Mr. Colson led the pledge of allegiance. 

Public Comment:

1. Cheryl Dorris - Thank you very much. Hi. Good evening ECR school board. I’m here to discuss or not discuss... Make a comment about section 3(A) on the agenda, under your government. Here’s my question. Is there any way ECR parents can receive a copy of how the aligning of your bylaws compares to the existing charter board term limit, and also, will the material revision that is required per LAUSD policy and procedures or charter schools be made available to the public? That’s it. 

David Hussey: Thank you. I have a couple quick announcements, so tomorrow, if anybody gets a chance, we have our homecoming games tomorrow at Birmingham, JV at 4 PM and Varsity at 7:15 pm. Also, if you’re not doing anything on Saturday night, we’ll have our homecoming dance from 6:00 PM to 10 PM, if you want to come volunteer. The PSAT will be Saturday, October 14th, so our students have signed up to take this test. It’s very good for our juniors especially, because that is where they can earn scholarships if they test high enough on the PSATs. We have started or we’ll begin our school tour, starting in October, and they will run until March. Parents or prospective parents can go on the website and sign up for a tour to see our campus. Just a reminder. We have extended counseling hours every Thursday from 4:15 to 6:15. We will be reopening the library, starting next week before school and after school. I want to say Mr. Camp and the safety officers have done a good job cleaning up the campus after school. We had a lot of safety concerns that we wanted to address and now we feel comfortable that we can open the media center library for those time periods. Then, today we did have a lockdown drill in our second period classes, just to remind students what to do on a lockdown drill, and then, our incoming ninth graders haven’t been here, so we showed them some things that we do during a lockdown drill. One last thing is, LAUSD rescinded their covid-19 vaccination requirement on the 26th, so two days ago. Since we followed suit with them, I need to speak with our council to see if we need to do an agenda item, or since they’ve already rescinded and we followed their policy, then we rescinded our policy as well. I’ll double check, and if we have to rescind it officially, then I’ll have it on the next board meeting. 

Greg Wood:                        Just one second. Sorry. In the middle, in the front, yeah. Good evening, board members. A lot of what I could cover on my update is... agenda separately. The only thing I would say, in addition to that, the federal government is potentially scheduled to have a shutdown with their fiscal year, October 1st. That may impact... Some of our federal funding may be delayed until such time as they reopen their federal budget, so let’s stay tuned on that. 

Steve Kofahl:                     You cover for it? 

Greg Wood:                        Yeah, I think we’ll do a good... At the moment, we’re in good shape to backfill anything that gets delayed. Audit report. Again, December 15th is our deadline to finalize the outsiders’, the CPA audit report. We’re well on schedule with that. You’ll be hearing the unaudited information for 2022-2023 also tonight. So, we’ll update what we’re doing with our auditors. Other things like our attendance, I’ll cover what’s going on with our attendance this year... will be covered in our budget updates, as well as the cafeteria... I’ll be covering the information with our cafeteria, in addition to the wonderful food our cafeteria manager, who’s not here at the moment, has prepared tonight. That’s it, sir.

Brad Wright:                      Thank you very much. We’re going to move on to our board chair update. This is an update where any board member, if you have anything to say, any acknowledgments, it’s a time to do that. You can address the crowd. I’ll start with you, Ms. Centman. You have anything you’d like to say?

Danielle Centman:          I just kind of would like to know what the progress is for the library.

Brad Wright:                      I mean, this...

Female Speaker:              Yeah. I’ve talked to a couple parents and they’re really concerned about us not having it open, so I just kind of want to know what progress and what’s going to be the next steps of getting it back open to the students. 

David Hussey:                   Like I said, we’re opening it up before school, 7:30 until 5:00 PM at night. 

Danielle Centman:          Okay. 

David Hussey:                   Then, in November 6th, they’re going to restart the construction of that. So, it’ll be open for a month, and then, we’ll have to close it down until probably after winter break. 

