Ms. Ramirez let the pledge of allegiance

no public comment received per Mr. Guinto

Tabled for the next Finance and Investment Committee Meeting

Discuss and Vote to Recommend to the Full Board Approval of Additional Biology Textbooks Vote Gregory Wood/ R. Monatogue 10 m Powered by Board OnTrack 4 of 6 Purpose Presenter Time Mr. Wood, CBO, & Ms. Montague, Science Teacher, will lead a discussion prior to the vote on whether the Committee will vote to recommend that the full Board approve additional biology textbooks for the biology program.

• Mr. Wood and Ms. Monatogue – Last meeting to order textbook for Science, for transparency and record the committee can consider the full board to include on the proposal for the next board meeting. No budget tonight but for the next meeting.

Ms. Montague - Approved for books last year, waited for the voice of the science department for survey, asked publisher for textbooks. Waited for a while, NGSS (Next Generation Science). 

All of LAUSD, and all charter school are using it except Palisades – a standard that students need. 

Textbook money was considered budget cannot be finalized on time from 2022-2023 It is being Represented to the full board for 2023-2024.

Books are outdated. Don’t want to waste thousands of dollars. Every single person in the department in Biology department is heard. Ms. Malconian agrees to defer to the teachers on what they think they need, and she is in favor.

Mr. Wood – budgetarian – cost will be approximately $28,000 per year for 6 years commitment. Also, will be cheaper, books plus licenses. 2019 Edition 3 course model.

6 years in the budget 28,000 – Biology line 

Integration on Canvas is included with free professional development. 

Mr. Wood - End of May 2023 ECR had 24.2 Million dollars in it. 11 months with 20 Million dollars, contribution $200,020 thousand for 11 months,  gains and losses 1.352 Million dollars 

Investment increase 6.6% total fund balance is 18.4% for the month.

Middle of June is 22.2 is up to 24.5 million dollars. About 200 thousand increase is a contribution the rest are further investment gains. Balance will be forwarded to actuary report with future contributions. Halfway into June we are in good position for the current school year.  

Ms. Ilyas – summary of all Cares ACT – money we received since the start of COVID. How much we were allocated as a school and how much we have spent year to date and what is left and the spending deadlines of those funds. Listed funds with sooner due dates on top and later ones on the bottom. 

Cares ACT money is to be spent by the deadline– Summer school related expenses spending deadline on September 30th, not leaving any money on the table. Funds SR -3, other grants, capital projects to be proposed for the money on the diagram. 

Ms. Malconian, is any of the funds toward the later end of the decade, are those in danger of not being funded. 

– Learning recovery, per Ms. Ilyas – they might 

30% proposed cut to learning recovery.

50% proposed cut to Arts, Music and Instruction materials grant. Unknown until July when update is done. No spending plan in place, question on the timeline when it can possibly happen? Per Ms. Ilyas, as of now NO. If they are on target on finalizing the budget must be adapted by June 30 – July 1 for the state grant.

We are considering what is applicable, and we have to allocate the capital expenses and charges. 

ASB Check registers – End of the year, teams are having banquets and paid for PROM. The spending balance is higher than usual. 

PROM comes out from the class of 2023, $117,071. On top of what students pay in ticket prices.

ASB Trust balances – balance and trust accounts with the closing of the year balance. Other receipts like ROTC still have more expense reports that would balance by June. 

Student Council – class 2023 will they deplete the balance per Ms. Daniela? The Student counsel class must vote per the student council by-laws. 

Graduation expenses- Receiving a security bill for prom will go against that account. 

Per Ms. Malconian, encouraged her to figure out how to spend the money. It gets donated to the next council.

On-going project – developing the budget before graduation/finals, more activities, or buying infrastructure things. By the beginning months of the year. Just spare for prices and stuff… end up going in the trash. Further engage, create a system that when someone can’t afford a yearbook. Coming out with plans, use the money for dance; raffle tickets, use the money. Teachers can encourage the students.

