government television and francisco unified school district for FEBRUARY 11th 2025 is now called order at 5:01 P.M. MR. Steel could you take a roll call attendance please? thank you, vice PRESIDENT. Commissioner alexander here. Commissioner fisher here. MR. Gupta here. Commissioner. Vice PRESIDENT Huling here with ray here. MR. Rice board here. PRESIDENT Kim thank you. PRESIDENT Kim has an excused absence for a family emergency correct? Noted. There are two items under section a general agenda of section eight general information of the agenda that were clerical errors. Number three conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation and number eight general information. I'm removing these from the agenda. Child care will be provided from 6 P.M. To 9 P.M. For children ages 3 to 10. The child care is just across the hall in the enrollment
center here on the first floor at this time before the board goes into closed session I call for any speakers to the closed session items listed in the agenda. There will be a total of five minutes for speakers. we do have a speaker I can go grab him right now. thank you very much. Good evening commissioners. my name is josh davidson. I am the chef for the school district and also the acting chief steward for seiu local 10 to 1 here in the school district. And I'm here tonight to speak about item six on your closed session agenda, your conference with labor negotiators. Our last meeting with the district's negotiating team was on JANUARY 23rd. On that day we made it we scheduled another bargaining date for JANUARY 29th which the district canceled telling us they had not had time to review our proposals. We asked for new dates on FEBRUARY 3rd and on FEBRUARY
10th yesterday and both times they told us they still have not had time to review our proposals. The proposals aren't complicated so I'm hoping that you can encourage them when they come before you tonight. Well, I'm hoping first of all that when they come before you tonight they'll have a different story for you. Right. That would be the ideal outcome that they've actually done their homework at this point. But if they haven't I hope that you will encourage them to do so. We'd really like to get this wrapped up. We don't want to be in reopening negotiations all the way until the successor contract negotiations start. We expect to sunshine that in MARCH and we really like we're ops people 10 to 1. We want to spend the next couple of months helping our members in our departments sort of navigate the new budget and staffing reality that's coming right? We don't want to like get all this stuff mashed up together because that's a great way to get everybody frustrated and
not working to like get us where we need to go. So I just have come to ask you please encourage your labor relations and human resources and budget folks to do their homework and come back to us with dates as soon as possible. Thanks very much. That concludes in-person public comment for closed session. Thank you. We should is there any remote public comment for our virtual participants if you care to give a public comment on any of the closed session items please raise your hand. Seeing no hands raised. please note the board will take a roll call vote on the recommended student expulsions when we reconvene to open session. I now recess this meeting at 5:05 P.M. S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television S.F. Gov tv san francisco
government television S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television approval of a stipulated expulsion agreement for one high school student matter number 2024-202520-20 for the remainder of the spring 2025 semester the student replaced at civic center during the expulsion period. Can I have a second? all right. Second roll call, MR. Steel. Thank you. PRESIDENT Kim. Commissioner alexander? Yes. Commissioner fischer. Yes, MR. Gupta. Yes. Commissioner healey. Vice PRESIDENT Healey. Yes. Commissioner ray. Yes. Commissioner wise one word. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim. Yes. Seven eyes. Thank you. I move approval of the stipulated expulsion agreement for one high school student.
Matter number 2024-2025-211 calendar year from the date of approval for the expulsion. The student will be placed at civic center during the expulsion period. Can I have a second? Second roll call, MR. Steel. Thank you, MR. Alexander. Yes. Commissioner fischer. Yes. Commissioner gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Healey. Yes. MR. Ray. Yes. MR. Weissbourd. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim. Yes. so I move approval of a stipulated expulsion agreement for one middle school student matter number 2024-2025-22 for one calendar year from the date of approval of the expulsion. During the suspended expulsion period, student will attend a comprehensive middle school from two school options provided by s of us. Can I have a second? second. We'll call MR. Steele. Thank you. MR. Alexander? Yes, MR. Fisher. Yes, MR. Gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Healey. Yes. MR. Ray. Yes. MR. Wiseman.
What? Yes. PRESIDENT Kim. Yes. In three matters of anticipated litigation the board by a vote of seven eyes. And sorry, I will repeat that and three matters of anticipated litigation the board by a vote of seven eyes gives direction to the general counsel in one matter of public employee discipline dismissal release the board by a vote of seven eyes approved a proposed resignation and that is not actually the case. Never mind in accordance with education code 44954 the board took action in closed session to issue notices to 258 temporary effected employees that they will be released at the conclusion of the 2425 school year. The board recognized and appreciates the dedication and contributions of these educators during their time with the district. we thank them for their service to our students and community. The motion to approve the
release of and their motion to approve the release was approved by a vote of six. Six eyes and one no with commissioner fisher voting no. Pursuant to education code 44929. 21b the board took action to non reelect 79 probationary certificated employees effective at the conclusion of the 2425 school year. The affected employees will receive written notice of the board's decision in accordance with legal requirements. The motion to approve the non reelection of certificated employees was approved by a vote of six one with commissioner fisher voting no. That concludes our read out from closed session. And I move to item d one land acknowledgment we the san francisco board of education acknowledge that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the ramah to 70 who are the original inhabitants of
the san francisco peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions the material and they have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place as well as for all people who reside in their traditional territory. As guests we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the armitage community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. I move to item two approval of board minutes regular meetings of JANUARY 14th 2025 and monitoring workshop of JANUARY 28th 2025. MAY I have a motion and a second from a second? any changes to uh any changes to the board minutes? Seeing none. Roll call vote MR. Steele. Thank you. On the minutes a student delegate montgomery yes. Student delegate lamb. Yes. Commissioner alexander. Yes. Commissioner fischer. Yes.
MR. Gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling. Yes. Commissioner ray. Yes. Commissioner wise reward. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim. Yes. thank you. Thank you and welcome to today's meeting the security board of education follows a student outcomes focused governance model based on community input. The board has adopted our vision values, goals and guardrails in order to increase the portion of board meeting time we spend in outcomes every other regular meeting is a monitoring workshop. This model also calls on the board to empower the superintendent superintendent to take full ownership of the strategies used to reach those goals within the guardrails set by the board. As we implement this new governance framework the board will continue to adopt new systems routines and policies that improve student outcomes. We encourage the public to follow this work on our website as a few ways to use site governance as we commit to finding new and improved ways to more meaningful engage with
staff, students and families. With that I will turn it to DR. Sue for a superintendent's report. thank you. PRESIDENT Kim. So I just want to share that well, first of all I want to wish everyone a happy lunar new year as well as a happy black history month. And it's great to see so many people in the audience today. Next slide please. As a school district we celebrate all diversity and we recognize the importance, relevance and origins of our black history month as well as our lunar new year. We aim to lift up the rich history of of all of our communities particularly in this month our african-american students and families and the brilliance of our black voices and black excellence. I will say that it's not just in FEBRUARY that we celebrate black excellence. We should be doing it all year
long. However, throughout this month our schools are holding a number of wonderful events that i encourage members of our commission to join as well as members of our community. Things like field trips, readings, curriculum integration that are wonderful teachers are doing they're doing art projects and lots of different types of assemblies and cultural performances. So please be sure to check out our website for more information on our black history month celebrations and other resources. I also want to take the opportunity to reiterate san francisco unified school district's commitment to protecting and defending the rights of our immigrant students, families and staff. We know that our immigrant families and students are sensitive to a lot of things that's happening in our world right now and I want to reassure families that we are providing lots of trainings and lots of information to all of
our site leaders so that they are prepared for any potential law enforcement visits particularly from immigration officials. San francisco schools will remain a safe haven for students regardless of immigration status despite any uncertainty or challenges that MAY arise. We as usd have policies in place to protect the rights of our students, families and staff as a sanctuary a school district as the usd holds every young person's constitutional right to feel safe and supported and welcomed in their school and we strive to expand the scope of sanctuary to all of our families in our community. Please go to our website and learn more about all of the different resources and policies that we have around immigration policies and services that families can
access. I also want to say that S.F. Justice board policy and california's state law affirms the rights of our students and staff to learn and grow in welcoming and inclusive atmosphere. This includes our lgbtq plus students and educators and staff and families leaning into and celebrating our diversity helps all of our students to feel seen heard and respected. This includes our district's transgender students and all of our lgbtq plus students and families and we continue to very much celebrate all of that adversity in our schools as we have for the last three decades. S.F. Usd will observe pride in APRIL which will feature our second annual superintendents
rainbow read aloud to promote literacy and highlight stories of resilience and acceptance. We are also excited to share that we have successfully launched the and transgender parent advisory council that I had the opportunity to be to to open up the inaugural meeting several months ago. I'm so excited for the work of this parent advisory council. I'm excited to also announce that we have launched the 2025 superintendents 21st century scholarship application. the scholarship will be granted to six graduating S.F. Usd seniors who who exemplify a particular strength in one or more of the characteristics of S.F.. Ucsd's graduate profile winners will each receive a $3,000 scholarship and will be honored at an event in MAY. Last week was national school
council leave week FEBRUARY 3rd to the seventh and I want to take this opportunity to thank our amazing school counselors who play such an important role in the lives of our students. National school counseling week is a special time to highlight the tremendous impact that school counselors can have in helping students achieve their school success but also mental well-being. This year's theme was school counseling helping students thrive. I want to acknowledge that we have plans. Oops. I want to acknowledge that as we are planning for school staffing next year we recognize the many contributions our school counselors have in supporting our students. And as I said earlier, happy lunar new year to everyone. Hopefully this year will bring you lots of prosperity, good health and for our students great academic success. many schools throughout our district are celebrating lunar new year with parades, tee
houses, teahouse ceremonies and other colorful events as they welcome in the year of the snake. On friday I had the opportunity to join the tea house event at sutro and had a wonderful time visiting with our beautiful students and a number of our other schools. Our marching in the chinese new year parade this coming saturday FEBRUARY 15th. So please come out and join our students. Teachers I know many commissioners and myself will be there at the parade and the highlight the highlight of my week is to visit schools and to be in community with our students, our educators and our families. So recently I had the opportunity to join commissioner wiseman ward at claritin elementary school where there are japanese bilingual bicultural programs celebrated fred korematsu day of of civic liberties and the constitution. There was a school assembly in the students in the fourth grade did a play that talked about fred korematsu, his life
and the work that he did to support our japanese residents. And then this past sunday, vice PRESIDENT Huling and I had the pleasure of experiencing the amazing james lake middle school students performance of the spongebob musical. We were extremely blown away with their artistic abilities. Definitely speaks to once again our amazing educators and the power and beauty of the art. Thank you to our families who applied on time. For our enrollment that ended on JANUARY 31st for next school year. I just want to let you all know that families who applied on time will receive their school assignment by mid-MARCH. One school assignments for on time applicants are shared in MARCH. Applicants who did not receive their first choice will automatically get on the waitlist and will be assigned a
second choice and that will continue for five rounds and if you are on the waitlist please go on our website to learn more about what you can do. and as a reminder schools and office will be closed next monday for presidents day. And I want to end my remarks by showing some recent joyful moments that I had at our school. This is at sutro. I just want to recognize that we are facing really challenging times in our district. But at the heart of all all of our decisions particularly mine and our team within central office we have to keep our children, our students, our families at the core. And and of course when we do that I truly believe that we will be able to land at a budget that prioritizes our student outcomes and support
our staff in the process. So I'm going to show this little clip here. Here's some recent bright spots in S.F. Ucd students like claire lilienthal elementary school celebrated the start of lunar new year with traditional korean performances over at jean parker elementary school. They also celebrated lunar new year with a lion dance performance and over at alvarado elementary school they honored the year of the snake for lunar new year by hosting a parade over in the bayview our bayview elementary schools including drew college prep elementary school hosted the 40th anniversary of the african-american read in for black history month also to celebrate black history month over at willie brown middle school, the moldova dance group taught students step dance our high school students at root the sahwa had their annual community service day here students are helping clean up corona heights park at sutro elementary school. They hosted their annual lunar new year tea house. and over at clairton elementary school they honored fred korematsu day with a play
that they've been doing for over ten years as well as hearing from fred's daughter DR. Karen korematsu and having a q&a with the lawyer who led fred's case and the san francisco giants and giants community fund hosted 150 cte pathway students from seven high schools for their first ever high school enrichment day where they learned about careers in sports off the playing field. Last but not least, students at carver elementary school were featured on nbc bay area. good morning. My name is MR. Mills and I teach first grade here at carver elementary school. And we have a message for you. and that concludes my report . thank you. Thank you very much. I will now turn it to our student delegates report. Uh, student delegates langston and student delegate lee. thank you. Hello, everyone. Um, today we have a pretty short report but some really important news and we were able
to officially launch our sase survey out to all of the high schools. We were really happy to partner with MR. Goldwasser to help send it out to all the admins of every security high school and they have all created plans on how they're going to distribute the survey. And now we are getting answers in and if you've gotten your answer in a fabulous but there's still three more days of the window. And every school has a plan to do it themselves. So if you haven't done it yet then you will in the next couple days if you go to ask us d high school. Um and we're going to start reviewing those responses after FEBRUARY 14th and the school with the highest response rate we will shout out here at one of our student delegate reports. um next moving on to um again reiterating our need for the sc to have a full time advisor. We are transitioning into committees and certainly summit planning and that is really hampered without having a full time staff position to be there to help coordinate a lot of those things we do to reach out
to city organizations and further organizations that then help us create our youth summit make it so great. And those are some of the needs that we are not having without having as sc advisor. yes and adding on to langston we want to be recognized as student leaders who want to create change in our communities and this is only possible if we have an advisor who could devote all of their time to the student advisory council and understand our needs without any mishaps. But on a more positive note rise for rights our annual youth summit that occurs every year towards the end of the school year will be occurring on APRIL 11th and we are currently preparing a presentation for our youth summit and we plan on having topics presented from education, finance, environmental justice, leadership and we officially have two organizations one is nami which is led by our cabinet treasurer and persistent planet which is led by our current vice PRESIDENT
Of the sec. And we plan on also inviting other san francisco youth, nonprofits and organizations to do some tabling as a way to you know, get students more opportunities outside the classroom and also more experience. And we are excited for this event and to conjugate many leaders across the district and we hope to get some more invitations from other high schools. that concludes our daily report. Thank you. Thank you. Student delegate sorry, apologies. I have a student out there, liam for your name mixed up there. Moving to item e public comments to line with our effective governance model public comment will last for one hour or until 8 P.M. Whichever is earlier. We aim to respect staff, family and community time by beginning board business no later than 8 P.M.. Our hope is to conduct board business in an effective, efficient and accessible manner
during reasonable hours. Each participant MAY speak for up to one minute. Staff will think the participant at the one minute mark at one minute and five seconds. I've asked MR. Steele and mysterious to please turn off the mic and transition to the next speaker. I ask members of the public to please respect that one minute so that we can hear from as many speakers as possible. I encourage speakers who are speaking on the same topic to collaborate and combine their comments that the board can hear from all viewpoints during our limited time. Please also note that the board accepts written public comments via email to board officer sfp with edu you'll hear first from students in person on agenda items then general public in person on agenda items followed by students in person on non agenda items and then general public in person on non agenda items. Regardless of whether in-person public comment is complete we
