Wing Wah Leung gave a public comment. He mentioned that he was at the previous board meeting and wanted the Board of Directors to consider having a conversation about hybrid/virtual meetings again. He explained that he believes that the staff at OMI are fortunate to have the ability to join the meetings but others do not. He wants others to be able to at the least join to listen in. 

Cadet First Lieutenant (C/1LT) Jennifer Tran gave a presentation about the current affairs of the OMI cadet body by targeting event recaps, school climate, student engagement and recruitment, and event outlooks. 

Jennifer explained that the beginning our of the school had started wonderfully. She mentioned a few events from the beginning of the year that went well: Back to School Night, senior sunrise, picture day, and the first OMI community service of the year. 

She explained that one of the ways that the cadet leadership team is keeping tabs on the school climate is by implementing monthly student surveys in which the students can let them know what they like and what can be improved by the school. Jennifer showed a pie chart for the middle and high schools to see how the students expressed their level of enjoyment of the school. She commented that high school students at OMI enjoyed the wider range of classes being offered for dual enrollment opportunities. 

Some students noticed that the classroom environment had become a bit more disrupted and that was also on the radar of the cadet leadership team. Jennifer attributes the disruptiveness to the shortening of the entrance camps from 7 days to 5 days. The cadet leadership team believed that this was the reason for the students becoming more disruptive because the cadet leadership team did not have the opportunity to fully teach the incoming candidates about the nature of OMI.

Jennifer explained that OMI wants to change the perception of the school from a perceived reform school to a college preparatory school.

176 middle schoolers filled out the survey that the cadet leadership team sent out and 281 students did for high school.

OMI Cares was created for OMI students to volunteer in their communities. The cadet leadership team expressed that they want some sort incentive for the students to engage in OMI Cares and the other student activities in the future.

In her concluding statements, Jennifer gave a breakdown of the schedule for upcoming events like college tours, career panels, and SAT testing.

Dr. Streshly asked Jennifer to speak on the incentive field trips that just occurred. Students who performed better than their previous scores in the CAASPP/SBAC were selected to take a trip to Santa Cruz. The overall feeling was positive and the students felt higher morale. Those students pushed for better scores because they wanted to improve and get a chance to be on the field trip.

The cadet leadership group had the foresight to have at least one community service event for cadets per month to ensure that as many cadets as possible could participate.

Marc Mares asked Jennifer how the clubs are being ran and handled with finite material and space, being that the school is smaller. She explained that the clubs are classroom based and the sports usually take the field.

Dr. Streshly expressed that she wants to make an effort to make it consistent to recognize students and staff during her Superintendent's Update. She also invited Cadet Commander Ryan Ton and Cadet 1st Lieutenant Jennifer Tran to chime in and recognize individual students when they need to acknowledge them.

Dr. Streshly began by recognizing the instructional leadership team. She mentioned that they were/are a very dedicated group to seeing the students succeed.

Dr. Streshly went on to say that she wanted to recognize the security team and Mr. Chu because they enforce the rules and are the first ones there when there is an issue.

Dr. Streshly wanted to recognize the athletics team. Tim Murray, Valmiria Amaya, and Alvaro Hernandez for their efforts in the sports teams that they lead. 

At the time of the board meeting, the current head count for students was 522. The goal/target was to be at 525 students. There are 229 students in the middle school and 294 students at the high school. The ADA for middle school was at 96% and the high school was at 94%. Dr. Streshly mentioned that OMI was starting to send out truancy letters and doing home visits to try to get more students here on time and present.

Dr. Streshly reiterated that the Board wanted to have more information given to them for the interest bearing accounts. 

Dr. Streshly suggested that OMI, Jacque Eischens, and some board members (Joseph Wire and Marc Mares) should create an Ad Hoc committee to look more deeply into it and create a board policy for that. She mentioned that operational money cannot be put in investment funds so it would have to be a special reserve used in those accounts.

The money used needs to be a special reserve and those types of accounts need to adhere to certain guidelines and codes so that the account is 100% secure.

Jerry Brown gave questions for the ad hoc committee to consider like how safe the account was. Marc Mares mentioned that he would like OMI to look into savings accounts as well with high interest bearing rates so that money can be taken out at any time.

Kathryn Wong and Dr. Streshly began the process of allowing OMI employees to invest in 403B and 457 plans. Dr. Streshly mentioned that this is a common practice in other K-12 school districts so they wanted to bring this option to the staff here.  You can make an agreement with a third party administrator at no charge to the board and they can make themselves available. The third party administrations are slated to come to the campus and speak with staff and educate them on this opportunity.

Marc Mares explained that OMI needs to be cautious and make sure that the teachers and staff are well informed about the 403B/457 plans so that there is no bad outcomes like he explained in his anecdote. Dr. Streshly mentioned that OMI will do its due diligence to make sure that the staff is well informed.  

