K. We're going to start now since the majority of the board's here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Yes. Here. Here. Okay. Thank you all for being here. We're gonna start with a special recognition res resolutions. One the first one is resolution 2,850, and we have Adria here, Adria Schneider to, speak to us. Alright. Yes. My name is Adria Schneider. I serve as chair of the community advisory committee, the parent led advisory body that
represents students with special needs. Tonight, I want to speak about diversity and equity, but most passionately about inclusion. Next week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the federal law that transformed public education, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. This landmark legislation guaranteed, for the first time, that children with disabilities had a right to a public education. Before its passage, only one in five disabled children received schooling at all. In 1975, within many of our lifetimes, it was still common for children with disabilities
to be institutionalized or for states to deny them access to school because their needs were deemed too difficult to accommodate. And I know president Hawley is intimately familiar with the history of institutionalization and the trailblazers who disrupted the status quo. We've come a long way from those days of exclusion. Today, students with special needs rights, their rightful presence in general education classrooms is protected, and schools have made increasing efforts to support learning in the least restrictive environment. But beyond what is legally mandated, our committee's deepest hope is that every child in
PUSD feels a sense of belonging. To truly fulfill the promise of IDEA, inclusion must be more than placing disabled students in the same room as their peers. It must honor each student's inherent value. I know this conversation is happening during a time of tremendous uncertainty. People are anxious, worried about the hollowing out of the Department of Education, impacts to protections within IDEA, but most urgently about budget cuts within our own district. Everyone here tonight is worried about what comes next.
But when the dust settles, our children will remain, still needing the same support that generations of Pasadena before them have needed. No matter the budget, changing hearts and minds doesn't cost a thing. So tonight, we invite all members of the PUSD community to join us in celebrating the diversity within our schools and in reflecting on how we can deepen our support for students who have historically been marginalized due to disability, as well as gender, cultural heritage, or socioeconomic status.
To honor how far we've come, to acknowledge the work ahead, and to remind our children that they belong in every classroom in this district, We respectfully request that the board formally adopt Inclusive Schools Week as an annual PUSD tradition, which will be held this year, December '12. And next year, I want our committee to return to this room and say that no child in our district is being excluded from shared school playgrounds, that students with special needs are increasingly learning in core subject classes and participating in after school programs
alongside their peers. Because inclusion is not an idea, it's an act of love and a legacy we must endeavor to uphold. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do we have, a motion and a second? And if any comments? Please Also move. Second. Second. Any comments on this? Mister Harden? I would like to thank you for your your beautiful words, and I also wanna thank you for the work that you, you both have done, to create an environment of belonging in the in the CAC. And it starts there.
And and hopefully, our district, truly does become a place where every child feels that they they truly belong. So thank you for bringing this to us and, proud to support it. Anybody else? Thank you so much. And I do thank the CAC and I was just at LACOE for a fiftieth anniversary for IDEA. It was a wonderful day and I learned some things about inclusivity in the country and that we're not where we want to be and that California is lower than the national average and L. A. County is lower than the state average.
So we have work to do. So thank you so much for being here and, do we want to have a consensus on this? A vote? Okay. Student board member? Yes. All in favor? Okay. That's unanimous. Okay. Our next item is Pasadena Unified, a story of partnership and resilience presented by the Western Justice Center. Okay. Great. Do we need to press it the whole time? Great. Hi, everyone. I'm Shachar Cohen Hodes. I am the restorative schools manager for PUSD at the Western Justice Center.
And I just wanna share how grateful I am that in this really challenging moment for the district, you've invited us to share a little bit about the work we're doing. I wanna start with gratitude for my colleagues, Stephanie and Anthony, who are here, who have worked with me at the Western Justice Center. I wanna share, my deep, deep appreciation for Del Johnson, who is here, restorative practices liaison at the district, who has been a vital on the ground partner with me,
and Doctor. Reynoso, who has been a champion of our work in the district. And this work, of course, could not happen without the staff and administrators on the ground who have welcomed us into their classrooms and hallways and meetings and so many different places. We have a five year MOU. We're two and a half years in to really build conflict resilient communities alongside you all. And I could stand here and tell you about all all of the awesome community building and conflict resolution work, but we figured it would be way more exciting to
hear from the students and a staff member who are really have taken this work and run with it on the ground. So I'm gonna turn it over first to Eddie, who is one of our peer mediators at McKinley. Hi. I'm Eddie, an eighth grader at McKinley. And today, I wanna talk about peer mediation and how it is so helpful to my fellow students. When I first heard of the whole peer mediation thing, I thought it could actually help a lot of people. The training taught me to better understand what to look for in a mediation. I learned patience, that you need to make sure you really understand each side of
the story. I learned how to help students find their own way to make things better. It's important to have peer mediators at school because the students feel more comfortable talking about stuff with people our age. When something happens, kids are scared that they might get in trouble. And when adults handle conflict, sometimes kids don't get to share their side of the story. In peer mediation, we try to find a calm for everybody. A month ago, I did my first peer media peer mediation with second graders. The conflict was based on a misunderstanding, but after they talked it out in mediation,
they felt more comfortable talking to each other. They felt like they could have the tools needed to better understand each other. When I saw one of those students in the hallway a couple of weeks ago, I asked how he and the other person were doing. He said, great. We talk like we used to, and it really just helped us resolve what was happening. I felt satisfied and confident because I helped somebody out with their problem. Even if it was just a little bit, it felt like a mile. Good evening. My name is Linda Ortega, and I am the MTSS coach at McKinley.
What you've just witnessed is a reflection of the past three years of work with the Western Justice Center. Watching Eddie and his transformation from the sixth to eighth grade has been quite rewarding. This is what it's like to develop the whole child. I am not the same teacher. The strategies and techniques I've learned over working with the Western Justice Center has transformed the way I approach my work and what I prioritize with my students. I've learned that a child will believe and trust in you if you're willing to put in the time to develop that trust.
I now have a better understanding of how to work through conflict, not to blame or jump to conclusions, but to understand, Listen more, speak less, and not judge. The culture change work in our schools is a big task, but I've seen a shift in moving from punitive to restorative discipline. There's more asking of why, more reflection, and more understanding amongst students and teachers. This has led to building a stronger school and classroom community.
Thank you very much for this opportunity. Hello, my name is Anais Henry. I'm a tenth grader at Blair High School and I'm also a member of the student think tank. Through WJC's peer mediation training, I've improved my relationships with knowledge I've gained from these awesome people. I've learned how to deescalate conflicts and make sure people know and feel like they're being heard and listened to. These are especially valuable skills when working with big groups like the Student Think Tank. They've helped me with school projects. They've even helped me with arguing with my little brother.
I'd actually like to give a personal example of that. When I'd have conflicts with my brother, we'd whenever I got annoyed at something he would do or say, I'd say something kind of annoying back. Like, I'd say something like, what's wrong with you? Or why are you acting like that? Or what's your problem? And and after participating in leadership trainings and learning how to manage conflict, I've learned that when I'm being annoyed, the most ineffective thing I can do is respond with
what's wrong with you or what's your problem. And I learned that if I really want to improve my relationship with my brother and figure out why we're having a conflict and how to fix it, it's better to respond with something like, are you okay? Do you have a problem? Is there something you'd like to talk about? And the improvements have been pretty crazy, honestly. As the Western Justice Center continues training, more students will get to learn how to regulate their emotions and manage conflicts, which would overall promote positive environments in schools as
more students learn how to productively resolve conflict instead of resorting to aggression like many of us, including myself, have done. So please consider our words. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Anais. Good evening. My name is Asucena and I am a senior at Pasadena High School as well as a member of the student think tank. I was trained to lead circles through the Western Justice Center. Having a structure to express my feelings through circles and leading circles has really helped me grow. I've learned how to handle my emotions and channel them into productive conversations.
Not only did I have the opportunity to teach my peers in the student think tank how to facilitate circles, but we also used them as a tool to understand and support each other after the Eaton fire. But we have also thanks to the Western Justice Center, I got the chance to help others with something I struggle with and to help them use their voices. I think circles are a good way to get people talking, especially high schoolers. I feel like it helped me understand other people's perspectives and teaching others was a great experience for me. Thank you. Hello, everyone.
My name is Alisa Barrett. I'm the executive director of the Western Justice Center. We're so grateful to be able to do this work with you all. This partnership started because PUSD made a commitment to strengthen school culture and to give young people the tools to lead with care and empathy using conflict resolution education and the tools of mediation. Our MOU reflects that vision. Since day one, we set out on a five year journey together to build trust and belonging on your campuses. What you heard this evening is about peace, the practice of peace in action.
Eddie helping elementary school students talk through misunderstandings, Anais using her mediation skills to strengthen the think tank, Asusena leading circles that helped her school community process the impact of the fire. These stories really illustrate what our partnership is all about. Students and staff stepping into leadership in moments of crisis. In the first two and a half years with the district, nearly 500 staff and nearly 300 students have been trained in restorative practices, community circles, and mediation.
In schools across the district, those restorative conversations are lowering the rate of conflicts, reducing suspensions, improving communication, and building a stronger sense of trust and belonging between students and between students and staff and even between staff and administrators. We know that conflict is inevitable, but harm is not. And when campuses are facing grief or loss, these restorative tools can help students remain connected and build community.
What we're seeing now mirrors our experience and years of partnership with other districts. In Azusa, where we're in our sixth year, the impact that we're having there is clear. We just completed a two year study by the educational leadership department at Cal Poly Pomona. And what we found is with a sustained commitment to this work, they have seen their chronic absenteeism rate fall from thirty percent to six percent. Their suspensions have dropped by almost sixty percent, and academic performance moving up into the
a through c grade range across the district is up by nearly ten percent. So when we stay the course, we see results. We hope to stay the course with you all as well. We are honored to walk this path with you. Our closeness to this community allows us to stay responsive to your needs and to create space where students can thrive. In fact, this April, I'm very excited to share that we will be hosting the first Pasadena Unified Youth Conference, at our campus and the Maxwell House, for this student
think tank and the student assembly. Our hope is simple. We wanna strengthen the work that we've all started to support every student, every educator, every administrator, and the incredible people in this district. Thank you for trusting us to partner with you. We are here with you and for you, and we look forward to continuing this work together. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was very interesting. Do we have any comments? Anything to add to this? No questions. Superintendent? Thank you for coming here and I really enjoyed going to the training with our
students and many of them were meeting each other for the first time and we were practicing, scenarios on how they would manage the, conflict. And so it was, really enjoyable being with them and having that experience with them. Yes. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing with us. And the students were fabulous. Thank you so much for telling us your story. It's really important that we hear that. So thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Bye bye. Okay. Now we're gonna move to public comment on closed session agenda items.
Do we have any? We have none. Therefore, we will be recessing to closed session. Thank you very much, And I'm going to read out the closed session actions taken. Concerning Item D1, Case 936,289, by a vote of seven-zero, the Board took action to approve of the settlement of Special Education Litigation in accordance with the terms of a written agreement. Concerning Item D2, Case number 948,117, by a vote of seven-zero, the board took action to approve of the settlement of Special Education Litigation in accordance with the terms of
a written agreement. Concerning Item D3, Case Number 957465, VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA VIA V zero seven four six. By a vote of seven to zero, the board took action to approve the settlement of a Special Education Litigation in accordance with the terms of a written agreement. Concerning Item D5, Case two zero two five zero eight zero seven nine four, by
a vote of seven-zero. The board took action to approve the settlement of Special Education Litigation in accordance with the terms of a written agreement. Concerning Item D6, Case two million twenty five million ninety thousand four hundred and fifty two by a vote of seven-zero. The board took action to approve the settlement of Special Education Litigation in accordance with the terms of a written agreement. Concerning Item D7, Case two million twenty five thousand one hundred thousand three hundred and forty one by a vote of seven-zero, the board took action to approve the settlement of special education litigation in accordance with the terms of a written agreement.
Concerning Item D8, Case No. Two million twenty five million one hundred thousand five hundred and fifty, by a vote of seven-zero, the board took action to approve the settlement of Special Education Litigation in accordance with the terms of a written agreement. The announcement of Closed Session actions is complete and the Closed Session stands adjourned. Adjournment of Closed Session call to order. Roll call, please. Here. Here. Here. Here. Presente. Here. Here. Here. Here. And I would like to ask board member Patrice Marshall Mackenzie to say the pledge,
please. Please stand. Put your right hand over your heart. Ready. Begin. Someday. Okay. We are going to begin the public comment now, and I I'd like to say a few things. We are going to limit this to two minutes each because we have such incredible participation tonight. At 07:15, any new public comment that's coming in, we are going to move it to the end of the meeting. The two minutes each is very important. Mhmm. 08:15. No. It's 07:15. 07:15. Okay. Two minutes two minutes is very important so that everybody has the equal amount of
time to speak. So when you hear the little buzzer, wrap up your last sentence, and we will move to the next person. Thank you so much. The board of education acknowledges receipt of public comment via email. These comments will be made part of the permanent record of this meeting. I'm gonna call three people at the same time, at a time. Octavio Castello, Ramiro Ramirez, Alma Reyes. I'm actually speaking on an agendized item. Would would you like my comment, for non agendized items?
I apologize. It does say during the initial public comment period. But Okay. I I can read it now, ma'am. Okay. President Hall Lee, members of the board, superintendent doctor Blanco, and members of the community, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening. I come before you with deep respect for the work you do. The deep concern for the financial direction of the district is your responsibility, and thank you for guiding the process. Over the past thirty years, Pasadena Unified has faced a mounting fiscal calamity, one that you can no longer ignore or postpone.
Despite your best efforts and intentions, the district has not been able to live within its means. The numbers make this impossible to deny. Your beginning unrestricted fund balance, which stood at $106,700,000 in the adopted 'twenty five-'twenty six budget, bolstered by an increase of over 10,500,000 from unaudited actuals, is projected to fall to negative $42,600,000 by twenty seven-twenty eight. That's negative. This is $149,400,000 in deficit spending across just three years.
This is not a temporary shortfall. It's a structural crisis. In twenty five-twenty six alone, you are projecting to spend $67,200,000 more than you will take in. The following year, another $51,000,000 in deficit spending. And in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, an additional $31,000,000 in the red. These are not small variances. They are structural imbalances that threaten your credibility, your stability and, ultimately, your ability to protect the very programs you value most. This is why the fiscal stabilization plan is not simply a document.
It's an urgent necessity. And not only must you adopt it in full, but you must also implement it with discipline, monitor it carefully, and adjust it thoughtfully as as it need arises. Thank you. Can, as I call you, please sign up so that we can move through the cards efficiently. Ramiro Ramirez. Good evening. My name is Ramiro Ramirez. I'm a senior accountant and part of the business department. I'm here today to speak on behalf of the supervisor of accounting and payroll who also oversees our district's benefits operations. A written statement has already been submitted, which was created and supported by staff across
payroll, accounts payable, budget, and procurement. These are the people who firsthand see the consequences of removing this position and do not want the district to be misled by the impact statement on the layoff document listed for the position. The result the results would be far more disastrous. As employees whose primary responsibility is safeguarding the financial health of this district and ensuring every PUSD family can rely on a accurate paycheck, we felt it was our duty to speak up. This is not about defending a title. It is about protecting the stability of thousands of employees who rely on a district
paycheck to feed their families and the continuity of critical district operations. This position is responsible for ensuring that every single employee is paid correctly and on time, that no one is underpaid or left without support, that the district's multimillion dollar monthly tax obligations are reported accurately to avoid penalties, and that every vendor from utilities to essential services essential services is paid so that classrooms, campuses, and programs continue without interruption. This is also the individual that the entire district turns to when answers are are
answers are needed, when complex problems arise, and when immediate solutions are required. Thank you. My name is Alma Reyes. I'm a senior accountant for PUSD. I handle the classified monthly payroll of our district. The accounting and payroll supervisor is an is the individual the accounting and payroll supervisor is also the individual the entire district returns to when answers are needed, when complex problems arise, and when immediate solutions are required. Our whole concern is not simply that one role might be eliminated.
Our concern is the significant and predictable damage that will occur if this position is removed. The loss of this role would expose the district to payroll errors, tax liabilities, vendor payment delays, operational disruption, and a loss of institutional knowledge that cannot be replaced. For the sake of our employees, our students, and the stability of PUSD, we respectfully ask that the board review the decision carefully and consider the real operational risk involved. The district cannot afford the consequences that would result from an ill from eliminating a
position that covers an extensive range of responsibilities. Thank you. Franco, Warren Bleecker, Jeffrey Fletcher. Mister Bleecker, you can go in. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Warren Bleecker. I'm a parent at Marshall. I was a parent on the SVAC. I have a daughter in the graphic design in the dance track at Marshall's Academy for Creative Industries, and my son is in the graphic design track. The proposed cuts to Marshall's ACI Academy for Creative Industries will cost more than they will save. ACI is the only academy at Marshall.
It's the only high school dance academy in the district. If cut, we will lose more PUSD students to CS arts. CTE is an a through g and a graduation requirement, and is supposedly one of the pillars of PUSD's curriculum. If the proposed cuts are adopted, it would leave Marsha with one CTE certified teacher. It's not possible for one teacher to provide instruction to every high school student. PUSD would have to hire an additional CTE, teacher, so there would be no savings. Dance instruction also meets the PE requirements. So by cutting a dance position would require the district to return grant funds, and
it would leave Marshall with the need for an additional PE teacher, not funded by a grant. This will cost the district more money than keeping the status quo. As for the athletics cuts, the district revised the cuts, so now that 57% of Marshall's budget would be cut. Although it's presented to the Board as an, as the SBAC results, the SBAC was never presented with these specific numbers. We never got those. We never voted on those. They were changed after we voted. The numbers we were given were that Marshall had the second most student athletes in the District, at five fourteen.