will see 15 minutes for remote public comment taking commenters in the same order as in person if any time remains we will return to in-person public comment. As a reminder board rules in california law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during the public comment time if appropriate the superintendent will ask that staff follow up with speakers. MR. Steel thank you. So I do have speaker cards for three students so when I call your name you can come up with this podium here and you have one minute each. Zurich woman mansoor griffin lawless let's go. hendricks seaver mm hmm. One minute I got my question. good evening. School board members. My name is eric mansour and I am a third grader at shared an elementary school. I have gone there since first grade. I want to talk to you about a few things that are important to me. First, I don't think split
classes are good because sometimes I have to teach the younger kids and I can't focus on what I have to learn. It is not my job to do that. Secondly, I want my younger sister greece to be able to go to sheridan. It would be easier for my mom if she only had to drop us off at one school. I also want her to come here because I know this is a good place for kids to learn and I want her to get to know my friend the little sister so they say play together. Thank you for your time. thank you. Good evening. My name is hendricks. Why are we doing split? I was in a split class. Second and third grade and I didn't know what was going on. It's not fair for the second
graders because they don't have enough education to keep up with the third grader. It's also not fair to the third graders because they have to slow down for the second graders. It's also not fair for the teacher because they have to teach two classes at the same time. If you're doing so many splits are you're trying to close down the school. The schools don't. Do I not manage you? tell me. Thank you. as far as we know, yeah. hello. My name is griffin. she did not close a kindergarten classroom because the teachers wouldn't have too many students and we would not be able to learn what we need to know. I don't want to slow down my reading and math. Please do the right thing. So those are other student
speaker cards I got. Are there any other students here that didn't indicate they were students on their card? All right. Okay. We can move on to PRESIDENT Kim. So most of these of the cards I want to consider not agenda items. I'm in there speaking to not a specific agenda item but a specific topic. So we do not have any specific agenda item cards but we can move on to the meat of the public comment which are not agenda for release. Thank you. Great. Thank you. I assume to call the first five people up please line up at the podium and again you have one minute each and and forgive me if I mispronounced names roshi zarif, alyssa arnaud, holly combs, ronnell garibaldi and john varga. and when ready to go. Yeah. Good evening. Good evening. My name is four chic three parent in mckinley elementary
school. I'm here to speak as one of the over 55,000 families in san francisco who cherish the hard work that our teachers and staff put in every day. Budget cuts that are being proposed are needed, no question. But do we truly know the impact as we on a national school national school counseling week and recognize they are critical for our students well-being? What happens when dedicated social workers like miscarry tanabe and mckinley elementary are potentially eliminated? The plan as it is presented to us does not seem to keep the lights on. It keeps it dim for our children's future. thank you. good evening. I'm melissa arnaud at the t k teacher at cobb elementary and a bargaining team member. The district's proposed combination classes not only violate the teacher contract but directly harm our students and families. Article 9.3.2.1 caps 4 or 5 combos at 28 students. Yet the proposal sets the cap at 32 forcing us to move nine upper elementary students. Similarly the k one combo would leave 13 of our students
without a place at cobb after the enrollment office assured our current t k families they would have a spot. Research has shown that combination classes often disadvantage younger and struggling students. These demonstrate that students in combo classes typically perform worse academically due to divided teacher attention and reduce grade specific instruction. Who decides which families must leave and how does this align with the district's stated equity goals? We should be protecting our students, not forcing them out. Please keep your hands off our kids. they deserve better. Thank you. good evening. I'm an educator at DR. William l cobb elementary school. I'm speaking against the plan to create combination classes at our school. This plan is a failure that will harm the students. To our new superintendent you must listen to those working at school sites. Top down decision making from someone without education experience does not make sense and does not match your reputation as a thoughtful city
leader. The combination class proposal will directly harm our students. Combination classes have consistently failed at cobb in the past leading to lower academic achievement reduced social emotional growth and greater inequities for our most vulnerable students. Single grade classes have transformed learning at cobb allowing teachers to specialize in their respective grade levels. Focus on the curriculum, the new curriculum and significantly improve outcomes. The proposed k one combo would place seven students with ieps in a class of 22. The 4 or 5 combo would place 11 students with ieps in a class of 37. This goes against the district's stated equity goals. thank you. Thank you. do I just. Good evening. I am a teacher at DR. William l cobb elementary, a legacy school where generations of families have built a thriving community. the district's plan to combine
classes will shrink our enrollment forced families to leave and phase out cobb despite meeting criteria to remain open. cobb serves 78% children of color. 72%. Free lunch eligible families 10% experiencing homelessness and 30% in special education. These families deserve stability, not displacement. Closing classrooms at cobb is a deliberate move toward closure. Targeting one of the district's most vulnerable yet resilient communities cobb matters. We must continue to allow it to grow and serve equitably. thank you. good evening. My name is john varga and it's my privilege to be speaking with you this evening on behalf of the dedicated members of ifp local 21, the san francisco unified school district employees in the professional and technical bargaining unit truly the backbone of student attendance, teacher support
achievement assessments and the district's department of technology. Our members are essential to S.F. Ucsd's success ensuring classrooms run smoothly and student learning remains uninterrupted. Whether working behind the scenes or on the front lines, our members provide and maintain the technology that students and teachers rely on daily. When students need computers for instruction, homework or testing our members ensure they are available and functioning when connectivity fault fails. When devices breaks or teachers face tech issues or are locked out of district online portals, they step in immediately because every moment lost to a malfunction is a moment lost to learning without their expertise. Standardized testing now fully online would be impacted. Thank you. Our members are not just important to the essential daily functions inside the classroom. They're vital to the district's success. think I'm going to call the next group can come. line up at the podium, please.
Marcel pope. Joslyn russell. Brandi, nancy sievers and naomi perlman. one minute each. Okay. I am a teacher, an elementary school. And I must tell you about what is happening with us. This district has decided to remove a teacher from our site and force us to have a kindergarten first grade classroom combo. This act will prevent us from providing the education that our students deserve. We are one of the most ethnic ethnically diverse sites in san francisco and 75% of our families are social economically disadvantaged. Our families come to us to find community where we are intimately feels value and it. Families who are going through traumatic times in their lives come to us and we do all do our best to help their children with love, consistency, care and education to help them become productive members of
our community. thank you. good evening. My name is brandi lawless. I'm an educator at usf and that sheridan kindergartner that you saw reading the speech that he wrote is my son during class. thank you. During class he has to read on his own while the other students learn phonics. he reads at a second grade level imagine him in ak1 combo class ak1 combo class is not student centered it's unfair to his teacher who would have to do differential learning for two grade levels while implementing a new language arts curriculum and a new math curriculum. And it's unfair to that little boy who just wants to learn. good evening. My name is nancy sievers and I'm the sheridan kindergarten teacher that would be displaced if the k one class would happen. My top priority is creating a strong foundation for our youngest learners because we
understand that literacy is important, right? In order for me to do my job I need to be able to sit with them one on one and you know I'm never going to read this sit with them one on one, go over the phonics rules that they need to do. But also every child needs a personalized learning environment for them. And in order to do that I can't be splitting my mind from k to first grade. Why? Because they learn differently . How do I know that? Because I've taught kinder and first grade. So yes, I could do it. But you're ripping me away from a community that doesn't have any spanish speaking teachers. I'm the only one that speaks spanish as a teacher at sheridan. So if you want more latinos to know understand san francisco and why it's important to learn how to read at an early age is me si subway. thank you. hi, I'm naomi.
I'm a speech pathologist with san francisco unified school district for the past 19 years. A parent of two kids who have attended S.F. U.S. From pre-k through high school. I just want you to imagine on the first day ak1 split at the end of one end of the student spectrum you have a four year old who's never been in school and at the other end a seven year old with potentially three or more years of school experience under their belt. You've got students with a range of school readiness, academic and emotional regulation skills. Four and five year olds will be falling apart by 11 A.M.. Six and seven year olds will be excited to start building on their reading, writing and math skills. The teacher will be doing their best at implementing two different curriculums as well as supporting their modifications to help the students succeed academically and emotionally struggling but doing their best. Support staff who might help are probably nonexistent because of the proposed budget cuts. Where does this leave our kids with special education needs?
How is a teacher alone in a k one split going to be able to provide what all of the students need to access a classroom with this range? this is not fair to our students. Thank you. please do not ask sheridan to implement anything that does not support. thank you that your time? better call the next five speakers. Please come to the podium. Bonnie markovich carol sudbury . Philip von furstenberg. Adriana blanco. Darcy chin blackburn. How do you go whenever you're ready. good evening. My name is bonnie markovic and I've been teaching kindergarten at sheridan for ten years. At my first sheridan meet and greet I talked to a mix of families. Many were excited to be back for another year, but many also warned me that their children were waitlisted at more popular schools in the district. Sure enough of my 22 students originally only about 12 stayed beyond the ten day count. then my roster filled in with students in the neighborhood who had missed enrollment or recently moved in.
Two were newly in foster care and another was staying temporarily in a nearby shelter. Over the years my AUGUST roster has grown considerably more stable with local families. Next year new automatic enrollment policy will result in us having at least 20 k and pre-k students staying at sheridan. So I fail to see the logic in capping our enrollment at 33. What a shame it would be to have to turn away families in the neighborhood. As an active ten year veteran at sf usd, I urge you to consider waiting for all student assignment policies to go into effect before intentionally reducing our numbers. It's in the best interest of the students and families we claim to serve. good evening. I'm carol savery from sheridan and I'm here to address what a child's literacy learning experience would look like over their four years at our school. If we are required to have ak1 combo class we currently have a23 split classroom and 245 split classrooms.
The new literacy curriculum implementation requires split classrooms alternate the grade level curriculum taught each year so students in those classes will not have to repeat curriculum. This has already proven a challenge with our current split classrooms where a third grade student has second grade curriculum and then will enter a 4 or 5 split classroom with fifth grade curriculum skipping two years of curriculum as they move to the next grade. If we had ak1 split this is what a child's literacy learning experience could look like. Child enters kindergarten when the first grade curriculum is being taught that year in ak1 split they remain in that classroom only to have kindergarten instruction the following year. Moving on to the two three classroom they could have third grade instruction and second grade and then second grade instruction in third grade. And so on through fourth and fifth. Not a good experience for a child's learning.
thank you. good evening, school board members. good evening, school board members. My name is phillip on first america my licensed clinical social worker. I've spent the last 11 years at sheridan elementary school and eight years with the district. The district has been systematically steering families away from our school by capping the enrollment of kindergarten in the 2024 school year which was entirely their decision and lacked any communication with the school by paying for a bus to take students out of the neighborhood to another part of the city and making the school less attractive with split classes. We know epic capped our kinder classes this year because a parent with an older child applied here and was told there wasn't enough space when in fact there was since 1910 shared in the story of multiple generations of family in the community. I say it is located in the heart of the city with the highest percentage of sfd sd students and if you close us
down the other sites in our area will not have enough space to accommodate us. You'll be displacing families from the community and forcing them to drive further away. Board members the threat of closure has occurred at our site three out of five times in the last few years. I welcome you to leave her duties and come talk with our parents, students and staff to see what we do. thank you. good evening. I'm speaking for a parent, uh, abby nichols. My name is abby nichols. I am the mother of two current kindergartners shared in elementary their second year at the school. They have had the joy and opportunity to grow their independence and social circles by being placed in separate kindergarten classes this year. And I would want incoming twin families to be provided the same opportunity option and opportunity. Having said that, I am strongly opposed to courtenay kindergarten class and having a mixed gender and first grade class especially given the caliber of teacher being asked to let go to look over a dedicated bilingual educator in a school with a large
population of native spanish speakers is shortsighted at the least. Not only should the district consider infusing resources into sheridan rather than diminishing them but a combination class at that level of development requires a highly skilled educator to hold these two separate educational spaces at the same time. I do not believe that a combination kinder and first grade will support the diverse needs of families. thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. my name is darcy chan blackburn. I teach at sheridan elementary as well. You've heard our students and our staff and our families. what's going on at our site is a shame. It is horrible. You are trying to shut us down and we serve the community. We have families that come to us who say for the first time they feel like they're at home and that they are welcome and accepted as they are. And you are doing things to make us undesirable.
You are busing students away from our neighborhood and you are capping our kindergarten classes. We serve the families that come to us who aren't able to enroll on time because of whatever their lives have for them. But we take them and we bring them where they need to be. We can't do that if you make us all split grade level classes. Now I have a few more parent letters which were unable to come so I will give those to you. And along with the teachers signatures we have our own signatures to share. thank you. You can bring that to me. I will give this to thursday after I don't recall the next group up. Please come to the podium. Joyce because of sure. Paige clark. Steve zelizer. Roberto guzman rivera. Go ahead.
Whenever you're ready. So good evening. I'm jose classes. I've lived here for over 30 years as a taxpayer and voter and community ally of the schools and all my friends kids who go to the public schools or teach in the schools. Please unfreeze the grant funded positions for the community schools fund. Use the money as intended by us the voters who voted for this proposition a few years ago. This was intended to provide consistent, stable multi-year funding to improve students achievement. These funds are to pay people who work with students and families at school sites. And these are consistent people people hired by sfo usd. We taxpayers did not okay these funds to buy tons of equipment or pay outside contractors with staff who come and go. Our children deserve stability. These grants have nothing to do with the school budget deficit. Holding back these grants does nothing to close that deficit. Again, please use these money
as we the san franciscan voters intended and freeze the positions to do otherwise the stagnation. thank you. hi, I'm paige clark, a kindergarten teacher at aliquot elementary. I'm here to ask you to protect funding for out of classroom site based positions such as family liaisons and reading specialists known as artists. These positions are a necessary part of reaching our third grade literacy goals to protect funding for these positions. You will need to make cuts away from sites so you can send as much money per pupil as possible. You will need to unfreeze the grant funded positions. You will also need to continue to allow peatos to pay for positions each site's even sites able to raise money for positions often have significant numbers of students who receive free and reduced lunch. Any position the pto pays for benefits all students who need that support regardless of income. We need to protect all funding
sources site based grant and pto so all of our students have the schools they deserve. thank you. I'm gonna share our tip that you quote elementary protect site grant and pto funding for artists. The work I and other artists do is integral to meeting S.F. Usd vision mission and goals. We are not even close to meeting the goal of 70% of third graders reading at grade level. Without artists we won't meet that goal already from last year to this possibly half of the art tip positions were eliminated. Without these different funds there will be no artists next year. Many first graders I worked with last year are now reading at grade level. First graders I'm working with now are making huge strides in their reading. Some students need extra targeted small group instruction to thrive. If we are serious about providing each and every student equitable support required to thrive in the 21st century then we must protect
funding for artists. I'm steve zellner with the work week and united front committee for labor party. I think what you voted to do here is a wrecking operation to destroy the public schools in san francisco. That's really what's going on here. this is you. This is also union busting and it's going on throughout the state. It's going in oakland. It's going on in los angeles. I think what we have to do is make the billionaires pay for public education. how about letting them off and hiring more teachers than any other any billionaires in san francisco? You're talking about laying off teachers, putting the kids in san francisco. We need a political charter. Abandoned by the democratic mayor in new york carrying out her measures. Tony thurmond, gavin newsom, where are they? They're implementing the budget cuts and the austerity that billions of dollars in california the wealthiest people in the world and we're going after the teachers and students.
