will be getting, the recommendations as followed on the slides that say staff recommendations for each of the three areas. Well, actually four areas, right?
So it's contracts, central office, and SBAC. Those are the ones that you'll vote on. Each one will be, a separate item worded the way that we have this similar to the wording up here on the staff recommendation. And then you'll have to follow, Rosenberg's rules of order to make amendments and follow the process if amendments are being suggested at that time. And then, we will ask you that if you make an amendment that you have a suggestion for a similar cost item to be replaced because we are very close
right now with the 30,000,000. We didn't build in a buffer. So it's really important that if you're going to make an amendment to the item that you've come knowing what you're gonna replace. Go ahead. May I provide an answer to the question before we shift and shift to this? Not Robert or Rosenberg. I'm not related to either. The question about clerical, the three were not redundant. So each high school will actually have up to six clerical. So three as a standard plus the additional folks who are listed.
Okay. Mister Harden? So in the outcomes and I understand we're taking these item by item agenda item by agenda item. But but so if there is an outcome where, you know, a board member should suggest a change to the SBAC for some, you know, in some way, and to pay for that would come out of contracted services. That would change the agenda then item for contracted services because that would be different. So we would have to manage that.
We strongly advise you against doing that. We had targets that we set up as the staff, and so that's really not how, obviously, we can't stop you from doing that, but that's not how we designed the process to work. So I think, missus Fredericks had asked a question before about, well, if we do central office first, will we take less from the schools? And my answer was no because I don't think that we should do that. We we designed this process. We told you what it was gonna be like from the beginning with the work
streams and everything, and, I think we should try to stay true true to the process, but it you know, you'll have to figure out how that amendment will look if you choose not to. Yes. Kim. Yeah. Point of clarification. So SBAC is on the on the agenda first? No. No. Central offices, but it's not trading like mister Harden was just asking. Oh, okay. Okay? The way that we designed the process was with targets in each area. So our preference, right, I'll say preference, is that you don't say, oh, let's take
central office all the way to tier three, and then we're gonna just only take the let s back to line 22 because it imbalances the system that we designed now. And that's what you were asking with contracts as well. Right? So when you said something about 69% unduplicated and we're hoping to get there, So were you implying that the 3.5 we set aside for uncertain economic uncertainties might not be needed and we were No.
I was implying that part of it because it was 1.2 for the the, unduplicated count. That was for current year. Right. That was for 2526. So it's then compounded by So and our our goal is if additional money, which has been a goal of the board for a long time, turns up, we give it to school sites so they can have autonomy to make decisions. But if that's a different direction, but I thought I've heard many times that, there has been a concern on the board that we reduce the amount of money that schools get so they might be able to afford some of the things back that
are being reduced or whatever works for their individual school. Do you have something else, miss Kenny? I can see you thinking. I'm not sure that this is the best time, but I'll bring it up anyway. We know that some sites already are using annual funds to supplement, especially if there's been a special program at a school site and we no longer, you know, if there was a grant, a magnet grant, etcetera, you know, there is the potential that when we make cuts like this to school sites that the response will be for
the schools that can to raise more through annual fund and the schools that cannot to have less. And I don't know if that unintended consequence is something that we're thinking about how to handle. Most definitely. We've already done an analysis with doctor Conyers about current people that are paid out of annual fund, and it didn't seem too imbalanced. And the, foundation also is very conscious of schools that are not able to raise the same amounts of money, and they give other services.
And he went through that with us in terms of, some of the things that they like the fire, money, the, bomber grant, and how certain schools received more because they don't have those same advantages. And we said that if it became an equity issue, that we definitely would have to have more conversations about that, that it it seemed pretty pretty nothing on too unusual, that where some schools were having fundraisers, you know, to save everything that they
might be being reduced. So if we see that starting to occur, we definitely will reopen the conversation. So my question is to our LEGO friends. Before we go too far down this path, I see you all taking very copious notes. Based on what you have heard, is our thinking, recommendations that are coming to the board are these viable pathways for us to get to a place where you all will feel comfortable with what we were planning to do?
