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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-08-17 City Schools Liaison Committee Agenda PacketBIG CREEK ELEMENTARY Palo Alto Unified School District Melissa Baten Caswell, Board Member, Chair Ken Dauber, Board Member City of Palo Alto Liz Kniss, Council Member Eric Filseth, Council Member Staff Cathy Mak, District, Chief Business Officer, Staff Liaison Khashayar Alaee, City, Senior Management Analyst, Staff Liaison 1. Oral Communications 2. Approval of Minutes – May 18, 2017 3. Review of Recent City Council/PAUSD Board Meetings 4. Discussion and Update on Safe Routes to School 5. Discussion and Update on City and PAUSD Construction Updates 6. Review of Upcoming Agenda Items School/City Liaison Committee Meeting Thursday, August 17, 2017 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM Palo Alto Unified School District Conference Room A 25 Churchill Ave School/City Liaison Committee Special Meeting Agenda City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 1 SCHOOL/CITY LIAISON COMMITTEE PALO ALTO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT CITY OF PALO ALTO DATE: May 18, 2017 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF May 18, 2017 Opening The School/City Committee held a special meeting in the District Conference Room A at 25 Churchill Ave, Palo Alto. The meeting was called to order at 8:02 a.m. * All handouts can be viewed in the Business Services Office 25 Churchill Ave. Palo Alto Unified School District Representatives: Melissa Baten Caswell, Board Member, Committee Chair Ken Dauber, Board Member Cathy Mak, Chief Business Officer City of Palo Alto Representatives: Liz Kniss, Council Member Eric Filseth, Council Member Khashayar Alaee, Senior Management Analyst Oral Communications There were no requests for public comment. Approval of Minutes – April 20, 2017 MOTION: The April 20, 2017, meeting minutes were approved. Review of Recent City Council/PAUSD Board Meetings City Council: Filseth reported the AD Ordinance returned with no changes. They discussed the safety element of the comprehensive plan. The track watch topic came up and the trajectory is to install cameras at the crossings and reduce the number of people physically there. The intent is for someone to watch the video cameras and they call emergency services if there is someone at the tracks. Keene added they actually have two contracts coming to City Council in June. One is extending the track watch guards for the next year so they will have that overlap and that is $1.23 million The other is to install cameras and the first year monitoring costs that will probably begin February or mid-year and that is $1.5 million. They discussed reframing how they talk about the track guards as monitors since they are not guards. They are not allowed to tackle anyone down to stop someone on the tracks; they can only call emergency services if they see someone on the tracks. The good aspect of the camera system with the testing they have done mostly at night is they can see two to three times down the track more effectively than the guards can. The one issue that will come up for the District will be when the City discusses how much they have spent on the means restriction, is how much has the District been putting in since this effort on the all of the upstream mental health. He does not believe it is anywhere close to what the City has been spending on the track watch efforts. They are still dealing with Jim Harden with Caltrain on the west side fencing issue. They essentially secured the west side with non-standard fencing for them and the City would like to do the same on the west side and that will be another potential $500,000 to $700,000. Caswell stated the District is spending a lot on upstream mental health efforts and perhaps under the Project Safety Net (PSN) discussion they can touch on that. Kniss does not remember when the guards started. Keene said the suicides occurred in 2009; they had parents doing the track watch so right after they eased into it so they believe it goes back to 2010. Kniss said every year she mentions to the District that is would be nice to share the costs on these efforts so she will try again because she has done it formally and informally since she came back on the Council but she knows the District has not felt it is their responsibility. Dauber said it is an interesting perspective and he does not agree with Kniss. He believes the right question, for both the City and District, is what is the right amount to spend on the services that are needed to protect students or citizens? They may or not line right because they are asking two completely different questions. The City is talking about means restrictions on railroad tracks and the District is talking about mental health services. It could cost less or could cost more so he takes the point that it is a question but they should not anchor their spending on either of these on to each other’s expenditures. Kniss said she does not believe they City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 2 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF May 18, 2017 ever have, it is the first time she has. She believes they are the only City that has track watch and in no way do they feel resentful for spending it but it has grown enormously. It started at one third of a million and now they are heading to four million. Caswell mentioned they are going beyond Council and Board meeting updates. They could agendize this specific discussion for a future agenda. Kniss added they will be finished with budget by then so that is why she brought it up. Just to finish this off, every time