Danielle Centman:          Okay. Yep. Perfect. That’s great--

David Hussey:                   We will look at other options, depending on the numbers that we have. We won’t be able to probably do anything before school, as far as housing students, but we’ll look to create another location for after school, if kids who want to study.

Male Speaker:                   We do have tutoring [0:09:58 inaudible]. 

Brad Wright:                      Sorry, sir. You cannot speak [0:10:00 inaudible] meeting. Okay? Sorry, this is a board meeting. [0:10:03 inaudible], please. 

David Hussey:                   Then, we do have tutoring after school. 

Brad Wright:                      Just so everyone knows, it’s a violation if everybody speaks out and we are being monitored. We are recording. Okay. I’m going to you, Mr. Kofahl. Do you have anything? 

Steve Kofahl:                     Yes. 

Brad Wright:                      Please.

Steve Kofahl:                     Mr. Hussey, the PSAT... and I think it’s the qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarship. Is it still? 

David Hussey:                   Correct. 

Steve Kofahl:                     Maybe we should publicize that part of it. That’s the big-name scholarship. 

David Hussey:                   Yeah. No, we do that, the college councils do.

Steve Kofahl:                     Okay, but I mean officially in public meeting and let the parents know too. Thank you. 

Brad Wright:                      Okay. Ms. Vargas, do you have anything?

Female Speaker:              I just wanted to say that the finance and investment committee met earlier this week, and reviewed and discussed the items in the investment section, as well as the finance section, and we have recommended all items for approval. So, all [0:11:12 inaudible]. 

Brad Wright:                      Great. We’ll go to the finance part, but that’s okay. That’s fine that you mentioned it. Co-chair over here, do you have anything, Ms. Ramirez?

Alexandra Ramirez:        I just have... or I’d like to get an update on the IV program. I know that we sent out a survey. 

David Hussey:                   We’ll send out another... We haven’t sent a survey. We sent out information, so we’ll send out another informational email next week, and then follow up with the survey the following week. Make sure everybody has the information again, and then, we’ll send out the survey the following week, and then, I’ll also resurvey the teachers to see if their interest has changed. So, in two weeks. At the next board meeting, I’ll have a full update on the data that we received.

David Hussey:                   Yes. The Charter School Division asked us to align our board bylaws with our charter when we changed... when the board changed the term limits. Can you go through it? I wanted to show... because there was a question about what was changed. Right there. The exist... or the bylaws previous in section five read that each director shall hold the office for three years, and until a successor director has been designated and qualified, board members may serve two consecutive terms. After one-term absence from the board, an individual is eligible for election appointment to the board. What was deleted was board members may serve two consecutive terms after one term absence from the board, so basically, there would be no term limits, but a term would be three years. That’s what the board approved and that’s what the material revision is looking to align, that language in section five, to change it in the charter itself. Go back up, Ryan. In their [0:15:25 inaudible] revision, we have to do five things. Item one is a letter to Charter School Division. Scroll down. [0:15:34 inaudible]. Right there. That’s a letter to Mr. José Cole Gutierrez, saying what we want to do and why we’re doing it, so reducing disruption, long-term planning, expertise and specialization, consistency and leadership, flexibility for exceptional board members. That’s the letter. Item two was analysis and discussion, so we put together some rationale of why reducing disruption, what that meant, so forth, and so on. Next was what we are changing, a clear description, so that’s been identified. Next is when it was ‘agendized,’ and then, the next one is the draft version. From June 22nd... Keep going. Then, these are the bylaws in its full on our website. If we go down, we can see that it was signed off after the June 22nd board meeting and you can find this on... Right there. You can find this... It was executed on June 22nd, 2023, by Ms. Marconian, and then the next was that they asked for a cash... a three-year cash flow projections as part of the material revision and that was provided by Mr. Wood and Arleta. That fulfills the material revision requirement. What needs to be voted on is a resolution that gives somebody on the board to sign off on all this paperwork and I will submit it to CSD. 