What can’t be better in raising money than spending it? - Malconian

The class can give a give to the campus. Something to consider for the budget.

Yellow Cab – cheaper special pricing for student transport from location to the school.

General account – Pay our bill, liability of what part of health benefits go to our retiree. Fully funded we should be transferring the retiree benefit cost for certificated employee 28,000. The value of the classified is 8,500. Once fully funded faster the board can potentially decide instead of writing a check. We have 11 retirees this year. 

Ms. Ilyas – fieldtrips - STEP team retreat (SeaWorld) came out from the trust balance.

Smart and Final credit card – card on hold instead go online.

Mr. Hussey – $9,148

Mr. Wood – $ 11,242

Total charges on this statement= $ 20,390

When money is spent on the credit card, US Bank provide rewards; it’s added on the fund-raising account, about $5,000.00 reward received; $1,200 a quarter.

Point of reference: Full back-office preparation of financials: ICON contract $132,000 – 2 years ago 

prior to hiring Ms. Ilyas this year lowered it down to $96,000 the next year substantially reducing the contract by 50%. 

Reference page 7, it will be lowered to 42,000 – 54,000 decrease goal continue to transition to unique knowledge, still getting quarterly updates, and timelines so we do not miss final reports. 

Planning to take it all inhouse – savings Arlita picking up.

Filing of 1st interim, 2nd interim we are taking it in house. 

FPP – fiscal manager or back office financial consultant, robust audit. 

Does other schools have 3rd party – NO. 

Larger charter schools, Birmingham, Palisades and Granada all in-house. 

Are auditors are okay with it? Yeah per Mr. Wood. They like the fact that multiple people are looking at it. Addition to inhouse.

Are they comfortable eliminating the 3rd party, because I am playing from a clients perspective and stake holders perspective, it seems that having a 3rd party is kind of outside control, outside set of eyes, financial risk perspective. Other organizations don’t have any other consultants. Currently we are adding a layer set of consulting set of eyes. Arleta and myself, things, and staffing changes. Organizing, more capacity in transition and always have the options. 

Malconian: How often do they find something? As we get the bank statement is on the financial – 

3,500 dollars seems worth to spend to get that extra layer of security, so I don’t know we need to transition to not have it anymore. What do you think Daniella? How does Arleta feel, “I am used to not having back office, I am used doing all of these inhouse so having back office was a little weird for me, is not the world I come from, to me it doesn’t really matter because I’m used to doing or overseeing, either I am doing the duty or overseeing it. 

Malconian: Does it give you a sense of security, is it a comfortable situation?

Arleta: I only know a world without a back office.

Proposal significantly high – executive summary: Commercial, Officers, Work comp: Package deal, except for WC policy provided by year. Cost change to be 467,000. 

WC – 237 down to 208 5% decrease in insurance rates

Student counts, property value 

How did we get the decrease on WC: Based upon claims experience: lower claims  

Cafeteria and 23-24 Budget update – Chartwell contract approved. We are tracking 47% increase in meal count. Our regional manager has 19 different Chartwell accounts, and our performance is on top 2 in all his accounts. We have a new manager, with new menu ideas. We bought a large propane grill – tested this week, grilling hotdogs and hamburgers, summer school kids have a record number on that day. We will incorporate that in a regular school year. The smell lunch or breakfast is attracting the kids.  

This shows some of the items and infrastructure improvements that have been done this year, $158,000 is what we have spent this year. The 200,000 are things we want to continue, what we are doing this summer the 40-year-old benches had been pulled out in anticipation of putting the new cafeteria benches and stuff for the kids. With the 15% increase with the type of funding rates from the state and the contract cost we will still show $266,000 surplus in the cafeteria, which we can continue to look for investments.  

Birmingham has some nice stuff that we can look at to add more equipment to the cafeteria, like cookie station for certain individuals.  

We are proposing this budget to you and the board, we have incorporated these numbers into our combined school budget.  

