Ms Jessica led the Pledge of Allegiance.

No public comments

David Hussey gave the update

Opening Spring Semester: First of all, I want to thank Mr. Alba 2:46, the counseling staff, teachers, and students, obviously parents as well, for a smooth opening spring semester. Everybody is in classes and we're ready to finish up the 2023-2024 year. The seniors are excited. We got Public Press 3:00 coming up. So, that's always an enthusiastic event for our school.

Field Update: A little update on the field. We had a meeting with LAUSD today. The field has now been pushed back to mid-February for a start date with a completion, hopefully by end of March, maybe mid-April.

Student Achievements and Athletics: Next, I want to recognize one of our student athletes who was recognized by the L.A. Daily News for a high school athlete of the week; Bercon Hassan 3:44. He's a wrestler on the undefeated wrestling team, which will be the number one seed in the upcoming wrestling playoffs, and he's also the number 21 wrestler in the state of California. So, I want to thank him for his hard work and Coach Turnruff 4:03, for his guidance in here. And I think our boys and girls teams are set up to possibly bring home to city championships. Also basketball, boys and girls, boys and girls, soccer are in the final stages of league playoffs, and they'll start playoffs in a couple of weeks.

Gregory Wood presented the update highlighting the following:

Cafeteria Participation and Financial Update: For the materials, I included the financial update, and it's on the screen, but it's also in the materials for the cafeteria. So, through December, our participation is down 5.1%, but it's more because that's in line with our enrollment, which is also down. Again, because we are still being reimbursed for all federal and free reduced students. So, we are still in a position where with our current contract, we're providing an excess of funds building up our cafeteria fund.

LCFF and COLA Updates: COLA which is the large part of our LCFF…inaudible..5:45…… which gives us our most funding: The financial news at the state level, they've been declining since our January information. The projected COLA for 2024-2025 was almost 4% in June. Now its predicting COLA to only be 0.6 % For the two subsequent years at the moment, that's also gone down. It's like 3.3% in June, now it's 2.7%. And the third year is about that. It's similar at around 3%. So, again, they're funding some of the short calls at the state level with some of the Rainy Day fund reserves they built up, so that will continue, that will facilitate next year's funding. They don't predict any deferrals, which for those that don't have any excess cash, that's critical to them. Luckily, we built up some reserves. So, if there were deferrals, that wouldn’t impact us as much.

Universal School Meals Program: The Universal School Meals Program is what gives us the reimbursement for every student on campus, whether they're paying reduced or paid. That's still slated to continue into 2024/25, which is good news.

Mr. Wright: Mr. Hussey just a question since we are talking about the money, I’m looking over here. We're paying money for our travel right now.

Mr. Hussey: They said they would reimburse.

Mr. Wright: So, we'll stay with them to make sure we get reimbursed because every time we have travel, everything we have to do.

Mr. Hussey: Correct. They've already agreed to do that. We just have to collect everything at the end and we'll give it to them.

There were no updates from the committees

Brad Wright and Ms. Centman provided an update with the following key points:

Ms. Centman:

Concerns about Graduation Venue: I don't have anything I want to share, but I just have a general question. In regards to the football field, I've had a couple parents reach out to me in regards to graduation. And I know LAUSD continues to say, oh, this is our production for the football field to open. God forbid that doesn't happen. It keeps getting pushed out. Is there going to be an alternate plan?

Mr. Hussey: It's already been confirmed. We have a location.

Ms. Centman: Perfect. That's all I wanted to hear. Thank you. That's it.

Mr. Wright: 

Introduction of New Staff and Recognition:

Mr. Wood you were talking about, the universal meals. And I'm going to introduce somebody. Ms. Randy do you mind standing up for a second, please. She makes our meals for all of our board meetings, and also our kids and nutrition, by the way, the nutrition of our kids, which is now at a higher level because of you. And as you're here, please, you have somebody new that you'd like to introduce to us, please.

Ms. Randy: This right here is Ms. Susan she just started with us. She's our new Sous Chef supervisor. She comes to us from a background in community health care with skilled nursing. She's very active in her church with catering and youth programs. So, and she's been a tremendous help. She's only in here two weeks, and she's coming in with some good ideas.