Greg Wood:                        Okay. You said it was just for a discussion, but within the... As in the materials that’s on the screen through August, our OPEB account had $25, 898,000. At the end of August... We started this school year with $25.3 million, so we’re up. We made our monthly contributions of the 220 and investment gains and losses through the end of August is $120,000. That’s like half a percent. Market conditions. If anybody has investments in September, they’ve gone... The market has gone back a little bit, so at the moment, we’re at about $25.3 million as the current balance. The other thing that we’ll be going into would be... In our general account, as you see on the screen, we have held two annuities that are now coming due in three years. One with Midland that we had an annuity, giving us a 2.4 return, and Athene, at a 1.95 percent return at the time. For kind of fixed income investments. Those were pretty decent three years ago, but now those are coming due. The next agenda item will address what the recommendation that we discussed at the finance committee... what I recommend and I’ll go into what we hope the board would approve as a whole body. That’s it.

Greg Wood:                        Again, in the materials, we have a... kind of supplied in the materials. What’s on the screen now is Midland. Midland National, but... at the end of the three years... Again, we have the choice of just rolling it over, or pulling it out and reinvest ourselves. This, as you can see maybe in the light... I don’t know how well you can see it in the light blue, they actually basically doubled our investment return from 2.4 in the last three years. They’re offering a rate of 4.8 percent. We discussed that in the finance committee, and again, that’s a very attractive rate, the fact they doubled it, and so, my recommendation that the finance committee agreed with was to roll over the Midland National investment at 4.8 percent. On the other hand, when you look at the Athene annuity, the Athene annuity again at 1.95 percent, they offer a rollover, basically the same 1.95. To me, that’s not what we could get on the open market, so that was not an attractive investment for us to continue for three more years. My recommendation to the finance committee, that they agreed with, is to choose another investment vehicle for that. The two possible... strong possibilities that I had mentioned was we could do one of... Well, we could do a number of things, but my two recommendations... is we could have either... We could roll that into the Beacon Pointe investment account, the general investment account, or adversely, our current bank has some T-bills and they offered us a T-bill rate on that, a two-year T-bill rate at 4.9 percent or a three-year T-bill rate at 4.7 percent. As the committee discussed, and we all came to the conclusion that having a two-year T-bill at 4.9 percent would be the way to go, so I’ve already... The City National Bank is on notice that says that since we agree on the vote, the Athene would be remitting those annuity funds, and then we would immediately turn them into an investment, a T-bill investment, very safe and secure, that would yield 4.9 percent. On that particular agenda item, we would need the full board to agree with the finance committee to... On those two annuities to roll the Midland annuity over, and to close the Athene annuity over and reinvest it in a two-year T-bill [0:24:13 inaudible] asking for. 

Greg Wood:                        Okay. Every year, again part of our reporting process, the state of California unaudited 2000... Before we do the audited financials, that can take place December 15, September 15th is a date with which we send in our unaudited actuals and there are a number of components of the unaudited actuals. I’ll speak to the slide that’s on the screen. One of the components that is actually more for LAUSD and our special ed reporting is we need to certify and report that, for our federal and state revenue and funding, that we fully spend that. This report here just highlights the fact that we’ve received about $842,000 in federal funding, that must be fully spent in the same year and a report to LAUSD is that we fully spent. The second area, which is the column to the right, would demonstrate that for our state special ed funding, that we have spent in excess of that, but the general fund supports the special ed needs of the school and we have spent more than that amount, but again, generally a negative amount is not good, but relative to specialized funding, it’s very important that we take care of the needs of the special ed students, and that’s called an encroachment, where we have to encroach or pull monies from our general fund and give it reclassified to the special ed fund. That slide is showing that we, to the tune of about $2.4 million, we’re supporting the special ed fund. 

Brad Wright:                      I’m sorry.

Gregg Solkovits:               I just wanted to comment on the slide. If that’s not unusual, because my understanding is LAUSD has a huge encroachment due to special ed, and that’s pretty much up and down the state, because of the underfunding by the federal government of the Mandate for Special Ed. So, this is not anything unusual. Just is what it is. 