Malconian:  Remind me, is the state paying for the lunches? 

Ilyas: It is a combination State and federal, more money on the state because it covers the rest of the paid students and the federal takes care of the free and reduced lunch, and state takes care of kids that don’t qualify between reduced.  

Based upon having a plan – budget every year, parent overview, where are funds come in in terms of state fund, federal funds and LCFF funds need to be driven by LCAP 41,000,000 million. We get 2.7 M dollars of our LCFF funding based upon the number of free and reduced, homeless, foster youth.  

In our budget, how much of the expenditures are in the LCAP total general fund 46,000,000 million give credit to Arleta, she has looked at the actual types of categories, Ms.Clark and LCAP committee had been identifying the goals and actions. We tried to cut the cost out of those expenditures, so out of it 34,000,000 million of it is included in the detail of that number.  

Mrs. Clark: As you know the LCAP is done every year, it’s a 3-year plan but there’s a requirement of us to meet every year for updates, modifications and adjustments as needed. Every year I meet multiple times with stake holder groups gathering input and compiling data and all stake holders are involved, some students, teachers, classified staff, parents, community members based on the surveys that we sent out. I gather and compile data, put together some success as well as some areas that needs improvement at the school and from that I shared them throughout the year over the course of several months with the various stake holder groups as we start working towards the developing our goals and action steps that complement the goals. And the funding that ultimately helps us meet those goals if funding is needed. 

There are seven goals in this year’s LCAP. Goals are still the same as last year, all schools are required to have academic goal is to improve student achievement in ELA, Math, Science, SBAC test and CAST test and because this are state mandated the areas where students are tested.  Not all of them required funding. 

Malconian: I am interested in what goals have been met in year two. 

Clark: In ELA – Last year we are right at 65.62% meeting or exceeding progress. This year we are 64.9% meeting or exceeding progress. We did not really lose anything, in fact just a matter of number of students who took the test. 

However in MATH – we were at 51.17% last year and this year we are at 36.11%, this is something significant so the CHD (Charter School Division) when they came, they mentioned we have to focus on improving our math scores.  

Malconian: The goal is 60%? 

Clark: Goal is 60%. It can’t be the same because the disparity is so great. For example, Math couldn’t be the expectation or desire outcome is 75% because it’s so low. We are trying to jump to 75%, even 60% is kind of high, considering we are so low with expected progress in just a year. It’s a new set of students every year, and that is what is so strange about it.  

CAST scores – Science test, we increased from 28.72% to 36.93% and our goal within the next year is 40%, which is a good goal. Really our scores should be in the 50% or better for science because that is average around California, we are a little under, but we are improving.  

Special Education – CHD needs improvement, all course subjects for special needs, although our scores have remained relatively stagnant in English we are about the same, in Math they went down, but across the board in special ed they are really low in all content areas. Focus is more targeted strategies and intervention for special education students in all content areas.  

Funding with action steps: $36,000,000 million is going, $900,000 in area of improvement in ELA, Math and Science and for class enrollment increases $214,000, College and career $150,000, SPED students $2,000,000 would also cover the cost of utilizing the consultant and professors from CSUN and others, ELA population $112,000. Not everyone will have funding. This is goal 1. 

Goal 2 – College and career ready – How we are preparing students for colleges and careers; various interventions and actions steps to take.  

Wood: Textbooks 1.158 million dollars – trying to facilitate through instructional materials for school, supporting the LCAP goals. 

Ilyas: Example of department planning days, the cost of supplies, subs and pullout time, being able to tie what Ms. Clark and her team have assembled in words and translate them into expenses, weather or not it’s something that they may or may not have thought of during there development process but we go in and what does this look like, or how do we write a check to this.  

Malconian: The teachers support of those additional employees? 

Clark: Yes, they ask for it, they feel like they need additional in class support especially in situations where we have special services students. A little bit of classroom management support is needed. 