Mr. Wright: Let me ask you a question. Exactly what is a Sous chef for those of us who don't know.? Are you naturally?

Ms. Randy: So, we have their different levels, so we have a cook, and then we have a sous chef. They're just a little bit more trained in the finer point of cooking. And rather than just a cook or fine cook, but she'd be able to take it to a next level. It's just a little bit of a higher level. I don't know if you’ve seen that's her chicken masala I think her presentation was very nice. Those garlic green beans, so all of that she was able to put together, cook it, put it together, and set it up. She did the roll, did the cookies, so she was able to do kind of all that on her own.

Mr. Wright: Welcome to our family at El Camino High School.

Mr. Wood, CBO, and Ms. Ilyas, Director, Accounting and Finance, presented the December, 2023, Financial Update.

Ms. Ilyas

Revenues: So on our furthest right-hand column, we have our actuals to date, showing how much revenue we received through the month of December. So we've received $28 million thus far and based on what we've projected for the first quarter, we're projecting $53 million. We're about halfway there. 

Expenditures: And then on the expense side, we have spent $23.9 million of our budget and we have projected that we're going to be at around $51 million. So everything is showing that we're halfway there when it comes to our revenue and expenses, which is normal because we are halfway through the school year. And we're also just trying to gear up for our second interim reporting, which reflects the close of January. So if you wanted to see the detail level, kind of line by line, it's on the subsequent pages. Any questions?

Committee Meetings and Proactive Financial Management:

Mr. Wood: If it looks like we are rushing, we aren’t. There was a substantive conversation. We took at the finance investment committee on the same report.

Mr. Wright: And I wanna bring you up to that we are more proactive by having these finance meetings. We have them on the Thursday before our board meetings and we are very, very in tune. So if you like to come, you are always welcome to come to those meetings.

Mr. Wood, CBO, will presented the December, 2023, ECRCHS Investment Update.

OPEB Account: This report has been changed slightly to reflect a number of changes that we've incurred. The last board meeting, the board approved the use of the OPEB account to pay the retiree health premiums. So we are now reflecting that. The month of October shows that we used $50,830 worth of the OPEB funds, and they are now directly paying the healthcare provider for retiree benefits. Looking in total, the OPEB account in the upper right of the executive summary now shows that we still have the $25.3 million that the school year started with. The next row on an accumulative basis shows how much out of the account got spent for OPEB payments. So, since it's only one, you'll see a reduction of $50,000. The school continues to fund the OPEB account with $220,000 a month, so to date, there's been $880,000 worth of contributions. Again, the market has been in decline for the first four months of the year. As of the end of October, we had $1.4 million worth of losses in our investments, and the current amount we're reporting is $24.77 million. One note of good news on the right, as of yesterday, the investments markets have surged, so the OPEB account as of November 15th is now $26.1 million.

General Investments: This report also now shows in terms of the general investments. I've updated our annuity account that we approved rolling over. It's $406,000. But now the other annuity, the ATHEEN, we closed that out and opened up the T-bill. There's a T-bill with US bank getting a 4.8% interest. It's a two-year T-bill, so we will be reflecting that on a go-forward basis.

To begin the conversation, there's what I typically put out as the Excel report that shows our investment balances as of December 23 as we reported and presented to the finance and investment committee at the end of December. 

OPEB Account: In the OPEB account we had $28.1 million and that represents that balance represents an increase; the total change. It's up 11% from the start of the fiscal year. We made contributions of $1.3 million. We paid out for the first time- the last three months when the board approved, making the retiree payments through the OPEB account. So to date we've dispersed $152,000 to retirees now that it's coming out of the OPEB and not the General Fund. And our gains and losses through investments are $1.6 million and that gets us to the 11% increase. Just to provide a point of reference, as of this morning, the OPEB account, it's pretty static. We're at $28.2 million, so up like $100,000. So I'll leave that report.