Brad Wright:                      Ms. Centman has a question. You have the floor, ma’am. 

Danielle Centman:          Yeah. I was just wondering how many kids in this school are there in special ed?

Greg Wood:                        It’s about...

Danielle Centman:          Approximate. 

Greg Wood:                        Three...

Audience:                           Approximately 370. 

Brad Wright:                      I’m sorry. You cannot respond from [0:27:53 crosstalk]. You cannot speak out there, please. Thank you very much. 

Greg Wood:                        We have one of the highest numbers of special ed students, but again, I sit on the district’s special ed fiscal committee, and yeah, we have one of the highest percentages of special ed students of our schools. I think, to supplement Mr. Solkovits’ comment, again, the COP group, the Charter Operated Programs group of special ed, part of their... We [0:28:27 inaudible] apply for funding and they do look at... This is summarized for all the charters in Los Angeles, and again, if you aren’t spending... Charter schools are looked at. If they can’t... If they are not only using the monies they’re given from the state, they will (1) report us to the state and we may... We, not us, but a school might be asked to give some of that money back, and (2) some of our funding, we can receive separate supplemental funding, which we’ve received in the past based upon the size of the encroachment that we have. Again, even with that extra money, we’re still... We’re fully supporting all those special ed needs. 

Gregg Solkovits:               Thank you.

Brad Wright:                      I’m going to say this. If you’re an administrative director and you would like to participate, please be recognized by the board. Anyone, before you speak. You’re not allowed to speak out in an agenda’s board meeting unless we recognize you, and that way, we stay in line with the Brown Act and the bylaws, the rules of the board. Thank you very much. With that, we’ll ask, anyone would like to make a motion to approve--?

Greg Wood:                        I’ve got a few more. At least a couple more slides... if I could. This is an actual... This one probably is very dry and it’s my... I’ll speak more to we create our own Excel spreadsheet, but this form here is the form that goes... It’s called The Sax form. It goes to LAUSD. It goes to Lake Go and it goes to the CDE, so this is just a summary of all the revenues and expenses, and so... This one is a summary page of all our revenues and expenses that shows our balance sheet. This is kind of what our unaudited actual form looks like. Once they get... If you can... Once we get to what looks more like an Excel form, I can speak briefly to that. Keep going, Mr. Guinto. Keep going. Or, is it a separate...? Is that a separate file? I think so. There you go. Can it get any bigger, possibly? Can you blow that up for me? What we’ve prepared here again, this is a full detailed report of all the revenue accounts, all the expense accounts, and we, when we talk about the 2022-2023 unaudited actuals, those are the first three columns. This file basically shows you what unrestricted files, which means there is no... It can be used for anything, type of funding, revenue or expenses. The second column represents restricted either revenue and expenses. Things like special ed and some of our federal monies are restricted, so we try to separate the two different buckets between unrestricted/restricted. The last column is really the combined amount of revenue or expense. If you look at like our LCFF, which is our largest stream of money coming based upon our ADA, about $48.5 million... Scrolling down. Just to summarize, I’ll just hit the highlights for everybody, so keep going. Yeah. Okay. You can see State Rep, so you have subtotals for the federal revenue, the subtotal for the state revenue. At the bottom of the screen is we have local revenue in the categories we recommended. Oops. That’s okay. Can you just take total rep up a little bit? Then you get into this section of benefits, so all our health welfare mandatory stirs and prayers, workers comps and all the OPEB contributions. We are at about $10 million reported of expenses there. Other sections, just other supplies, which include textbooks and the like, $4 million, and then, just other operating expenses. Continuing down, keep going down. There you go, and so, that section, which includes things like legal, transportation, bank fees, just general utilities and that type of thing. That’s $9. Nine million? Okay. Yeah. Okay. That’s a large area of our expenditures, and then, going down, the last few sections are depreciation. If we go down a little more on that. There you go. For all our assets, as we are on a modified accrual basis, we’re not a cash reporting basis, we reflect what our depreciation is, and then, what’s called other outgoing, our indirect costs, LAUSD, the one percent oversight fee we pay to LAUSD, as being a charter, is reported there. In total, after a... Revenue minus expenses... Again, we had a very healthy 13... one of the highest net fund balance editions, $13.7 million, but in analyzing and just giving the organization a full recap, $13 million seems fantastic, which, obviously, it is. The section that’s on the screen now, now we’ve broken down kind of where did some of that $13 million... It’s either restricted or it came from other sources like investments. The summary of all the $13 million comes up to that we have restricted amounts of over $9 million dollars, so kind of the unrestricted edition, if you will, the $4.5 million. You can see all the categories of things that are in the $13 million dollars, whether it’s cafeteria or federal fundings that they’re holding on to for future expenditures, some of the OPEB investment gains and losses, those go in there. Again, it’s still a healthy fund balanced edition of the $4.5 million. That’s relative to that agenda item. Mr. Wright, that would be what I would ask the board to... This is what we’ve reported. I would ask the board to approve the unaudited actuals as presented. 