Clark: We have to have the instructional materials and textbooks, so that budget is always pretty large, required by the state textbooks. We are mostly transitioning now to eBooks, I am noticing that departments are asking less and less for physical books and being more comfortable with the eBook, so that is looking better and better. 

Assessments – we paid for a couple of programs online that help us facilitate the assessments like the MAP program, a couple of other virtual program for EL’s is used as well, we are going to add an additional bilingual assistant this year for the EL program to help Ms. Harris, with the EL population. She needs it since the program is growing and she is reclassifying students at high rate which is excellent. We are going to give her second assistant this year, with the goal of next year possibly adding another EL teacher, so that is what we are looking at. 

Goal 3 – Clark: This is relative to college and careers readiness. CTE pathways we currently have 3 – working in culinary arts, media and entertainment. There are some discussions on expanding CTE pathways, this is work in progress, students are interested in building relationships and establishing externship with local area, organizations and programs. We are hearing in the last 2-3 years that students wants such things as barbering, beauty and those certifications back in the schools, when they use to do that years ago. But now it’s being asked again, so students are wanting to re-establish those connections, and they are some talks of that happening. This year, we are going to step out and start talking about some local area beauty and barbering schools, on how we can bring it back. Our issue is our ways, location on campus where, we run out of space. Is it something where we can provide transportation for students to go to another facility, like an off-campus facility. Where we build it on a schedule and make it like go to Pierce and take a college class, so finding ways but we are going to start those connections this year. 

Goal 4 – Provide a safe and more inclusive culturally competent learning environment through targeted efforts that supports students of color, student experiencing opportunity gaps and LGBTQ plus students. This is about the equity here at school, on how students and teachers, families are feeling on how we address the equity issues. Overall, I would say 50/50 we didn’t get some request to focus more on a balanced way towards all groups who are underserved or underprivileged, a lot of the feedback parents and students feel we cater more to one specific sub group than another, they want to see a balanced across the board where all sub groups are getting attention.  

Goal 6 - We hired a marketing director plus the marketing plan, the parents want to see the marketing coordinator through the campus and various areas. They recognize that we have expectations for Ricardo and goals for next year. So, he can support where areas are needed.  

Provides specific support and sufficient and optimal equipment to meet the social, emotional, mental, and physical health needs of all students. PSW or licensed professional counselors are on campus now, we have 4 of them, we have increased from 1 to 4, so the Wellness center has grown. Mr. Wood and Arleta made sure the funding with them last year, so they got furniture, it’s very nice, bright and lively, they even got manipulative for students that help with anxiety and stress. Lots of positive feedback on the surveys. They can’t stop talking about it. By far it is one of the best things about El Camino is the Wellness center, that none of the other school that their kids where at had anything like. That is like a shining light in campus.  

Attendance rate – how do we combat this problem, excessive absences, the dashboard we are hoping will help with that and finding resources to maybe even support who needs it. 

Discipline and attendance – Requested to add by CSD because of the need for attendance system and a very clear referral process. It’s no secret that we struggle a little with this. This is a work in process.  

Malconian: Is there a plan to relocate the Deans office? 

Clark: Yes, that is part of it - to relocate, it is to be determined.  

Security and safety officers need more training. We are to focus next year it’s been said by teachers and students that they don’t feel like the campus safety officers knows how to relate to students so there would be some protocol on how to interact with high school kids.  

Mr. Guinto gave updates on the current projects. Everything is on time to be completed by welcome week which is by July 31st.  It includes, the gym decor, cafeteria decor, and the flooring for the main hallway/foyer as well.  

For next year’s capitalization project proposal, most of the projects that are on this proposal are a carryover from the previous year. There has been some challenges because this facility is owned by LAUSD and we have to follow their rules. Going back to some of the project. It is broken down areas of the school and it is based on the master plan: 

School Front Façade 

Front Signage - It does require DSA permitting and the use case for this project is obvious. The executive team did meet last week and marked each project based on priorities.  