It's outrageous. it has to stop. We need a general strike to shut down the state. how dare you say a black history that you respect? Black students are going to be laid off when students are going to be here in san francisco. it's going to be the black and the time. hi, good afternoon. My name is roberto guzman rivera and I have two kids in the school district. Last year I came to advocate for a speech therapist. My son needed that and 29 kids last DECEMBER I came to advocate for our cause suited to teacher. I feel like we go forward one step and we go back several. I don't know how to say why I had to come and talk to you about this. Now last week it was announced that we're no longer going to be hosting the spring ball a valuable reading program. English as my second language and let me tell you what.
To learn how to read an english is hard. We need support. Last summer it was content 20 kids to attend the program. 20 of those kids were put in our waiting lists. We do use our program. we need the program. thank you. Thank you. But to call the next group of speakers, please come up. melissa camacho joanna lynn ,jamie leong. Stephanie kuch kuch I think christopher pepper come on or. Good evening. this is my third time coming to these meetings to fight for our staff. You know how important our staff are and I'm not even going to try to convince you. I'm here to completely oppose your staff cuts. You came here as a budget balancer. You seemed like you care. you looked like you cared. But when you come up here and you talk about hard decisions
which means gutting our schools, it makes you look like the other guy who came before you. You propose balancing this budget on the backs of our hardworking staff at the detriment of our children. I have said this 100 times. Cuts come from the top. If you don't have enough money to fully staff the schools you need to go across the street and ask for more money. You are not fighting for us. i really wanted to trust you but I don't. You are not working for us. This whole thing feels ornamental. You let us come here and participate. But you are not including us. You don't even consider anything we say. It doesn't seem that way. We live in one of the most wealthiest cities in the world and we're all we're here doing this to our kids. Thank you. That's your time. Have you even talked to the mayors fully staffed the schools and give them a living wage? you I'm sorry. Hi. My name is stephanie and I want to urge you to consider social workers as essential to the base staffing model.
I'm a parent of a first grader so two years ago I twirled towards several schools. My kid is high needs so for my family social emotional learning was the most important thing. I noticed those the social workers were staffing the wellness rooms leading the school curriculum. I saw students come in and use the sport supports while on the tours. We ended up at harvey milk and are lucky that acl is baked into so many aspects of the school. But our social worker MS. Summer still goes above and beyond. She checks in on my kid despite not having a five before she leads parent groups and she makes sure vulnerable kids and families are getting the support they need. She helps our kids feel safe. We need this in all our schools more than ever as the federal administration is attacking our immigrant communities, our trans kids and all of our kids rights are public education. So please find a way to fund these positions. thank you. good evening, commissioners. I'm a parent harvey milk civil
rights academy. I'm here to urge you to staff social workers at every school of every size school social worker so social workers are essential. Our social worker MS. Summer is the reason many of our families are able to overcome attendance barriers and come to school this summer is the glue between our educators and families ensuring students have the personalized plans and supports they need to learn and be their best selves. The summer enables inclusion and belonging in our diverse schools. She facilitates repair and helps our entire community restore peace after conflicts. Our students are safer because of MS. Summer. Our students are more capable and ready to learn because of this summer our school is more successful because of MISS Summer. Please you must retain our social workers. We cannot afford to lose them. hello. My name is christopher pepper. i'm a teacher on special assignment. I work with our health education teachers. I've been a teacher in san francisco for 23 years. I taught at balboa and at
lincoln high school. I've worked with many of the teachers in this room, especially our health teachers and our health program is something we can be really proud of. We have had funding to support the growth of this program since 1991 through the centers for disease control and prevention and I'm here to ring an alarm that this program that has really grown into an exemplary program we have people come from all over the country, sometimes from other countries to see our program, to see our health programs, to see how good they are. I'm worried about it because our cdc funding I'm concerned that it will not exist in the future. I need you to work to find a replacement for this funding. It's $425,000 a year. I don't know if it's going to continue this year because it's really under the microscope of the federal government right now our lgbtq q students in particular really depend on the work that we're doing with that. Thank you. Please replace thank you. hi, my name is melissa camacho.
I'm here for talking about my son and represent many students. My son is asian rosa pa he's learning japanese. He speaks spanish and he speaks english because we have the opportunity in san francisco. But now with the change we are allowed these opportunities. I only have one question for us while we plan for the future for the kids education for all we want education and this is no one good reason for good efforts and I'm probably the the assistant and the teacher we need to continue with education with the opportunity because the kid is the future for the community. The kids is the future for san francisco. thank you. Thank you. I want to call the next group. Please come to the podium. Katrina cabello uh keena hazelwood. Rory abernathy. Grace wakefield and studying
bendjelloul bendjelloul forgive me for mispronouncing hi, my name is katrina cabello. I'm a health education teacher on special assignment. I also help to support our health education teachers primarily secondary. I want to bring to your attention the impending lack or loss of at least some funding from the center for disease control and prevention. We need the board and the state of california to figure out a plan to support our our health education programs as well as the programs that help to support our vocal students like our lgbtq plus students and the people that support them. We have one person primarily who answers the emails to support our lgbtq plus students and families. You need to find the funding to keep that person on staff. We need to keep up with the
policies and science that helps support our students and families in their health education classes. thank you. Good evening commissioners and board. My name is kind of what I use amir's pronouns I am the district lgbtq student services coordinator. I am so gratified by all the people I get to work with to do a distributed model to support our and trans students and their families and their staff. However, we do not have more than what we me and I am asking you to please not wait until we know that we don't have the federal funds but to take the time now to make sure we find those funds to replace the work because that is affinity groups, that is curriculum, that is all of the ways our students see themselves and know that they are okay but they are scared right now. Their families are scared right now. So many of us no longer have legal existence at the federal level that is real and I'm asking you to take that seriously. I'm happy I post is addressed to you from my students all of
us have you and steve asking you to take this seriously. thank you. hello. My name is grace wakefield and I'm a first grade teacher, bret hart. two weeks ago starr presented interim goal reports and several of you asked what was happening in classrooms were interim goals were being met at bret hart we are exceeding your goals. 80% of our african-american and pacific islander k-1 students are reading at or above benchmark levels. Yeah, there are amazing we're able to do this because of our deep content knowledge insistence on culturally responsive pedagogy but ultimately because of our best resource the people on site independently of this district are k one and sped teams are all orton gillingham trained several our board certified with grant funded t s a's and our app we were able to make an rti system that's providing earlier intervention. That's what's happening relationships great foundational curriculum assessment, cumulative practice and systems of people with deep
content knowledge to teach. It's only possible with people no curriculum or online program license ubi is going to replace the people we need our apps our coaches are to of our social worker. It's simple when you cut we're not going to meet your goals. I invite you to come to my heart and not just on friday when the nba's there you come see what we're doing. Uh, recently trump asked someone in california to, uh, open up this flow of water that went into a hole. You know what? Somebody could have said no. they could have just said no. And so we're going to see more and more things coming to our state and I'm asking all of you to say no. If you look at our state right, we have kentucky, mississippi, missouri and texas. We are in good company with them, not good company. We use ada to decide how budgets are spent in the state of california. That is an outdated model that we need to get rid of and in JUNE of 2025 the 32 largest
unions teachers unions in the state of california will be coming together to change the way that schools are financed in california. Two to your point right. In the meantime, hold on and say no because we are the leaders and the beacon for the entire country right now. If san francisco does not say no, nobody will. Hello as a parent and the para dictator at DR. William cobb, I'm really concerned about how will we keep the student and family at the core by combining classes to and reduce the number of teachers as if he is the always advertised about how students will thrive in our schools and this is our duty. But have you thought about what are the consequences of this cut less teachers means large larger class size, less individual attention and lower quality of education and we're already still struggling with after the pandemic we should invest in education. The students are the future future and short term budget
cuts leads to long term consequences for student and society and I have my student my my daughter who was experiencing the combo and she can tell you about how she felt . Hello my name is norman hood and I am in sixth grade in roosevelt middle school. As a as a student I was in a 4 or 5 combo. It was hard to slow down when I was in fifth grade and who I was when I was in fourth grade I fell behind. Now when you see the struggle between fourth and fifth graders, imagine this day struggle with kindergartners and first graders. Consider not consider not for me but for the school for but for the school community. I thought you cared but maybe not. Thank you for your time. thank you. Okay. I'm going to call the next group of speakers. Tina lee young, brandi markman ,sarah shechtman I go up top none fun and I'm so sorry for mispronouncing the first names
aggie and poppy because we just step on the podium. Let's go ahead. You're ready. Good evening everyone. My name is tina low and I am a bilingual chinese speech language pathologist ecuador and j. Lao elementary school. I am a byproduct of a product of a U.S.. This is my 40th year in the district and I provide speech languages, speech language service to preschool and elementary students. I am in a school community that is made up of 85% of monolingual chinese speaking caregivers who need educators that speak their language to let them know the child's progress and how to support them. Lao has 6676 students and that's a big school we need to administrators to keep our students safe. We need two speech language pathologists, three literacy specialists.
We do not have a social worker in the beginning of the year and wasn't until late fall that we have three part time social workers. aside from our elementary students, our preschool age children also need your attention. There are preschool children that are eligible for walk in speech services since spring of 2024. So we need your support to keep our schools and stability for our students in their territory in their future. thank you. Hi, my name is sarah shechtman and I'm a parent of a fifth grader julius at rosa parks elementary school. He's sitting out in the lobby. Hey, buddy. Uh, he's we've had a lot of turnover in our administration at rosa parks. We had a principal and an assistant principal who left when my son was in second grade. In third grade we have principal who ghosted us in NOVEMBER and we had a series of substitute principals. You had to bring somebody out of retirement to get through that year.
You could feel it everywhere in the school the teachers were holding the school together because our teachers are amazing and now we have an incredible principal and an assistant principal who have been working so hard to create a loving community at the school. They've gotten our attendance up. They've gotten our test scores up and our kids need that continuity and that regularity that they get from having their administrators stay there from year to year. Please do not cut our assistant principal position. We need MS. So go. thank you. Thank you. there we go. Good evening. My name is kyle woodward. I'm speaking on behalf of another rosa parks parent who's absent right now. How about rosa parks is a large and diverse title one school in the western tradition. The proposed staffing cuts on the table are in block and ignore the impact of staff on student outcomes. They were designed to achieve
state mandates without any thought to our children's success. So as sara just alluded to, rosa parks was allocated an assistant principal only two years ago. She coordinates over 100 ieps since her arrival chronic absenteeism has fallen 10%. Reading scores are up 35%. Math scores are up 50%. These are gains that will be erased if the staff is not retained. But budget cuts do not have to be applied in such a thoughtless and uniform matter. Funding and staffing decisions must remain at the schools. We expect that you will consider your stated northstar of student outcomes when evaluating staffing proposals. thank you. Thank you. and brandi brandi, before you go, I just noticed that you had also submitted a um a card for an agenda item so I can give you a little time a little more time to speak to both right now. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, MR. Steele. hi. My name is brandi markman.
I am a public school parents and I want to talk about this budget mess and why it came about. A couple of weeks ago I was at a national stop school psychologist conference put on by the advancement project. It was at the nea building and I met student students, parents and teachers from around the country. One thing they all had in common. They all used their districts all use this to come student outcomes governance model. This model was instituted as if you a state after a recall. And what did it do? It took away our monthly oversight committees to make sure that our moneys would be spent property properly. Maura coletta, who is the national director of alliance to reclaim our schools, said the ultimate goal of the students outcomes focused governance model is to dismantle public education. The realignment and transfer transformation school closures and privatization. And we see this as a continuation of things you're
trying to do like the combo classes. We need these oversight committees back. We need them back. That we need them back now. I hope that the school board will do what the los angeles school board did the clark county school board. They just voted to discontinue this model because it takes away democracy. It takes away oversight. It means that we as a community have less public comment time. Things were so much different before we had this model. And I encourage people to be vigilant when we talk about billionaires. Five of you setting up as dyess. You were put here by vote by billionaire money. You are backed by anti teachers union astroturf. And I'm going to name them the san francisco parent coalition and together S.F. We have peter tito, peter teal's, former hedge fund manager sit in the audience right now. So we know what your agendas are. and to that we all say no cuts, no combo classes, no compromises and no school
closures. Okay. I have seven more cards. And then at the end I we'll be calling up the ussf designee who tonight is a don luevano. So you can go last but I'll call the other speakers up first. Kyle woodward I think it's reyna diaz chris klaus reiko ando violet vasquez cafe bi. And then don you'll be be the designee at the end. So please come out come up to the podium. MR. Seals and all of our public comment remaining that is for in-person. And then we'll move in to virtual thank you. So I'm coming up for kyle woodward within the po. I am devlin israel hannaford. I'm a parent of a third grader at rosa parks elementary and a sixth grader at willie brown. I'm concerned about the
proposals to cut assistant principals as well as other staff positions. thus far you've not provided any sort of insights into how you're going to maintain student achievement and goal setting for these students. You just are cutting that's all. We're here and we're not hearing anything else about that. And that just makes me think that you really have no plans. And that's upsetting because you're all sitting there getting a salary that we're paying that you should be doing. So either get it together or like come up with a different plan because just cutting nilly is not going to do it. thank you. hi, my name is violeta vasquez. I'm as a few as the alarm my educational journey started at sheridan elementary so I'm very disheartened to hear about all the bullying as opposed to them with such an immaculate school and in the neighborhood that I've grown up in my whole life
I went to this and then eventually got pushed out about boa and finished at city college. Um I'm also san francisco born and raised native. I'm an organizer and co founder of five elements youth program because I'm committed to not tokenizing young people and their leadership here in san francisco. Um as well as I came running when I heard on the news today that you guys were going to be closing and shutting down or cutting our teachers and those who are directly working with our children. I remember all of the difficulties having to navigate as usd as a student because of the lack of staffing and because of the pink slips and now to hear that you're going to do another round um I don't think I think we should be cutting from the top. You know you guys we have the most amount of money coming in is at the top and so if you guys are so unwilling to part with that amount of money then at least go and hit up the thank you. there's like the homicide here.