We were told Muir had 500, PHS has five fifty. Yet under these revised cuts, Marshall's funding would be cut by 57%, which is substantially more than any other school. And Marshall student athletes would receive the least amount of resources per student athlete. The Board's concern whether each sport is still offered at one school misses a point. The 50% and above cuts will substantially reduce opportunities for many QSD students. Thank you. Adela Franco, Jeffrey Fletcher, and please, Darcy Maganuma also stand in the line.
Good evening. My name is Adela Franco, and I am your district, payroll and accounting supervisor. I began my career here at PUSD back in 2017. My first week here, I got a visit by the IRS who was here to put a lien against the building. Apparently, PUSD owed a little bit over a million dollars for a back taxes rep back from 2012, 2013, all the way to 2015. Since my employment of since my employment of July 2017, we have had zero tax penalties. Each year, I oversee about 45,000 paychecks, retros, summer savers, teacher checks.
Every single disbursement, whether it's a $5 check, whether it's a $10,000,000 check, comes through my desk. I'm a little nervous, so bear with me. In addition, I oversee all the benefit payments, all the federal and state mand mandated reporting, w twos, nine forty ones, DE nines, local unemployment charges, ten ninety nines to self tax filing. These are duties that only apply to my my job description. If you look at the other job descriptions, within the business services, I've kinda looked at them very narrowly, line by line to see if there's any other job description
that talks about can they do any kind of this reporting. It is not. I am the district liaison for the state teachers retirement system and the public employee system. I oversee all employee deductions as well as compliance with federal TSA contributions. I handle all implementations of board approved salary increases as well as furloughs. I have over twenty years of school district experience. As you may know, we are going to a new payroll system with the Los Angeles County Office of Education in about a year from now. This is not the time to cut a position like this. This is not the time to potentially impact, more staff.
Thank you for your time. Nadir Anayo, please incorporate yourself to the light blue. Okay. Good evening. I'm Jeffrey Fletcher. I'm here with miss Darcy Naganuma and miss Divette Johnson. We are the CTE teachers fighting for ACI, the Academy of Creative Industries at Thurgood Marshall. We're fighting for our students because CTE isn't just a graduation requirement. For many, it's a pathway to a real career. We bring years of experience as educators and decades of industry experience into the classroom
from the industry. We've worked in film, television, animation, dance, design, and media with high profile companies like the NFL, FOX Sports, Paramount, HBO, NBC, CBS, PBS, MTV, Google, the Discovery Channel, and more. And we still have connections at those places and at Netflix and Disney and Dreamworks. And we have an Emmy. And miss Johnson brings decades of industry expertise in graphic design.
Miss Naganuma has led major international productions, built professional partnerships, and created paid opportunities for her students. This is expertise you cannot replace, and it is directly invested in our students. We're building something truly special at Thurgood Marshall's ACI program, and breaking up this team would deprive our students of life changing opportunities. And if you're wondering why we teach in public education, even though we have all this experience and all these things, it's because we believe in public education, we're products
of it, we love our crafts, we want to pass it on to the next generation, and this is the program we wanted when we were in high school, and we understand what is necessary to guide our students towards a career in the creative industries. We have the expertise, we have the resources, we have the passion, and we serve as models of professionalism for our students. Please protect the ACI program and Our students deserve this pathway. Thank you. Darcy Naganuma. Good evening. I'm Darcy Naganuma, and I direct the ACI dance track at Marshall.
My husband, Jeffrey Fletcher, who just spoke, one of Marshall's three CTE teachers, is an Emmy award winning animator. I bring a decade long New York City dance career, experience running an internationally touring company, and years of teaching at university teaching to our students. Marshall is a California Exemplary Arts Education Award School recognized by the state as a model program. I've created community partnerships with globally acclaimed dance companies and such universities as Cal State Long Beach and USC, home to one of the nation's top dance programs.
Through my industry connections, my Marshall students even participated in a generously paid national JCPenney commercial. My former students have performed at the Grammys, on Broadway, and with companies like Alvin Ailey, the Stuttgart Ballet Company, and Pilabolist. One of my former students recently graduated from Juilliard. We've seen our incredible Marshall students growing confidence, creativity, and connection. Please help them to continue developing their artistic voice and leadership through the Marshall ACI program. Thank you. Nadira Nayo followed by Robin wearily, Cassandra Nevarez, Melissa Cervantes.
Good evening, doctor Blanco and members of the board. My name is Nadira Najo. I currently serve as the director of CIPD EdTech. I'm a long term time resident of Pasadena and a product of its schools. Public comment is not a place that I like to find myself. However, after months of listening to conflated information about central office administrators, I can no longer stand by and not have it addressed. Information has been presented to this board and the public about there being 51 administrators at central office. This is often followed by the statement that the admin teacher ratio is out of balance with the proposed fix of eliminating 28 to 30 central office administrators.
If this solution were implemented, it would effectively decentralize PUSD since there would be no administrators remaining at central office. Education code section four one four zero two clearly defines an administrative employee as someone in a certificated position who is not a pupil service employee or a teacher. So there are not 51 administrators at the central office. Based on CDE's definition, I have identified 25 administrators, which is 12 less than the most recently reported twenty thirteen numbers that are floating out there.
In addition, four of the current 25 administrators are the superintendent, superintendent, and members of the leadership team. The additional 26 classified management employees are not and cannot by law be used to calculate the admin teacher ratio, which is the legally recognized ratio, not admin to student. As of today, I can neither confirm nor refute the statement that we are out of ratio, but I find it necessary to refute the disingenuous statement that conflates the information and misleads people to believe that there are more administrators at central office than
exist. I show up every day to serve as the staff and the students at our schools, not the departments in this building. So if the work we do at central office is not valued enough, then by all means, decentralize the district. However, the work will shift because much of the work we do that supports teaching and learning does not go away, and the someone's who will be left to do it will be at the school sites. Thank you. Hi. My name is Robin Worley, and I'm a special education teacher and parent at Octavia Butler Magnet. I'm here tonight to implore the board to please focus the cuts away from our
school sites. At our school, we call our students bears on the rise. Our school too is on the rise. Increased enrollment, improved ELA scores, increased ELA redesignation, and signature programs that allow students to find their passion. None of these things are accidental or coincidental. These gains are the direct result of people and positions that you are considering eliminating today. Our school librarian, missus Daley, whose lessons enrich our content, without whom we would not have our sci fi festival or eighth grade portfolios.
Mister Trapp and miss Fontenot, who develop relationships with each and every student on our campus, and through those relationships, teach them how to resolve conflict and develop healthy and positive problem solving. Mister Bracamante, who aggregates our data in so many ways so that we can develop and execute targeted interventions. These few sentences truly minimize the impact these people have on our students. They are a large part of the reason we are bears on the rise. I asked the board members, and in particular, board member Bailey, who was elected to represent the students at Octavia Butler, to fight to keep these cuts away from our
campus. Do not make our students, who have worked so hard and shown so much growth, the casualty of an avoidable budget situation. Thank you. My name is Cassandra Navarres. I have been the band and orchestra director at Octavia Butler Magnet for six years. If our school had an MVP, it would be MTSS coach Jason Trapp. As many of you already know, mister Trapp leads our school tours and student ambassador program. He is not only proud to be an OUE bear, but a parent as well, but empowers our students to also do the same. He doesn't just build up the stereotypical student leaders, but he creates opportunities for student
for students who represent the beautiful diversity of our entire student body. Our students have made gains academically, socially, emotionally, and it's not surprising that our school's enrollment has steadily increased. This can be directly attributed to the climate and culture that mister Trapp has been instrumental in creating at our school. I had the privilege of co leading our school's DC and New York trip or New York trip with mister Trapp, and I spent a week witnessing how much he loves our students and has invested in their education enough to spend his own spring break traveling across the country with 22 students, allowing them to learn and grow.
After the fires, Jason was here at the district distribution center, serving our community within days of the fire, alongside Doctor. Blanco and other members of the district office. So I encourage the board to keep in mind the irreplaceable Mr. Trapp, to keep in mind the four names here on my chest, and to not leave Octavia Butler as a shell of a school. Countless present and future students at our school are relying on you to advocate for their success. Thank you. Natalie Daley, Nicole Issa Alfredo Resendiz, please.
Good evening. My name is Melissa Cervantes. I'm a dual language teacher who previously taught at Jackson, and now I'm at OEB in my eighth year at Pasadena Unified. I'm deeply concerned about the disconnect between the district's stated commitment to putting students first and the proposed budget cuts that directly impact student learning and well-being. Our school library serves as more than just a resource. It's a safe haven where students thrive. Students actively seek out Ms. Daly, excited to discover their next book and engage with reading. Requiring librarians to split their time between two sites will inevitably diminish the quality of
support and connection our students receive. This decision contradicts the principle of prioritizing student needs. Our science fiction festival, founded thanks to miss Daley, has become a major annual success, not just for our students, but for the entire community. Requiring our librarian to split time between two campuses will make it nearly impossible to keep this event alive. Yet today's district message, again, stated that students come first. I ask once more how. I respectfully urge the board to reconsider these cuts and explore alternatives that genuinely protect student services.
Please review contracted services and administrative expenditures that don't directly serve students. Also, please evaluate the necessity of our central office administrative positions. Our students deserve a district where students first is more than just a slogan. It should guide every single budget decision, and I ask that you make choices that honor this commitment. Thank you for your consideration. I work in the Octavia Butler Library. My name is Natalie Daley. This library is so named because the PUSD educated author credited her success to using libraries. And I am so privileged to honor her legacy. Libraries are more essential than ever.
Middle school libraries, in particular, are designed to get kids joyfully reading and writing, and we do. But it takes being there every day. Kids are using the library constantly. I literally can't even keep up with the bookshelving because circulation is so high. That's a really good problem to have. Cutting the library makes no sense because we are seeing the results of a consistent and dynamic library program that centers student enrichment through a thoughtfully curated library collection and popular literacy programs like author visits, reading challenges, and our popular sci fi contest and
festival. We should be adding to library budgets. Our literacy scores, our literacy score gains at OEB are rising right along with our library circulation rates. Butler's parables imagined a Pasadena in which public education had died, likely bleeding to death by a thousand cuts. Many have referenced what Butler predicted about our current reality, but these predictions were warnings. In 2000, she issued a direct warning about education funding in a memo to President Clinton, We'll do well to keep all children in mind when education looks depressingly expensive
and there are so many other things to pay for. Pay for the things that are directly benefiting these kids. A full time librarian directly benefits every single kid in the school. Please come visit me. Find out how a cut to the library will negatively change students' learning opportunities. Hi, everyone. I'm Nicole Esai. I am the head librarian at John Muir High School. Doctor Blanco's latest communication said, it is important to note that student learning opportunities will remain largely unchanged, but that is categorically false when it comes to libraries and librarians.
I'd like to paint a picture, following Natalie Daley, my esteemed colleague, of what it will look like for standalone middle school libraries to be staffed at 50%, which is your proposed solution that you claim will, by no means, lessen the student experience. Librarians at 50% will spend the majority of their day on Chromebooks. They will maybe open up for student choice use during nutrition and lunch, maybe before and after school. Classes will not get to visit the library on any regular basis because they will be beholden to a 50% schedule and the inevitable tech support backlog.
Research will suffer, which is a graduate profile skill that PUSD requires for graduation. Say bye bye to the eighth grade defense. Students whose safe space is the library will have nowhere to go. There will be no time for librarians to run book clubs, no time for the sci fi festival to encourage students to build community with each other around books. That's how we connect is through stories. Go ahead. Really, I want you to picture it. Picture frustrated students because they can't exchange their Chromebook. Picture frustrated teachers because their students don't have tech and no longer have research or
instructional support. Picture it. Picture students walking past closed library doors and gazing longingly at the games, activities, books, looking for their beloved librarian. Really. Really, really picture it. It's not acceptable. These cuts also present a serious equity issue. Marshall and Blair, because they are six to 12, get to keep their fully staffed libraries while Elliot, Sierra Madre, McKinley, and Octavia Butler struggle. That is not equitable. Our librarians and libraries serve all students. Please save them.
Thank you. Good evening, board and EOT. As the athletic director at John Muir, I'm here today to provide some context to the proposed athletic cuts at Muir. It was noted during last week's board meeting that the majority of the sports in the district will remain even with 50% of the athletic budgets being cut. That is true. However, what was left out of that conversation was what our programs will actually look like with these cuts. As one parent inquired, how can you possibly gut your budget and still keep pro programs alive? The answer is simple. Our sports seasons will look vastly different than what we're used to, and they'll be
vastly different than what the surrounding schools will be offering. The largest cost in athletics are coaching stipends and transportation. So in addition to cup cutting a couple of my teams, all of our teams will now lose between one to six coaches depending on the program. This means that the remaining coaches will have to pick up all the responsibilities from the ones who are let go and still receive the lowest stipends in our area. Additionally, we will limit our sports teams to a mere seven buses or less per program for all levels. Our varsity teams will now only be playing half of the games they currently play,
and our JV will play less than half. Also, for some sports like boys basketball, fewer buses means longer days. Instead of my varsity boys basketball team leaving Muir at 5PM and coming for a 7PM game, they'll now join the other two levels on the same bus and leave school at 2PM only to return to Muir at 9PM. Furthermore, the ability to attract potential families interested in athletics with these cuts in mind was best summed up by an OEB parent who asked, Alfredo, why would I even think about sending my kid to Muir to play for a skeleton soccer program when
other schools offer so much more? The only thing I could muster up was a, well, wish us luck. Lastly, we need someone here at Central to oversee all of this transition as we move forward, and we need checks and balances to ensure that the budget remains in line. David Ibarra has done a great job in that role. I hope that won't change. Thank you. Harry Collins Lopez, Bobby Gonzalez, Aaron Hurtado. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and board members. My name is Aaron Ortega. I stand here today on behalf of the students, families, educators of Thurgood Marshall Secondary
School to urge you to keep our football program and athletes alive. Let me share a quick background story. About five years ago, my uncle unfortunately passed away. He was a huge inspiration in my life and the person who encouraged me to get involved in sports. When I joined flag football, he was always there, taking me to games, giving me advice, and helping me improve my skills. That support meant the world to me. Keeping the Thurgood Marshall football team and athletes alive honors the spirit of members like my uncle. Programs like programs like this give students guidance, support, and a sense of family that
I was lucky to have. Losing them would take away the same opportunity from future athletes. Marshall Eagles is not just a team to me. It is a family, a brotherhood that many student athletes can contest and count on. Our football players aren't just athletes. They are scholars, mentors, and role models. Many students who might not have athletic opportunities may make the wrong choices that will lead them to a negative path. Sports programs such as football keep our students safe and protected. Athletes such as football keep our keep our students out of trouble.
Hearing that our sport that I love might be taken away truly breaks my heart. Our football team is more than just a group of players. We are a family that I can count on no matter the ups and downs. We don't see each other just as teammates. We see each other as brothers. If the program is removed, it won't only take away the sport itself. It would take away the years of hard work we have put together and the strong community our families helped build. Thank you for your time. Bobby Gonzalez followed by Curry Collins Lopez and Gina Cohen. Good evening. My name is Bobby Gonzalez, and I come from Octavia E Butler.
I've come to represent my librarian, community assistant, bilingual instructional aide, and all of my MTSS's coaches. Starting with my community assistant and the bilingual instructional aides. When budget cuts happens, it always happens, always affects the most disadvantaged communities first. We have seen this many times over, but now it is affecting the same people who provide direct support to English learners, such as small group instructions in targeted areas like reading and writing. We need to protect these positions from being cut from our most vulnerable schools, Madison,
Octavia Butler, Washington, and Muir. Another very important person at my school is my librarian. They do so much for us, such as helping the students with work and playing big parts in events. Taking away the people who are the very structure of our schools is not right. So many students rely on these instructors in their classrooms for much needed social emotional support. We cannot stand for this. Make the Power of Us slogan about us, the students, not the power of you.
To continue to make decisions that affect students' learning negatively is not right. Stop making poor decisions for our schools. Corey Collins Lopez, Gina Conan, Matt Lorschider. Hi. Sorry. I'm Corey Collins Lopez. I'm a sophomore at PHS High School. I'm 16, and I play for the varsity water polo and varsity swim team at at my school. So when I first came to PHS last year, I didn't really feel like, I belong to school.
I felt like I was just going to the school and not really belonging there. And I actually applied and got into a charter school, CS Arts, and I was going to go there. But when we were just wrapping up swim season, at the end of the year, I realized I gen I really did not want to go to that school. And that is what has kept me at PHS, and those sports have been a very major factor in my enjoyment and sense of belonging at the school at this current moment. Thank you. Gina Conan. You and Jane, I'm gonna switch. Uh-oh.
Matthew Lorscheider. I'll try not to cuss this time. Sorry. My name is doctor Matthew Lorschider. I have my doctorate in education from the USC Rossier School of Education. This morning, on the air talk program with Larry Mansell, doctor Pedro Nuevaera, our dean, said that warned against this this board, this body, putting this district into a death spiral with a poorly executed financial stabilization plan. And I wanna talk about how that looks about with one single teacher. His name is mister John Newell, and he teaches science at Jackson, whereby kids go to school. When my wife and I first toured Jackson, it was our neighborhood school, and we
were not initially super enthused about Jackson. But when we saw the science lab, we knew that would be a great place for our son, who was who was five years old at the time. When I toured with my son later on, they were doing a wave experiment, mister Newell's science lab, and London my son, London, was so into it. He was so excited to go to that school. Mister Newell teaches every kid at Jackson every year. Jackson has about 650 kids, 650 kids year after year, 14,000 a kid in ADA. Most of those kids at Jackson, about two thirds of the students at Jackson, their parents chose for them to be there specifically because what Jackson offers.