And if it's not if you're not comfortable, please say something now so we can figure out how to retool and come back to the next steps next week. I think first, I yeah. You should be commended for the hard work and, tough decisions you have to make. They're not easy, especially what you're t you're dealing with people's lives, their livelihood. That's something that we take lightly in our office because we can easily be impacted as well. So I just wanna commend you for making those hard decisions. I think you're going in the right direction. But keep in mind, we look at the totality of your budget. So we can't tell I sit here and arbitrarily just tell you, yeah, everything's fine.
Because I understand. Yeah. But your your projection, your trajectory is the right trajectory. It's something that should have been done several years ago. I know things happened. They exacerbated your financial situation. A lot of districts are dealing with declining enrollment, reducing funding. The extra money is gone. But special ed costs are increasing, just cost of labor is increasing, cost of materials, construction, bond proceeds not covering them much because they were passed years ago with the inflation consumer price index.
The economy is not the best economy, per se, but we need to look at the totality of your budget. So I can't just arbitrarily tell you, yes, you're fine right now, not until we look at everything, look at your multiyear projections because you do budget on a multiyear projections. Like doctor Granado was talking about the increase in in rate insurance fees, we have to factor that in. There's a lot to go that goes into our analysis of the first interim report. We'll give you our opinion based on your financial standing at first interim. That's also why you have a second interim. We'll review again at second interim and we'll give you our opinion again at second
interim. If necessary, we'll let you know that we'll encourage you to file a third interim report. But we will give you our opinion when we look at the totality of your budget at the first century. I I have stay right there. Alright. So just stay right there. So this is very interesting. It's a nice recap of everything. And I know you and I we spoke earlier and we talked about public education funding in this country. Right? We're gonna talk about I wanna I want your opinion on special ed funding and how that impacts public education.
Personally, I think, this is just my personal opinion and to a certain extent my professional opinion. It's not enough. It hasn't been enough. At the federal level, at the state level, it has not been enough, especially with the severity of the, the populations and the students that we're serving. It hasn't been enough. More has to be done. Mhmm. You're probably talking to the strongest advocates, for special education. We just actually had a presentation to our districts on what they can do to reduce their special ed costs just this morning because it's not enough. So we're reducing from a pile of money or pot that's not enough.
Exactly. That's the reality on the That's the that's the stuck reality, but you're not the only ones facing this. Right. So that's the other stuck reality. You're not the only ones. You're not in isolation. Other districts are able to do it. When I was fiscal adviser to the district, we did it. You can do it as well. Okay. Thank you very much for that. Yes. So as painful as this process is, I wanna restate my concern that I don't wanna have to go through this again later on because we didn't make enough cuts.
So we don't need to revisit the past. We are here, and this is the situation. But I am feeling very sensitive, and I'm very concerned about our ability to successfully meet the goal that we are set. Also, I just wanna clarify that long term restructuring will not replace the cuts that
we have to make right now. It'll long term restructuring will happen in addition to all of the reductions that we have to go right now. And I just wanna make that very, very clear because I don't want anybody's expectation to get confused. So I have a question on that. Can we accurately predict what's going to happen next year financially? I mean, what if we come what yeah. What is the future? I mean, what if the cost what if the COLA goes down again? What if the special ed goes up?
What happens? I don't think that I'm suggesting that we have a special power into budget and how the economy is gonna move. Like, I've spent my entire my father is an economics professor, so I've spent my entire life looking at stocks and the stock market. My entire life. However, I don't think that this conversation necessarily is motivated exclusively by the finances.
So I just wanna point out that what we're trying to do here, like, it's not just nickels and dimes that is a myopic view of the task in hand, but it is about the student experience while in our district and the broad spectrum of experiences that are needed in a city like this. K. So we have a few more minutes here, I think.
Any anything else? Alright. We're gonna adjourn. We're going to adjourn. Thank you all very much.