It's like kindergarten teacher hi my name is katie b and I am a niece of usd parent with two kids at star king elementary school. I appreciate the difficult decisions that we are faced with but I am deeply concerned about the lack of transparency around the budget decisions. DR. Su you have said repeatedly that student outcomes are at the center and the core of your decision making and yet so many parents and teachers have come here today to say that we don't see that analysis. Where is that work? I think I'm not alone. I'm probably not the only parent in this room who has been feverishly poring over past budget numbers in a giant spreadsheet looking for the answers and the numbers do not add up and every time we consider a budget strategy I would ask that we weigh the estimated number of students impacted against the estimated financial savings if for example, we eliminate school
counselors, we eliminate social workers world language programs . Each of those line items should show the number of students who are going to be impacted as a result of those decisions. thank you. And so this was actually a budget item. can I have 30 more? Sorry I think yeah no this was an agenda item so just okay 30s okay. I would just ask that you share transparently what costs and reductions are being conducted within the central office which you promised to share with us and yet in today's slides I don't see anything about that. Thank you very much. thank you. but when node.Js me no brainer the jovanka sanchez apartment destroying tnl committee they lacked yesterday by that I mean paul I look at
you and then in the last ninos gave us no go no centimeters no colas and rispetto as much a boolean that make me a sovereign mental illness me me did he get a mutual mistake? Does mohammad doumbia and study ecuador can there in this period maestro no shorter this is double maestros and so this is the we must resign using maestro the kinder image nina but and another lady on classes those maestros get a robin meaning yana brandy or nada and also necessity of my sternness as it was that are priestess they they are necesitamos the men must maestro they therapist are they they um cause graft yes thank you and hold for a moment for translation please. good evening. My name is raina. Yes and I'm coming from sanchez. I'm actually a right now I'm a ela I'm here because I am concerned because of the education that the kids are
receiving. They are not knowing about boundaries. They are not knowing about respect and there is a lot of bullying happening. I also want to talk about the clothing that the kids this is a thing that concerns me a lot. The girls especially are dressed very, very, very bad and I also agree that there should not be firing teachers. We needed teachers. We were here three years without a kindergarten teacher. I'm a girl. You don't learn anything. They she was giving classes by two teachers that were taking turns. She didn't learn a thing so we need more teachers. We need a speech therapist and we also need other kinds of therapist. thank you. I'm chris klaus as my teacher in department head in washington high school and effective school community requires that the school be fully staffed. Unfortunately we are frequently understaffed and struggling to meet our students needs. That's because being fully staffed means more than just
every class having a teacher which we've struggled with this year it means having sam's family liaisons a fully staffed wellness center security team, academic counseling department, special education department including related service providers, school psychologists, parent educators, teachers and case managers. And that doesn't even cover all of the support staff and site administration that is needed. Something else to consider is that many students draw motivation from from the electives that they are able to take. So offering a variety of different elective options is crucial when schools are not fully staffed. Learning is halted services and supports go undelivered. No one is able to focus on the learning that needs to happen and students and communities suffer. Our schools need more funding and people not less. thank you chris gallagher. hi my name is rico ondo and I met rosa parks parent and
former teacher and I currently work for an afterschool program provider in the district. As other rosa parks parents have already noted, our assistant principal MS. Togo has supported over 100 ieps at our school site in our schools literacy and math scores and our attendance rates have seen significant strides since she was onboarded after we've had a few years of administrative turmoil and stripping away this critical person from our school site will cause irreparable harm especially to our african-american and immigrant families who make up our schools, our school students district wide will face similar harm when support staff are eliminated. Please fight harder for all of our school communities. Don't take money and resources away at the school level and please don't set up our schools to fail. Thank you know I done? yes. So this will be the designated usf speaker for the evening using their time. great. Thank you. Just quickly before you go, I know that we started also about
just over ten minutes behind so after you I asked us to have the time not be included as part of our time for public comment. So once you as ep is done we'll move to online public comment for ten minutes and then we'll move on from there. Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is randall avenue and I'm a school psychologist in my 19th year with the district. It's my honor to be here tonight as a lead negotiator for united educators of san francisco that represents classified and certificated workers. We submitted tonight we were hoping to submit our letter sunshine so that we could begin talking about negotiations and we submitted that over a week ago. But unfortunately we did not make the agenda. But that's okay. We can do this again next meeting so we're happy to do that. We cannot wait any more. Our schools, our students deserve fully staffed and fully
funded schools. Our students deserve educators and school sites that can both recruit and retain educators with improved pay. Our students also deserve stable community schools where we are able to support them and their families. And lastly our students and our educators deserve dignified learning and working conditions . Over 3500 members participated in a survey to let us know the critical issues that we need to negotiate this contract over 3000 members and 60% of the school sites have signed the petitions that you see here tonight. This is before bargaining has even started. We hope to meet with your representatives of the bargaining team and we hope that they come prepared and ready to find real solutions to the problems that we face. Now it is our pleasure to be
representing all of our members ,our students and we've heard from so many people tonight of the real issues that are happening in our district. We will see you again in two weeks and then we look forward to working with you all to find the real solutions that we need. They're happening every day here in our district. Thank you very much, PRESIDENT Kim. That concludes in person public comment. good evening. We have about ten we have ten minutes set aside for public comment. I'd like to kindly remind everyone that each speaker will have one minute to share their comment at one minute and five seconds the speaker will automatically be muted so please do your best to keep your comment to one minute to allow everyone to speak first we'll hear from students then we will hear from those speaking on agenda items and finally we will hear from those
addressing non agenda items. Can we please have that repeated in spanish and chinese when our legislator requested that as a participant as again as a comment that excuse and detained individual on menudo connell menudo con cinco so wonderful as well corporal microphone I think a part of our 13 they started introduce those minutes that are all about the paralysis to the end through this policy well let us to go those in control agenda it is possible that I recommend that is on the record the sponsors can notice that includes an agenda which is underneath what I don't want thank yous a drunk if I can get billion how yes some drunk a second get come I think jingdong astoria and guess you gonna like on my level here yep and let me you lightweights sitting about that waiting to come modest I was never high ab hawkes on going to see how lights are high and recall I got you can eating let me I thought you might be how I think you come get out you get
right thank you at this time if you are a student please raise your hand this is time for students only rebecca hi. I have two children who would like to read go. hi. My name is ethan and I graduated from sheridan elementary school in 2023. I still go to events and the school to support my younger brother and one of the things I like the most about sheridan is how such a loving and supportive environment where every child has the chance to be seen and heard, taught and cared for. I am glad that I was given the opportunity to be in a strictly kindergarten classroom because I can still remember what it was like to be that young and just starting to learn new things. By first grade I was able to sit longer prepared attention for longer periods of time as well but simply there is a big difference between in the two grades and I would hate for future students to not get the same educational experience I had. Thank you. I have one more child who would
like to read. Thank you. Go ahead. Yeah, hi. My name is ari and I am a fifth grade student at sheridan. One of the things I like most about my school is how I have been given the opportunity to learn in a setting that support my education needs. Like my brother I remember it's a difference between kindergarten and the first grade. I think it would be really challenging to learn as a kindergartner next year first graders I think both I think would be for example, my reading and math skills have really begun to advance in first grade. Every kid deserves to be in a classroom of their own peers. Please don't take away from the future opportunities of the
youngest kids at my school to get there or their needs are met. We matter. thank you. Thank you. please raise your hand if you care to speak to the agenda items everything below yes. Um my name is sophie mattera and I was seventh grader from apj leaning and I think keeping those special ed education teachers but really benefit because they help out in the classroom since they are small and they just make them violent a safer place for more good education and I think that would really help the students. Thank you. thank you, yvette. Hi. Good evening. My name is yvette edwards. I am a parent of two middle school schoolers within a city.
I am also a board member and a co-founder of other parents. And I'm calling in because I think what I'm hearing is a common thread from families, educators, children and everyone that really what needs to be done here is a transparent and clearer plan about why this is happening, how it impacts families, what it will save, how it will possibly create better better educational outcomes. Things regarding safety etc. If this really needs to happen I ask all of you to make it clear why as a middle school parent I tell you in particular on a personal basis not as a part of an organization I belong to any cuts made to middle schools right now in particular to assistant principals would be very concerning not only for school sites but I think for families. Those children were left out as we all know for a lot longer than they should have been. I think many middle school educators family will tell you that those students need as much support as possible. But in general you need to
explain how all schools can succeed and reach fully staffed communities if this is a plan that you are actually planning to do. Thank you and have a good thank you, meredith. hi, good evening. This is meredith dodson, executive director with S.F. Parent coalition. We are a network of survivors de families from over 100 public schools advocating for excellent equitable schools. There's not much I can say tonight that you haven't already heard. I'll just briefly summarize what we've been hearing from families in our facebook forum other channels and much of what you've already heard tonight. This budget titled keeping the lights on is not what you want to lead with if you're trying to build confidence in a community to to get their support for where you're headed. We understand that budget cuts are going to be deep and necessary to regain global control of our schools which we absolutely need to do. But also this is not the message that you want to lead
with. You need to present a vision of excellence and equity for all of our students across the district so that we can have confidence that you're actually bringing strategy with the budget cuts that you're proposing. And I don't think many are feeling that right now. And by the way, just want to clear the record from a previous commenter who had some misinformation about as a parent coalition. So we're that's your time. Thank you. Autumn on? Yes. hi. Good evening. My name is autumn brown and I am a parent of a kindergartner and a fourth grader at flynn elementary. They also serve as our pta PRESIDENT. I just came out of our school city council meeting tonight where we reviewed our annual parent and teacher surveys. One thing was clear our community deeply values social emotional learning and we need to keep our full time social
worker MS. Alisa. Our teachers do an incredible job integrating second step curriculum. But as the old goes so far beyond the classroom a couple of years ago we went without. We went without a social worker for almost a year and the impact was alarming. Behavior challenges escalated, conflicts went unresolved and teachers were stretched too thin. This year we already lost our assistant principal. flynn is an is a diverse school with over 50% english language learners and our families rely on strong school support. My son lisa is more than a staff member. She's a trusted presence helping students in crisis, resolving conflicts and keeping classrooms focused on learning. For my family this isn't just policy it's personal. This police helped my child with an iep build a growth mindset and she is a trusted resource when my child needs regulation during the day. I know many other families also benefit from her care. we can't afford to also lose this. Thank you autumn. That's your team.
Thank you, susan. good evening everyone. I am a parent of two abused students and a former employee for 20 years. And I just wanted to urge our district leadership to be so much more mindful than we've heard so far of not compounding the harms of this current presidential administration and not to impact in a negative way or cut the programs that serve our most marginalized parents and especially the people that work closely with our most marginalized students including our nurses, our social workers and school leadership. Courageous school leadership because in these coming days these are the people that we will need the most to keep our promises to san francisco's children. thank you. Thank you, rianda. it's pretty fitting for commissioner. My name is rihanna bettys and I am one of the apex parent leaders and I'm calling in tonight as a mom I implore you all to do a deep dive research into willie brown middle school and its founding here.
And that will tell you what all your schools will look like if you cut school side administrators, nurses and counselors. It was absolute chaos. It takes a team in order for the students to be fully supported. MR. Brown and MR. Montez worked together to turn the school around and it has been flourishing and thriving ever since. But it took a long time to get there and a long time to get that close and team together. When you just have one administrator they're overworked and they will end up leaving. This district has promised to be students centered and focused. There's nothing to do this interim focus about making these deep cuts to the classrooms. I implore you to reconsider because if willie brown isn't enough of a cautionary tale then I don't know what is. thank you. Thank you, PRESIDENT Kim. That does conclude the amount of time allotted for virtual public comment for. Thank you. Many thanks to the parents
families and community members who showed up today for public comment. We'll move on to item f discussion items to align with effective governance practices as the superintendent and her team are tasked with providing a draft of each agenda 12 days in advance. Once that draft is made public on our website board members have made a commitment to submit, clarifying and tactical questions and staff have made a commitment to respond to those questions in advance of each board meeting. The q&a doc is linked into each board agenda on board docs. Today it is linked in item d three. We invite the public to review those questions and answers alongside our discussions today . Just a quick acknowledgment that this particular uh the third discussion item regarding our staffing model was not available until most recently on friday. And so you won't be seeing questions in the q&a doc related to that. Additionally we will be moving most items to our consent calendar and identifying only our highest priority agenda items to discuss.
Board members are reminded not to restate questions answered by staff in advance but to instead bring forward strategic questions into these discussions that we can be better informed in our decision making and partner with the superintendent as we hold our accountable. We have three discussion items this evening uh for the first first reading of a resolution and authorizing documents for the issuance and sale of the san francisco unified school district's general obligation bonds in an amount not to exceed $160 million by negotiated sale. How to protect it. thank you, PRESIDENT Kim. Tonight we will be presenting the first reading of a resolution and the associated authorizing documents for the issuance of sale of general bond bond obligation by our district. This bond issuance which will not exceed $160 million is
being proposed through a negotiated sale. The funds raised through this bond will support critical capital improvements across our district to ensuring that our schools continue to meet the needs of our students and community. This is the first step in a process that will help fund essential projects to enhance our educational facilities. I would like to introduce our bond director listening to a bureau. Thank you superintendent and good evening commissioners lucy newberry I'm the director of the bond program here at sfo usd. I have with me today dave olson from baxter mccarley barry and company long name he advises the district on public finance related matters and is available as a resource if there are questions. If we could just move to the next one since the superintendent provided an excellent introduction just a reminder to this board and also to the public that san francisco voters in NOVEMBER 2024 approved a bond measure for us of usd
authorizing $790 million in new funds for to continue the district's bond program. The bond program of course funds capital investments, construction projects across the district. In preparation for this bond. The bond program has continued to pursue design of active projects in anticipation of new funds being available in 2024. And so now that the voters have approved the authorization we are ready to pursue series a our first issuance of this bond sale. We need new funds. Really? Really. In MAY this you'll see in this schedule later that this will close in APRIL to fund the next 18 months of subsidies. Bond program it has been the practice of the district when we go out to the financial markets for new money to also look at refunding or refinancing existing debt. But the district is holding this is codified in the district's debt policy and is generally a good financial
practice to ensure savings to taxpayers over time. So tonight this presentation is really for both of the bond related discussion items on tonight's agenda authorizing the first one authorizing a $160 million in bonds as new money to the district. And the second discussion item authorizing the district to refund cd old debt to potentially capture savings for taxpayers. This slide is our tentative schedule for these two financing actions. We are here tonight with the first reading. The purpose of the first reading is to provide the public and the board with an opportunity to review what will come before the board in MARCH as an action item to the approval of two resolutions and a series of supporting financial documents that essentially the district uses as disclosures to potential
investors of our bonds. Um and so you can see on this schedule that we'll be back in MARCH. We also need to go to the board of supervisors which we will do sort of contemporary asli and then we will speak with the financial market rating agencies and then go to the market at the end of MARCH. Um foreclosed ing in mid-APRIL . Really the remainder of the presentation is really public information about the bond program. We did have an opportunity to brief each of the board members previously so I don't think there's a need to do that go through the rest tonight but we wanted to make sure that the public was able to see which projects the bond program is working on. so that concludes my presentation. Thank you. At this time I'll open it up for questions from the board. MR. Fisher not so much a question as much as a comment.
I really appreciate the context that's shared here the opportunity to participate in in discussions before tonight and one of the things that really stood out from for me um it I really appreciate the intentionality in all the work that's being done by our bond office. Um, you know the transparency is super helpful to me and recognizing the fact that a lot of places bond funding is treated as boom and bust and the fact that instead of doing that we we are trying to put together a more robust plan and we're being very careful, you know, the fact that this is only an 18 month bond sale and that we're we're planning to do everything we need to do to respond simply go out to investors and and make the right compliance decisions. I really just want to thank you all for your for your efforts here.