The OMI staff mentioned that there is an option with Cal STRS that allows for something similar if not the same thing as a 403B/457 plan investing. Shann Chu shared an anecdote that explained that he used the STRS option before and he saw that there were different options for low or high yielding investing. He mentioned too as well that the fees for Cal STRS was generally half of what the commercial lenders had their fees at.

Dr. Streshly mentioned that OMI has weighted heavily in the direction of dual enrollment for the last few years. Roughly in 2018, the first set of dual enrollment classes were given at OMI. This year, OMI made a conscious effort expand the program and make more classes available and placed them in the departments. So, the Spanish teacher would be helping the dual enrollment Spanish class and the same for the other departments.

One way that the administrators of OMI want to transform the image of the school is by creating a pathway starting from 8th grade and culminating in senior year of what needs to be taken to receive full credit towards college eligibility.

In order to fulfill this goal, OMI would need to establish a strong Memorandum of Understanding with the Peralta Colleges to organize the Early College Model. Dr. Streshly mentioned that in order to go full early college, OMI would have to expand its policy to offer more than just electives for dual enrollment but some of the graduation requirements.

The Board and OMI Staff asked Jennifer Tran for her opinion on the subject of Early College Model adoption and she agreed that it sounds like a good idea. She explained that she thought having an Associate's degree while submitting applications for college acceptance would make OMI students more competitive. She gave the suggestion that not every student has to be in the dual enrollment classes because they will not prosper if they are not prepared.

Jerry Brown explained that he wanted to know what the teachers thought of the new proposed model. Cynthia Murphy was called up from the audience to give her perspective on the model and she said that she thought it was a good pathway and that more research was needed to see what classes were being offered at the universities. She also mentioned that this model was a good idea because the students having credits to their name will help financially. Rachel Mahlke was also called to speak on the matter and she explained that OMI should research the percentage of students that pass the dual enrollment classes and decide what is done based off that.

Jacque showed the cashflow from June 2023 to June 2024.

Our projected cash for June, July, and August was incorrect and projected less. OMI took what was on the software and not what was in the bank itself.

Jacque pointed out that March was going to be the lowest projected cashflow and explained that July and August are typically low projected months as well.

Some of the federal funds that were given to OMI will be taken back monthly as opposed to the entire funding all at the same time. That funding total will be about $250,000 as opposed to the projected $600,000 anticipated when building the OMI original budget.

She showed a bar graph that compared last years actuals with this year's projections. She explained that in some months, the projected number was higher in the 2023-2024 than last year.

OMI is projected to be in the deficit at the end of the year at about $430,000, then the following year $180,000, then the year after that $325,000, so OMI has to be vigilant.

Shawna Lipsey gave the board a breakdown of what the BARR (Building Assets, Reducing Risks) program was about and it was to get our OMI cadets academically ready for college and be at grade level.

The goal of BARR is for students and staff to build relationships so students improve academically, socially, and emotionally.

BARR was brought in to help broaden the perspective of what it is to be a teacher. There are layers to the BARR structure. Shawna Lipsey and Christopher Lee have implemented the I-Times as part of the curriculum that structures student activities. Then there is a staff to staff meeting (OMI Academic Support Groups) that allows for the staff to work together to find the optimal outcomes for students.

The teachers take charge of the program while Shawna Lipsey and Christopher Lee coach them with the help of BARR representatives.

There is a process for how cadets are identified in weekly grade reports. Level 0-3 are how the students are categorized in ranging from no intervention needed to being addressed by the community connect team. Involving parents as much as possible is a goal of the program so that they know what is happening every step of the way.

Based on the graphs that were shown, Jerry Brown asked if the conclusion was that there was progress after starting the BARR program. It was confirmed by the graphs of grades 6-12 that there was progress.

This was brought to the board for consideration for the 2023-2024 school year. It is important to point out the cost and the cost to the ending fund balance. Since there will be no board meeting in October, Dr. Streshly suggested that there would be more information sent in the board letter so that there is appropriate action taken in November.

If approved, OMI Staff recommended that the Board consider a retroactive action to the cost of living allowance. 

The COLA that the state got and will be getting in the coming years will decrease after this year. There will need to be restructuring but Dr. Streshly would like to avoid the restructuring to happen in the classroom. The OMI staff would like to see the classroom sizes stay small, as the sizes of the classes fluctuate from small to moderate.

Some of the restructuring will also go to the funds that are being used for coaching programs and technology infrastructure remodeling will be reduced because some of the expenses were already made this year.

Jerry Brown expressed that the teachers and staff were very important and that they needed to be taken care of so he is sympathetic to the idea of a pay raise.