Mister Newell is a big part of that. If we lose mister Newell, we cannot call ourselves I was part of the renaming, by the way, when we chose to keep STEAM in the name. We can't call ourselves legitimately a STEAM school without a science teacher. It's impossible. There's lots of places this district can find money. Employee trap contracted, PD people bring you're bringing in. I don't wanna try to pick on admin roles, but there got to be some administrator roles that don't directly affect students. Unfortunately, they might have to go. Contracted services but you're spending all this money on sped contractors that apparently aren't doing
a very good job. So think about where you're spending money. Think about putting this district into a debt spiral it cannot recover from. Fix the financial stabilization plan to include cuts away from classrooms. One more thing, it's been eleven months since a thousand students in this district lost their home and 10,000 were displaced. We are not gonna get over that. Gina Cohen, Maite Alde, Kyle Micherson. Hi. My name is Gina Cohen. I have five children, and I've been a PUSD mom for twelve years. I'm wearing red for solidarity, but I kinda feel like wearing black for a funeral.
I have two children at Jackson and one at OEB. Two of my children, I've chosen to pull from the district for charter schools. One was continually denied an IEP assessment when she was two years behind academically. The charter school got her an IEP right away. And the other attends CS Arts High School. We all know what's happening to the arts budget. My eldest child did not have a science teacher in the seventh grade at OEB in the twenty twenty three-twenty four school year. The entire year was substitutes. This year, my seventh grade son only received a science teacher several weeks into the
school year. This proposed budget now wants to cut the incredibly talented and dedicated science teacher, mister Newell at Jackson. And these are supposed to be STEM schools. Are we flushing those designations with the budget? What will that do for enrollment? My nine year old son is a phenomenal athlete. I mean, parents whose kids don't play sports know how good he is, but he won't be attending a middle school without a robust athletics department. My seventh grader loves to read. I'm not gonna send him to a school without a librarian. Altadena is an incredible community filled with amazing families and teachers who deserve stability.
I would love for my children to stay in this district, but we are being pushed out one talent, interest, and special need at a time. I have listened to central office employees describe the validity of their roles. Central office employee positions will have to be reduced and those who remain will have to do more with less because teachers have been doing that for years. For comparison, this budget feels as if I were at a scuba diving company that was losing money and the management decided to cut the budget for oxygen tanks. You can't scuba dive without oxygen tanks. The teachers and enrichment programs are our oxygen.
We cannot educate without teachers. Please let us breathe. Good evening. My name is Maite Alday, and I'm a parent at Octavia e Builder Magnet, speaking to protect the more than 500 families who rely on the stability and integrity of our school. So we're finally here tonight, but it feels like decisions are still being made without full, accurate, honest information. Even SBAC members have said they recommended cuts based on incomplete or inaccurate data. That alone should give this board pause. Let's be clear. Enrollment drives funding, attendance drives funding, and OEB is thriving.
We are over enrolled with a waiting list. Cutting the staff who make that possible is shortsighted and self defeating. Here are the people and services at risk. Doctor Farinas, our assistant principal, who supports twenty percent of students with IEPs. You know that no principal can absorb that without harming our highest need students. Mister Trapp and miss Fontenot, our MTSS coordinators, They create the welcoming environment that brings students, hence, funding into PUSD. Miss Daley, our librarian whose programs raise literacy scores by 20%. That's unheard of.
Mister Bracamante, who uses data to strengthen teaching and learning. And miss Nuno, our senior attendance clerk, who protects our ADA funding without her district revenue, is at risk. These are not just lines on a spreadsheet. They're why families choose OEB. They are the model this district should be learning from, not eliminating. PUSD faces an enrollment crisis. Our school does not. Cutting staff here undermines revenue and harms students. Whatever vote happens here tonight, there must be a transparent, long term plan for district access, real estate, and enrollment. Without it, we'll be back here again next year.
Our students deserve better, our educators deserve better, and our community deserves better than crisis leadership. Kyle Mitchelson, Deli Reyes, Joel Herr. I really had to ask. I had no idea what it says here. Okay. I am so sorry about handwriting. Okay. Kyle Mitchelson, Deli Reyes, Yo Her. I am so sorry. Okay. Max Romanov and Amaya Cervino.
Okay. Gavin Jarvis. I'll keep reading names so that they make their way here. Okay. Calvin Jones. Let's go through the list again. Kyle Mitchelson, Deli Reyes, Joel Herb, Max Romani, Amaya Servino, Gavin Jarvis. Can you please say your name?
Yes. Hello. My name is Deli Reyes. Good evening, doctor Blanco and members of the board. I'm a fifth grader and third grader in art in the French program, and we also speak Spanish at home. So they're multilingual by now. I know the district is facing serious financial challenges, and I understand the difficult decision that must be made. But I'm asking you to please consider making more quilts at central office and not inside of that school. That means our teachers, our programs, our librarians, all of the people that help our
children to grow and to be happy. Our students depend on them and their support, the staff they see every day. I have noticed when you could see, my kids really need missus Reger. Now our students gonna be losing also PE, and our full time teacher, we don't have it neither. This affects their learning, their health, and their joy to be at school. We need to value our families and our teachers. Teachers already do so much for our students, more than many people can see. If the district wants families to continue enrolling and staying here, then we must protect
what happens inside of the schools. With these cuts, many families will start to leave. And even when we want to stay, even when we love our schools, our community, our children's friends, and the programs that support them. So we're asking you to please consider making more reductions at central office. That is the most important thing. When we have a final sound problems at home, we don't remove the phone from the table. We do not take away the basics, and the basis for our children are their teachers and the staff who support them. Please protect our schools, protect what our children need the most.
Thank you for listening. Does this work? Okay. Cool. Hello. My name is Yule. I'm a tenth grader from Blair. I don't come here today with an action plan or anything else. I simply wanna reemphasize the interpersonal impact these cuts bring. When you have to cut $30,000,000 in the next month, it's understandable to see these budgets on a spreadsheet and only cut them down to the norm of other districts. However, these dollars matter. Every single one. Every $2 is a toilet paper roll that I have to reach out for from under the stall when my stall is out.
Every $5 is a student's breakfast that they need to get through their math test for the day. Every $50 is a student's application for the science fair that will change their couriers trajectory forever. And $150 is the team's after party post victory, memories that will last a lifetime. While I am aware that not all the things that I have described will be cut, I just wanna reiterate that every digit of every figure redirected or butchered tonight will have an impact on someone's life, whether that be the students, the teachers, or the central office.
Even though we're cutting just 10% of the budget, it is not 10% of the student experience. Thank you. Good evening, school board. My name is Kyle Michaelson. I'm a teacher at Pasadena High School, and I have three children in the district. And my question for the school board tonight is, what is the goal for these decisions, that are being proposed? Is it to retain the students that we have in our district? Because when I look at the decisions that are being made, if we reduce our sports by 50%, it's gonna be hard for an incoming freshman on the high school
level to want to attend a high school. It's gonna be hard to tell parents of eighth graders that the schools will be safe when there's not the same amount of security or administration. And it's gonna be hard with these newly renovated facilities like the front of Pasadena High School to be maintained when we cut custodial services and landscapers. These programs are not sustainable at 50%. The proposal tonight is not something that is gonna be long lasting.
We're gonna be back here next year. And so I'm asking you as leadership to think about what is sustainable for our district. Pasadena High School, when I started twenty years ago, we had 2,400 students. We are now down to 1,200. And I know that consolidation is not a word that is like lightly spoken in this room. But this is necessary for our district moving forward to be sustainable. So why can't we start the conversation now? Even if it doesn't mean consolidating a school this year, I believe that it is
responsible for us to begin that process now. Thank you. Max Amaya Gavin. Hello. I'm a sophomore at PHS. My name is Max Romanu, and I don't have anything prepared, but I just like, I do cross country. And, our girls' varsity, made CIF for the first time in the history of PHS, and our boys' varsity also made CIF for the first time in many years. And, honestly, these budget cuts just seem like an insult to us. Like, after all we've gone, we've made CIF.
We're on the we're on the up, and it's the result of this is just budget cuts. Like, what's gonna happen? Are we gonna be go to less meets? And, like, what's this gonna be the future for us? Thank you. Hi. I am, I'm Gavin Jarvis. I'm a sophomore at PHS. I'm a member of the baseball team and the cross country team. When I came to high school, it was a scary experience. A lot of my friends had gone to different schools, and I didn't know if I was gonna have friends there or what. But when I went to cross country and baseball, I was instantly accepted into a
group of friends that would last throughout high school. And these are people who have been mentors for me, have been role models for me, and people who have taught me things, including my coaches who are wonderful people, who have just helped me, gave me discipline, gave me hard work, which are things I can apply throughout life. And these budget cuts would mean less coaches who can help me, and I've already started to see less people coming to baseball, and this means even less people.
We can't even have a JV team this year, it seems. And so I just wanna know what's gonna happen. I'm not are we not even gonna have a varsity team? Are we not even gonna have a baseball team? Can I not play the sport I love? Thank you. Hi. I'm Calvin Jones. I am a also a sophomore on the cross country team at PHS, as you just heard from those two. But the cross country team has meant so much to me. Like, I've just I have such a good supports support crew there. And my brother's gonna be coming to PHS next year, and I want him to
have the same thing that I had coming in because, like, I had friends when I came to school, and I want him to have the same thing. But if we're cutting all of these programs, we're gonna have, like, what? One coach for the entire team? Sprinting and distance? Like, what are we gonna do? Also, I went when I was at SirMadre Middle School, I didn't I could, like, barely go into the library. It was always locked. It's the same at here at PHS. Like, what am I gonna do if I wanna, like, get a book for something? Like, I I can't do anything.
So I just, like, want to say, if you want to help the students, put people in positions to help the students. Having a bunch of people sitting in a room here all day is not gonna help the students. Having people working at the school will help. Thank you. Amaya Cervino, Neil Tyler, doctor Ricardo Pinaldo. Hello. Good evening. My name is Amaya Servino. I am the parent of two children at Marshall. One of them is in the arts and has had the honor of studying with both mister Fletcher and miss Naganuma. And you've probably seen him in some of the performances or at the all star.
The other child is an athlete and cannot wait to grow up, be in high school and perform, sorry, and participate in our basketball, team. You can tell a great deal about the health of a nation and a community by the strength of its arts and its priorities the priorities it chooses to protect. For many students, the arts are essential to well-being, academic engagement, and a sense of belonging. As a parent and a spectator, I've witnessed firsthand the community building and healing power
of the arts. I've also witnessed the dedication that our teachers have put into these programs. Before reducing the programs that directly serve students, I encourage the Board to take a closer look at areas where meaningful efficiencies may be possible, specifically longstanding vendor contracts and service agreements that have increased in cost over time. Renegotiating or rebidding these contracts, along with more strategic use of district real estate and underutilized facilities, could produce significant savings without reducing opportunities.
We owe it to our students to examine every alternative before reducing access to arts education. These programs shape confident, well rounded young people and reflect the values of a district committed to preparing students for a complex world in which being a creative is actually going to be a survival skill. I respectfully urge the boards to preserve arts offerings and instead pursue fiscal efficiencies in areas that impact students the least. Thank you for your leadership and for considering this request. Hello. My name is Doctor. Ricardo Pinaldo, school psychologist at PUSD.
I would like to go over a little bit of information regarding, and I hope the data that I'm presenting you is wrong, but if it's right, it's a bleak situation if because basically, it's indicating how poorly our students overall are performing in reading and in mathematics in terms of their performances. And so with all these ongoing budget cuts, performances are gonna be even reduced even more. But once again, if my data is wrong, I would love to hear a presentation sometime regarding how our students are actually performing in the areas of reading and math.
I gave you the data for all all our elementary schools in terms of how what the percentages are of students reading at or above proficiency level. Same thing with, mathematics how many are at or above mathematics level. And as you see, over, half of our schools are performing very poorly on our reading and math schools. So when preparing them then for, middle school and high school for them to go into college and that, well, it's gonna be an ongoing challenging. And then more even so with all these ongoing, budget cuts.
And and the other and the other component is the MTSS process. I don't know exactly what's going on with the MTSS process. If you're doing any cuts, on that, that's only gonna make it the situation even worse. Because if supposedly our curriculum, according to research and even our own, MTSS, manual says that the core curriculum is supposed to take care of 80 to 90% of our students, but the data that I'm showing you is not even close to that. I also would love to hear, sometime, I don't know when, some, information regarding, here
that there's a new new curriculum that's teaching our students their sounds and so on and so forth. I have not heard nor seen any data as to how many students are performing and how they're performing in those areas and in the process of preparing them, for reading. So I hope, this stuff is taken into consideration before whatever cuts, you end up, doing. Thank you. Neil Tyler, Devette Johnson, Alex Burstein, Gilbert Mora. When this process started, we were provided the statements suggesting that about $7,000,000 would be
targeted for cuts at the Central Office. Then we started hearing between $3,000,000 and $5,000,000 with suggestions that it would be at the higher range. Tonight, we've landed at 3,600,000.0 On the flip side, there's more and more cuts being recommended every single week at the school sites. Just last week, in the presentation buried on the slide about elementary school cuts, suddenly both full time science teachers are being recommended to be cut at both Jackson and Washington. This process has been deficient from the start and has gone against the core pillars of transparency and putting our students first.
None of us understand why the central office cuts have been on a separate track and not lined up and compared against the school site cuts. We've been told that it's because of sensitivity related to talking about these cuts publicly at the central office, but the district staff had absolutely no problem putting a librarian on the SBAC and making her analyze and recommend in cuts to her own position. The community overwhelmingly supports cutting more from the central office rather than at school sites. I would think many of you are aware of the change.org
petition that started seventy seventy two hours ago. There's over 1,100 signatures on it already. The community wants more cut from central, less at the school sites. We believe about 10,000,000 can be cut from the central office, sparing our school sites and stopping this district from gutting everything. But at a minimum, you should cut the tier two and tier three. If you do nothing else that's in front of you and line up the positions. Tier two and tier three has positions like a TV producer and a website designer. How could you ever say those positions are more valuable than the full time science
teacher at Jackson? My kids go to Jackson. Jackson's a STEAM school. You can't have STEAM without the s, and s stands for science. How can you really take these recommendations seriously when you're gonna cut the science teacher? This is mister Newell. This is the science teacher. Look at the joy he brings to the school. He's the heart of Jackson and you're about to gut it. You need to find more central office cuts and save teachers like mister Newell at Jackson, Washington, and all these other schools. Divette Johnson, Alec Boorstein, Hilbert Mora.
Good evening, board. My name is Davette Johnson. I'm a CTE teacher, and I'm currently working at Marshall Fundamental. We just renamed our school after Thurgood Marshall, and he was always about equity. If you cut the CTE programs at Marshall, you're cutting the equity for all of our students at Marshall. Let me give you a little history about what we do at Marshall for our graphic design program. We actually provide entry level computer knowledge for the creative industries for, entertainment, for graphic
design, for visual arts. We're also part of the CTE program that goes for the AME, which is the California Assessments for the Arts in our, our California area. It is important that we continue to supply these kids the knowledge of entertainment, creativity, so that they can fuel our economy, especially our entertainment programs here in California, which
are now hurting because they don't have the entertainments that or the students that are filling that entertainment. If you've ever come to our program at Marshall, you'll see the design work that our kids do for our drama department, for our dance, for all of our equity for the kids that have the opportunity to go on. I've had students with my program go on to USC in the architecture program. I've had one of my students to come back to visit. She is currently at Cal Poly using communications.
I've had a student that's at Berkeley. So and you continue to say that our school is underperforming. We're one of the highest performing programs in the district, but yet you wanna control and cut our CTE program. There's only three of us there. And if you do that, you're definitely limiting our growth. Thank you. Madam president, members of the board, superintendent Blanco, I'm here to speak on the budget proposals that will be voted on today. My name is Gabriel Mora. I'm a school counselor at Thurgood Marshall Secondary School. I have a vested interest and a self serving motive for speaking tonight, but not
self serving in the way you may expect. My position is literally on the chopping block. But I'm not here to plead for my job, but to explain how these cuts will negatively affect our purpose as a school district. We're here to educate and enrich lives of the students that we have in our charge. I feel like the SBAC committee in its decision making could not see the forest for the trees. They proposed cuts based on purely monetary basis, not really thinking of how it would affect students we service daily at our various school sites. As many of you know, school counselors have large caseloads of students to service, spanning
all grade levels from six to twelfth grade. Per our contract, the ratio is supposed to be 400 to one. I know that sounds unattainable, and to be honest, it is. Most of our secondary counselors have case rules anywhere from three to 400 students to serve with various academic, career, social, emotional issues. SBAC suggested that we cuts that are not very pragmatic, validating some sites to halftime counselors. Financially, that sounds pretty generous. Hey. You're gonna take half of them. You're not gonna take the whole one. But in reality, it it's it's really not a a pragmatic to have only the
counselor that works half the time. Is our case level only gonna be half the size of the full time counselor? And if they do, you know, do they pick up another half time to make it a full time? So that means they're gonna travel between two schools? And while in closing, you know this is ridiculous. I'm just Thank you, sir. Frustrated. Let me just finish this last sentence, please. If I could just get out of this. You're gonna need to wrap it up, sir, because we'll move on to the next part. Okay. The bottom line was that the frontline direct services providers for these students, the chaos,
the recent history of COVID, Eaton, and last year's cuts, now you're gonna fully fully traumatize the students with changes they don't they did not ask for and do not want. I understand you're trying to keep the programs running in central office, but is that that's not where the badge happens. Okay, sir. We needed to wrap it up the last It's in the interactions with the students in person by all the staff and to support them in the day to day operations of our school. It truly matters. I'm sorry. Can you repeat your name? Gilbert Mora. Good evening. My name is Alex Borstein. I am a senior at Marshall. Okay, that's not true.