And then I can talk briefly. At the finance and investment committee, we had our advisors on a Zoom call, so the next part of this presentation is the full report, which is included in the materials as presented here. We had Mike Brawler and his assistant give all the information. There was at least a 30-minute conversation back and forth between their presentation, the committee members asking questions on the types of investments, maybe just for purposes of this board meeting. I would just point to the key information which is contained on page. So what you can see, I would just focus on: out of the $28.1 million that the OPEB account has, it's showing the types of investments. So it's in Fixed Income, International Equity, US equity, some alternatives, and just cash. So you can kind of see how the portfolio is allocated in those amounts, which is the first column in terms of the numbers and the percentages. We do have an investment policy statement that we have to stay within. So our advisor has to know to keep within the range of the US equities, for example, our board-approved investment policy says it needs to be between 20 and 50%. So in this case, right now, as of December 31st, we had 34.6%. So are we within that range? So the answer is yes for this one, and all the other investment types, we are within the range as well, so our advisors are abiding by our investment policy. 

General Investments: And then the other key page is for our General Investments. So our General Account, which is the General Fund Investment is a little more conservative for the school's General Fund as opposed to the OPEB account. So the portfolio is weighted slightly differently for those types of investments. So we are showing the $6.5 million is the balance in the General Investment Account. It shows the amounts and percentages by those types of investments. Similar, we have a different policy and range for those types of investments in the general account versus the OPEB. And again, this chart here shows; there will be a report to the organization from the advisor. If we were outside the range and they would be asked to reallocate these investments. But in this case, as of December 31st, 2023, they were all within the range.

Mr. Solkovits: Two things jumped out at me at the meeting. One, I was very impressed with the success of the investment strategy and how they've invested the money. But I did ask them to come back to us with an analysis of if we were to move away from investing in fossil fuels. I said that as a school with kids who are facing a future of a world devastated by global warming, it kind of bothered me that we were fairly heavily invested in fossil fuels. So they're going to come back with an analysis of how that might be adjusted so that we are not as heavily invested. In the back of my mind, eventually being able to invest entirely. I know that the CalSTRS system is looking at trying to do that as well, but it's not easily done because a lot of investment funds are invested across the board in fossil fuels to one degree or another. But I've asked them to come back to us so we can have that discussion because again, I just think that in a perfect world, we're not invested in fossil fuels because fossil fuels are killing the world. And our students' future world is going to be severely impacted by global warming. On the other hand, you don't shoot yourself in the foot just to attain that goal. So we're going to have a hard look at what that will entail and we'll of course bring that discussion back here if it's worth bringing back. But I did raise the point, probably obnoxiously, but that's the way it can be sometimes.

Prior to the vote, Mr. Wood and Vanessa Pineda from Christy White will presented the 2022-2023 Audit Report 

Mr.Wood: 

So maybe by way of introduction, Vanessa Pineda works for the independent accounting firm of Christy White Associates. She's been on our account three years. She's the lead on this account. We provide in the materials the full audit report. Obviously, it's a very long report, but she's going to do a summary on it so we don't necessarily have to go page by page.

Mr. Pineda: You just want to summarize the main point to provide you guys with an overview of the audit. As Greg mentioned, we do the audit every year. So this is as of30th 2023. We're going back in town a little bit. You know, once the financial statements are at home and submitted to state, you're authorized there to go ahead and review the financials and provide an opinion on them.

Overview: This is just an overview of the audit report. The first page, we are saying that it's a nonprofit we’re providing the audit on the Charter school. And then we include the charter in them. And quick overview of what it includes in the audit report. So all these pages are in there. There's this financial statements section, which is the Financial position, statement of cash flow,income statement and then within there, we have some notes and companies. This is the financial statement to provide more detail on each of these line items that we've included. And then there's the supplementary information. This is either by government auditing standards, by state requirements or federal requirements. We are required to include additional schedules. So the first one is the organizational schedule, so providing the board member listing, that administration, that is a requirement. Thenwe include the schedule of expenditures of federal awards. This is only included if expenditures are above $750,000. And that threshold is met, in this case, so we’ll include that shadedule. And it is also due to the single audit that we completed. Then there's the schedule of average daily attendance, including the ADA that was admitted to the state. And what you're funding is determined on. So we need to provide that for the P2 and the annual. And then the schedule instructional time. There is also a requirement for instructional days, instructional minutes, and we have to make sure that we provide that schedule to the state. And then lastly, if there's any reconciling items in the financial piece of it with the unaudited submitted, we also have to provide those adjustments. There might be some adjustments that doesn't affect the bottom line. So they wouldn't be included, but otherwise we have to include that, and provide it to this.