Um, and um, I know we have our back and our a lot of other opportunities hopefully for community engagement because this is a lot of public money so so thank you very much for your work. thank you. Vice PRESIDENT Huling thank you so much. I wanted to just ask one clarifying question for the better for the public. My uh I had asked a question in the advance document about the schedule for additional funds and by that I was referring to the fact that we approved as voters a $790 million bond. This only this resolution only raises 160 million of that. could you explain what the schedule is for um issuing bonds for the remaining $630 million and whether that means that the projects funded will go beyond those identified in this document.
so thank you. Yes. Let me I'm going to answer those in reverse order. It absolutely means that there will be additional projects beyond those that are listed in this this one and these are only projects that are ongoing now and that we initiated with 2016 funds that need 24 funds to for construction that's a generality but it's mostly true for the list of projects that are on this this list. It is also correct that these funds the next 18 months of the bond program as we have not initiated yet any projects as new starts under the 2024 program we're not borrowing any money for construction of any of that because design itself takes you know, 18 months is sort of a good rule. We are really modeling this understanding that our next big tranche of funds will be needed towards the end of 2026. And that brings us to the close of our 18 time 18 month timeline and likely the timing
of series b which would be our next new money sale. We as we model this program are looking for likely 3 or 4 series which really should match up with our expenditure schedule per our requirements just from the irs from the tax code we if we are issuing tax exempt bonds we are required to expend them 85% of those funds within three years of receiving the funds. And so that's why it's really important that we not, you know, go out and sell more bonds than we can spend because we don't want to be out of compliance with the irs. thank you so much, commissioner ray, I thank you so much for the presentation and tonight sorry, can you hear me okay? I have a general question and I apologize for not asking this before but I didn't I just didn't notice it. So if you need to give me the answer later, that's fine.
But I notice that the bhm project which I understand is a modernization is at a total budget of 105 million. I if I'm remembering correctly I think the mission bay project was around 100 million for a totally new school. So I'm just wondering why why is the modernization if I'm remembering correctly costing so much more so the buena vista horsemen project is I would say atypical in scope for the history of the bond program and it was really scoped three years ago and the direction that was given to the bond program at that time was to pursue a comprehensive modernization instead of what we had typically done before was to essentially establish an allocation and design to that allocation. So buena vista horsemen, the $105 million really reflects a campus wide upgrade to every
building on some other sites there had been, you know, some buildings left out of the scope to preserve budget. I think in the briefings the way I tried to explain this was there's sort of two different ways to think about this. One is to say we have $20 million for, you know, ten sites and allocate the money just across those sites evenly the other way. Another way is to look at the facility's unique needs and model the scope of work after that I would say that that was the case with buena vista haussmann and so really the district's leadership at that time made a decision to pursue this very large scope of work at an individual site. Thank you. Any other comments or questions from the board? Thank you. I think this also includes item two the first reading and I'll
read it into the record you I supposed to do that council no I don't think it does but certainly do that and that's the focus legally it's not required. Okay. This presentation covered both items. Correct. Thank you so much. Any questions about the second one in particular? Okay. Thank you so much. Uh to staff and we'll move on to item three our fiscal and operational update and with that I'll call on DR. Sue to present this item. Thank you PRESIDENT Kim okay. thank you. PRESIDENT Kim and commissioners and of course members of the public. Today I'm going to share with you a a snapshot of where we are and our best thinking and the best work that we have so far done towards our budget. I am really happy to be to be joined here in this presentation and with melillo smith, our executive director
of strategic initiatives. So I just want to reiterate and I guess comment on the the the fear and the concern that I'm hearing from public comment. I, I hear you I hear that it is a really tough place to be in right now where we have to make these tough decisions and these tough decisions are going to as I showed in our last meeting, impact people that we know and impact our students and impact our schools. I am very committed to continuing to make sure that usda remains not only a beacon of hope for our students but a place where students can come to receive the support that they need the the mental and well-being that they deserve and of course the academic supports that they require.
However, we are at this moment in time facing a very large deficit. $113.8 million represents 10% of our budget. And it requires us to make really difficult decisions. But that doesn't mean that we make these decisions irresponsibly. It means that we need to be very careful with the power that we have in our hands. it means that we need to be very strategic with the resources that we have. We have to be laser focused in how we make these cuts particularly because we will always have children and students at the center of every decision that we make. We are committed to making sure that we provide the detailed budget that is required to have that level of transparency that not only do you all this body here need but our parents and our educators and our staff
needs as well. In fact we have already started to engage with state leaders and principals on this budget planning process and I will admit more is necessary more information is needed. But this is where we are now. I recognize that these difficult decisions are not easy to swallow. But I also know that we are all capable of making these decisions on the behalf of our children. Next slide please. So the purpose of today's meeting is to provide commissioners with a snapshot of where we are and I and the initial thinking of our strategic staffing model. We are not going to provide the details behind the specific budget and the multi-year projections. I think one of our public commenters asked about that you know, where were we before? Where are we going now and
where will we be in the future? That level of information will come to the board on MARCH 11th when we present our second interim. So that is also a moment where we should all just recognize that the budget process is a very long process. It generally starts in DECEMBER JANUARY and then it just continues until NOVEMBER until NOVEMBER. Oh my GOD. Until JUNE when? When the budget will be fully adopted. Next slide please. So as many of you are aware, the district like many districts in california and nationwide have been experiencing a declining enrollment trend for us. We have been experiencing this for many, many years now and because our revenue is very much linked to enrollment we
now have less resources because unfortunately our enrollment has decreased over the years. However what hasn't decreased are our expenditures as our expenditures continue to climb. And because of that we are in a place where we are now out of balance. And so that means we are now deficit spending for many years as usd has relied on one time funds represented by the yellow bars here to help us carry ourselves from year to year. Think of it as a line of credit . So every year we tip and we dip into this line of credit. Unfortunately we might end up without any more money in our line of credit in a few short years. I will say this practice is not unique to just san francisco. A lot of other districts do this. They use one time dollars particularly the dollars that
you can see here that came in alive during covid times. We use those one time dollars to really provide a lot of supports for our students. Unfortunately those one time dollars are going away as we spend as we spend down the one time funds from our fund balance for ongoing expenses. It means that we need to reduce our expenses otherwise we will run out of our money. We will run out of cash by mid 2026. I think last time we were here I shared with you our monthly payroll. The monthly payroll is six. We owe. How much does monthly payroll? I am not exactly sure but I think it was between 65,000 and 85,000. Our monthly payment our monthly payroll is around 60,000 a month. If we do not address this gap
here we will not be able to meet our payroll. No, it's 60,000,060 million. suppose I told you not to call me and 60,060,000 would be easy. Well, we cannot allow ourselves to be in that position. Next slide, please. So therefore we have to make these cuts. So if we make the cuts we make these painful cuts. The cut for next year of 100 $113.8 million. It will help us stop the increase in expenditures and allow us to start down the path to rebalance ourselves. these cuts will be painful for the short term but they're necessary for the long term. I think I've shared with you my vision before of if we make these cuts now we will be in a
much better place in two years time where this district will be fully solvent meaning we control our budget. We control how we allocate our dollars. We control what types of programs and initiatives we want to fund and more importantly we will have and be able to give our teachers and educators and staff a level of stability and predictability that they need which then translates to a level of stability and predictability that our students need. But we have to do this really hard thing now. So consistent to the resolution that we passed in for about two four for me to deliver a balanced budget, this is why I am proposing these really drastic cuts. Next slide please. So in oh, I'm sorry. Right. So in JUNE of 2024 the board of
education passed a resolution committing to implementing a fiscal stabilization plan that included elimination of positions one time funds and reducing positions through our general fund our unrestricted general fund. So consistent with that resolution of passing a balanced budget, this is going to be my top priority that we have been working on since I started here at the district four months ago. i've been working very closely with our cdc advisors so that we can identify all the areas that need to be reduced, identify areas where we could have greater efficiencies in operations and provide different options for our staff so that we can help to work towards a more balanced budget. One of those options is our supplemental early retirement plan which is our incentive program for members of our
community who chooses to take an early retirement. And then of course for us to continue to review all of our contracts. And then of course finally our layoffs. We continue to monitor the governor's budget because when the MAY revise comes out we would hope that the revise will look similar to what was released in JANUARY. But we're not sure if it doesn't look like what it looked like in JANUARY. Then we're going to have to come back and figure out another strategy at this moment in time. We're monitoring it and we're hoping that it will stay stable . Next slide, please. So once again this is another representation of what I just shared. Our goal is to make the very painful $113.8 million in
reductions in our budget which I want to remind again that's that's a 10% reduction of our total budget. And the strategies that we're using to get there is to to use our early retirement package or early retirement incentives. And I will say right now we are feeling very hopeful of what we are seeing in terms of interest in that package option. We are also making very drastic central office reduction. I know that there was a question about making sure that we cut from the top and we are we're also looking at contract and other non fte non staffing reductions. And then of course our last resort is to look at staffing reductions. At this moment in time I am going to hand this over to kelly to share with you.
How are we getting to our budget allocations and our staffing model? Thank you doctor two can I have the next slide please? And good evening commissioners. Thank you for this opportunity to present as can you just go to the. Yes that one. Thank you. As you know this school year the district implemented a school staffing model and the staffing model was designed to provide schools with an allocation methodology for determining the resources available to the school to operate their school site. As our revenues have continued to decline and the one time restricted resources are no longer available, we have needed to update the staffing model to support the budget stabilization plan. And that's what I want to share with you the high level view of that today. next slide please. as DR. Sue mentioned, budget planning when resources are limited is complex. We all know that it's very difficult to make hard choices of where to cut expenses.
So the first thing we needed to do was update the staffing model and in doing so we wanted to start with the very basic question what do we have to do to keep the lights on to welcome over 50,000 students to our schools every day? And to do this we need a qualified teacher in every classroom. We need a principal at our schools. We need clerks in our offices. We need custodians to clean the buildings. We need student nutrition workers to prepare and serve the meals. What we also wanted to look at was not just the school side what is needed to keep the lights on on that side but also at our central office looking at the bases what is the base for a central office? What are the expenses that we need to pay to keep the lights on? And those include substitute routes and leaves our transportation for both our special education in general education students facilities, utility fees, routine restricted and maintenance
that's the set aside for repairs and maintenance to our buildings. Our special education contribution and our central office operations. So when we looked at both of those things in terms of keeping the light on, we really wanted to say what is our base cost that should come from our unrestricted ongoing funding. next slide please. Next slide. Sorry. Thank you. So what we did was to determine the base costs for the school sites we looked at we determined the number of principals, clerks and teachers based on our enrollment. So it was very these are enrollment driven numbers for our base allocation and we wanted to look at our enrollment to know how many teachers we needed in each of our classrooms. We also were guided by our collective bargaining agreements to determine the number of students in a classroom. We then needed to factor in the programs and services provided
by our central office. But in doing that we in count we accounted for a 20% overall reduction in central office which is equivalent to $20 million. So you will see that 80 million for central central services in the chart. And that represents a $20 million reduction in doing that the calculation ended up being a cost of $791 million and our current projections for unrestricted general fund is $679 million. So the next step we did was we wanted to look at what are ongoing restricted monies that are most fungible. They're like the least restricted of restricted money so we can use them for other we don't we have multiple purposes we can use them. And when we looked at those fundings and we wanted them to be ongoing because some of our restricted moneys like our pif slash moneys pif other general uses are cut to funding that is ongoing.
So we wanted to add that into our base. When we did that we were able to get that 700 and get the costs going to our base ugl funding down to 727 million which leaves a deficit of 57 million. And this 57 million which I think many people have noticed is it does not account for the costs for the additional services and priority investments in our schools that are really critical for our student outcomes. But I want to be clear that this does not mean that we will not receive those additional services and priority investments in schools. It means we have more work to do to understand the restricted resources we have available for those investments before we can share our budgets with school sites. The next slide please. So our next immediate step is to turn our attention to our restricted resources and leverage those resources to support our base where we can also support the additional
services in priority investments. This is where we are today and we are making progress. I also wanted to give you a more holistic picture of the strategic staffing model. I think initially when it was shared previously it made it seem as though the base was all we were considering as what was needed at a school site. So really what you can see in the pyramid is the blue is the base staffing and that's what I just described. And also remember that includes the central office side of it. We have green which is our sports library arts and music. That's our peak funding that is ongoing funding and that continues and we're really fortunate that that continues to support programs at our school sites. We have grant funded specific resources at schools which our student success fund community schools partnership grants could be pta funding and other grants and then site discretionary funds.
Those are the funds that we are pretty confident of the amounts and that information we hope to be sharing with schools soon. The other two that we're looking at is what we call the additional students services which you can see also include what we used to be part of the base. I think that's a big shift for us. The district because we're an equity focused district our base has always been very robust and we have been very fortunate to have a lot of one time funding and restricted resources to build that base. We are now having to look at the base as sort of staffing enrollment driven in all of the additional services as finding restricted resources for it. That includes assistant principals at the middle school and high school level new monitors and such. The other thing we really wanted to elevate was what are what are the priority investments for our student outcomes for our vision, values, goals and guardrails for those goals? What are those positions that whatever restricted resources we have available we would prioritize to move our student
outcomes forward? So that's instructional coaches counselors, acg course offerings you can see that list. So this is the staffing model that we are working towards. We have been able to meet with our site administrators and begin the conversation about the model and to get their thoughts. While we are currently in a hiring freeze as you know based on our negative certification we want to provide site administrator raters with information about their base allocations. And in additionally guidance on how and when they can use the site specific funds the grants, the student success funds, the community school partnership funds like what does that look like? So that when the hiring freeze is lifted school sites will know already have guidance on how to hire positions to more supplement the base funding or the other parts of our staffing model and we're looking forward to that coming time. sorry. so what I want to do I'm
going to turn it back over to DR. Sue, but I did want to give you all just sort of a snapshot . I will be sharing this. We've been getting feedback from our site administrators. It has is as DR. Seuss said, we have many more conversations and we need to really dive into it. But this is I wanted to share with you where we are today, where we where we actually are very confident we can get to and continue to share updates particularly with the second interim coming up. And I'll turn it back to DR. Sue. Thank you. Molly and I had the rest a couple of more slides but I just before I say it's want to reiterate that equity is still at the forefront of all of our decisions here. We are building this budget with that in mind but we have to continue to be vigilant and monitor what is happening and the governors MAY revise that's coming out. We will be looking at what the serp will yield for us and
hopefully that will bring in additional resources as well as continuing to have conversations with our site leaders and principals so that we can understand what are the what are the programs and services and staffing needs that they need and of course continuing to work with our cde advisors. Oh I've moved on to the next slide. i'm sorry. yeah. So so as I showed before. So yeah equity is for funds where we're monitoring the serp, we're going to monitor the governors MAY revise we are going to continue to come back to this body to provide more budget updates. The most notable one is that on MARCH 11th we will be sharing with the board the second interim budget and that is where we do a deeper analysis of where we are and how much have we spent already of where
we are and the projections for us in years in the out years in fiscal year 25, 26 and 2627. Once again the goal is for us to be a solvent district and quite frankly we need to have a healthy reserve so that we can prove to cde that we are able to and can stand on our own two feet and manage our own dollars and more importantly our own district. And so this is our our budget timeline. I am very, very committed. I am very confident as well that we will be able to have a balanced budget by JUNE for full adoption of this board. I want to once again reiterate and remind folks that 80% of our budget is comprised by
staff our workforce and unfortunately as we make these really painful reductions it does mean that the reductions is felt by our workforce. But I believe that we will be able to get through this. We will be able to come back and become a very strong district that is leading in world class programing for our students so that we can reach and achieve all those goals that we have laid out for our students. I am very fortunate to be working with really dedicated staff throughout the district and I look forward to working with our labor partners to make sure that we will be able to achieve the outcomes in the goals that we laid out here. So yes, with that thank you. Thank you, DR. Sue and thank you MR. Smith also just to acknowledge that today there was a memo added this afternoon by DR. Sue that further explains just some of the context that was shared today
which I do think is critical to helping to understand exactly that the context behind this presentation. And so with that said, I um I'd like to I know there's a lot of questions that could be asked around our budget so I would love to just begin by asking for clarifying questions on the presentation and the content in front of us before we go into a deeper strategic conversations that we can reflect on together. So if there are questions to clarify the content that has been put in front of us, I would ask that uh commissioners or delegates please raise your hand. Commissioner ray thank you both for the presentation. I appreciate it. In terms of clarifying questions I am wondering if you will be able to provide at the you know at the next meeting or otherwise add to the slide deck that's provided here for the public a more detailed version of the slides because when I
looked at sorry it's the one with the with the chart here this one here I personally had the experience of not being able to make these these numbers make sense to me. So it would be really, really helpful to you know, to to show where each of the numbers mentioned on this slide comes from and even perhaps to have something like looking at the chart I see principal and then reading across I see a certain amount of money and I don't entirely understand what that means. Does that mean that's enough money to cover all the principals and how many are there or does that mean that's just how much money we have for principals that's listed in that column like in in many respects I couldn't follow this chart and I think it's really important to provide that information for the public and for us and for the sites because we all need it in order to be able to make decisions
and have confidence in what the district is doing. Thank you. Do you want us to answer a question? My question for the clarifying questions yes, sure. okay. Thank you, commissioner ray for the question. And you're right. What is missing from the deck is what we would call the allocation methodology. How did we come up with the number? So for example for principals that's looking at one principal per school and the 220 I'm really getting my zeros off the 22.1 million reflects the salaries and benefits for the 101 principals one principal per school so that is where that's but yes we can get the allocation methodology details provided to how the numbers were generated but that's what it means. It's like the number of clerks at each school one clerk per school and how that methodology and so all of this represents
except for the nurse, the five or for all of the I'm sorry the positions represent the salaries for those positions across the whole district. Thank you. We'll just go down this way if that's all right. Commissioner alexander yeah. I had a similar kind of clarifying question so I would second commissioner raise question around where how do the numbers where do the numbers come from? But also I was having trouble even understanding how they add up. So it says our projected base expenses are 791 million after preliminary accounting this is the same slide after preliminary accounting for pif og you pth baseline q t.A and a portion of lcf supplemental it is 727.2 million. This results in a projected deficit of 57.9 million is that that's what's the deficit
that's the between 700 anyone I don't understand where the fit and understand the difference in those the two numbers have 9177 and then the deficit number just seems to like come out of thin air so I don't and I yeah I can work through that. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. So if you look at so the column the unrestricted general fund column is rolled up it's it's the 600 so the costs are the costs for the number of principals the number of clerks, the number of teachers. Right. Does that make sense to do costs? Okay so that adds up to 700. Yeah I see what you I know exactly what you're saying so I'm trying to figure out what the 71 came from because I see I see how it adds up to 727 where is where's the 791 so this is how it goes.