I am a parent of a Marshall student. I pulled my son, who is in eleventh grade, out of a private school. He was going to Sequoia and I chose Marshall. And I did that because I wanted my kid to have a public school experience like I did, both of them. My daughter will also be going public next year. I chose Marshall because performance. I chose Marshall because they have a lot of AP classes. I chose Marshall because they had an ACI program and they have sports. I know you've got to make cuts. I get it. Money's gotta come from somewhere. I'd like for them to be equitable. I'd like for you to cut if you have to cut sports programs, do it
based on how many athletes are at each school, not how many people are enrolled within the school. If you have to cut ACI programs, take a look at how many ACI professors there are, teachers there are at that school, and what it would leave that school with. Marshall would be left with only one ACI instructor to try to take care of the entire school population. It's just not possible, and they have to have a CTE class in order to graduate. So I get your job sucks. This is hard. I would not wanna be in your position. Someone's gonna lose, but it would be great if you could keep the money in
the classrooms and cut it somewhere central. I barely know what I'm talking about, but I just hope that the school can maintain its integrity, its quality, because I'd really like to keep my kids at a public school. Thank you so much. Fernando de Nocochea. Isis Mulder. Lizabeth. Martin Dorado. Fernando wrote a lot of things. He had an appointment. He wanted to talk about things. So I'm just gonna assume that Fernando left. Isis Malden. Lisbeth Neff, Martin Dorado, Darby Street, Oria Baja.
Good evening, board. My name is Uriah Bon. My wife and I have, two students in PUSD, one at Jackson and one at San Rafael. We spent years, researching and visiting various schools in the district, because this is not our own. Friends and colleagues commonly shared, praises and compliments about their experiences at these schools and others in your district. The curriculum offered, through the DLIP program and the STEM programs are what brought us here. We are district transfers from LAUSD specifically for these programs and these teachers.
Mister Newell's been a hot ticket, but, my son has enjoyed this class and learned much during his first year there. Terrible. He came home with a catchphrase, science it up. That's why this is hard. These budget cuts, describe lower enrollment as a contributing factor, but you are getting kids outside your community. So realize that these programs and these positive experiences created by the staff are precisely what we are seeking as parents in this community and beyond. So make sure you make choices that reflect your choice to put kids first because
what you offer reaches outside Pasadena as well. Thank you. We have Isis, Lizbeth, Martin, and Darby. Good evening. So you wanna know something interesting? I started digging in the POC facility data this morning and kinda took me down a wormhole. And I understand the last couple of meetings that we've had, we've been talking about how the facilities, especially the ones that are unused and sitting idle, are not touchable. But I would like to just reopen up that conversation. Let's just talk a little bit about facts.
So let's start with just the unused sites. The campus says that everyone drives by and thinks, oh, I guess nothing is happening there. Except that's not true. Things are happening there, just not for the kids. When they're vacant, campuses still rack up huge annual costs. Insurance, utilities, security, basic maintenance, environmental testing, and compliances. It's a lot. And so the district has to continue paying for these every year. I also checked out the PUSC's facility condition condition index, which is basically the credit
score of these buildings. And a lot of these buildings have high credit scores, meaning don't keep this building. It's a money pit. But guess what? The buildings with the highest FCIs, the facility conditions index, are the exact ones that have been sitting vacant for many, many years. The repair needs are so massive that keeping them idle literally is the most expensive possible choice. High future liabilities, high maintenance, and zero educational return. Meanwhile, I checked out the bond measure t t and measure o shows that PUSC
has already spent millions maintaining these exact campuses that don't serve students. So that bond money that's supposed to go towards modernizing active schools is going towards these unused school sites. Now let's talk about proposition 39. You're leaving schools empty for charters to come in. You may have to wrap it up now. Which is lowering your ADA. Your lessons. I would like to encourage you guys to just revisit the unused school sites first. Thank you. Thank you. And your name was? Isis Molden. Hello. Good evening. My name is Martin Norado, and I'm speaking on behalf of us teachers facing looming
budget cuts. I understand cuts need to be made. However, I also believe that the cuts that hurt our students the most are the cuts made to their teachers. These are the individuals that are serving our scholars amid significant challenges in the world. I can speak to the demoralization that layoffs result in as I have experienced four separate times in my eight years here in PUSD. As teachers, we wish to serve our students. We even sometimes prioritize their smiles over our own well-being.
But these cuts make that difficult. How are we to ensure stability in our schools and public education if we continue to devalue the single most important position in public education? I am indeed aware that that is a bold statement. However, it was miss Chandler, miss Bowden, miss Murphy that helped me arrive to that conclusion. As the skills they imparted upon me with such care continue to serve me today. Hopefully, with the job next year so that I can serve my scholars at Madison Elementary in a similar fashion.
Please keep the cuts away from our classrooms. I know it's difficult to make that decision, but I have no problem in saying that the single most important job in public education is a public school teacher. Thank you. Lisabet Ngarvey. Good evening. Excuse me. My name is Lisabet Napp. I am a teacher at Sierra Madre Middle School, social studies also known as the orphan child of the curriculum and I have been at this district long enough to remember when it was the norm to see school board members visit our schools and
step foot in each and every classroom several times a year. I have not seen that probably since 2010 and it concerns me that you're making these decisions without putting boots on the ground and seeing exactly what we deal with. If you haven't been in the classroom on a daily basis for ten years it's a completely different now, and if you saw what our librarian does you would be amazed. I brought history day, National History Day to our campus.
There is a reason why it's been in the last three years when we've had a full time librarian that might have had students who have made it to Nationals, who were honourable mentions in front of the entire nation, that's because our amazing librarian Jane Ruwe, she partners with the classroom teachers, she creates lessons in digital literacy, in how to research, how to cite sources, all the skills that they need now and
beyond. A school of 600 students that cannot work with a half time librarian. That that will not do. She partners with social studies teachers, English teachers, science teachers, and the results are there. Our students excel because we have that skill and if you're not in the school site, if you don't see what we're doing, how can you make an educated decision on what to cut? Thank you. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with this board tonight.
My name is Dobby Streets, and I'm assistant football coach at Marshall Fundamental. I'm here on behalf of my brother, Darius Streets, the head coach who couldn't be here tonight due to a prescheduled obligation. At Marshall, we're known for our strong academic reputation along with our breadth of college prep courses that attract a unique and diverse type of student that prioritizes the pursuit of academic curiosity. Beyond the arts and student clubs, some of these students choose to enhance their academic experience by choosing to represent martial and athletics, where they learn the hard earned life skills that can only be garnered from the fields of friendly strife. In football, some of these life skills include leadership under pressure, mental toughness, accountability, facing
your fears, and understanding what it truly means to have others depend on you. Eliminating our football pre program and implementing the proposed solution will create an elevated bar of entry for our students who choose to play football as it detracts from the time spent academic and football pursuits. Instead, this time will be spent commuting, all while adding to transportation costs along with increasing the time that is required of parents and caregivers, not to mention the slow degradation of pride in alma mater and community that comes with not being able to represent the school that you attend and the sport that you love. For our Marshall students who have chosen to play football, our football program has provided
a safe space and positive alternative to after school distractions as well as provided temporary respite from the weight of family problems as well as the personal challenge that marked the progression of this age group. This is born an unwavering loyalty for our football program and bred student athletes who are committed to representing the Marshall community despite the endless open ended options to transfer to any of the neighboring football programs. This is especially notable given the inherent struggles that we've experienced standing up a new program. It is truly it has been truly admirable to witness students who show up every
day even after tough losses because they believe in something bigger than themselves. They believe in each other. They believe in the chance to build a legacy. They believe that next year and the year after that, they can be better. That hope is powerful and it's worth protecting. Thank you very much for your time, and may your vote reflect the hopes and ambitions of the Marshall football community. Thank you. Alright. That wraps up public comment. Thank you all. We're going to hear from our labor unions now. All right. Good evening, superintendent, members of the Board. Bring to you our, labor partner comments.
We start with contract management, a couple of items. We currently have a grievance because Muir has four less teachers than the ratio requires. So we're going to hopefully get a resolution on that, but that's where we're at with that grievance. The grievance on denial of physical relief break, is now at level four, which means arbitration and possibly legal, action. We do have some resolved items. So longevity is now being paid as part of the yearly salary. We agreed to that. Pregnancy paid leave is counting toward years of service according to the contract.
That's the way it should be. And special education teachers, when they were misassigned to the IB seminar class, we've had that agreement. Now they will get the redress they need. And there was a PE class, earlier this year that, had a safety issue. It was over 55, and we were able to get that resolved through modifying the the master schedule. A reminder that the top three most effective strategies on our LCAPs are class size reduction, teacher pay, teacher retention, access to guidance counselors health services, and funding quality PD.
You can look at that link. You all got a copy of this. I urge you to look at it and, review because we are not implementing these. Our current cuts include 6.3 career and technical teachers from PHS, Marshall, and Rose City. That's what's in front of you to cut. There's two science teachers from STEAM schools, seven arts teachers from across elementary schools, especially from arts magnet schools. There's three IB teachers in support and 29 MTSS and other TOSAs supporting PD. You've put forward that you're gonna deprive middle school students of full time librarians despite,
as you the data shows, 4,500 books were checked out at our four middle a stand alone middle school so far this year. For counselors, we're gonna lose some extra counselors that are specifically for making sure our students achieve college and career readiness. Cutting teachers, especially CTE, removes student experiences as well as reducing success on the college and career readiness indicator, which is one of the board's goals. Cutting librarians threatens literacy progress. Removing MTSS coaches arts in PE will remove planning and collaboration time along with enrichment
of student learning, which will jeopardize all the rest of your goals. BUSD has a values crisis not just a spending crisis. A reminder this is the fourth year in a row that we're below the 55 state legal minimum. All of the SBEC cuts are draconian and painful. There are no good SBEC cuts. Just want to be clear about that. Instead, we really need to consider streamlining the central office. I understand the comment that was mentioned that not all 51 of those admin positions are certificated, which is why there is not a fine, on on needed to be
paid. But the reality is that we had 37, certificated and classified managers back in 2014, which was 17,000 students. We now have 51 classified and certificated administrators. That is way more. We've run out of parking spaces at central office. We need to reduce, okay? We also need to cut legal expenses and outside contractors. We have about $9,000,000 in contract expenses that do not benefit students. We can some ideas of how we can enhance revenue.
There are about 15,000,000 that can be recovered through Saturday school. I heard the discussion earlier about how expensive it might be, but the reality is that other districts are able to do this, able to get a lot of money back, and they're able to provide enrichment. We need to look at those examples and figure out what works for us. I know personally at PHS, just at one school, we were able to recover quarter of $1,000,000 every single year, and we weren't really even trying that hard. It was mostly through punitive and other sorts of things which are not the best
practice. We could also fix up our fields through partnerships. There's plenty of outside organizations that want to help us fix up our fields. We could then charge once you know, those fees, you know, there there are contracts that can be signed that will allow us to then collect fees once, those are paid for. We also need to eliminate over budgeting. Our budgets do not match our actuals. There's at least an $8,000,000 to $12,000,000 gap and part of that is we need to close unfilled vacancies as soon as possible especially if they're away from the classroom.
If we have them in classrooms of course we do need to make sure those students are served. We need to shift special education professionals from outside contractors to POC employees which will save funding and ensure better student outcomes. This is what it looks like to avoid the central cuts. You don't cut at 18,500,000.0, but you do make sure that we right size central office. You don't have nearly as many contracts, and we're still sitting at $23,000,000 Asset management will be about the same staffing vacancies.
I included your kind of vague economic uncertainties that are from there. But also we regularly over budget, I put $5,700,000 but the reality is it's an extra $8,000,000 to $12,000,000 that we constantly over budget for. And this is how you get an amount that is greater than the current proposed amount of cuts. Some additional consideration, Measure J was 10 is currently $10,600,000 coming in. It was marketed to voters as preserving our strong schools and programs. Measure EE is around $5,000,000 a year.
These cuts are unnecessary, damaging and let down the voters, parents, students and staff in PUSD. Thank you for your time. Good evening, president Lee, school board members, superintendent doctor Blanco, superintendent leadership teams, and members of the audience. As everyone knows, the board is facing another big decision that will impact many employees' lives. I've been through this process a few times in my career, and I know it's not easy. Facing potential layoffs versus saving the district from going into receivership. I represent Inglewood Unified and know what it's like working with a district that's in
receivership. Although their county administrator, doctor Morris, is very good to work with, he is the only one, along with the county superintendent of schools, who is not there every day to decide what is going to happen in a district. If this happens, we will lose doctor Blanco, and the board will lose all their authority to govern. Teachers understand that we'll be experiencing layoffs. I'm the first one that will step up and fight to save my members. However, I understand the position the district is in. I've done my own budget analysis. I've been sitting on the superintendent's budget advisory committee for the past two years and
see what other unions and departments are facing. In my twenty five plus year career representing education employees, I've never participated in a budget committee that has been so inclusive and transparent of an actual budget. Kudos to doctor Blanc for allowing us to see behind the curtain and vote on potential budget cuts. The committee was made up of parents, students, classified unions, certificated unions, principals, and administrators. Everyone had a right to voice their opinion and get to learn about the important work others are doing in the district.
I was always put my members first, but I also know the importance of the positions at the central office. They haven't cut to the bone. Anymore, they won't be able to function and complete the important work they do for us every for everyone. I have worked in over 50 school districts as a rep or as an advisor, and Pasadena is by no means top heavy at the central office. I met with my negotiating team earlier today, and I'm very proud of the ideas they came up with to save the district money. Two of them are here with me this evening, Thomas Filivanos and Frank and Eric,
Martinez. And I also have, Frank Lombardi as one of my shop stewards. They understand the need for potential cuts. However, we are working hard with mister Dunning to see how we can save the district money by contracting in work to potentially save the district money by not having to contract out. With little training and many of our members that can perform the work at a fraction of the cost, they would receive a stipend and perform the work resulting in saving money for the district and creating raise raising for, raises for my members, a
win win for both parties. Even though there is no money, there is no money for raises, we are working on generating our own raises with the current budget by simply reallocating money in the budget. I challenge my fellow unions to do the same thing. We need to work together to save our district. However, each of us responsible for their own part to move us forward. This is not the time to point fingers and argue whose fault it is. We are here. Let's work together to become one of the elite school districts in the San Gabriel Valley once again.
Thank you. Good evening, president Hawley, members of the board, and superintendent, doctor Elizabeth Blanco. My name is Julio Vanegas, chapter president for CSEA. I represent over a 100 different classified employees here at PUSD. Coming up here and expressing my thoughts is never easy, especially when I'm still trying to make sense of everything that's going on. As a union leader, my job is to make sure every classified employee are well represented and heard, especially during these difficult times. CSEA recognizes the hard and painful decisions this board is facing.
We also express appreciation that some of the some of the districts originally proposed cuts to our schools' office staffs are no longer being considered. We all recognize how every job is essential. Without classified staff, our schools cannot properly function. Our students are not effectively supported. This is a difficult moment. There's no easy way out. Without pointing fingers, I believe the board is being rushed into making decisions that will have a long lasting impact on everyone. I'm not sure if everyone fully understands the weight of these decisions.
The board and district management are paid lawfully salaries that I I submit should reflect their ability to meet these challenges. Shouldn't be too hard. They do it each year. Let that sink in for a moment. Trusting a better outcome is being lost. At some point, we have to get this right. We have to make we have to make sure deficit spending stops now. We have to ensure our students have a future and and must ensure our staff have peace of mind when they come to work every single day. Before I walk away to tonight, I wanna say thank you to every classified staff
member who works for PUSD. Thank you for the hard work you put in every single day, for the value you bring to this district, and for the dedication you show in helping our students strive and learn every day. Thank you. Good evening, Board of Education, President Jennifer Hall Lee, Superintendent Blanco, and my esteemed APSA colleagues on the superintendent's leadership team. My name is Karen Anderson, and I serve as the arts and enrichment coordinator for Pasadena Unified. I also serve as the public relations chair for the Association of Pasadena School Administrators
or APSA. We are a non bargaining association that represents and supports certificated and classified managers at the district and site level. From business services to principals to the district service center to academics and student wellness, we have incredible leadership in this district. I invite you to take part in our yearly warming hearts campaign, which provides holiday gifts of assistance to families in our community for food, clothing, and gifts. Each year, we provide roughly 2,500 in gifts to our families in need.
And this year, we hope to top that goal. You will see a postcard with that information that was left for you. We appreciate and we understand the challenges put forth for you tonight. Many of our members have also been working through difficult choices as they have presented to the superintendent's budget advisory committee, answered questions from staff members and community, and worked tirelessly to meet accelerated fiscal deadlines. We continue to lead with integrity and purpose and with a focus on student well-being,
which which aligns with our association's core mission of putting the children first. They are why we are here. And together, we will continue to serve them at the highest level. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're on to our student board member report. Miss Wick? Thank you, president Hall Lee, esteemed board members, and superintendent Blanco for your committed for your commitment to supporting the students of PUSD. Recently, the student assembly has experienced a collective sense of fear and uncertainty throughout the district regarding the proposed budget cuts set by the superintendent's budget advisory committee.
The student assembly has spent hours over the past few months reviewing the budget reductions, and we understand the very large impact they will have on our district and community. Many valuable programs, teachers, staff members, and administrators will lose their jobs. This uncertainty district wide has left staff updating their resumes. Students are worried about losing essential programs that will shape communities and are vital to the school experience. It is essential to recognize that the district's budget cuts are not new. Understanding the catalyst for budget cuts is the very first step to addressing change. They originate from systemic and historic patterns, not just in Pasadena, but nationwide.
Around the world, financial instability determines who has access to resources and the way that taxes and wealth are distributed. When when financial instability deepens, education is the first to feel it. Pasadena specifically has a very high volume of wealth, which if diverted could significantly shape the reality of public education. These systemic issues stem from historical financial any and inequities. According to a 2019 report conducted by Peter Dreyer at Occidental College, Pasadena now ranks second among California's 50 largest cities in terms of the concentration of income among the
wealthiest residents and the gap between the richest and poorest households. As low and middle income families are priced out, enrollment continues to decline. It is because of this that we are sad to recognize that the district will continue to face budget cuts in the upcoming years. This situation is not temporary, but a structural challenge that public education across the country is facing as public in as public school enrollment shrinks nationally. Declining enrollment and increasing financial instability also puts student programs at risk. For example, athletics is a very large program that is currently at risk at some
campuses in the proposed budget cuts. To many students, athletics are a main form of community, school spirit, and mental well-being. One Blair student on the girls team shared, tennis gave me a great sense of community. We were able to go to CIF, and it was a very memorable experience as someone who's been on the team for years. This team is now at risk of being completely cut. Tonight, the board will make the difficult decision to vote on proposed budget cuts. We understand that Allego takeover is not something anyone desires. Even as these financial pressures persist, we can be certain of one thing. Students will continue to attend school to learn and grow, being surrounded by brilliant peers.