she has brought it up she has gotten an indication that it the City’s issue, the District’s issue are the schools. Caswell pointed out they had several discussions about what should be on the agenda for this Committee but no one asked for this to be on the agenda but she is happy to put it on. Kniss repeated their budget will be done by then. Caswell added that this has been a long term issue. Dauber added if this was a concern about this year’s budget it would have been useful to raise it when they were in their budget planning process than now. At least for him, this is the first time he hears of it. Kniss said they have never made the request formally but she has raised it many times and just wants to put it on the record again. Keene pointed out this is agendized under the current agenda item PSN discussion and update. They would have brought it up during that discussion, not necessarily what the District is doing, but what the City is doing and the challenge they have. Also, his comment was not about how much should the District contribute, it was more to know that there is an answer and to know what the District is doing. Caswell said they have that information and will hopefully provide that today. Filseth reported that in the comprehensive plan discussion on land use, an issue came up on a clause in the comprehensive plan that calls for the impact on schools to be evaluated when making these decisions. The Council’s action was to have staff come up with language on the clause and that will come to City Council on June 5. Keene mentioned Council is almost done with the comprehensive plan; there is one governance piece and it will be back in the fall. They had a thank you celebration on Tuesday night for the Citizens’ Advisory Committee for their two years of work. District: Dauber reported they have taken a fair number of actions authorizing budget changes and building projects for Paly and Gunn high schools. They had intended to discuss the renaming on Jordan and Terman but it was pushed off but it will appear before the end of the year. Caswell said the construction projects will be relevant when they discuss traffic at the next meeting. They will have a Paly gym opening celebration on October 21, 2017. They have had a lot of budget discussions, almost $4 million in cuts. They are trying to figure out what money they have to do programs they have not done before. Caswell reported the Board has asked one of their law firms to do an investigation on the things that prompted the latest media reports on incidents at Paly. They are committed to all sites being safe. Discussion about Public Employee Housing Alaee mentioned there is no formal presentation on this topic. They agendized it so the Committee could have an opportunity to discuss their thoughts and perspectives on the issue and bring the feedback to the City Manager and Superintendent. Mak said they talked about this last year when a firm came in to speak about a program for employees. Alaee said it was a lending program. Mak mentioned the District has not done much but they had a meeting in March with a San Mateo County College District Director on their program. Caswell asked if there were any materials from that meeting. Mak will distribute the power point to the Committee. Caswell reported she had a conversation with Senator Jerry Hill last week. He mentioned the legislator has put new laws to make it easier for those that want to go to school to be teachers to receive loans; they also have other things in the pipeline for grants for housing or being qualified for more discounted housing. San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara are putting housing for their teachers. They know this is a problem, they have not seen the number of job applicants go down so dramatically but the kinds of applicants are different. A lot of applicants are saying it is okay to live and work in Milpitas or Tracy because driving from there is a problem. They are seeing things they have not seen before. For example, they are finding it incredibly hard to find an industrial tech teacher for the middle or high school levels. If the cost of living makes it too hard to live here, then City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 3 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF May 18, 2017 they are not going to have the kind of caliber teachers they want to have. Kniss said she has talked about the Santa Clara and San Mateo programs. It would be a good idea to have a field trip. Santa Clara has their housing on a school site, and they spent a great deal with the community on this before it happened. Caswell asked Mak how many employees the District has. Mak said close to 2,000. Kniss mentioned it would useful if a couple of people would talk to Santa Clara or San Mateo about their programs. Caswell stated that would be very useful. Filseth believes the Santa Clara program is called “Casa del Maestro”. Kniss mentioned she saw a film on this subject so she knows that it is circulated. Keene said the income level for affordable housing is probably $100,000 for a family of four. He is pessimistic because he does not believe the solutions are all that easy. They like to always like to talk about having housing for teachers and public safety personnel but most police officers do not want to live in the city they work in and firefighters already live at the fire house. The practicality of housing is a challenge too. They have thought of ideas on having employees work remotely. Kniss said that is hard for teachers though. Keene said yes, teachers are a different situation. Another idea they had was buying an old motel to have it available for people