That number is 727 in that column you see the next column that says additional eligible funding oh I'm sorry addition eligible funding the one on the full right that represents the cost that is going for classroom teachers. We will pay 236 million out of the unrestricted plus 35.3 million out of additional eligible funding. So those two combined so when you do 727 plus 70 five. that's 800 and okay that's not 791 because this is where you are right that the table is I will have to get that better for you. you know I that's why I was confused. I was yeah. So those are supposed to add up to 791 yeah and I apologize in I had a spreadsheet that I was looking at when I was applying those numbers so I apologize that so which do we know which ones are correct? they're all correct except
for you're not seeing the 791. So where is can I but there's the total 802 is the total seven any one okay well let me think how I'm going to say this so it makes sense and I apologize that I'm not being clear because I can I just look at one document in my head to see I'm sorry. Can I just jump in really quickly? So we're going to we're going to have to get better at sharing budget information. But I think the story here or the line here is that it cost us $791 million to fully fund the base and the base includes all of these things here we we exhausted what we have in unrestricted general fund so we
exhausted the $669.3 million of unrestricted general fund and once we once we exhausted all that we started to go into our restricted sources to try to see if there were parts or categories within restricted that we could draw to pay for the base because we wanted to make sure at a minimum we could fully fund the base. Yeah, no I understood the concept. I was literally just trying understand is it 780 like I couldn't figure out where the 791 comes from because 727 plus 75 is about two. I apologize. I think that there was rounding errors and so as you're rounding these numbers you and we shrink it down to just one integer we're losing some of i think it's a transposition and I apologize I was I don't want to make excuses I had the numbers correct in my spreadsheet and I think when we
transition them over I can take time to do that and correct it. We can put it on the slide deck. We can get it to the board commissioners. But to explain I think overall what you're saying is correct. Commissioner alexander when we look at that the 866 million really is the amount. but again I think it would be better if I could share the more detailed spreadsheet to say how it is all broken down so I could explain these and I apologize. thank you vice PRESIDENT Who we think I am curious where that additional $11.7 million is is represented and I understand it's really difficult to be presenting your work publicly as it's very much in progress and I just want to ask a clarifying question to that end about slide ten which is the pyramid because when I saw that I'm going to say it freaked me out. It looks like it's saying that
we are only funding the blue and green layers of the pyramid and that schools will not have the pink and yellow part of the pyramid. But what I now understand and I want you to confirm that because it's very important that this is that I'm correct in understanding this is that we just are only through working through what unrestricted funds and subset of our restricted funds we have available to fund the blue and green layers and that now the work in building our budget continues to identify and allocate our remaining unrestricted earth are remaining restricted funds to ensure that those top two layers of the pyramid are in fact funded for next year. Is that correct? yes, that's correct. Before we move on with clarifying questions, I'm going
to invite the board delegate student delegate sorry to share their questions and then we can continue on. Thank you. Yes, thank you for doing that since we are dismissed at night and thank you for jumping to us but unfortunate I think it's something that might be shared. A shared sentiment here tonight is I feel almost more confused now than I did coming in and it's with the process but also on the idea of equity. DR. Sue, you talked about how categories of the center and I I'm just like failing to sort of see that and through all of this especially when it comes to our alternative schools and as a high school student obviously typically I mean to think of the high schools first but we have alternative schools all around the district and I want to know how they are being looked at with this model in mind because with the base model of what every school looks like for the when we saw
the pyramid for a lot of our alternative schools they do a lot of equitable work for our most marginalized students if that's not going to work for them. So I want to know how those sites were included when looking at this model and then also as another question of mine was with counselors and high school counselors and for me seeing that one in sort of like the third bracket of requirement for height for schools of high school and middle schools in general really concerning for me going to a larger high school with a ton of counselors that works with a bunch of students and even though we're a we have a lot of counselors they so work with hundreds of students and not having that guaranteed for some of these high schools it sounds pretty much insane to me to think of some high schools with really limited counselor positions with hundreds of students they have to meet with have appointments with I'm lucky enough to go to a school where I can walk in and have a meeting with a counselor but if
I don't have that ability or students don't have that ability to have to make those appointments and have to wait weeks for those appointments to come in, it sounds like we're not supporting our students in the way that we should be and doesn't sound very equitable to me. So how to question questions basically around how equity was used in this process and how we made sure that was and what our alternative schools are looking like with this process and adding on to langston when it comes to counselors, yeah, since custodians are considered base staffing to keep schools clean which was also mentioned during this presentation on why our school counselors who constantly support students in their success scores whether it is to advance catch up or beyond track classified under available funding. That said, who is going to support these students when it comes to their academic and personal needs if we just cut them off the table? Additionally, I want to add
with the concern of courses how our way through due course is going to be affected with the staffing model presented and more crucial and needed and I mention again needed courses like ethnic studies going to be affected by this because if we're going to be cutting off courses are we cutting off the courses that you feel don't benefit students in the same ways as math and like reading even though they both support students just because we simply cannot afford it? That's the end of my question. Thank you. Thank you both for that question and I want to just remind everyone of what vice PRESIDENT Huling question was about where she asked whether or not there is a second part to this process and there is so what we wanted to present to you is the first part which is the part of fully allocating
our unrestricted general fund which are the dollars that the district receives based on enrollment. The second part to this which is why it says pending available funding. The second part to this is for us to go in and evaluate all of our restricted dollars which some of those dollars are specifically for counselors and ap classes. So we have to evaluate those dollars and then determine how much is remaining in those in those funds so that we can then fund the next category of services that we do know our students need. You're absolutely right and I look forward to you to to for our next meeting to make sure that I am held accountable to that. Thank you. Thank you. Student delegates at this time if we need to head home um,
please do. Thank you so much for your time tonight. Thank you, commissioner weissbourd thank you. I think this is we're still doing clarifying only. Okay. So and if this is not a clarifying I think it's clarifying and you can tell me if it's not I think one of the just related to vice PRESIDENT Huling question and DR. Sue yours. I think one of the thing that's a little confusing about the pyramid is that some in some of the pyramid language is describing positions and others is describing sources. And so I think I would be looking for something consistent which is we're either talking about positions or we're talking about sources. But right now it seems to conflate the two and I think that it might be a source of of confusion and I do understand that part of it is that we
haven't decided with the pending available funding those positions that would benefit from that available funding haven't yet been determined but I think for me that is part of my confusion and I guess the other but maybe just can I. So that would be my clarification on the visual. Yeah. I think the only I believe most of these are positions well but if you look at two it's like slam cte grant funded specific resources discretionary funds. so it's like the source of the funding not the so you're correct so the slam cte is actually talking about the fte that you would allocate allocated for for librarians arts and P.E. So those are fte. But you're right is like when we the other way that we've also showed this is the whether the funding is discretionary you know like you're saying fungible with resources versus fte so the pyramid doesn't quite pull that out. So the additional student
services is that those are all fte is those would be reflected in in school sites budget as an fte allocation the number of aps you receive the noon monitors and things like that same thing with the vgs the base staffing and you are correct on the right side or my right it the only one that sort of is mixing resources with fte is the slam the sports library arts and music but that's the p f slam moneys that comes over to a site as an fte then the grant funded is going to be a resource because that's the most discretionary moneys for a school site, right? Those are grants that the school receives directly either through student success fund or other grants. So that will come to a school size budget as an amount because that's their discretion how to spend it the site discretionary funds I think we missed we should have put non fte so it comes over as an
amount to spend on supplies so and then the vocal student allocations would also be a pot of discretionary money that school sites would be able to potentially hire additional staff to support that fte that comes through the staffing model. Oh okay. I this sounds like that wasn't clarifying but can you say which part? I said a lot. So I think the thing is that the parent I agree there is a there's another chart that we can do that breaks it down more clearly that says so the way schools get their budgets traditionally is for certain positions principals, teachers, clerks you don't get an amount of money, you get an fte allocation right? So pretty much everything on my left of this is fte allocations that would come into a budget what you are and then on the right side the only one that would come through an
allocation and fte allocation is the slab and the rest are resources. but I guess and maybe it's also confusing just because there's like you know there's two I thought the numbers meant something like one two, three four on that. oh I see. I see. Okay okay. yeah okay good. See that clarifies how well got and then the other clarifying question it was clear took took a minute to get there but were there is and this is I think this is clarifying but I and student delegate montgomery brought this up as is I still think that there's a question about is this the appropriate base and and why are counselors and social workers not included in the base when I think of what is necessary to operate and then MAY not use the verb operate to have a school that is educating and providing safe and nurturing environments
where our kids and our educators want to be. That list is not is not it? So I think that's where I am on that. thank you for for naming that and and I do think there is a question around the the even just the term based staffing and and I know that there was also a lot of reactions to the term keeping the lights on and so I will acknowledge I know that we have our cde advisors on the call right now yes. For this in particular just because this is language I think we we have pulled from the language. If you do want to make a comment on that, ali and pam, I think you are on the call right now. you are welcome to you.
scuse me this is difficult to explain and I want to give the staff some grace because you are in transition from a site based model where I think as MS.. Smith was explaining was given specific positions were given to sites. So when we used the term base funding it's really what are you statutorily and in accordance with your collective bargaining units required to provide at each site that means a teacher in every classroom with a certain ratio you need a principal to run the school, somebody to mow the line, somebody to turn the lights on and and a school secretary who's probably runs the school . The problem is when you add all that together it exceeds what is called your base lcf funding
and let me just take a second to describe that you get your local control funding formula from the state in separate parts. The basic three your base is about $690,090 million and then you have about another and that is supposed to cut cover the cost of running the district for many districts that is all they get. They have they don't get supplement on concentration because it's based on what's called an on duplicated count which is your foster use years. Your students within and with that going to cd students which matt said but socio economic we low students and you're foster youth and you get a certain allocation for every one of those and in any if you have over 55% you get an extra
allocation yours is relatively on the low side so you are going into that money which is supposed to go specifically to those student groups to pay for keeping the lights on and I think that's why that language gets confusing then when you add in all the other funding sources that the district gets which are many, many more than most districts get, that's what typically goes to for you. A lot of the services like social workers, like counselors that are above and beyond your required number by either those are not by statute but they're by collective bargaining unit agreements and your basic operating expenses. If you were looking at this as a business it keeps the store open, doesn't pay for the advertising or things like that.