In this effort, the student think tank and the student assembly are committed to finding meaningful solutions. Our team has begun to identify how to take action now and in the in the future to support the district and work toward preventing cuts. The student assembly and think tank are working on strategies to build a district that will thrive and remain financially stable in the years to come, supporting its students and staff. We'll share more in the upcoming months. Regarding the student assembly, ballots were closed last night, and now new new representatives will be announced the week after Thanksgiving break. As mentioned earlier in a board of education meeting, we're excited to represent our first
or we're excited to welcome our first CIS representative alongside 12 additional members at Blair, Marshall, Muir, and PHS. They will be sworn in at the December 11 Board of Education meeting. This election also received a high amount of student engagement, with almost 1,400 high school students voting. This is the most student turnout the student assembly has ever seen, thanks to the teachers who input the voting ballot into Canvas and principals who included it in emails and announcements. In closing, we recognize this is an extremely heartbreaking moment for our entire district. Staff will lose their jobs and students will suffer.
We hope to work with the board and administrators to ensure the district will not face such drastic measures again. Thank you. Thank you, miss Wick. I'm going to start with item one, doctor Julie Reynoso, a recommendation for expulsion student ID. Did you have something to say or you just called for a motion or a second? Motion? I'll move approval. Second. I'll second. All in favor? No, student board member. Okay. All in favor? Yes. Okay. For the next item, item number two, the superintendent has a comment. Before we begin, I just want to thank all of our students and our community,
family members for being here this evening, advocating on behalf of our staff and our students. What we're about to embark on has not been easy for anybody that's leading the district. Every person that works in this organization is valued and appreciated. We find ourselves in this situation not because of mismanagement. It's circumstantial in that we were able to provide many services for our students for many years. We had large ending balances, and we did not right size our budget because we
valued the things we had and the people that work here. And we were able to do that when we received additional $62,000,000 in COVID money, measure j, the parcel tax, because the community has always supported everybody that's here tonight and our entire school district. The time has come where we have to make difficult decisions for the future of the school district for the students that are here today and the students that are going to be here tomorrow. We are losing people that we care about and love.
I'm not gonna deny that. But our programs are going to be different. They're still going to be here. And part of the reason that we're able to preserve our programs and do them differently is because of measure EE and measure J. I know this is going to be a difficult transition for all of us, but we will get through this. We just got through the Eaton fire. We lived through COVID because this is a strong community with resilience that cares about the school district. And I apologize to anybody who is on this list.
You are not a number. You're a person that we care about. We're working with the county to ensure people that, will not have jobs after we make these decisions will find jobs. Many times, we're able to call people back because of attrition. We're held to statutory deadlines where we have to give notices and reduce positions. Many times, we're able to bring back the people. That's always our goal. We appreciate all of you, and I know that none of us wanna be up here tonight doing this. And I appreciate that everybody was very civil tonight and expressed themselves in ways that
were not demeaning to others. Thank you for being here. Alright. Miss Holly Thank you. Yes. I would be interested in offering a sweep motion for k two, k three, and k four as written, except for amending central office reductions to include tiers one, two, and three, and to to include tiers one, two, and three, and to amend the SBAC reductions to exclude CTE packages a and b, and to delay the athletic's choice between proportional cuts and sports at only two sites to a future board meeting with
a robust discussion and board vote. So not that we will that the amount of money would still be cut, but that the decision of how to implement it would be postponed until that time. So that would be my motion. Alright. So I will second. I need to repeat that. Okay. We're gonna clarify this motion, and we're gonna write it. I have to clarify this. So suite motion for k two, k three, and k four. As written, accept to amend central office reductions to include tiers one, two, and three,
and to amend the SBAC reductions to exclude CTE packages a and b, and to simply delay the choice of which athletics option we choose, whether it's going to be proportional cuts or sports at only two sites to a future board meeting with a robust discussion and board vote at that time. So we have a I have excluding CTE packages A and B.
And then delay the choice. So they the packages A and B for athletics would still be here. We just would choose which of those options at a later time. Okay. So we have a motion and a second for this with these amendments. I'd love to make remarks. Okay. So hold on. Yes. Question. Alright. Hold on. Do do you have a question? The superintendent raised her hand. Yeah. I just need some clarification on what you're replacing the what is the total cost of the CTE packages that you're asking to exclude and what you're placing them with?
That'd be equal value. So I believe the total cost of this would be $8.16 $4.90. And then the additional central is 1.5. So that nets to 700,000 more than More cuts. More cuts than the total as proposed. True? Approximately? It's a net of 683,510. Secondly, you're asking that the athletic amount stay the same.
Is that correct? The reduction of the athletic amount stay the same? Yes. And are you do you have the understanding that we brought the high school principals together and came up with the formula for athletics based on the number of students in the school and that they agreed as a group to use the formula and met later with athletic directors regarding the sports that they would offer already. So you're asking to undo the decision of the athletic directors and the principals, and
what are you proposing to substitute it with at a later date? So it was originally presented to the SBAC, and I don't know exactly when it changed. There was an option of well, there was what was presented to the SBAC, which was a reduction, and I can't remember if the amount was there for each high school. That changed to the proportional amounts, and then someone crossed off the or only have sports at two schools. So somehow that got crossed off. That was there for the SBAC, but then I think by the time we saw
it on the thirteenth, that was removed. So I'm asking that we put that war back and then actually allow the board to make that decision. I don't think that would be in the best interest of students, but it's the board's choice. If we're going to go to athletics at two schools, we would probably have to have more of a change management strategy and thinking about fading them out because it will impact, you know, college applications for students in sports that they're already in. Right. That's why I think we just weren't able to have a very robust conversation.
I know staff has done a lot of work, but I think it's been it would be great to have more communication and more discussion before our final decision. I have a question of staff right now of doctor Hill, I believe. I'm a little confused about this concept of something in the SBAC was there, and then it was erased, and it was changed, and then it came back as something else. Can somebody explain this to me? Because it's very vague. The change in athletics. Okay. I've I believe maybe it was the reference to, when the when the packages for
athletics were presented to the superintendent's budget advisory committee, we, athletics was the unique category that allowed for either a percentage reduction, equally across all schools, or the consideration of consolidating sports to two high schools versus all four high schools. It was stated that the committee would weigh in on the dollar amount of reduction in total and not the decision as to whether it would be a percentage applied
across all four schools or high school consolidation. That decision would be made by the high school principals, when we came together. What changed was that when we brought the high school principals together, neither a direct 50% across all high schools nor a decision to consolidate sports to only two high schools was made. Instead, a new proposal arrived, which we, at the time, believed was within our purview as implementers, that we would use proportional reductions.
Meaning, that if a school had a particular student population, we would then divide the entirety of the remaining budget proportionally by student enrollment. Therefore, the numbers that you see on the slide deck now represent what the dollar amount each school would have to reduce by based on their student enrollment rather than an equal So that's where this 50% comes in onto here. You're they're all four principals got together.
Yes. We have all four of them. Having sports at all their schools Correct. A reduction as opposed to just having sports at two schools and two other schools having none. Correct. And that's where we're at right now. It's either all four or sort of this amorphous gray area right now in this motion in second because we don't know where we're going now with the athletics. Correct. And much like would happen on any committee that involves more than one person, Not every single person agrees to the same idea, but it is a team decision, and
therefore, this is the collective decision. By all four principles? Yes. Okay. That sounds pretty fair. So this motion yes. Miss Kenny? No. I just had a question. I wasn't sure what I could say. Miss Wick? I just had a question regarding athletics because from it's from my understanding that a and b were combined at some point. But, do we know the exact percentage that each each school is cutting? Because I know that it's based off of ADA now. It's changed. Do we know the percentage based on every school, or is it just Yes. We do.
Okay. Doctor Hill, do you wanna answer that? I actually wrote the dollar amounts. So the percentage is based on, adding all total enrollment at, across the district. So Blair I'm so sorry. I'll go in alphabet a quarter. Blair has 13.84% of students. Marshall has 22.11%. Mayer has thirty three point one one, and PHS has 30.92%.
Okay. I'm good. Well, we still have a little queue here. We have Kim has a comment. Miss Kenny has a comment. So I had a comment just All I want is for Fatima or whomever is doing the corroboration of the numbers to show us what the implications of this resolution would be, if possible. Sorry. What do you want? Miss Kenny? The the math for the total of dollars. Yes. Okay. So I had a a comment just on, the rationale for CTE, but then I had some other overall comments. And so you let me know when I can make them.
Alright. So I have you as a comment. Miss McKenzie has a question. No? You didn't? Doctor Velasquez has a question. Okay. So let me write them all down. I wanna clarify one request by doctor Velasquez. I believe doctor Mumilow and doctor Turley are working on the numbers for us this evening. Is that correct? So we would have you give the numbers to miss Montoya? Oh, so we have so I need to clarify that, but we're not doing that adding and subtracting. The numbers we provided are accurate, for central tier three and as well for the
exclusion of, a and b. I think the numbers were that were provided was 816490. Those are our the numbers that were spoken earlier are correct. The question that I believe was asked was in terms of just the difference. Yeah. What's the balance? And that's what they're working on. Alright. So doctor Velasquez, do you wanna go next? No. I wanna Okay. Mister Harden? Oh, did you want me to wait? Oh, did you? Alright. Well, if you had comment, did you Miss Kenny, go ahead with your comments. Great. Thank you. So just to give some rationale, about the CTE packages, when looking at the the
SBAC packages, it seemed that they could be categorized into student supports, enrichment, instruction, and operations. And CTE is instruction for our students. It's a required graduation requirement, and one of our three board goals is increasing college and career readiness. Package b would cause a restructure of Muir, which is now a campus of small learning communities to support students. It wasn't clear from any conversation we've had exactly what that what would happen and
what the impact would be to the Muir students. And it by doing those cuts, we would give back an additional 800,000 in grant money. Overall, in looking at these cuts, I'm still not sure exactly what we're doing wrong in our spending, but it does seem that there is something as we've been hearing about other districts that are not having the same kinds of problems. It might be related to our continuing low attendance rates, which limit our state funding, or it could be something else. So I do think we need to do some further study and continue making changes.
I don't know that we were able to discuss as much whether any programs had a lower program effectiveness and needed to be cut or how we were focusing on improving instructional quality at the same time that we were making cuts. One of my concerns is that we're cutting both personnel and services from our supplemental and concentration funds that we receive to increase and improve services for our at risk students. So I'm not clear what we will do with the freed up funds.
It's about $11,000,000 and, again, they're meant to target our neediest students. I don't know if we will just spend those funds on regular expenses and not something that will increase and improve services for those students. I really central is an interesting case. I I think that the district needs to consider some type of reorganization that reverses the last ten to fifteen years of position inflation that we've had. One example that I looked at today because there were some fiscal positions, on the
central list was our fiscal department. It is currently made up entirely of management and supervisor personnel. Every almost every single person in that department is a member of APSA. Thirteen years ago, it was made up of mainly CSEA personnel. So there's now 11 APSA and one CSEA. Thirteen years ago, it was three APSA and 11 CSEA. The APSA positions start at $83,000 and $91,000 whereas the CSCA positions that have been replaced start at 47 and 51 when your entire department is made up of management
and supervisors. I don't know exactly what happened. Second example is just the number of director positions we have now. We had positions that were coordinators. We've made them positions, directors. The director positions then get a higher level of admin assistance, so now we have higher expensive, admin assistance. And I just wanna say, I hope that as we reduce personnel in the central office that we update job descriptions as the positions are reduced so that we can address our tendency to give 10% stipends to employees who are doing extra duties so
that we get that practice under control and assure that it doesn't increase in the future as people will be taking on additional duties. Just real quickly on the contracts, it was kinda hard to weed through that list and find impactful items amongst a lot of very small things. But as I mentioned on the thirteenth, these are contracts for last year, 2425, not what we have budgeted or are spending money on this year. I did notice that this the board budget has 500 k budgeted for an election
that we are not having during this school year. So, hopefully, that will be returned to the ending balance and will no longer look like an expenditure soon. The superintendent's budget has 800,000 for services in it, and I I'm hearing that it's going to be reduced. It had 700 in it budgeted last year, but only spent 300. But that's the kind of expenditure that sits in our budget all year long and only gets cleaned up at actuals. Since these figures were still there on November 13 I mean, November 17, my concern is that we will not see that reflected in our first interim, and we will
have to wait until second interim to see those changes and to see those reductions in our expenditures. I think that's what's gonna make it difficult for us to know where we really are in December. On the SBAC, a lot of these cuts are services that we have supported our schools and families with for years. I've been in this district since 2003. Services such as community assistance, health clerks, nurses, coaches, librarians are integral parts of our schools. I'm concerned about our operational cuts and whether we'll be able to continue to supply
adequate services. But I have to say, if if we're cutting this staff, this integral staff across all of our schools, it seems to beg the question, if we can't afford to staff all of our schools, do we have too many schools? Mr. Harden. Thank you. I appreciate the SWIB mechanism because I think it allows us to talk about this holistically, which I think, you know, I know there's different separate work streams. And I appreciate all of the hard work that was put into, to planning. I'll I'll I think miss Kenny talked a lot about the value of CTE.
I have been a long time, supporter of CTE because I think it's making a real difference, in our college and career readiness, which the last time I checked is a board goal. Number three. I think that if we look at the dashboard, the recent reports from the California dashboard, we're seeing market improvement in our CCI preparedness. Now, not all of that is attributable to CTE, but I firmly believe it's a major part of it. I heard comments about, you know, there are different pathways in school, for students.
I will be honest. I was not the world's best student, but some of my CTE type electives that I had in high school, prepared me for, for, for my life's work. So I think it's I appreciate that we're making steps to, to preserve that. I think it's important. It's in the classroom where it matters. And it helps, it helps preserve a value that I think that we have.
Now to do that, I think it comes at a major, it's a major cost. I mean, it is going to result in steeper cuts. At the Central Office. I appreciate everyone in the Central Office because I've worked in the Central Offices before, and I've worked alongside many of the good people here. And and and and I think Doctor. Blanco said that the folks that are here, you know, if the situation were different, we would appreciate and we would keep and love to have everyone continue on.
But I do think that we are at a major inflection point. And I do think that that we have to to put our money where our values are. And I think above all, it has to be in the classroom and has to be at school sites. I think that this is going to be painful, but I'm hoping it provides an opportunity to do some redesign of our organizational structure, perhaps flattening it a bit and
also embracing our sites and possibly leaning in on local leadership structures at our school sites. Our community schools program, for instance, is built on that framework where a lot of site control goes back to the school sites and is managed at the school site level. So it's not an easy it is an extremely hard choice to make, but I do support the additional cuts at Central.
And I think that the with regards to the sports strategy, I do think that there are I think we will benefit from perhaps bringing on additional dimensions in terms of determining how we manage our sports cuts. I think there are opportunities to consider actual participation in sports potentially a dimension that, that I don't believe we're considering currently, as well as the other dimensions that the
staff has already considered. So that's where I am on these issues. Thank you. I I just have a little comment about process because since we're entertaining a sweep, there is public comment. So I don't know if we should do it now or when. What what's the order of that? So So we're going to start public comment for item K-four. Andrew Medina. Good evening, board members.
My name is Andrew Medina. Some of the best understand the yellow little yellow piece of paper. I wanted to go earlier, but my name is, Andrew Medina. It's my sixth year as an elementary music teacher in PSD. I currently teach grades k through five at San Rafael and Jackson Elementary Schools. I see every single day how music positively affects children, help them grow academically, socially, and emotionally. That's why I'm deeply concerned with the proposed cuts to school sites, including cuts to the elementary music program and arts education as a whole. Every child deserves access to high quality music education. Research shows that music strengthens early literacy, improves social emotional development, and increases student engagement
and attendance. At my sites, cuts to programs like music, art, PE, and science, which are all part of the special programs funding, will take away places where students learn through joy and creativity. I see the impact of music education, whether it's kinder and first graders in our dual language programs, singing in their target language, second and third graders gaining confidence as they improvise rhythms and melodies, or fourth and fifth graders beginning their instrumental music journey, excited to play an instrument and to learn what it means to be a part of an ensemble.
These moments are not extras. They should not be considered special. They are critical learning experiences that support academic and social emotional development. The district already knows the value of these programs. In every PUSD update and on the district website and on your way up the stairs, you highlight middle and high school performing arts. Every musical theater show, every orchestra concert, every choir festival, every marching band has its foundations in the elementary music classroom. School communities should be the last place considered for cuts. I urge you to prioritize classrooms, school sites, and the arts so every child continues
to receive and comp a complete and well rounded education. Thank you for your time. Brian Matthews and then Tony Boschetti. Tony Boschetti? So I had my comments prepared prior to, the comments that were just made. So thank you for, at least considering to reevaluate the CTE programs. I'm a parent at Marshall. I have three student athletes that are part of Marshall marching band, Marshall soccer program,
color guard, and cross country. While we completely understand the need for cuts within the district, however, this crisis was not a result of the decisions made by the students, But they are the ones that are going to suffer if we cut the programs for CTE and athletics. So as was mentioned earlier, we've heard the district say that the crisis is a result of losing of temporary funds, such as COVID money and other temporary monies to
the district. We've gone to the voters to approve specific projects, particularly for improving facilities, while they're over and they were overwhelmingly approved with measure TT, measure O, measure R. So we're at this crisis Further reinforcing the community's desire to seek private school options. And that's The community has seen the need for facilities improvements. So we've heard many people speak today, and we've even heard a teacher at PHS
call for consolidation. I can tell consolidation, I can tell you that consolidation is not the answer, because we will lose a lot of kids. We will lose a lot of students. The clear inequity that has been presented for the athletics program with, within PUSD is not the answer either, as Marshall has the second highest student athlete population in the district, but it's being proposed to receive the lowest amount of funding per athlete within the district. Please consider, reevaluating how the funding is allocated.