Greg Wood:                        Ryan, if you could pull up the single... Like the partners one with the... Yeah. Just a brief... Don’t have to spend any time on this at all, other than what’s captured. Cafeteria... I will... Just for new board members, I will on a monthly basis, give the updates, financial updates, on the cafeteria. Again, we had kind of record increases last year of like 40 percent on our participation. Again, as we’ll talk about in a minute, our attendance is down quite a bit this year from last year. We’re like one percent ahead, which obviously, is somewhat realistic to the participation. Just giving that information. That said, if you scroll down a little bit, because of our participation, we are... On a cumulative basis, we’re still... We’re ahead with that, but we’re up like $17,000 in the cafeteria. Again, remembering that the cafeteria revenue has to stay within... It’s a restricted fund, so any gains or losses coming out of the cafeteria have to get reinvested, so one item we’re showing on here is an example. $21,000 was spent on infrastructure. Last year, we carried over a balance of like $300,000, so if we... Again, those funds do have to be kept in the cafeteria and used for cafeteria. 

Steve Kofahl:                     You’re reading that bottom line too?

Greg Wood:                        I’m reading the -$4,800, but then adding back the... You see the $21,000. 

Steve Kofahl:                     I do.

Greg Wood:                        Yeah. Yeah, so you take out those expenses, you really have a gain of $17,000. 

Steve Kofahl:                     All in how you look at it. 

Greg Wood:                        Okay. That’s that slide. The other one that incorporates indoor projections is... Okay, so this is also a slide we will do monthly for the organization. This captures our... August was... We finished month one. We have 10 months of reporting attendance or enrollment and ADA information to the state after month eight. Month eight locks in our funding for fiscal year, so this is representative of the first month of the school year. You will see that the enrollment for August of 2023 was the $31.65 and it’s broken down into the grade levels, as shown on the screen, 678, 807, 807 and 873. The screen below that shows the same period last year. We had basically three... We had 300 more students last year. The biggest change would be we graduated... Last year, we had 906 12th graders that... Those came off the chart, or the amount and everything else shifted over one grade level, so that 906. 