So it gets very confusing because these all come together . The bottom line is you are operating at a deficit and I think the most telling slide was I think the what was it so it's the one with the the second slide with the green and yellow and the red wine. You can go back to that when a couple back sorry yeah that one that means with you are using up your beginning balance so you have no ending balance in the 27 school year that's that's the crash point for a school district because cde california department of education under looks at two things when they look at whether it districts solvent or not and you aren't because in that year you cannot meet your ag your expenses and it is very
likely that you won't have cash and that's when you have to go out and get a loan and we don't really want to talk about that. I mean we do but we don't if you get a loan that's when you get where we're all gone and a trustee comes in and basically takes over the district, you don't have to get there and I think the hard part about this is you are used to a lot of resources at your schools and typically and I'm going to bring this up because it's a little bit of a sore point and trustee weissman ward brought it up for commissioner weissman ward social workers are wonderful but they're not generally part of a school allocate and I was a superintendent for 17 years. We did not have any social workers in the district except
those assigned to spread until the 15th year of my superintendency and that was only because we sought outside grants. You have really in I don't mean to say you should feel it in any I mean that's the way it should be unfortunate we it's not really something that's covered in either base expenditure areas so if you have to look at everything in your base and that's why okay I'm the stop there and come when final thing where they say to me add one thing please because I think this is important when you talk about funding being available the school staff will not know where the budget stands until may. So what do you mean so what's left once you meet those base expenditures and I'm sorry to go on so long but you know. thank you MR. Dushan. I will say I and I want to be very clear about this what we say as a district is sufficient for our students in our schools MAY just be different than what
the state defines as a base allocation. that's not to suggest that we need to now be making decisions that are out of compliance or irresponsible financially. But I do think it's a I do think it's an important distinction that be made about what we believe goes into a fully staffed, fully equipped school that is different from a state definition of what is considered baseline for a school. And the reason I say that and I and I do think it's worth naming over and over again for ourselves and our community is because I think that there is a very real reaction to things like what it means to keep the lights on in our school and whether that is sufficient for what we believe our students deserve in this city. Now again, I just want to be clear that's not to suggest that we make rash decisions
about our staffing or that we believe that our allocations should be categorically different from what wonderful guidance we receive from the state. But I think there is I do think that to commissioner weissman words point how we look at a school adequately serving our students is perhaps the most essential thing we can be discussing as a board. And and so I do think that that conversation is critical and we're talking about what we mean by developing a staffing model that meets the needs of our schools. And so without belaboring the point you know, I, I know it wasn't a MAY I I'm sorry to push back. I did this at last meeting. That model was developed at the advisement of us because that is the model that you have to
provide nobody in this room would say that we don't want a social worker. We don't want other mental health staff. We don't want other things at school sites. Every student in california deserves that and so do your students. The problem is you simply don't have the money until you go through the budget process and you won't know it until MAY. And the distinction of based funding wasn't addict with funding I never used the term adequate and I want to be very clear because this is this is what I and pam were brought into the district to tell you and and your staff you as a board that you cannot overspend your money because whether it's fair just or otherwise if you do you'll you lose control of it and I am being brutally frank because you are going to be in for a pretty rough run
until MAY and if you don't plan for it now I like to use the analogy of the tired things that the bank you can't back up so I'm sorry to be if I'm being rude or even cruel that you can only plan on what the state gives you and then use the additional money. Thank you. I'm going to move to commissioner gupta for clarifying questions. Thank you, PRESIDENT Kim so I want to get a little bit of clarity on this pyramid and assistant superintendent, I appreciate you trying to put this together and I recognize that certainly there's a pressure to produce something that we in the public can react to. And so I recognize this is incomplete but just to kind of get a broad brush stroke because I think I appreciate what vice PRESIDENT Huling asked in terms of you know, what what you've allocated here, what's shared in the table seems to be how we get to
the numbers at that base staffing level. If I just work backwards from the numbers. so if we have about 1.3 billion of a budget normally and so we have to cut you know about 117 million if I take that number back out of it then we have about 1.18 million I'm sorry 1.18 billion left in here you have about 727.2 million which means that if I'm understanding this correctly from sort of the broadest brushstroke that would mean for the top three layers of this pyramid then just the math would say we have about 456 million or so left to be allocated. would that be an accurate statement? I can't say that the four hundred and 56 million is an accurate statement but the way you're describing it is what we are only looking at is
unrestricted and we have a large sum of restricted funds to fund the top of the pyramid. So yes, and that's the work that we're doing now is looking at our restricted resources, what the restriction is is is it ongoing or is it going to get last for three years? Do we get it every year, that type of thing so we can start assigning it to the top of the pyramid? So I won't say the numbers are accurate but I will say the way that you're describing it is the next step in our process how we would allocate something and again I'm not going to hold you to the 456 million. Thank you because I've done a lot of zeros wrong in this wrong so but at least want to get an order of magnitude as we think about these additional pieces that we absolutely I think you know we hear from the community and we all seek to be able to fund. Yeah and I would say that I we believe and I know DR. Su believes that the entire pyramid is the base to us in an equity centered district and we
are separating out with the support you know, under the advice of our fiscal advisors to sort of map our resources so that we can explain like maybe we can figure out different terminology for the entire thing is the base how do we pay for the blue part of our base or the green part of our base? So that's really the exercise that we're trying to go for so that we know say for the vgs we have instructional coaches, we have a restricted resource that lasts for three years. We can get instructional coaches in our schools for three years and at that time we can look at our student outcomes and look for other resources for it to really get us to better map our resources so we have a more strategic plan versus I mean that's that's kind of our goal and so I think I would say that categorically that superintend and all of the cabinet agree with all of the commissioners that the entire pyramid is our base and then there is semantics which maybe we can
talk differently about it or describe it well and then also use that said those six figures mid you know 4 or 5 hundreds or whatever whatever that is in an equity centered way as student trustee langston had had named one other question I notice on this or one of my questions is where we're nurses in this pyramid it could yes so to the nurses so we have nurses as part of the base that provide specialized health care services for students that have 5 or 4 plants. That's kind of the general education side of it. And then all of the nurses that provide specialized health care services on the special education through individual education places are really part of the special education contribution and funding. So we did not separate them out because they're supported through that as part of the special education funding we can certainly break it out in the next iteration in a I guess
a clarifying question on that then is that only nurses associated with special education are going to be funded at that base level or what about nurses that are not necessarily allocated for yeah, currently we have the we have we have a we have a large reliance on agency nurses to cover our specialized health care needs. So as we reduce our reliance on agency nurses we were we were looking at a different types of models for nursing. It is true we have the wellness center model currently at some most middle middle schools and some high schools does include nursing services that will put our costs higher than what we have. So we do have that built in but we don't we haven't currently found the funding for it. Okay. One other clear well I have a couple of clarifying questions but I know my my my colleague one of the other questions I have is it sounds like you will
be sharing a broader model of some sort. is that is that correct? Yeah. I mean we really need to break down so people can see one. how are we describe it the allocation methodology, how did we get to how many teachers at a school has type of thing how did how was the decision on how does a school get a point five social worker a full time social worker so all of that allocation methodology needs to be shared. We have to be clear like what are the resources that we're using? So for instance we still have dual funding from litigation that successful litigation against the vaping companies that will probably go that goes to community health outreach worker so we need to be able to share with people where the funding sources are as we know them and also give that opportunity for people to say hey you forgot about this resource, did you? You know because we have lots of resources so that is definitely the information we
should be sharing. Okay. That that's helpful. I mean in a I'd certainly hope that you know, we can be as transparent as possible just given everything I mean I think it would be great to get public eyes on just how the how the assumptions are made and whatnot so that everybody is as you know is is confident in this PRESIDENT. Can I have clarifying questions on the process by which sites are involved? But if we are sticking to this, I can hold those. I think we all do. So why don't we come back to that question so we can talk as we talk about next steps maybe towards the end of our conversation here. That sounds great. So thank you. And if I don't bring that up please please chime in and we'll do now I'm going to have superintendents you respond really quickly and then we'll go to commissioner fisher to wrap up with clarifying questions and then we'll keep on.
I just wanted to to remind commissioners that the restricted resources that we have have lots of different types of terms inside them. So some of our restricted resources are for two year cycles or three year terms and so that's the very complicated process that we have to go through. So some of you know we actually see in the the trying the pyramid here something called cc esp which is the california community schools grant and a lot of our schools receive that but they're on different cycles and so it's it's requires us to have deeper conversations with schools and trying to make sure that those programs are going to number one are continue to have funds but the number two figure out how to support those funds. Thank you commissioner fisher clarifying questions for now and then we will go into the trust me I have two separate lists so we're good. We're good. I'll save my grandstanding for later.
Um, I'm just getting first of all MS.. Lao smith, thank you for being in the hot seat tonight. Appreciate it. Um, now you're our budget expert too. You're just like during the pandemic. you are our public health expert. You know you've been our operational expert. Thank just thank you for all the hat you wear. I appreciate you so and DR. Sue, you have stepped into the hornet's nest here with everything that we have just thrown on to your plate this year and we knew some of these decisions were coming and we knew they were painful and so thank you for leading us through them. Um, those weren't clarifying questions. So sorry. Um, I have a lot of clarifying questions about special education though let's if we could go I think is it slide ten here? Um mine is very very small but it's the graph.
um uh, so yeah that um so piggybacking on some of the questions earlier about the 802 versus 791 I see here for special education we've got 209 plus 25.3 which is 235.1 million but our self budget is 231 million so I'd love um our self unrestricted general fund is $162 million but then we've also seen it at 183 million now 209 um and plus I don't know that we fully accounted for all the the closed contracts, the $30.7 million that was deducted from nps and mpx contract so just like I'd love to see a much more full accounting of special education particularly last year's budget compared to this year's budget we approved in MAY and JUNE the super budget. So I still would love to see our actuals compared to what we as a board told you you have to do.
No one has shown us that yet so please and thank you. So I'd love to see from a clarifying standpoint how that aligns with all of this. Um, I think you answered some of my clarifying questions though about these funds restricted versus unrestricted funds. Um, and I you know I see that in the slide where it says not including supplemental and concentration grant thank you MR. Dejon for some of that clarification but I think my biggest clarifying question really is we're not like a lot of other districts. One where a county and a district so we've got county funds as well as district funds. We have a lot of I appreciate MR. Deshawn for reminding us that you know, there are a lot of districts that don't get more than lcf frankly, we do our school our county values public education to the point where whenever we put any ballot initiative on the ballot we get it funded.
So we've got pif funding. We've got come to some of these I see here but I don't see the students access funding. I don't see all of our grants and so I'm so if you could clarify for me is that going to be in the in the in the when are we going to actually get a breakdown that includes that and I I'll I'll do I have further questions about all of that um a little bit later to um but those are my clarifying questions um so on the cell phone versus the special ed contribution, I don't know the answer to that this time so I'll have to get back to you on that. I'm not sure if it's I thought it was in addition to but again don't hold me to that um on the question about the student success funds and the grants, the the student success funds the it's about 24 million that is coming over their direct grants to schools. So that's listed in the part of
the pyramid and their grants for schools so that that's at the schools discretion on how to spend those monies so that's how they're identified. Same thing with the community partnership grant. the the student success funds that come directly to the central office that they're called district innovation funds. Those are right now funding for schools for the lessons study math pilot and some work with ali. So it will be showed in the bigger budget but it isn't something that we look at for our base or the supplemental since they're very restricted on the sources. Thank you for those clarifications. Um, and I realize I, I never asked my clarifying questions but some of them have been answered. I do have so going back to the table I know that there's some work to clarify just some of the numbers that are there but um if I heard correctly for example a a $20 million decrease in central services
coming down to $80 million reflects a change in a year over year budgeting for for central office staffers. Correct. So this so this what we see here reflects not just the base but it also reflects some change strategic changes that are happening with budget allocations. Is that right? Okay. I think if that's the case that I do find that this slide to be quite profound and telling us a lot about some some things including where our money is going for folks for things like staff principal clerk etc. But that is a it is what I don't want to get lost is that is the changes that are being made year over year to help us meet the base using language here meet the base of this and so so I just wanted to clarify that that is a decision to remove to reduce our costs from a presumably 100 million to 80
million that is not necessary informed by a staffing model correct. on the central office side? That's correct. So the 80 million that's in the that row represents a $20 million reduction so to current year 2425 the unrestricted funds to the central offices in the amount of 100 million. This is based on saying that to the nec for 2526 it will be 80 million for the central office because I think there's a similar question to be harder on the other line items that are not fte that are informed necessarily by staffing model but nevertheless MAY reflect changes in a year over year budget so similar to commissioner uh fisher this $235.1 million for special education contribution it begs the question is that more or less from the year prior and I
mean you know despite those changes I think are important to reflect in the table like this. Yeah okay. Um I know that there are a lot of thoughts to share beyond now our clarifying questions and so uh um I am I am open to taking feedback on how to best approach this conversation but when one part of me tells me that for the sake of time given that we all have things that we want to say on our minds I am totally fine putting a timer on for each of us to say what's on her mind as we do a whip around it could be a question. It could be a statement. It could be you opining about things that you feel about the world. But uh, if that's something that's okay. Yeah. PRESIDENT Kim was was there or the superintendency was there anything with regard to next steps that you wanted to show? so sorry. I think this is my opinion. You are going to forget it and you had a clarifying question as well so okay great.