Brian. Hi. My name is Brian Matthews. I've been a PSD parent for ten years. My son's currently in elementary school and is having a great experience for which I'm very thankful. I also appreciate the work of the administration and the SBAC to try to find ways to minimize the effects of these painful cuts on our children. It's definitely difficult work. What I'm troubled by, though, is the apparent lack of vision for the future of POSD. It's not enough just to be reactive without addressing the structural challenges that result from enrollments that keep falling. Like Larry Mantle said on Airtop this morning, that will likely just lead to a death spiral of further cuts and continued exodus of families from the district.
I hope that won't be the case. We need you to take bold action. Whatever happens today in the discussions of these cuts, at your next meeting, you should approve a process for a school consolidation. Imagine the possibilities if we consolidated to two high schools. Every student could access every sport and twice as many academies or special programs, and friend groups from the eighth grade wouldn't have to separate to different high schools based on their varying interests. We can invest twice as much bond money in renovating and beautifying each of the remaining campuses. And district administration could invest twice as much time and focused efforts to improve learning
outcomes at the remaining sites. And board and administration, you have a hard job, but I hope that you will lead and make the hard choices that are necessary to get PUSD moving in a hopeful direction again. I'm worried about the families that might leave, if not. And honestly, if the board doesn't provide this leadership, then maybe a LACOE takeover is what we need. I'm pretty sure they'll be willing to make those hard choices, but I'd rather have our elected representatives do it. Thank you. Okay. Miss Bailey? No? Doctor. Velasquez? No? I I I'm waiting for the number too then. Okay. Okay. Doctor.
For those three work streams, it's 25069302. 25069302. For those three work streams, obviously, it doesn't account for the other work streams, the additional work streams such as the grant maximization, the asset management, staffing, economic block grants, which means this plus those, would reach the the goal of the 30,000,000 plus. I'm confused too. So so these three items as written were 24, three seventy eight, nine thirty five.
And sorry, I rounded up the point five. And then now it is 2569303. So it's that 690 k greater. Okay. Ms. Mackenzie, did you have something? I am incredibly conflicted. Nobody runs for office to be in a position to cut programs, cut services, or to make decisions that are going to have adverse impacts on the organization. However, I think that, we are in a position where as leaders, we're obligated to
make the courageous decision even if it is unpopular. I think that all of these issues that we are grappling with are important to somebody because they affect somebody. Be it students, be it employees, be it our community, because ultimately, the school district not only serves for the purpose of educating our students, which will be our future
leaders, it also is an entity that serves as kind of the pillar in our community and provides value to people in a multitude of ways. We've heard and received, a significant volume of advocacy from various interest groups, people advocating for what's important to them. And all of this is important to us, and none of this is easy.
I don't want people to think that we don't care and that the lives that are going to be impacted are just numbers on the spreadsheet because they're not. And I think that what you hear us struggling with is trying to figure out how do we arrive at a solution that is least impactful when I don't know what that path looks like. We are, you know, trying to figure out how to make a decision that meets
our fiscal needs because all of us took an oath to be the fiduciary responsible parties for this organization. And were there an opportunity to be able to not make any cuts, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Were there revenue sources available to be able to help us close the shortfall, we would be actively pursuing that. Sadly, Mackenzie Scott did not give us $30,000,000, so here we are. Right now, I don't know if I'm at a place where I can support the
amendment to the proposed, recommendations. I need to hear more. I need to know more because the things that are important to me are, you know, far exceeding what we can actually do. I hear the the calls to cut central office, and I'm not caping for anybody or anything, but be clear. The services that are centralized are things that ultimately support school sites and ultimately support our educators who are at school sites.
Because I am certain that while our educators love what they do and they love being able to focus on their job of teaching and learning, there are many functions that happen in this building that allow them to be able to focus on teaching and learning, such as being able to get your paycheck, such as being able to have your benefits processed. It's open and open right now. Correct? We wanna be able to make sure that those kind of things happen because we can't put that burden on you as well while we are, asking you to focus
on educating our students. So at some point, there has to be a balance between what it is we're asking of you in the classroom and what has to happen somewhere else that's not at a school site. So I'm gonna keep listening and keep trying to figure out sort of where I will be and where I can find a way to make what I know is the courageous decision. But, you know, this is one of those situations where our, you know, kind of poet laureate at the time said that winning is easy, but governing is harder.
So just know that we are struggling with the governing part of this right now. Doctor Velasquez? I'm also sorry. You you are. Okay. So thank you everybody for coming and sharing. I mean, a lot of you I know from how my daughter, you know, had the librarian and the teachers. And this is sort of an impossible choice because it's like picking which child to give up. I mean, it's numbers. Right? It's like we're trying to balance this budget.
Okay. We take something here, then we gotta, you know, make it up with another position. So, the SBAC process, which I, you know, I attended most of those meetings. To reiterate, it was basically cuts of 25, fifty, seventy five, a 100, you know, 100% of the departments. And, that's a tough process to be cutting people you know or yourself.
And the recommended, cuts was 18,000,000 in the s back list. As far as central, the max the recommended with 3,600,000.0, and to tier three would be a 5,100,000.0, which is a difference of a 1,500,000. So I'm a former teacher, so I'm I really believe that if you're gonna impact children, it's gonna be in the classroom. So I support the tier two, tier three cuts in order to invest, some of
that back into the sites. I hear you. I I mean, literally, we're here to make sure that we keep local control, and we have to balance this. And this is a this is work that should have been done for a long time, and we're just scrambling right now. This isn't again, this is sort of a really hard impossible situation, but we have to do this.
And so I do support maximizing the cuts. It is only 1,500,000.0. I cannot save 18,000,000, in SBAC at the sites, unfortunately. What I I I appreciate everyone that came. I learned a lot about our district. Unfortunately, you know, this this situation actually allows me to learn how amazing our staff and teachers and programs and students are.
And I I think what resonates with me is just we need to have this conversation. We need to have a conversation as someone had mentioned in public comment. We need to start having a conversation how to structure ourselves differently. And, ultimately, we need to share. We need to share. Thank you. Thank you so much to everybody that spoke today and to everybody that wrote us. Thank you to all of the students that wrote us. I did my best to answer to as many of you as I could.
This is a very difficult position that we are in, and I am a strong supporter of establishing a plan that is both immediate but also long term. However, I would like to clarify that from my perspective, the long term planning does not replace the changes that we have to do today. Long term planning will be in addition to the difficult decisions that we're making today. I am willing to start a long term plan of reimagining as soon as next
month. I want to appreciate, and I want to say that I value the work of all of the central office staff. I value and appreciate the work of all of our teachers and staff. Some of them I know personally, and it is very difficult. However, I wanna talk about the three areas. The first area has to be has to do with the CTE.
I am sup in support of that because I believe that we need to preserve all pathways for students. Number two, the reduction in central staff. It's a very difficult decision to make, and it's not out of a lack of value or at a lack of acknowledgment of the many cuts that we've asked you to make in the last couple of years. I wanna acknowledge that and still acknowledge that within the spectrum of choices, I still
believe that it is the best path forward. And number three, when it comes to the sports, I think that it is an ongoing conversation. I am not sure where we're gonna land in that particular conversation, but that seems inconsequential to the decision that we need to make today because the end balance of the cut would remain the same. What we would then become having a discussion about is how we proceed forward within that same budget line.
So I am happy to hear about the consensus between the principals or not or it it would be very difficult for me to support certain positions, but we're not here or there. That doesn't change the math, and I think that what we need to resolve right now is the math. And so I am supportive of her continuing the conversation about sports in since it doesn't really change the number of the cut, our favorite pastime is to argue with
each other. So we can add that to the line. After, my, colleagues speak, I would like to ask, trustee Kenny if she would entertain a friendly amendment. I have something to say here. So the board is here for the what and not the how. We are here for the what. The how is done by the staff and the superintendent. I have a big concern. One is how are the sites going to do the job of the central office?
Can I get something from staff? Can you give me an example? Because I'm thinking maybe a lot of we some people don't understand. The superintendent can answer my questions. Well, it would be really easy for me to let you all vote and go home. I think that the central office deserves knowing what decisions you're making. And I'll start with Kalern since Hilda and Beth aren't in the room. You're making a decision to maybe not broadcast your meetings anymore because if one of them is absent, we won't have anyone to broadcast the meetings. I'll let the other managers here explain, starting with Helen and CIPD what that means
because I want you to make a conscious decision about what tiers two and tiers three mean. We cut $13,800,000 from the central office two years ago, and we cut all the cuts from the central office last year. I just want everyone to understand what the trade offs of what you're making tonight really mean to you before you vote. So I I think I I need some examples of how this is gonna work. So Caitlin are not broadcasting our meetings. That would be one thing, perhaps.
And what are some out not broadcasting, the school site events? State of the school speech. So that's just one example, but can I get some concrete examples? I would like her to give you the academic Of course. Academic examples first, please. Okay. So for the reductions that are included for CIPD, that would, I mean, that includes, the coaching, the curriculum development and articulation when we talk about consolidating classes, professional development
coordination. PD day would likely go back to, you know, I mean, could go back to the school sites. I think, ultimately, it would be, breaking down the consistency that we're hoping to have district wide. I think the main, impacts might be the the board's academic priorities. We're just set. We have some really high markers to to attain, and, we are moving forward with
a a structure of multi tiered systems of support that involve creating interventions, supporting the change and training that happens within them, developing the curriculum, adjusting the curriculum when it has to be applied, and those would not occur at the central office any longer. So an example might be that teacher teams could work together.
I'm actually, at this point, very sorry that I'm spitballing at what might happen because I there are a lot of ways we could go about this, but maybe teacher teams could could, write write those curricular pieces. Ed tech support for the technology in the classroom would be maybe moved again to teacher leaders. Doctor Hill, who what do you mean by teacher leaders? So teachers at the school sites would have to do the tech support? Yes. We would have to So that means preparing Chromebooks?
Well, librarians help with that. That is more we did get computer technicians to to support that, but that, I think is also included in the reductions. So yeah. So both of those areas. And who would help the sites to do this work because they've never done this work before? So who would help them? We could get them train I don't know. We would get them external training. And who would pay for the external training? Well, those would be contracts that we'd probably have to open, but maybe nominal in comparison if if that's the consideration. So that's a major coordination Yes.
To move what's happening at Central to all of the sites. The other there are some logistical things too that I'm just sort of, again, spitballing. We also order all of the instruction materials. So that would be while that's, is more of a logistical area, that is that is a behemoth of a of a task that I don't know we could put at the school site. There's a lot of requirements around, learning materials. I had another question about the board goals because we just set goals.
Mhmm. How would this affect our board goals? So I think that's kind of the the impact that I'm, considering. I think collectively, all of our reductions will impact academics regardless. Okay. Alright. I would like to make a motion to extend the time to 11:30. Second. Alright. All in favor to extend the time to 11:30? We're gonna need it. +1, 23456. Okay. Thank you. So, Okay. And, sir, doctor Knoell and doctor Reynoso, I really need you to weigh in on
this. So my my main concern's who's gonna help the school sites do the work for the curriculum and all these other things that doctor Hill just talked about. Who's gonna coordinate it? Where's the money gonna come from? Who has the time to do this? Who are the people that are gonna do this work for the school sites? And how does it affect our board goals? Because our board goals are are big. Sorry, I'm probably not gonna be as eloquent as Doctor. Chan Hill is. Yes, you were. I won't disagree that the most important thing that happens in this district are our classrooms. I I think that is the most important thing.
However, been a teacher in this district, I've been a coach in this district, I've been a principal in this district and I've also been at the district office. So I understand the comprehension of what happens everywhere. Athletics and curriculum, I used to order all of the curriculum for the district. We do need to make a hard decision tonight. And that is the work that's been put before the board. To answer your question, Doctor. Mishali, I think, it would have to be resurgence of looking at what and who
is left to be able to say what services remain. I think some of the conversations we have all had is there is going to have to be some hard decisions too whether it is fiduciary or not that just some plans just cannot go forward and we are going to have to rely on other means. I do believe that we have strong leadership in this district. We have wonderful principals who step up all the time to lead in amazing ways.
Smaller districts do rely on creating cohorts of leadership. It creates pathways also for our schools. But to do without, you know I'm going to speak I guess not only on the curriculum side but on the wellness side. We are making hard decisions but it will be, somewhat of a change in structure of what the schools will be required to do because if that service and that person is no longer there, it's not like you can just make that up and say oh it's just going to come from somewhere else. We've seen that over the last now three, this is the third year that we've
been doing this so we keep trying to reinvent how that's going to go down but I will be honest with you, there's no greater place in this district than walking into a classroom and seeing children and our kids. So I do believe, it will be difficult but to give you more concrete evidence with not knowing what's going to happen after tonight will be difficult. So we're doing the best we can here on the spot. Just reminding the board that we have several impact statements that I believe we wrote, on every section from contracts to reductions in all tier one, tier two and tier
three. So it does point out, possibilities beyond what we're talking about right now. But it will be the hard work is ahead of us. Doctor. Canel. Well, it's definitely given, difficult to go after Doctor. Reynoso and Doctor. Chan Hill. I think the the advocacy is, something that I think, for me is, particularly in the role that I sit in, challenging. I do think, a lot of people have expressed how difficult this is going to be, in terms of, tier two and tier three, I think, some of the speakers,
articulated that, specifically, Ramiro, Adela, and Alba. They came in and they spoke regarding some of the impact that would happen. Then, fortunate to to be there and, lead, the business department. And, they spoke very well about the challenges, ahead, going to tier two and tier three, cuts even further into the business department. They spoke about, payroll concerns. They spoke about reimbursements. They spoke about, a lot of the impact that's gonna have.
These are the folks that do the work that people don't often see, but, but they receive whether salary warrant on, you know, whether they receive their salary warrants on time without errors, whether they see reimbursements, whether vendors get processed, all of that, work that is essential, as part of, activities. So, I think I would refer even more so to, to those three public speakers who spoke on the topic in in terms of, the impact on business.
And I just wanna say that I think the difficulty that maybe the three of us are having in articulating is that it is we have been tasked to be, objective about all changes. Right? Everything that was in any of the work streams, all eight of these work streams impact the district. And when I say the district, I don't mean a divisive statement between a central office and a school site. Every service provided at the central office is in service to the schools. I think that is something that I just want to very boldly state that I
have heard misused repeatedly in this in this season. We may have opinions about the the, current priority of prioritization of any of the items in any of these work streams, but I am not here to diminish or champion the value of something over another when they are all interconnected. So I think our task is to really look at the collective reductions and say what can we do and who can do it and what can we no longer
do based on how we proportionally reduce. It is true that services that, seem to be outside of the classroom tend to be reduced first. That is that is, you know, I think I've seen that in every budget era. So and some of the tasks that are required for compliance, or out of necessity will will go to who remains. If we, if we make cuts in one area, it will the balance will have
to be in the other. Somebody will pick up the work whether you reduce it at central and it goes to site or you reduce that site and it goes to central. They are meant to work in harmony. And that's why I say it's it is, this is a this is a heavy season for all of us because the cuts of the school sites are the exact people and programs that we're tasked to support. The cuts at the central office, having been at both, you know, in both, venues mean that supports that maybe are more behind the scenes will be will be impacted.
So but your one question around the board's priorities, I do wanna I do want to uplift the fact that the people who need to reach those goals to ensure that our students are progressing at a phenomenal rate for literacy, math, and college and career readiness, not only are the people in the classrooms, but are also the support systems that allow them to do it with precision.
So I think that there will be impacts on both sides, and I'm really sorry that I can't give a concrete example. There's just too many. Okay. So, I'm going to go to, Ms. Bailey. So, yes, I, I have similar concerns regarding what you're discussing now. And, I wanna include the business office in that. You know, I'm I'm very concerned about the language and I'm hoping that, after we
get through this phase, tonight, that doctor Blanco, you and your team are going to, start identifying where the responsibilities are gonna go, from the positions that, will be eliminated through this process. My concern is with procurement, payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable. Your language everything in your language says that, you know, it it may be late.
It may be, you know, delays, the service may be interrupted. And anyone who has worked at a school site knows that finances can hold up books being received, other materials being received. You know, with IB, it holds up the training. It holds up the whole, diploma process. So I'm concerned even with what Adela presented, eliminating her position with her, who has
with her in it, with all of the knowledge and the skills that she brings to the table. You know, I'm just really concerned about that department. I don't know if that is a department, a district level department that, we really want to place those kind of challenges on because they're the lifeline, the financial lifeline of this district. And if things aren't flowing, in and out of that department, you know, it can
literally bring this district to a halt. So, I'm not sure if I could if I'm, you know, ready to support the, central office tier one, cuts in its totality. The other concern that I have is about the the registrars. It's not a big one. I'm sure that it's it's something that, we can probably work around, but it involves
their professional development because it's saying that it may eliminate their abilities to be on top of the latest procedures or or information that registrars need to do their jobs effectively. So I'm concerned about that. I This is really, really challenging. This is, I think, my third time being in this position while serving on this board. And I I agree with with Kim, with board member Kenny.