Responsibilities: So, you know, what the unaudited are provided anything after that, we have to include that to the state. And then just the other report. I will read what are the responsibilities of the Charter of El Camino, and then our responsibilities as an auditor. So, your organization maintains and designs internal controls. They prepare and have ownership of the financial statements. They prepare and manage financials for continued operations. So then as the auditor we come in and we provide an opinion on financial statements, we provide a reasonable assurance, just a little bit of what reasonable assurance means, It's just a high level assurance, but not absolute assurance as you guys know, We like sample we don't take a look at every item or every adjustment that is needed.

Financial Statement: So our first of opinion is on page one. It's on the financial statement. So we have, an unmodified opinion. Best opinion you can receive “the financial statements  presented fairly in all material respects” and all in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted tin the US. So it's a great job all around.

Internal Control: And then the second letter we included is on page 27 and it's towards the back of the auditor report. And this is the internal controls, lower 26:46 financial reporting. This helps us determine our opinion on financial statements. So it's what we actually do while we're looking at financial statements, So looking at cash, accounts receivable, capital assets, the investment accounts. You guys just went over. So we look at everything that is included within the financial statements. Unmodified and no significant defficiency nor material weaknesses were noted. And again, unmodified opion.

Federal Opinion: The second opinion is on federal. So like I mentioned, it is the charter spends more than $750,000. That triggers a single audit. So we have to take a look at the federal expenditures. And we select one major program to test. In this case, it was the Education Civilization Fund for discretionary grants, also known as ACER in here its a COVID pandemic funding provided by the federal government. This has been the major program in the last couple of years, just because of those large amounts that that funding has provided to the charter. So our opinion on this program was unmodified and no significant defficiency nor material weaknesses were noted. 

State compliance: And last opinion is on the state compliance. So as you guys can see, there are  quitea few programs that we are required to test by the state. If you guys see not applicable, it just means that either the charter does run that program or doesnt receive funding for that program? So it's just unmodified. So other than that, anything that has “yes” we have tested, and we have a unmodified opinion, no significant defficiency on material weaknesses were noted. And although there could be no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses, there could also be a finding, but there wasn't any findings this year. And then this is what I like to call the cheat sheet if you guys want to see the summary of all of our opinions they on page 35, and this provides again the three things that I just mentioned, all unmodified, with no significant deficiencies on material weaknesses noted. 

Other Key Points: Just a few points I wanted to review. So any accounting estimates that are used, for example, for capital office as many as you can like, it is determined by management. We do have a net assets detail on note 7, and there was no audit adjustments noted, nor difficulties, disagreement or audit findings issues. Again, you could have findings or maybe comments that aren't to the level of finding, but we still provide that information to the charter if we do see anything. And then finally before finalizing and submitting to the state and all other authorizing agencies, we obtain a management representation letter from management. 

And lastly, I just wanted to say that we appreciate the hard work of El Camino. ………….29:30 are the main point of contact, but there is pretty much everyone at the charter school helping us with all the requirements that we have to test. So we either were looking at attendance, we're looking at payroll, we're looking at teacher credentials, so all across the board, everyone at the charter helps us with the audit. And we really appreciate being willing to do the audit. We know that not everyone enjoys the going through an audit. So then providing everything so quickly and providing quick turnaround just helps our audit process and provide the best audit we can provide. So again, if you guys have any questions, I'll go ahead and open it up at this point.

Mr.Wood: No, I confer. From the school side. We've used Christie White for a number of years now, and I would echo from our side that it's Christie White and Vanessa in particular have been very easy to work with. We communicate very well, and I think we do an efficient job getting to the point of having our financial statements put together and produced and done on time by December 15 deadline. We met those deadlines and continued props to Vanessa and Christie White.