The all the clarifying questions everyone has a clarifying question. Okay. so in terms of next steps actually millie has been meeting with our site leaders and principals providing them with clarity around what this means to them. Um, we have actually also been working with our principles to train them up on using the new budgeting tool on front line so it is a lot to ask of our principles to do both of these things at the same time but that is what we are doing because that is the moment that we are in. We will continue to have those conversations with our state leaders and principals and in the next board meeting on FEBRUARY 25th we actually will be bringing to this board a
list of proposals for a separation which is our reduction in force proposal. And then in MARCH on MARCH 11th we will be sharing our second interim budget which will include our multi-year projection for how we are doing if we make these cuts for those out years once again with the goal of maintaining solvency solvency and having a healthy revenue reserve after and then in MARCH we will be hosting a family summit with all of our school psych councils where parents will have an opportunity to provide feedback to us on their their larger our larger local control funding formula budget and then in MAY we will hopefully have the governors revise budget and we will do some consolidate of that revised budget with our budget and then hopefully in
JUNE we will be sending a balanced budget to this body for full adoption. Emily am I missing anything? No. i mean if there are hopefully we will be doing more cohort meetings with the principals as well in the big meetings and then they meet with their cohorts individually on a regular basis to talk about this. I know there are some lingering clarifying questions and so we can go vice PRESIDENT Hu. Commissioner alexander, commissioner gupta and commissioner fischer and then we'll we'll do our two minutes of you know, parting statements . thank you. One question I have is about cuts to the central office and I'm wondering whether $20 million is a is what is represented as a cut in the understanding of the base needs
of the central office or is expected to be the total amount cut from the central office budget because I recognize that it is really um it's a very large amount and it's going to affect a lot of people but I also recognize that that is actually only 17% of the $113 million. And so when we talk about keeping cuts furthest from students that's actually a disproportionately smaller cut to the central office than to school sites if that is indeed the maximum reduction that we expect from the central office to make that sure the 20 million represents the reduction to the central office in the unrestricted side of funding the central also office also receives restricted funding and we're working through that. So there will be cuts on the restricted side as well most notably the learning and recovery moneys that are now I think it's about 35 million in the central office that we
either have to find an alternative funding for or eliminate those positions. So that's the next work. So this is only representing the unrestricted things and the other thing I just want to kind of touch on is there's been a lot of references to the governor's MAY budget revise and is it accurate to say that like this whole budget is based off of the assumption that the governor's proposed budget which does not cut education but and only ever so very, very slightly increases the budget not really keeping up with the increased costs that we have but in absolute terms is slightly larger than last year remains the same and there's a lot of concern on that with cuts from the federal government with costs to rebuild los angeles as the proposed budget was initially made prior to the fires that we
have to keep some flexibility because there are things in the governor's MAY budget revise that MAY be out of our control and that the proper place to put that pressure for all of us and for the public is to our state legislators to not cut the state education budget that that is accurate. We are hoping that the governor's budget does not change. We actually think this is the best that he can do because there is actually status quo at this moment in time as the best I I am we are thinking about what would happen if the federal if we lose additional federal dollars and that is unfortunately a contingency plan that we have to be prepared for. We are looking into our budget to determine how much federal grants we get. We do know a lot of the title dollars the title funds which
are restricted funds come from our feds, our federal government. We also know that there are some dollars for special education that comes from from our federal government if we have to make additional cuts to the federal government because of certain policies that's happening at the federal level ,I don't I don't even know how we can sustain that. It would devastate our it would devastate this this district we get upwards of $50 million from the feds. There's just no way we will be able to sustain that. Um, I had an additional clarifying question well two quick ones about what's in the keeping the lights on. So one question is why are ap perhaps in keeping the lights on? And my second question is um does the transportation budget in there include general
education busses like the ones that we keep hearing about in public comment that take kids from like outside of guadalupe elementary and send them to west side schools? That makes sense. um okay like on your sorry there were two totally different questions but I was it was just the senior moment sorry. no no, no. The ap prep is included because remember MR. Dookhan was saying what is in our collective bargaining agreements and ap prep is part of it. So we put that into the base the base allocations that isn't to say maybe we can find restricted resources for it and move it out but just knowing that that is something that we have to account for and then on the question of the general transportation so yeah, so when you have students I think we have busses that go to from you said from the east side of the west side right we have busses the general education busses
includes all of the busses that are part of like the c tip and all of the busses that go from schools maybe in the bayview to chinatown or on the west side. So they do include that uh that money's 6.5 I forget but the bulk of the student transportation in that 29 million is special education so it's about 6 million for the general ed and the remainder being special ed and that's why when we give you the more detail those things are broken out in it. Commissioner gupta um so so I'm really happy to hear that communication has gone out to at least our site administrators and you know I think that's great. Obviously you know we need to we need to make sure that that we're on top of that. i'm curious I know the site budgets will not be out sounds like for another few weeks or so but is there guidance that
we can already provide for sites that have in the past used part of their pta funds to fund additional positions and how they have to treat those or not treat those this time around? yes, we shared our kind of our current thinking about that guidance with site leaders. We had today is tuesday yesterday monday we had a series I think of five meetings with you know how our our schools are broken up into cohorts. So we had a couple we invited principals from each cohort to come and we shared our best thing. We got a lot of feedback from them, good questions about how we're calling it the supplemental hiring guide like how do you use your student success funds your pta? So our plan is to go back. We have an admin institute next wednesday and so to go back and the next iteration and keep working with them we are currently under a hiring freeze which if I don't say that MR. Dushan will remind us but our goal is to have that guidance ready so when we are out a
hiring freeze then um administrators understand while they're thinking about their budget what positions they can hire for and be ready to do that is in a again I'm thrilled to hear that we're having those conversations with say administrators as they also recognize that part of the school site councils are parents that MAY not be part of those conversations. Is there anything that you might providing guidance to school site council members that they MAY not hear directly from the principal or you know, administrators are obviously busy so is there anything else that we can share with them right now? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. I mean we are meeting with the el cap advisory committee tomorrow and that is representatives of school site councils and we do communicate we can't communicate with them directly so yes, that's something we can do and I can talk with superintendents to more about our plan and what we
want to we do want to get the information finalized as much as possible. We also hope we have the MARCH 8th summit coming up. So we are actually have that in our mind for a lot of sharing as well as schools start doing their school side summit since spring planning. Thank you thank you um commissioner ray and then we will start with our closing statements. Thank you. I have a few clarifying questions I just maybe ask and answer unless you are ready to give them all you want. What would you prefer? Okay. Sure. Okay. Sure. Um, so my first question is just to clarify um is the staffing model that we're working with reflecting the enrollment at each school reflecting the number of kids at each school or not and in what way is that being handled how we're determining staffing versus how many kids are in a school? My second question relates to
central office which just a couple of questions in here. First, do we feel that $80 million is sufficient or at least on the unrestricted side to cover our core needs? We've had a lot of problems with things like payroll and hiring and so forth and we need to make sure that we can actually run our most core business operations in order for our school system to function. We want like we want to be sure we don't have more in power fiascos so and also related to that with the reductions that are contemplate in central office, where does that put us? These are the central offices elsewhere in the state essentially like does that put us on par with what most other school districts spend on their central administrative functions or above or below? Where is that? And then my last question relates to to the extent that you can explain or or can obtain the information. We do have three stated student
outcome goals and if those are the core goals we're working to how are we actually essentially working backward from that to figure out what we need to do in order to reach those goals? How how is that being reflected in our budgeting? Thank you. Um I can answer some of those some of them I might refer to DR. Sue or another time or both. Um, so on your question about the number of staff per school it is enrollment driven. It's based on the number of students at the school at the tended count. Um so the current year enrollment of identifying the number of teachers per school in terms of the 80 million is sufficient to meet our core needs. I mean that is an eye that we're keeping and I think DR. Sue did mention it's it's the 20 million but it's not it's not 20 million for each department. So some program is MAY be ending and some other programs
like are more core functions payroll business services MAY not be experienced as many cuts. So I will kind of say like I don't think any of us feels like this is sufficient for our schools or for our central office. But we are keeping an eye to how to ensure that our core services continue um in relation to other districts, I can't answer that right now. I think we could look at you know I know there's been a lot of analysis done looking at long beach and other school districts and how the central versus school side and I can't remember commissioner alexander's is usually around 1,520% well the the vla report when it was done had us at 27% of our general fund but that included restricted and unrestricted. I think we were down to 22% last year or something like that. But again that's a question I'm going to ask too so I would love to use that same methodology. I mean I know it's that's pretty complex but it's as much
as possible to use the same methodology so we can again track we've been making progress in that area so we should be able to say next year because our peer districts were 18%. So I would like to know are we you know below that you know, are we at that level and I think the vla would be happy to help. I mean they kept offering so if the board of supervisors were willing to put more time in they could help us do that as well. Thank you. Can I just oops can I just add that with these central office cuts actually thinking back to the vla report there were recommendations for us to review all of our managerial positions as well. So within this within this 20 million reduction we are looking at that. So we do see managerial positions. I will say again 20% minimum cuts across the board in central office but there are
certain programs or initiatives within central office and within divisions that we're asking folks to completely eliminate because we do not have the luxury of dollars to do it. And I believe that we can create better efficiencies by either coordinating our different units closer together or by aligning certain things that we're doing. Okay. And my last question was about the student outcome goals and how if at all we're working backwards to figure out what we need to do to achieve those goals. I can just speak to a little bit on the staffing model for the the student outcome goals. The literacy and math and instructional coach was a big strategy for moving those outcome goals which is why we have the instructional coach included in that the whole child guardrail which was
centered around chronic absenteeism and moving that forward. That's why social workers you see that since that's simply group so it's drawing on the work that is currently happening around moving those goals forward within the staffing model and I don't know if superintendency wants to add anything else. I don't have additional comments for that. I think once we have the final staffing model we can then start mapping backwards to those goals. As you can see here we do feel and and acknowledge that instructional coaches are crucial to making sure that we reach our literacy goals. We also know that math coaches are going to also be equally as crucial to reach our math goals. So these are things that we're keeping our eyes on to make sure that we find those those dollars to continue to have those positions. As we wrap up here, I want to
start with commissioner weissman. Word just I said two minutes but I'm going to reduce it to a minute and 30s per person to stand on your soapbox if I say whatever it is that you need to say. But the 90s thank you I'm going to do it in under 90s because I don't know about most but I think a lot of us have to work in the morning. So I think one of the things I just want this is in response and pushback but maybe pushback to our cdc advisors or just maybe a response. We know we have a budget crisis. We know that I don't think any of us are living in a fairy tale land where we don't think that's the reality. We also know that we have to make cuts. We also know that the cuts are going to feel bad. We know this this is not anything that I don't think I think none of us are in denial about this. So the and the idea that, you
know, many schools operate just with this space, that is fine. But to commissioner fisher's point, I MAY it's not actually fine but to commissioner fisher's point that is not our reality. We do have extra funds and and we do have extra resources and so I think we need to be really ,really intentional about how and why we are choosing to spend them beyond the fact that we're in a budget crisis and that this MAY be a base somewhere according to the state and one of the things I encourage us to think about is maybe approaching this not from a race to the bottom model but maybe a harm reduction model which is we know this is going to hurt. How can we engage in a thoughtful and efficient way of thinking about how to center our students and minimize how bad this is going to feel? so I the framing of this I've been thinking about sort of from a harm reduction space this is where I would like us to to continue to focus 90s day no, I mean I think I just have more questions at this point so I look forward to the budget
and thank you for for for being in the hot seat right now I'm going to try really hard for the 90s um I'll talk fast sorry to our interpreters we are a district and a county office so when we talk about cutting the central office we have to be super careful there. We have a lot of programs to superintendents whose point that we have the obligation to do as a as a county board our schools that our student delegate montgomery mentioned are continuation calls. Those are actually county schools and in fact if you look at the counties around us san mateo, marin, others there are special education programs and classes and schools that are run out of those counties that frankly would save us a whole lot of money that we're spending right now sending kids to nonpublic schools. Um, I would just want to reference to the consent calendar um line 13 summary of fiscal year to date contracts for professional services for
consultants that's $131 million. And to commissioner gupta's point earlier about nurses, there are two contracts on there just to pick on our nursing and staffing emerges health is 1.4 million. Rowe health is 1 million. How amazing would it be to hire those folks internally? We contract out with agencies for other services. How amazing would it be to hire those staff internally and save that money instead of contracting out? We had public comment about union busting. To that point I want to make sure that as we're moving forward and we're looking at reducing budgets, we're actually looking at what we can do to bring staff back in-house. So and to follow up on commissioner weissman ward's point, thank you very much. This is my last point. I will wrap up to be student centered and goal centered with our investments our third grade reading goal. There's research that shows that it takes four times as long to intervene in fourth grade as it does in kindergarten because of brain
development to teach a kid to read. so when we have grants and we have resources and we have other things out there that we could be investing in our elementary schools that will save us money and help with this budget later for the love of GOD we need to be doing it. I'll stop there. Judson, can you give me a minute? I'm sorry, MR. Steele. Can you give me a minute and a half that'll help me keep track. I could only do one minute increments on here. okay, that's fine. Yeah. So why don't we. Yeah, sorry, I do the minute. how about that? Thank you. I appreciate it and my apologies. I would like to second what commissioner fisher had said about finding ways to do things in in a more sensible and smarter and efficient way. For instance, just looking at the numbers that were given on this chart we all talked about a lot the special education contribution here is very close to the amount we're paying for
all to k to 12 classroom teachers if we intervened earlier and address these issues earlier we could do so much more for all of our students both for our special education students and for other students for our schools and school communities in general that would help everybody. So the other thing I want to talk about briefly is how important I think it is to work on restoring trust and transparency in the district and making sure that the materials that we're presenting to the public are understandable by the board, by sites, by the general public is super important and I know it takes extra time and it's difficult it's a difficult, difficult task but the way that we communicate people with people has to be clear and accurate so that folks will trust what we're doing and we have you know, as much as we can we need to be clear and transparent and honest with people and a lot of these things are going to be
extremely difficult. But in every crisis there are also opportunities to make changes that will benefit us and sometimes we have to you know, sometimes we have to reach some difficult places before we're willing as a community to make those changes because people get used to doing things the way that they have always been done or get used to what they know. And I'm hoping that we can come out of this better and with a stronger focus on student outcomes. Thanks. Building on what commissioner ray was just talking about, I want to start by also thinking MS.. Smith and apologizing if it our earlier interaction seemed in any way like a gotcha I was I didn't intend for it to be that way and it was just I was confused and I think to to your point, I think we've got to make sure that the information we're presenting is accurate and I mean I guess I would ask the team if you all when we
talk about budget I just think we need I don't expect anyone of you to know everything but can we have the people in the room who can answer the question? I mean if we can you know, because that's we need to be able to have a real conversation about the numbers understand where they came from and make sure they're accurate and if there's a mistake it's all good as long as we can correct it. I think that's the issue is the people weren't here to to give us the information to correct it. And so and because these are these are big numbers that are being put in these buckets. Right. Like the question I asked about busing there's that $6 million is being spent on general at busing. Is that really more important than social workers? I don't know. But I mean that's a conversation that at least that the board of education ought to be able to have right. So anyway, that's my request moving forward and then my comment I guess is just as several colleagues have said, this has to be connected to student outcomes.
I mean that's our responsibility as a board is and not supported budget unless we are convinced that it's going to advance our goals. And so it needs to be even though we're making these cuts it needs to be harm reduction and it needs to be we need to be convinced that we're moving toward our goals and meeting our guardrails including guardrails one around meaningful consultation. So 142 I'm time's up and thank you I didn't think you got you were doing it and I gotcha I appreciated that thank you thank you thank you for your work on this. I know you're it was this was a lot of like I said I don't want to make excuses. It should have been better and I just started this project a week ago I know that's my little bit that's what I want to say something because I know you've jumped into this at the
last minute so yeah, yeah, yeah . I second everything that my fellow commissioners have said and you know I always think about so when my dad would always say which is show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value and I think that that is so so true here and that's what you're hearing from a lot of us obviously I think we all understand that it is imperative that we adopt a balanced budget but because of the depth of the cuts this is also an opportunity for us to have some transformative leadership around what we value, what we are going to invest in, what we are going to unfortunately have to say goodbye to and we need to really think about every single decision that we are making. I know it's really difficult to be putting this budget together in honestly completely unprecedented budget times with everything that's going on at the state and federal levels. But that's not an excuse for just cutting for cutting sake and overlooking the reality of the people and the programs
that are benefiting from that budget and those investments and so I think this is really an opportunity for us to explain to the public our vision for where we are going like this is a reset for us to have a sustainable district and we also need to convey the vision that is behind this because the vision is not just cutting to the bone and satisfying the state. The vision is having an education that is worthy of the students of san francisco. Um thank you mallett your um MS. Last smith and DR. Su I you know what I want to be really clear on is in the in the many conversation we as a relatively new board have had I would hope that both the public and the state hear very clearly that we
are ready to make the necessary decisions to bring forward a balanced budget and finally receive a positive fiscal certification. I don't think that's a question in our minds but I also want to communicate that we are asking a lot of our community to put their trust in us. We are putting a lot of trust into our staff and our superintendent and I would ask the state to also trust us and recognize the shifts that we are making as a body to really follow through on the commitments that we put forward . and I, I say that with all due respect to our key advisors in the state who have been really instrumental and helpful in getting us to where we are and it's it's so clear to me that we are asking so much of our educators, of our staff, of our families, of our communities to put faith in in a system that
has hurt them and that will continue to frankly hurt them through these cuts and that we are ready to make the necessary decisions to make the hard decisions. I would hope that we have that same level of trust from our city, that same level of trust from our state and that same trust in our superintendent to be able to move this work forward. And so I, I really I can't underscore that enough and I'm really grateful for both staff and state and our city for being able to have this conversation to even argue about restricted funds like that is very clear. Um but I, I, I think it's just really important to communicate that to to everyone who is listening and so thank you. Um, I think we're well past our time so that being said I realize I don't have my script in front of me.
We can move on to item g the consent calendar grants we can do we want to move to after ten minutes and take us a few minutes. Yeah. So yes sorry can we do a quick roll call vote if I motion to extend early past 10th OCTOBER second on PRESIDENT Kim thank you. second it's ah got it all right on extending the meeting past ten MR. Alexander yes, MR. Fisher. Yes MR. Gupta. Yes, MR. Vice specifically? Yes. MR. Ray. Yes. Commissioner wiseman word. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim yes. All right. We're moving on past ten. Um, moving on to consent calendar g um, motion and second to bring forward the consent calendar. So move second, any items are withdrawn or corrected by the superintendent? None. No, there are none. Thank you. Roll call vote MR. Steel. thank you, MR. Alexander.
Yes, MR. Fisher? Yes. Commissioner gupta? Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling. Yes, commissioner ray. Yes. MR. Whiteman. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim. Yes, sir. Thank you. Moving on to each one we've attached to the agenda is the quarterly report and the williams complaints. So just to acknowledge that item I or member reports are there reports from board members on either any membership organizations or other advisory committee and appointments by commissioners seeing none I adjourn tonight's meeting at 10:09 P.M.