Front Monument – The school name will be placed by Mariano and Valley Circle. There is also four planters in front of the school and we will put E, C, R, on each planter and also Royal on the other planter. All of them will be back-lit during night time. They reached out to an architectural firm that would be willing to work with LAUSD and also go through the DSA permitting. So all of the numbers are projected cost that includes the design, structural, and DSA permitting.  

Stack Stones on Planters – This is a design continuation from the Shoup campus that have the stack stones at the front. Goal is to increase the curb appeal of the school.  

 Front Façade cost is $221,297.66 

Priority 1 is $110,261. 18 

Priority 2 is $94,636.48 

Media Center 

Collaboration Spaces - $80,000 is for the Architectural design and DSA permitting and it does not include LAUSD oversight fees 

Audio/Video Installation – Will have projectors on both sides of the media center for board meetings and other presentations. It will be a complete multi-media solution for the library.

Total cost for the media center is $178,400 and all are priority 1.

Gym and Stadium

Audio/video Gym - Will be used primarily for school events and athletic games. Cost will roughly be around $158,870. 

Audio upgrade in the stadium - This is part of the safety project and can also be used for events such as graduation. This project does require DSA permitting. 

Bleachers Stadium - Approximately $350,000 and is part of the safety project which can accommodate around 3,000 seating capacity and also requires DSA permitting 

Digital Scoreboard (Gym and Stadium) - Approximately $216,000 which can also benefit from branding/marketing opportunities and also requires DSA permitting

Permitting - All projects can incur approximately $60,000 and does not include LAUSD oversight fees. 

It will have a total cost of $872,060 and priority 1 projects are $713,190. 

Technology

CCTV - This is a carryover project from last school year which is approximately $240,000 which includes 64 cameras. 

PA System/Clock - Approximately $500,000 for the entire school and it will be IP/Network based. 

Network Access Point - Upgrade will cost approximately $150,113 and will be e-rate eligible. 

Total cost will be $890,113.25 and everything is a priority 1

Vote tabled and the approval will be contingent on Item G. Fund balance designation

Ricardo Covarrubias - Main goal is to increase brand awareness changing from the conquistadors to the Royals and for the community to understand that. When he talks to the vendors/alumni all of them asks the questions that we are not the conquistadors anymore. So it is important to spread that awareness such as the mural that has gotten a lot of feedback. Also increasing the social media presence with the new students we are attracting, everyone spends their time on social media and most importantly increasing our school enrollment. Enrollment has been down in the State of California for the last four years consistently so having certain projects being done such as the foyer and providing certain excitement to prospective students.  

Ricardo showed growth on social media where on Instagram it shows 81% increase in reach, 204% increase in engagement, 450% increase in conversation started, 117% increase in new followers and 11% increase in profile visits. Facebook had 470% increase in reach, 668% increase in engagement, 68% increase in messaging connections, 106% increase in profile visits and 902% increase in engagement in the last 90 days. ECR’s twitter also shows 193% increase in reach, 100% increase in profile visits and 4% increase in engagement. Social media ads will be the most effective and Google ads will be based on keywords and price changes every day. Website is also another area we should invest on as Granada has a more modern website and we are lagging as well as branding and marketing efforts. We should spend about $1,000 a month on advertising and showcase like the wellness center.  It is better to target prospective students than parents. The more you invest, the higher the reach would be. The proposal is for within 10 miles of the school. Action buttons can make it. Website spending compared to other school, Granada spent $88,500 and Birmingham spent about $143,000 for their websites. Finalsite is a website hosting solution that provides a template where they build it for us and we manage it ourselves with a recurring annual fee. He recommends also advertising via partners such as billboard and bus advertisement doing metro bus ads and billboard.  

Niche is also a great advertising partner. Our numbers are healthy despite not being a member. Comparing to Granada’s, they have 34,204 page views in 2022. Other potenial partners are AmGraph for the signs and Fidges for the windscreens, school spirit apparel, and marketing materials for all ECR stakehodlers. In comparison, Birmingham spent about $400,00 on branding efforts.   