You know, you you look forward, you ask questions, you dig deep, and you just can't figure out what we're really doing wrong here. You know, it's implied that we're mismanaging, that we're top heavy. Everything that's been said up here is absolutely right about the district office. If you don't have the support up here, then nothing flows through the veins down
to the school sites. The school sites suffer. But at the same time, when you start talking about putting more into the school sites, more work that increases their loads, which are already heavy. Every day at a school site is a different day. It's like fingerprints. No two days are the same. I know because I was there. I worked there. And so just knowing that, having that institutional experience, having that institutional knowledge, I would
like to see a comprehensive plan or strategy on how the work is going to be divvied up. You know, I've been saying for years that we need to restructure this organization and the workflow. We need to look at things that we're doing that may be obsolete or unnecessary. Maybe the way that we're doing things could be done differently and more efficient. But I think that we need to look at that. It's just hard to conceive burdening a system that's already burden and still being able
to bring our best to our classrooms. So, this is is really challenging. There's there's so much internally that, you know, our community is does not experience, they're not aware of. And, I just would like to caution everybody in your passion because we all are
passionate about this. I mean, our children are our most precious commodities in this community. We all want what's best. All of us up here, everyone working in this district, we want what's best for all of the children, or else we would not be here. And we would not have to go we if we if we didn't have that love and that care and that concern, we definitely would be sitting in the seat having to go through these kinds of things that we have to go through.
And I also I also would like people to stop and look at what's happening, not just in Pasadena, up and down the state, across the country. There are so many school districts that are going through similar challenges that we're going through and have been. And every time you think that you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, something caves in to cause you to have to go back again.
It's like doing that cha cha, you know, up, up, back, back. That's how I feel. You know? We had COVID. We had the fires. You know, we have something that prevents us from doing something or to stray away from, what Leko said. We've never been able to stick to our, our fiscal stabilization plans. When do we drift from it? I don't know. I just know that this is where we are now.
I would like to see a plan for what the workload is gonna be about. I'm very, very concerned about the cuts in business, in the business office, very, because we don't need any issues with payroll. We don't need any issues with procurement. We don't need any issues with with accounts payable. Those are important areas in payroll. There's also something that goes on that people don't even know about.
It's an attendance audit for employees. And if that's not done and there's there's an issue, you know, any staff member could literally end up owing the district money. So and people aren't aware of that and that happens. So we need knowledgeable people. We need skilled people to remain on their jobs, not just in payroll, but I have to say payroll. I have to I have to advocate for payroll right now because I absolutely know
how important that department is to how things flow throughout this district. But it's it's it's it's just hard. It's hard. And, you know, one thing that, you know, I've been trying to do is, you know, just be encouraging to any staff person that talks to me about this matter. And even being elected officials, I mean, we we have to take it on the
chin from a lot of community members or parents. It's not easy. We were elected to serve. We have a job to do. And something like this, to some people sends a message that we don't know what we're doing. I honestly believe that this is a systemic problem. I am a true believer that unfunded mandates are a huge contributor to this problem
up and down the state. If those issues aren't addressed at the state and federal level, I don't see how school districts, public school systems are gonna pull themselves out of this. Public education is not funded adequately. It's just not. And you would think with the passage of EE and the measure j or I
funding that we get that that's all extra, and we should have enough to to help us where we wouldn't be in this condition. It's obviously not enough. It doesn't even come close. And, you know, I don't know. Just in the pit of my stomach, I I feel really sick right now. The other thing that I wanna say when it comes to our properties, the bottom
line about the property is that any funding generated from the sale of our properties go back to our facilities. It does not go to the general fund, which is where the problem is. That is why we have not been discussing selling property or school consolidations to this point. I'm not saying that the discussion does not need to happen. I agree that we need to have the discussion because, you know, we all need
to be educated. But the concern that I have is that when we speak, people are not hearing. And so a lot of what we say is repetitious. And I don't have a problem with that because I think it's important. I'm sorry. Bless you. Miss Bailey. I know I'm gonna start I'm gonna start cutting it, but I just I just have to say this because I really care about this district. I really care about our children.
I really care about our families. And, you know, I want you all to know that whatever decision that I make up here, it's only because the decision has to be made. It is not because I want to do this. So thank you. Thank you. So I have a question. I think I would like to hear from Hilda Ramirez on the this, motion that's before us to cut the central office and how that affects the district. Hi. I'm going to ask my colleague Beth Laden to come up here with me.
Before you, are central office reductions that include, Calearn and Communications. In Tier one, you have, one and a half positions, actually, two and a half positions, two from Communications, half of a TV producer director from Calearn. KLearn has a total of, two and a half, TV producers and a director. KLearn is, a channel that has what's called an educational broadband system license, which is
a rarity, of a license issued by the FCC. It allows us, because we keep programming on the air, to generate more than $2,000,000 in revenue a year, plus wire, hundreds of thousands of dollars in wireless services. KLearn, broadcasts board meetings like this and make sure that the that the public has a way of engaging with, the what is happening on on the school board, and, broadcast this meeting not only in English, but simulcast in Spanish via YouTube, ensuring that
it, our communities have equitable access. Removing with already the loss in tier one of the halftime producer, this leaves only two and a half people to ensure that the board meetings are broadcast regularly with only two staff members left, should should, the tier two go through. That means that if one is out, there we have one backup. If two are out, we have no backup. We have no way to put the, the board meetings on the air.
I have a question. How does how would this affect us receiving the money with the FCC license? It puts in jeopardy our license. We have to keep original programming on the air in order to maintain the license. Original programming ceases. We do not qualify for the license anymore. Remember, some of our original programming includes not only these board meetings, but things like the turkey tussle, which highlight our athletes. The five, the six graduation ceremonies that highlight our students.
The welcome back event. Any emergency, for instance, during the fire, we had the media briefing. That was we were able to push that out to our entire community, thanks to Kalern. So it is it is an essential thing, if, an essential way to communicate directly with our public while, generating revenue for this district. The second thing is, the website designer. The website, he's our our, webmaster, manages 24 of the districts, the 24 district websites,
including the front page, including the Board of Education, pages that have agendas and vital documents. Without that position, because of the complexity and the additional information that needs to be on our websites and compliance with ADA requirements, that that would basically cease because we would have to push it back to the school sites or to the departments to take care of this. The website our our webmaster is also an essential part of our emergency response team.
So during the fires, the, this position made sure that as we created content for those messages, that those went out to thousands and thousands of our of our, community members, local press and beyond. Is that all? Okay. Thank you. Do we have any other comments on this motion that's currently still on the floor with these amendments? Superintendent. Sorry. I keep complicating the vote, but I have to be clear in my direction. So, you mentioned the what versus the how.
So the what was to cut the athletic budget by 50%, which we did. So I'm not sure how you're going to manage the how or why you're going to manage the how. So I have a question on that too. So if in the motion, the Athletics is gonna be suspended to the next meeting or future meeting, I don't know where that leaves the Athletics right now, but where does it leave it in the future and who's doing the work on that because we are the the what people. I'm sorry, but that's not what I understood in the motion.
This is an excuse me if it's not perfect English. Promise the minutes are gonna look much better. This is just my ideas. So this is what I have, original motions with the three action items with the following changes. To amend the Central Office Board report to add all tiers. To amend the SPAC board report to exclude CTE packages A and B and delay what accredit packages to choose. We pass the packages as they were submitted to the SPAC and then choose at
a later date the options. So if I'm understanding correctly, we're still passing the credit packages? Mhmm. Okay. Yes. And that's not my question. My question is around what are you expecting to come back? Because we already gave you our recommendation and we already ran a process. So the board's gonna decide this now, Bau? That's my question. And based on what? So I'm reflecting on what was given to the SBAC committee was an or. And I know that SLT did make some changes, but they removed the or.
And I was under the impression that the oar was coming to the board. And so we're asking for the oar to come to the board. And And, I did explain that we presented the or to the principals. We didn't we said this is what was presented, and you don't have to do it with the or, and they came to a consensus and came up with a process and a decision. So that's the part of having trouble with understanding why you want to reverse that.
So what you're asking is to have the board come back with an action item to reduce sports at two schools, basically. I I wanna be really clear on what we're talking about here. So let me see what I exactly said. That the choice between the proportional cuts and sports at only two sites come to a future board meeting with a robust discussion and a board vote. I don't believe we've had, well, I'll just say that that was the motion. If I may clarify at the superintendent's budget committee, we did present the or options,
and we did state that that or option would not be made by the committee. It would be made by, joint meeting of the high school principals. Doctor Velasquez and then miss Fredericks. I mean, I'm I'm not gonna be coming in permanent to the sweep. I am perfectly satisfied with the option presented to, the board for the sports. But because it doesn't change the numerical calculations, I'm okay with having the conversation again
at a later time even though my current position is to Support the recommendation. So I find it as a way to entertain this process but with minimal changes to the decisions that we need to make today. Next. Okay. So My understanding is that there wasn't an agreement on the schools because it's hard
to say, well, no one no high school is gonna volunteer their school to be the school that doesn't offer sports. So, therefore, the easier kind of thing to accept is the option to cut across. But my understanding is that you're removing the pipeline of all these schools, be all the athletics of these schools. And that's the part I I really wanna understand.
I mean, we could go ahead with the proportional cuts, but I just you know, I wanna look at those options. We could still do it, but I want to actually see how is transportation affected? How is, what is the game schedule? What is the financial expenses? How many coaches? You know, I I've heard the comments, little bit of that here, but I really want to, have a representative from each high school to lay it out.
Okay. In a proportional cut situation, what do we get? In a, two school situation, what do we get? Because there's also the multiscool agreement which allows the all you know, the schools without sports to send their kids to, join the sports of the other school. It's happening in Glendale Unified. So I wanna know the offerings, and I want to be able to compare those things and really understand what we're getting into because I do not want to set
a path of basically gutting our athletic program because we're deleting the fresh stuff, and we're left with the current, you know, athletes. But the like I heard, which you know, how do we recruit for the new athletes when they know that there's no pipeline? And it's it's a vastly reduced program. So, again, I don't wanna get into it. I wanna hear it from the sites themselves so I know what we're what we're
choosing. Okay. Now I'm really confused because I thought that the four principals met and looked at a 50% reduction, and all schools would offer sports, just not the same sports. This is what I have been under the impression of. If I'm wrong, somebody correct me. But this seemed pretty set in stone, and it seemed really good to me. If we start getting into who's gonna offer what and how people are gonna get somewhere, seems to me that that is the how and not the what.
The what is they've made a decision and they're moving ahead with it. So can somebody clarify this for me? Because I think that confusion has come with the 50% and then based on the number of students in the school as opposed to the number of athletes. And I think things got into a really muddy area there, so I need somebody to clarify that for me. This process in the SBAC and what happened? Can somebody do that for me? Just in a really blunt way, like, what happened? Between what we stated at the committee to where we are now?
Issues on the SBAC, what was delivered, what was supposedly taken away, and then there's this other avenue that came in where all four principals talked at a 50% reduction, and now we're talking about emotion putting athletics out into the future. So this is really confusing, and I need this all clarified. So as it pertains to the the committee, we did present packages where there was a 25% cut, there's a 50% cut. The 50% cut since that's what currently lives in the recommendations, I'll just go from
there, are approximately remaining $1,000,000 left in the athletics budget split across four schools. There, when we brought sorry, going back even further. At the committee, athletics was the unique, package where we actually presented an or. So there was either we will cut all four schools 50% or we will consider another idea of moving sports to only two campuses. There are other ors, but those were the two that were presented to the committee
as ideas. When we also, at the time, told the committee that that did not have to be made by them, They were only voting on the dollar amount. We would then convene the high school principals to make the decision collectively on which or. When we convene the high school principals, they decided not to go with either or and instead came up with a different idea. The idea was proportional reductions based on student enrollment. That is what you see here. It does not change the overall total dollar amount for reductions in athletics as a
whole district wide, but it does adjust the dollar amounts at each school. If I may, if you could, project the athletic slide deck, I can show you with more specificity. And if you can go to slide seven. Oh, sorry. Okay. Thank you. Slide seven is, detailing out package b. So if you can see there, if we had gone with the first ore of 50% cut directly, Blair would have cut $202,032.
But with the proportional cut, they are now going to be cutting 267,270. PHS, just to go to the other, end, would have cut 270,214. Instead, they will be cutting 234,830. The just the change there is that Blair has a smaller student enrollment. PHS has the larger student enrollment. So we are basing that funding formula on total student enrollment as all students are
invited to participate in athletics. So this is what the principals agreed upon? It was a collective decision. I would not say it is any one person's deepest part of desire. Four principals made this decision. Because there are compromise happens when you're together. Okay. Doctor Velasquez. Alright. I've I've worked through the numbers to make a series of friendly amendment. My first version was, family engagement line 27 at 314,000.
It was account payrolls at $2.48. And so at this point, I think I am so we have a $693.68 balance over the proposal. And so if we take athletics b, which is $544.02 17, can we just drop the conversation? Yes. So that would be the friendly amendment, miss Kenny. I'm sorry. So you said So we would rescue line 16 or item 13.
I don't know how you wanna call athletics b, and that is five hundred forty four two seventeen. We do have, with the changes that we already made, $693.68. So we could afford to do it. Wait. Wait. I'm sorry. You said something about family engagement. You said something about accounting payroll, but now you're talking about sports. And so I started to write down those three I I narrated all of the different scenarios that I've been calculating here. The only one that you're proposing now?
The only one that I'm proposing is athletics in order to drop the whole conversation. So you're saying we would only go with athletics a? Exactly. And we drop the conversation about athletics. And so everybody would have to go back and rehab the whole conversation again. Well, it's it's the same. It's just that instead of eliminating 50% of their athletic expenditures, they would reduce it at 25 and adjust those percentages, but it's the basic same basic concept. So everyone would get more money for athletics, but we would use the same The same system.
The same calculations that they agreed upon. Yeah. The the principles. So we agreed on an ADA calculation. There would be more money to give all four high schools with the ADA calculation. And, I do understand what missus Kenny is saying about two schools that's been recommended by, Eva Luke when we had the county watching over us before, But we need a change management strategy for that. We can't move to that model this quickly. We need to prepare schools and athletes and have more conversations about that.
I think that the friendly amendment is a good suggestion. So the friendly amendment is a suggestion also taking into consideration that, again, I'm a proponent. That doesn't mean that this body agrees. I'm a proponent of starting a process of long term planning. So that 20% would take us through whatever the process is. So, I understand. And I thank you for that friendly amendment. You know, I wanna make clear that my concerns around this were understanding the bigger
ramifications between what we were doing. I think, board member Fredericks alluded to it a little bit when she said, you know, what happens when you starve each individual sports? We will stop drawing people to our district at all for sports if what we have is a watered down. So all I wanted was that further discussion to make sure we understood those ramifications and that when a sport was discontinued at school a, the people have to trans
students have to transfer to other schools. What would that effect have on our district? That would exacerbate, perhaps, movement and changes in enrollment at certain schools to their detriment. So that's those were some of my concerns I'd hoped would be fleshed out more in a discussion. We might have ended up with the same, resolution that the principals agreed on. I would accept your friendly amendment. I don't know if it's worth trying to call the question. I don't know that it's worth having a vote on that. Call the question because this has been But we are approaching running out of time.
Was it ever in your discussions of the principles, had it been I understand the ADA calculation, total number of students enrolled, but had there been a consideration of total number of student athletes participating at sites? Because it's a little different when you look at it through that lens. Yeah. Well, for Marshall, it's a little different. I think, you know, in terms of, the a compromise, nobody's happy. I see doctor Gray in the back. I wouldn't say any of them were cheering at the end of the meeting, but
they worked together as a team and they came up with a compromise that they accepted and then they brought their a D s back to work on the logistics later. So, you know, appreciate that they were able to make that compromise and start moving forward for what was best for kids and what they could do at their school. The school that is losing the most is gonna be Blair because Blair has a smaller number of students. We didn't talk about who's enrolled in athletics because that could change at any time. Right? I mean, one year, you might have more Marshall athletics and the next year, you
have more mere athletics depending on the sports interest in the kids that enroll. Most of our calculations in the district are done on ADA basis or the number of students at a school that qualify for a certain service. So I do think the calculation and compromise that they agreed to is fair. And I think the amendment that, is made to get more money into athletics will help a lot. I'm looking at doctor Gray in the back as the only principal I see here. So I'm Miss Talumian is here.
I didn't see you over there. Why don't you both come up here? Because you have very different perspectives. I am gonna call for the question. Yeah. If Mhmm. Can okay. So I I wanna make sure that She's calling for the question. That miss Fatima has has the actual amendment. Yeah. So can you can you she's called for the question. Can we repeat the amendment? We're gonna clarify this whole motion with the lightest friendly amendment. Okay. So based on the friendly amendment, again, this is what is going this is what
I have. Swift the three action items with the following changes. To amend central office board report to our all peers, to amend the SPA board report to exclude CTE packages a and b and to remove line 16 from SBAC, which is athletics b? Yes. And if anyone wants to know the dollar amount, we've now added $1.46, $1.50. So what is the dollar amount now total? Well, we we added to the $24.03
78 the $1.46 $1.50. The fastest calculated is the possibility. 24. 24525085. 245? 245. Apologies. 24525085. Point six, yes. It's a sweep of all three at twenty four. I think that the, the reason that the confusion is, Doctor. Kanal, is the sweep is for all four items, all three items and includes the contracts. And that's all three? No.
But That's all three and it doesn't add up to 30 because as we mentioned before, there's the other streams that aren't included. That's correct. Okay. That is correct. We still have to go to the next stream, correct? No. The other streams were informational only, so we will get to the 30 with the other streams they're not voting on. Is that correct? Yes. That's where I was confused. Okay. Alright. So she called for the question. We're gonna have a vote now. Student board member. Because this is being changed, I can't vote on it. So I have to explain. Fatima, all in favor.
Against? Can we, take a break? Are we okay? No. Alright. Let's go. Alright. We're moving on. Now I can't find my page. I can't find my page. Board discussion. No. We already did it. We already did it. So now we're on board discussion l, resolution two eight five one, miss Frederick's review of policy practices to improve long term fiscal recovery fiscal solvency. Sorry. I need recovery. Okay. Alright. We want a five people will need a five minute break.
They need it. Okay. Five minutes. Yeah. Tight. Five. Trustee Hawley, president Hawley, adding my item to the agenda, resolution on review of policy practices to improve long term fiscal solvency. This was a response to LACO's visit on October 9, and I was making sure that it was clear that we heard them, that we understood them, and that we were, taking meaningful action.
