The Board should consider a motion to approve the financial report presented here. 

The Governor issued his revised budget proposal last week.  He provided some additional details regarding the funding of public education for 2024-25 school year.

The state budget is likely to include a COLA of only 1%.   Our budget has included a salary increase of 3% for all JJMS employees. We believe that providing that increase is essential to keeping high quality staff and it can be supported by cuts in other portions of the budgets that will not have a huge negative impact on the educational experience of our students. 

JJMS has operated in our current building for two years.  Our experience has prompted us to plan a change to our current facility.

We need more indoor space for lunch and for PE classes because of the new normal of heavy rain.   We knew climate change would create more heat, so we designed for shade and powerful A/C.   We did not foresee the hundred year storms that would be annual challenges.  This has meant during inclement weather we are forced to serve lunch in individual classrooms in addition to the MultiPurpose room.  This creates a terrible problem for staffing.   Staffing individual classrooms requires many more people.  We have tried to fix this problem by planning for three different lunch periods in the 2024-25 school year, but that is a poor solution because it means that paraprofessionals will spend the majority of their time doing lunch supervision instead of providing academic support in classrooms.

We have worked with our Facilities consultants and developed a plan to add a modular building.  This building would have a lunch time/PE capacity of at least 250 students.  This would solve our indoor space problem. 

This urgently needed solution will cost approximately $500,000.  We hope to install the modular building during the Summer of 2025.

Overall Funding would be as follows:

Plan A:  If the Employee Retention Tax Credit is sent to JJMS by May 1, 2025, we can use that one million dollars to fund the contruction.  If the tax credit has not been recieved by the time we start construction, we go with Plan B. 

Plan B: Our mortgage needs to be refinanced to a 30 year term.  We have identified and begun working with a non-profit vendor. They are very confident that we will be approved at a low rate for low income projects.  We would add $500k to our mortgage.   We pay for the modular building from cash reserves in the month of July and get reimbursed by the refinance in the month of August or September.   

At this time, the only commitment we need is to approve the expenses associated with applying for zoning permission via LADBS plan approval process.  This process will take 10-12 months of paperwork.  Construction in July 2025 means that we need to start the paperwork now. 

This paperwork portion of the project would be funded from cash reserves and then reimbursed when we activate the funding of either Plan A or B described above. 

A more detailed budget and timeline will be added before the board meeting Thursday night.   Getting planning permission does NOT obligate us to complete the project if there is a economic disaster prior to July 2025. 

The board should consider a motion to approve the "Plan Approval Process" expenses listed in the attachments to be spent from cash reserves to complete the application for permission to install a modular building in July 2025.  

Special Education continues to be the most difficult area to staff.   We have determine that the best course of action is to work with non credentialed candidates who wish to become a Special Education teacher.  Previously approved board policy allows us to pay credential tuition for areas of critical shortage, including Special Education.   The Provisional Intern Permit allows an employee to begin their teaching under close supervision and mentoring while they work their way through the full credentialing process.  We believe that this is the best option to fully staff our Special Education department for the 2024-25 school year.  

The board should consider a motion to approve the submission of  Provisional Intern Permits for 

1. Karina Casillas PIP as an Educational Specialist (special education teacher) for the 2024-25 school year.

2. Eliezer Tarin, Jr, PIP as an Educational Specialist (special education teacher) for the 2024-25 school year.

JJMS collects input from various stakeholders before creating the final draft of our LCAP.  We will present input given by teachers, students, School Site Council and the English Learners Committee.  We have not received our report from the annual LAUSD site inspection which took place on April 19, 2023.  

Federal law requires us to put out a Request for Proposals every  3-5 years.   Attached are the three bids that we received.

The Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Albores, recommends that we contract with Revolution Foods.

The board should consider a motion to approve one of these vendors as our meal provider for the next 3-5 years. 

The state of California requires a minimum of 175 days of instruction for public schools.  The attached calendar will create a school year with 179 instructional days for the 2024-25 school year.

The board should consider a motion to approve the attached academic calendar for the 2024-25 school year.