This is Department of Finance and the CDE. They’re suggesting, in the next 10 years, Los Angeles will have like a 17 percent... They’ll have a 17 percent decrease in enrollment. Again, I think it’s important that we continue to attract students and enroll students, and so, that’s something I think organizationally, we’ll need to keep our eye on the enrollment ball, so to speak, to make sure that we can support future activities, teaching with enrollment. Right. That being said, then Ryan, could you then go to the spreadsheet, the prior spreadsheet, and then you can kind of hide... For the same spreadsheet we talked about with the unaudited actuals... Can you... a little bigger? What we’re showing the organization, the middle columns... Same financial information. The middle columns represent what the board approved in June and that particular budget had a surplus of $2 million, which as we’re now looking at the new information, that’s a good thing, because now, with the lower enrollment... Can you scroll to the right, Ryan? To the right and set it down, and now up a little bit. You’ll see that what I’ve taken in... The top numbers are really, to me, the most important numbers to have a conversation about, because the enrollment that... which in June, we thought... we hoped would be 3,420... Now, I’m forecasting that enrollment for the full eight months that we’ll get funded on, would go down to 3,145, and then, that our funded ADA would go from 3,181... I brought it down to 2,956. We got a slight increase on the per ADA funding underneath that from the time we approved the budget. It was 13,178, the latest State of California LCFL [0:43:42 inaudible] chart, which is what... suggests what our funding is. It’s up to $13,200. With that said, that’s going to affect our budget. We’re going to have lower... This re-forecasted budget now suggests that our revenue will be down 6.9 percent or over $2 million dollars off... Just on that line. We’ve taken some of the lower ADA, some of our other revenue, without going into detail, we’ve lowered the revenue for things... whether it be our federal title I... our federal funds... Some of our special ed cafeteria revenues or... I’ve tried to lower it in accordance with some of our ADA drops... since the revenue now is what I’m... would like to say is the most accurate projection I have on what I think our funding will be. Could you scroll down and just maybe go to the revenue? 

Greg Wood:                        Okay. Let me get to that section. Can you pause your question till I get there? I haven’t gotten there yet. [0:46:05 inaudible]. Revenue, let me finish out... The revenue is down $2.2 million. It’s from what we adopted to what I’m suggesting... what I would like the board to re-adopt our budget for. Expenses in general, we tried to update our expenses for current expense changes that are known from June through now. Things like I know we’re going to have some additional legal expenses. We’ve had some legal settlements happening over the summer, so I’ve increased for that. Some of our benefits, we’ve had favorable updates on our [0:46:43 prayers]. Now that we’ve finished out, we watched it save money on our [0:46:48 prayers] expense for the year, because we forecast higher than the actual [0:46:54 prayers] expense we had last year, so that’ll save $200,000 for your health savings. Our certificated administrators, we know we have two open positions currently, so we will save $50,000 as of now, on those positions. Things like our bus transportation, once we adopt... Once we adjusted or approved the bus contract, I tried to take current events and do those as appropriate. Now, being subject to answer Mr. Kofahl’s Question, so our expenditures went from $53.9 million down or $254.1. In which, now can you re-ask your question, sir? 

Greg Wood:                        Oh, okay. I want you to be. The budget... As of this report, we go from having a surplus of $2 million, again with the knowledge that $2.2 million of our revenue shortfalls. With all other revenue changes and updates with either savings or slightly additional expenses, I’m asking the board to approve a budget that has a slight deficit of $317,000. Again, CBO-wise, I’m pushing for the approval of that, but [0:48:31 inaudible] like one. We had a prior year... We have been building up our fund balance. I’m not concerned that again, as of this moment, that we’re having a budget that has a slight deficit in it with the knowledge there is... I think I’m being about as conservative as I can, with the hope there is an upside to our revenue, or if more revenues start coming in, that’ll help this number, but I would want to be realistic to the organization, and say, yeah. That’s the amount as of September 28th that I would like to board to approve.

Brad Wright:                      That includes future sponsorships that’s help... All right. 

Greg Wood:                        Things like that would not be included yet. Any additional revenue we may get outside of kind of the known, would help offset that.

Greg Wood:                        Okay. That’s my hope, that I can get this budget re-adopted. 