And, unfortunately, this is not an action item, But, you know, it's a basically a transcript of the presentation we received, the information on the slide deck. And the one thing I wanted to emphasize, the second portion is, the, demographic data that our district had done in 2023 because the theme was that our, that we
have declining enrollment like many districts, and our planning just needs to align with it. So the second part of this resolution was just putting in the data from our demographic analysis. And one of the things I want to emphasize that's in this resolution is that a majority of our schools actually have either maintained or increased enrollment, but there's just a handful of them that are, contributing to the declining enrollment.
So I'm just overall, most of our schools are doing well, and I wanted to highlight that. But at the very end is where the meat of this resolution is, which is to state the board's commitment to prioritizing the conditions for long term fiscal sustainability, which is basically the three themes that LACOE had pointed out, doing business differently, revenue enhancements, long term planning in alignment with actual enrollment data, and projected declining enrollment as recommended
by LACOE on October 9. And then I had asked, doctor Kanal, our human resource, chief of HR to review this, and he offered some revisions, which I incorporated. And, this is basically to say, let's have a one time audit, basically, a review of our policy and practices. And, but because this is not really an action item, this the intent was to
put this as part of this fiscal stabilization plan to show that the board was proactive. We weren't. What was this? It was stated as, you know, inaction is an action, so I wanted to show that we were actively, proactively doing things differently. So this was my response to their visit. And prior to them coming to us, I had talked to some administrators, and, they were saying, oh, Lago's coming, and it's they're gonna take us over.
And I was I was like, oh, it's fine. It's fine. It's not gonna happen. But once they were here, I got really scared, to be honest. And so this is my response. I wanted something concrete to offer to say that this board took it seriously and, that we were gonna take meaningful action. So thank you. Miss McKenzie. Trustee Fairhurst, please help me understand kind of what is the ultimate goal in terms of your resolution. Typically, if you're introducing a resolution, it's supposed to give direction to the superintendent to
take some action. And I'm not sure that I see kind of, like, the the concrete action that I hear you talking about reflected in this document. So I'm unclear about sort of what do you want to happen ultimately. Okay. So I'm gonna read the ending, which is the concrete action. The board of education directs the superintendent to take proactive measures towards fiscal solvency and prevention of reactive budget cuts by including in the fiscal stabilization plan submitted to LACOE by December 6 a one time review of focus areas mentioned in this resolution, and
a summary of findings provided to the board no later than May 2026 general board meeting in a confidential Friday communique, which includes one, which existing district policies slash practices already address any focus area, two, recommendations to follow-up on, designing new practices policies to address any focus area, and three, recommendation to evaluate other focus areas not mentioned in this resolution in order to align them with projected declining enrollment and further the long term fiscal sustainability of the district.
So it's basically taking October recommendations, looking at it, seeing opportunities to improve our policies and practices. This is just a one time review, to to check-in with HR and see, you know, were there opportunities to, improve our our practices so that they align with their recommendations? But I I feel like what is in your head and what's on paper don't quite match. And I'm looking to just sort of understand what direction we're giving the superintendent and
her staff to implement in the next two weeks, essentially, because our, FSP is gonna be due to legal first interim very, very soon. So if your December 6 deadline is coming up, what, kind of reporting document is gonna be produced in two weeks? So this is this was requested as an action item, but it's a discussion. So there's nothing that's gonna be going into the fiscal stabilization plan. This is just a discussion. So there won't be any action because because it's too late.
So we're talking in theory about this? The superintendent wants to My original intent was this for this to be an action, it was decided that it was gonna just be a discussion. So I do think that, doctor Kanell maybe can give us some procedures that are already in place that meet the objective in terms of audits and things that we're required to do, to clarify, you know, what reports we might be able to give you that meet the same objectives.
Thank you for the opportunity, Doctor. Blanco. One of the things I mentioned, in the discussion is, as everyone knows, we currently we've been talking a lot clearly about the first interim report. So I think the the current cycle of the budget adoption, first interim, second interim, the unaudited actuals, all of those contain information, that is mentioned. So, for example, whether it's position control, what are we doing, both on the business side side and on the HR side to ensure the fiscal solvency. So a lot of those reports, the backups that are provided to the board, I
think, help address, some of those. They include timelines that are already part of them that, obviously, that documentation needs to go to LACO. There's a lot of internal documents that are provided that are internal, that I think, can address, the concerns that that are mentioned there. The only concern that I had, previously mentioned was just simply in terms of, the implementation. Meaning, I think there's already some process and systems in place that address, some of the requests, so just in ensuring that the the redundancy.
And I did mention there's always an annual audit, obviously, that that also takes place that we're currently doing, that we're, in business. So those are the different elements that are currently in place in terms of a structure, and there are timelines, for a lot of the information in terms of staffing that has to be provided that is currently already as part of board policy. I'm not sure if this is coming back as an action. I just do wanna make sure that we change the 2526 enrollment to be thirteen two hundred because right now it says 14,000. Someone said this evening, and now I don't remember it was a public comment or
someone on the dais, that we should be talking about visioning, about a redesign process, about moving forward with the next step, saying as soon as next month. So when we ask about what are the proactive measures we could take towards fiscal solvency and prevention of reactive budget cuts, that's one. I do and then it talks about in order to align with our projected enrollment. And so I would, say that in my before I was on the board and
in my early years on the board, our demographer usually brought us a report and and did a presentation to the full board on our status of our enrollment and how many people were choosing something that wasn't their home school and how many people were coming from out of district, etcetera, etcetera. And I don't think we've had a a report to the board at a public meeting from a demographer in five years. I know that once the light trace has been on the board because our smart accountants So two years ago.
Alright. And mister Torlucci came? I think so. So I think we should have, I don't know what the status is of our demographer report for this year, based on our 20 '4, 25 I'm sorry, 25, 26 enrollment that just was as of the first Wednesday in October, if that's coming to us in time so that we can project enrollment for next year as we're doing staffing. But, certainly, I think I see that most boards get reports on enrollments and and
staffing, sometimes even on the same graph, to kind of keep an eye on what's happening and and where we're going, I would appreciate I think we need that for our long term planning. So I don't know. That's an example, I think, of something. But I I'm not clear if this is I think I would ask, our LACO friends if they know demographers that have been successful in predicting enrollment after a wildfire because that's where I think we have a disconnect, right, with what the normal prediction might be. And now we have this anomaly.
Can Davis give us that? Have we talked to them about that too? Well, I think it's not just I know that it's important to look at the prediction, although I think we all have to take that. It they're not going to be 100% accurate, and they don't always take all factors into consideration. I think they even say on their reports that they don't take new construction into consideration, which seems like you want to. I'm just saying we need to look at what the trend is. I will remind us that we've been adding a new grade, TK, for the last
five years four or five years. So while we decreased 500 students this year, we added 100 TK. So K-twelve, we actually decreased 600 students. So next year, we'll not have that. And so I don't know. I think it's important to reflect on where we've been, where we're going. Okay. So hold on, hold on. Ms. Bailey is next. I'd like to get back to the topic at hand, the resolution. I would like to ask my colleagues.
I would like to ask that when it comes to resolutions, something as important as a resolution, that we're careful not to create resolutions that mimic the work that is either underway or already being done. And when you go to staff, if staff points out that there's a redundancy or
that there's already something in place to address the the the context of the resolution of the proposed resolution, that you you believe them. That if you don't, you ask for the evidence, like maybe a job description or the board policy or protocols or ed code. I just think that this resolution is redundant.
I don't feel that it's necessary. Kim, I don't know if you're trying to say that we need to put your request in a resolution because I don't think that's necessary either. Certain things just require an ask, a consensus of the board. You know, I think we're putting way too much on resolutions right now that are redundant and not necessary or that mimic the work that's already being done. We've had our goal planning session for the coming year with the superintendent and everything
else that we bring to the table that is not a sense of urgency on the side of those goals that we've already established is extra. And now that's going to require some planning for that to be worked into the process. So if you've never managed an individual or a department or a group of people, however you wanna look at it before, you might not understand what I'm talking about.
You just might not get it. But we have got to do our due diligence. When you wanna bring something as important as a resolution, which turns into policy, makes sure that it's not about something that's already being done. Now I'm not the superintendent. And when I read the resolution, I was a little irritated because everything in the resolution appeared to me to be something that was either coming down the pipeline or
that the superintendent's already doing. So I would like just for us to just be careful. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it's just a waste of time, energy, effort, and we we're better than that. We're better than that. So thank you. Any other comments on this item for this board discussion? Yes, Ms. Mackenzie. Yes. I'm just curious. What are our next steps with this? Is this just conversation point? Or is there anything else? This is a board discussion, so I'm just asking if anybody has anything.
But this is basically it. Okay. All right. Thank you. We're going to move on to Board Committee reports. Oh, excuse me? What? So do we are we retaking this conversation in December or no? No. Okay. Yes, superintendent. But I think, LACOE is here, and they know the point that Mrs. Frederick was trying to make, right? That you understand this board is serious about what they needed to do. Okay. All right. That's great. Okay. We're going to move to M, Board Committee Reports. Does anybody have a Board Committee Report?
I don't. Maybe next month. Q, LACOE, exits, stage left. All right. So we're going to move on to consent agenda. I hear we have two polls. Could I pull Nancy three d and Nancy three ks? Motion to sweep the rest. Sorry. And then I have a couple questions. I have a couple a second and we have a question on your Question or comments on the sweep. Okay. So can we take, consensus for the sweep? Can I ask my questions first?
Yes. You may. Okay. On the consultants' reports, this is an observation. So we're paying for Reading Partners, one of these contracts, through Title I centralized services. And I think this is an important issue to point out because about half of our title one services dollars do not get distributed out to sites. And so sites aren't able to do very much with their school plans individually at
their sites. I think this will be more important in the future. We do, we are required to give them a sheet of paper that says this is the funds that are not coming to you at your school site, but we are providing centrally direct services to students. This would seem to be one of the ones that we're saying we're using that money for. This was not on the list that was provided to the site councils to go in their school plans that we approved last spring. This is the first one that I'll point that out on tonight's agenda. There's more than one. But there's about $1,000,000 of contracts that was held centrally, not distributed to sites.
Okay. I'm only gonna respond to that one. I see Doctor. Chan Hill came back, but I did speak to her and Doctor. Turley. And we discussed, that, Reading Partners was also one of the areas the labor partners asked us to keep in our consultation with them on contracts. And then we are we're gonna bring an amendment to you with the, list for all the school plans, an amendment to be more specific. Doctor Turley felt generally one of the statements that she made covered in the centralized
services covered it. But because you had brought up that maybe it needed to be more specific, we're gonna list each of those services more specifically. That would be wonderful because right now it says district CIPD leadership and staff who are providing direct hands on instructional services to the teachers and students at school sites will be paid out of that money. It doesn't talk about any contracted services whatsoever. Alright. Wonderful. I'll move on to the Kaiser grant. I just wanted to clarify. So it said that there are 11 new positions that we'll be funding with this
grant. And I asked the question, will these new positions be brought forward for board approval per board policy before we fly them? And the answer I got was these aren't new positions. They are not new positions? They're not new job descriptions? Not new job descriptions. But they're new positions. So they are positions that are actually replacing things that have been cut over the last four years. So the Kaiser Permanente grant, I've had the EIR grant, I've had four other grants. This is actually gonna build back up. They're new positions for 25, '26. We didn't approve them in the budget.
Correct. Because they're grant funded. Right. So they'll come to us on the new position form. Or it could have come with this as an attachment, but we'll follow that policy. Right? Should have been tonight. But I'm saying it'll say, here's the positions we're adding. Here's how much they cost. They're funded with this grant. Yeah. I have all that. Okay. So that'll come to us next time. I'm sorry. That's what I'm asking. Yes. Absolutely. Sorry. I thought you had it. That's why I maybe I misunderstood your question. Yeah. It didn't at least on the attachment, it just said it didn't have to have all that. That would be great. Absolutely. And, again, it doesn't always have to be a separate border report. I think it would be great if it's incorporated in the future and things.
Okay. Okay. Fantastic. On the paper contract, again, I wanted to clarify. I said, are we paying a $180 per hour for a tutor for three students? Because we're paying $30 per session, which is a half hour per student, and there's three students in the session. So I just wanted to clarify that I did my math correctly. So that's a 180 for that tutor to tutor. It's a 180 per hour. They're getting $90 an hour for those I mean, for a half hour for those three students. I would have to check the rate because are you saying that because the model
or the example given is the three students? Yes. That's what it said. So Paper Grow is specifically intended for intervention services. So we targeted students who need additional, closer to one to one. They are intentionally small. So, yes, it is still less than we pay for one to one tutoring. Okay. So 180 for three students for an hour. So that's just so you're saying that's 60 for an hour, so that's what we pay our teachers. So it's the same. We pay our teachers slightly more. Okay. Yes. I just wanted to clarify. I wanted to make sure I understood those things.
Thank you. Okay. I believe that that was answered in the question and answers that I read. Okay. Ms. Mackenzie? Find the support. The sublease want to abstain from N1A. Okay. Thank you. All right. Is that it? We're ready to vote on the So we're pulling that one as well. We're pulling that one as well. Okay. So now we're going to have a vote on She's abstaining. Oh, she's abstaining. She's abstaining. Fatima? Fatima, what do we do in a situation like this? She's going to abstain. From From one item, no, one item.
So you have to pull that item out, but we're doing a sweep. So we're doing a sweep. She's asked her questions. This is a sweep, and we're gonna pull and do it separate. Okay. I do two, but we'll do it. But she's saying in a minute, but that's what I'm saying. Alright. Okay. Let's vote on the sweep, board student board member. Alright. Hold on. Excuse me? The motion was a sweep with the three polls. It who was the first and the second on that? Yarma was second.
No. I'm sure. Okay. Student board member? Abstain. I can't go to miss. Okay. All in favor? Okay. That was unanimous. Okay. So now we're going to do n I what I? One a. It's one a. Okay. The one that she the yeah. That's the one we were talking. She's going to abstain. We're gonna vote. So student board member. Move approval. Motion. Second, Student Board Member. Abstain. Oh, okay. All in favor? And all abstain. Thank you. Okay. So I think this is do we have all right.
N3D? N3D? N3D? Yes. Oh, the other two poles? The other two poles. N3D, I'm sorry. I didn't I wasn't able to ask this question ahead of time because I just was looking at the purchase orders this morning. The Dale Scott one for the $150,000 I wasn't clear what services. It says bond services. Does that not come out of the bond? Because this is not election services anymore. I'm assuming it's related to the bond. Mr. Dunning, can you respond, please? No, I think this is for current year services. It's $150,000 to Dale Scott for I think it's just a blanket for the year,
but it's, it would be covering our issuances. And that doesn't come out of the bond itself? It comes out of general fund? We'll check. I I believe we can pay for that, but Oh, okay. To Canal knows to answer you with that? Yes, sir. General Credit. So we're checking. Alright. So right now, I think it was booked to general fund. Lovely. That's 1290 purchase order if you want it. Yeah. Write that down. Alright. So on purchase order 1559, which is for Panorama, this is in our board report I'm sorry, in our LCAP as a noncontributing item, but it is using S and
C funds. People may have remembered that in the past that I have said our LCAP cannot be an accurate reflection to the public of what we're spending supplemental and concentration funds on if it actually doesn't say what we're spending them on. So that's a reflection there. You're lucky Michael left. I can let them know. And then I again, I noticed that we had a purchase order for Muir and Marshall for Title I using Title I, again, centralized services for AP tests. So that can go on that list with the contracts that's going to be, updating
that form. And then my last question was on learning recovery block grants that are being used for special ed nonpublic agency. When I went back and looked at the and this was, dollars 500,000.0 for this year and 1,500,000 last year. When I went back and looked at the original learning block recovery grant plan, it said funds from that source would only be used for SPED for the 2324 school year. I don't know if there was a later amendment. I'm asking because these are the funds that we've been using to maintain our PLCs,
but it's run out, and we're gonna get rid of all of our PLCs, which means no arts no extra art and PE teachers at our elementaries next year, but we've now used this 2,000,000 of that grant for special ed. So I don't know if that was a decision that was communicated to the board. My other concern would be we're paying for current SPED expenses out of one time money. So next year, when this grant's gone, we will need additional unrestricted money to pay for SPED.
So those are my reflections on that one. But I don't know if there's an answer So you just want Doctor. Knoell and Doctor. Chen note of your reflections? Well, I'm not clear on this one if we did change the grant or we just decided to keep using it for SPED even though that wasn't the plan. But also, I am expressing a concern. There's no response to say we will have $500,000 of expenses that we're not expecting next year because we're using onetime money for an ongoing expense. Are you referring to the current Learning Recovery Block Grant? Well, I looked at last year.
I mean, it's the same grand. We just got an extra allocation this year. But there's a half a million this year being used for an NPA, and there was 1,500,000.0 used last year. Thank you for the information. We'll follow-up on that. Okay. Thank you. That's it. Those are my questions and comments. Okay. Can I get a motion and a second? Motion to approve. Second. Student board member. Abstain. All in favor? All in favor? Waiting for the NE against. Yeah. I can raise my hand. Yes. So we see it. One in favor states. Yes. Okay. One against.
Okay. Alright. The last item, n k three, is the college access plan contract. Sometimes we have these, and they come to us with split funding with two or three funding sources. I'm just asking that we can actually have the dollar amount shown as split into those. I know that sometimes it actually comes that way, but this one doesn't. So I would wouldn't mind amending it to have ready, Fatima? Yes. 170,142 coming out of Title I.
Title I. And then 36,459 coming out of each of the two CSI numbers that are there on that. And with that but I will also mention that this is one of the contracts that's coming out of centralized services that was not on the form. But I will move approval. Second. Abstain? All in favor? No public comment? Board requests? Any board requests? Are there any board requests? Okay. Future agenda items. Future agenda items, do we have any? We're on queue.
Future agenda items. Okay. Adjournment, we're going. Thank you. Bye. And that's a wrap for you.