Ricardo proposes three different types of packages 

Economical Package $154,500: 

Digital Social Media Ads + Google Ads $51,000 

$88,500 Granada Website Design 

$15,000 current Banner Spend 

15% of Birmingham's 

Branding/Advertising 

Partners Spend ($60,000) 

Total: $214,500 

Standard Package: All-in Package $210,500: 

Digital Social Media Ads + Google Ads $87,000 

$88,500 Granada Website Design 

$35,000 Birmingham Banner Spend + 25% of Birmingham's 

Branding/Advertising 

Partners Spend ($100,000) 

Total: $310,500 

All-in Package $316,500: 

Digital Social Media Ads + Google Ads $123,000 

$143,000 Birmingham Website Design 

$50,000 Chaminade Banner Spend 

+  

50% of Birmingham’s Branding/Advertising Partners spend ($200,000) 

Total $516,500 

Malconian and Ramirez felt that the Economical package will be a good start to get a sense on how effective the marketing efforts would be. Combination of all these efforts can be a good starting point.  

Wood: Revenue total in this budget - $54,636,000 we have used multiple sources, and we slightly lowered our ADA, to see with continuing trends of lowered enrollment. These are funds between federal, state money and some local revenues. As supposed to this year was $ 57 million but a lot of it is from relief funding, lower restricted funding or what we call categorical money will be able to see next year. 

We have all different financial sources on the revenue. Different salary areas, we have taken in the account. We have a full blow out in terms of both classified and certificated. We mapped out everybody stepping changes, we have 2% increases that have been negotiated, we have built in potential new positions, and or changes for when we have 11 retiring teachers. The items will provide where the ADA budget. This year our ADA are at 3220, the budget as we build it was 3181 just down a bit. Our funding level as long as it holds 8% plus COLA that is where 13,178 per ADA is at the level we built based on all the factors.   

We have our SISC proposal our health premiums, we have that factored in based upon 1/3 of the year. We are operating now, are current health plan that is starting on October 1st we have the proposal, what the new rate would be, that has also been factored in. Our biggest components our certificated salaries we are forecasting about 17.5 million dollars, classified slightly over 5 million dollars for that, the employee benefits of 14.9 million dollars, also include large contribution to OPEB, with the additional retirees that would also bump our benefit expenses. Supplies up slightly, other services 10 million, depreciation expense we factored in this is our financial profit lost, up to 516,000 assuming all capital purchases. Depreciation is 331,000 that is increasing almost $200,000, if we assumed on the $1.8 million dollars that is more of a cash expense not a financial expense. $516,000 is assuming the capital purchases. As of now the budget we would be asking the committee or the board to approve an excess or surplus of the $2,069,000. As of now, the budget we will ask the committee to approve for the excess of $2,069,000 and also considered and track the cash cost, not the financial cost. It will be shown on the profit/loss but it is not going to hit our financials of expense. 

CARS is a consolidate application and have to do with the annual reporting to CDE. We put in early June it is basically the amount of Title 1 money and how it was spent. It is a formality and on the full board, we will show the breakdown of the costs of the application. 

ECRCHS balance sheet shows equity line and there is $36,000,000 and it equates to assets minus liability or also known as fund balance. Figuring out what is unrestricted so out of the $36,000,000 there is $6,000,000 in assets which are fixed assets which is not available which brings our fund balance to $30,000,000. Some of the fund balance also has restrictions to it and it also needs to be excluded which is around $1,200,000. What Mr. Wood is proposing is we have $28,000,000 in unrestricted fund balance. We need to look at and consider the long term health of the fund balance. Most schools calls it designating your fund balance for the purposes such as capital needs and/or technology needs so I would recommend set aside 20% which is $5,600,000 and call it designated funds for deferred maintenance and technology needs.