Greg Wood:                        Well, this is just about having the OPEB... The investment account takes the ownership of those retirees’ premium. Again, we set up the OPEB account. It’s up to $25 million as we’re saying, but there has not been a penny... None of these premiums have ever been charged to the retiree agreement, so what I’m asking the board to do is that, starting in October, that we will be getting our monthly medical statement as usual, which shows both retirees and actives. My request of the organization is that, starting in October, that those retiree benefit payments be paid for by our investment [0:51:45 primary] ... Talk to them... They have a process that we would... they will pay those bills instead of us. We do reflect... One second. They do reflect... We have been reflecting those payments within our check register. The check register that currently... When we pay our medical premium to our medical provider, we take the total amount... We’ve been reporting all along what the breakdown is between the actives and retirees, but kind of knowing that we are going to be fully funded, it’s... To me, it would be time for the OPEB account, and then, in addition to that, just one last comment, it would be... Once we start doing that, that would be a savings to our... Okay. That’s going to come out of the OPEB account. In the past, we’ve reflected that payment, which is about $450,000. In the past, we reported that as part of our general fund budget, so in essence, by passing that, we’ve already... That $450,000 would now come out... would come out of the OPEB account, not be reflected the budget... Kind of you just adopted... We would... and at the end, we were showing less, about $450,000 less OPEB expense that we have, versus what we’ve historic...

Brad Wright:                      I get that. Any questions.

Gregg Solkovits:               Maybe there is a legalist degree, so it was a reason why we didn’t take this motion first, so you could reflect no deficit on the document, when this approves. Was there a reason why we did it in the order we did? 

Greg Wood:                        Not in particular. 

Gregg Solkovits:               Realistically, there is no deficit out--? 

Greg Wood:                        Yes.

Gregg Solkovits:               When we take this vote. [0:53:20 inaudible] approve it?

Greg Wood:                        Yes. That’s right. 

David Hussey:                   Yes. I want to start off by thanking Mr. [0:54:21 Monroy], UTLA chair and Mr. Russell, The Ask Me chair, on working with me, going over the changes in the handbook. I’m going to start with page seven. There are very minimal changes. I just want to go over the pages, so page seven, criminal background checks. This is just language that we receive from our legal counsel. On page 12...  just more legal language. Page 17, just making the language more inclusive. Page 21, again, just making the language...a language update. Page 41, more legal language. Page 45, just clarifying some language and those were the changes to the handbook. We talked and we all agreed that these were changes that we all liked, and so, I’m putting it to the board that the board approves the updated employee handbook. 

Brad Wright:                      Do we have any questions? 

Female Speaker:              There is a new section on page 54 for bereavement leave. Is that new or is that just edited? 

Brad Wright:                      Edited... 

David Hussey:                   Oh, no. Yeah, that was... Sorry. That was edited as well. Sorry. I messed up there. All these recommendations were made by legal counseling. 

Greg Wood:                        Yeah. LACOE stands... LACOE, which is Los Angeles County Office of Education, and since we are part of their financial system, the County Treasury is one of our largest accounts, we use the County Treasury. The state sends its funds to the County Treasury. We in turn, when needed, transfer monies from the County Treasury into our bank to do things like normal operating expenses and payroll. Every year, part of the LACOE processes is, every year, the board has to approve... It’s called “certificate of signatures” and I don’t know... You have... I have the original form. You have the materials, which it doesn’t matter if you don’t. The form I’m holding in my hand has every board member’s name on it, with the fact that you would approve what it’s... Two people, which currently is Mr. Hussey and Mr. Wood, are the two people that are authorized to transfer funds from the LACOE bank account, if you want to... for lack of a better term. The LACOE bank account to the school’s bank account, and so, they require an annual renewal of this “certificate of signatures,” so I’d ask if the board approves this. I could pass around the document. Every board member needs to sign it right above their name, and Ms. Lopez Vargas, as our secretary of the board, you would have to sign it both as a board member and the secretary of the organization has to sign it twice. We’ve done this every year since we’ve had it, so it’s kind of a normal document that LACOE asks us to do every year. That said, the board needs to formally approve the authorization of this certificate of signatures. 

No actions were taken in closed session.

Brad Wright: We’ll be going to a board approval on the chief operating officer’s contract, the COO, and before a vote, anyone like to present this item? We all spoke about that, the item of Fernando Delgado becoming our chief operating officer. He’ll be under Mr. Hussey. Would anyone like to make a motion to vote on this, on the COO, the Chief Operating Officer contract?