Discuss the 2023-2024 California School Dashboard Suspension Rate compared to other school years

This agenda item was tabled for the next meeting.

Prior to the vote, David Hussey, led the discussion on the School Accountability Report Card (SARC) completed annually which includes a variety of school-based data metrics to show how ECRCHS is performing on a variety of metrics.

I want to thank Stephanie Avila for helping collect all the information on the circuit port and all the administrators for adding their expertise. The issue with the Circuit Board is always a year behind. So we're always looking at data that's always the year behind. 

SARC: So just real quickly about the SARC, It has our vision and mission. It has a list of our enrollment for. 2022/23 again, it's a year behind. Talks about teachers credentials, making sure we're in tune with what we should be, any vacant positions. It goes back to 2021 and 2022. Next, it goes over the textbooks and instructional materials that the school is using. Next school facility conditions and planned improvements. This is done by the district. State priorities. I just want to go over a couple of these things. We've gone over them before, but I know the charter school division likes to make sure that we're discussing test scores.

CAASPP (CAASPP- The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress)

Eng Language Arts: So in our WASP 33:49 report, we did identify, especially in the ELA, our students with disabilities, only 31% are meeting or exceeding standards. So that's something that we are definitely looking at. And our Hispanic and Latino population exceeded at 59%, African Americans at 60 and socially disadvantaged at 60. So these are definitely areas that as a school we're looking at. I think VLA 34:18 we’ve been progressing every year. In mathematics as we're trying to look for an answer here, especially, I don't know if it's more tutoring, different delivery, but our students with disabilities only met or exceeded at 8%. Hispanic and Latino at 32% and black or African American at 26%. So these are all self identified areas and we will continue to work on those.

Mr.Wright: You said we're looking at tutoring for those low averages. What are our plans for that?

Mr: Hussey: Offering different studies skills classes for them during the school day. Different types of tutoring programs after school. We're looking with the PLC process (Professional Learning Communities), having more of a continuity with our special day classes as the teachers are teaching in the regular day classes to make sure that they're getting the rigor that they need in order to be successful in these classes.

12th grade Science Test: We have tested our 12th grade students in science. Our data team is looking at if this is the best grade to test students because a lot of them check out. When they're in their senior year they're ready for graduation. 

Career Technical Education Programs: We have our career technical education programs that we've started. So if we look on the next page where it says participation and we haven't had anybody complete this because last year was the first year, 2022/ 23. So next year we should see an increase in these numbers that earn a diploma through the CTE program. 

Physical Fitness: The other thing is our physical fitness results. As you can see, our PE teachers do a fantastic job getting our students to pass. 91, 90, 87, 89 and 90. For those components. 

Dropout Rate: And then our dropout rate, our graduation rate is fairly high, almost 92%. The district is 86 and the state is 86. And we continue to lean on our flex program and our independent study to try to provide alternatives for students to graduate instead of the traditional four year cohort at El Camino. 

We have the completion of graduation requirements, the issue with chronic absenteeism by student group. The biggest group is our students with disabilities. And I know our specialist teachers and our resource teachers are doing a good job calling parents, making sure that these kids are coming to school. Students with disabilities, if they miss school, it's even harder for them to catch up. So we're trying to get them to get here on time. 

Suspensions and Expulsions: You can see over the three years, it went up 2022/ 23, but the other years we weren't at school. So that's why the suspensions were down so much. 

Mr. Wright: Who’s getting suspended.

Mr. Hussey: So if you look on the next page, these are the suspension rates. So we have 1.7% for all students: Females 1.2, males 2.2, Asian 1.8, Black or 2.9, Filipino 1.8. So they're all pretty close to, we'll say equal as far as who's getting suspended.

Average Class Size: we're very happy to say that most of our classes are very small. Majority are between 1 and 22 students in a classroom. In English, mathematics - 66, science - 61 and social science - 104. So majority of our classes are very small. 

Salaries: And then it goes into our academic counselors, our teachers and administrative salaries. 

AP: How many students are in an AP class? So 32% of our students have taken an AP course. And we offer 69 different sections of AP courses. And that's just an overview of what the SARC report is.