to stay over occasionally. Lastly, they spoke with the Daycare Committee and they mentioned most people do not want daycare where they live, they prefer to daycare where they work. If some of the City employees could have their kids go to PAUSD that could be a potential real incentive to recruiting and keeping employees. Caswell asked if they have had a hard time recruiting. Keene, yes but they have run a shuttle from the Central Valley for years to bring utility workers and the like. Caswell asked about how many employees they have doing this. Alaee said it is a vanpool so under 20. Keene said everyone in the area has concerns about retaining employees. Filseth stated he does not know very much about the Santa Clara place but he was told there are about 800 teachers in Palo Alto and only 10% live in the area. It would be nice to have financial assistance. Last week, Stanford announced they are buying the Colonnade Los Altos apartment complex which is even more housing than what they are building on campus. Kniss said they will go out there and speak to them. Dauber every housing decision is a tradeoff of cost, location, and amenities. One thing that is very appealing is housing for people so they can be closer to work to have an easier life. If they could create a situation for some people that were not costing direct compensation problem, it would be great. What they do have is land so leveraging that with something that is attractive. It could well produce questions, like could they have more intensive land use in order to allow for economizing on land while still providing a sufficient number of housing. Filseth asked if the District has land that could not fit a school but could be used for other uses. Golton stated there are three acres at Strawberry Hill on the northern end of Gunn High School. The neighbors would be concerned about having housing in that area. Kniss asked what the start pay is for teachers with a master’s degree. Mak said $60,000 a year. Caswell asked if they could organize a field trip together to the Santa Clara facility. Mak will work on scheduling a date and time to visit. Kniss asked for it to be towards the end of June. Caswell said it does not look like there will be one solution for this but it would be nice to chip away at it. Caswell asked if they could get information on the City employee shuttle. Alaee will email the information to the Committee. Discussion and Update on Project Safety Net Deputy City Manager Rob De Geus reported the track security effort is extremely costly and difficult. They are working on some transitions there. This effort is really important but it is not really sustainable. There is also the Project Safety Net work that is organizing and coordinating with the community and their response to suicide in general. It is not just one agency involved, there a lot of non-profit partners, students, parents, and business community. Everybody needs to be engaged in order to be effective. The third area the City is involved is in providing services. They have the Teen Center, Youth Council, Art Council, and they piece different activities for the kids so they spend a lot of time, money, and effort. The Youth Council is having a study session with the City Council on Monday, May 22, 2017 from 6-7 p.m. at City Hall and the Media Center will be broadcasting. It is really nice to see students from all different high schools including Castilleja, Gunn, Paly come together on finding balance. City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 4 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF May 18, 2017 Project Safety Net Executive Director Mary Cheryl B. Gloner presented on Project Safety Net with the following slides: -Quote: “Keep moving ahead because action creates momentum, which in turn creates unanticipated opportunities.” -Mission: To develop and implement an effective, comprehensive, community-based mental health plan for overall youth well-being in Palo Alto. -PSN Leadership Team -PSN Infrastructure Workgroup -The Journey to Project Safety Net 2.0 -PSN Timeline -PSN Roadmap -Social Intern from Paly design -Community Momentum -PSN Organizational Structure -Fiscal Sponsorship Activities -PSN Investment Opportunities De Geus confirmed that the leaders of these institutions listed would represent PSN’s Executive Board. Gloner answered, yes. Caswell asked Director of Student Services Brenda Carillo to share with the Committee what the District’s upstream investments are and what the needs will be. Carillo reported that as a whole, if they look at what they spend on mental health and youth well-being, they spend over $10 million as an entire District. They have continued to invest heavily into mental health and well-being efforts. One that comes to mind is the social emotional learning initiative that is moving forward and will be a long term investment the Board has decided to make. Just for next year, the District will spend about $50,000 just to lift social emotional learning (SEL) at the high schools and it will continue to increase as they continue to bring in the middle and elementary schools. Caswell confirmed the scope of the $10 million is for programs PreK-12. Carillo said yes. Kniss asked if the District could provide a paragraph on what social emotional learning is. Carillo will provide a write-up. Carillo also mentioned two wellness centers opened at the high schools and had to add staff at those locations. De Geus mentioned they will discuss the two wellness centers at their Monday meeting. Dauber would like a longer discussion on what PSN’s goals are and how they expect to have impact. The first iteration of PSN had a concrete plan and made it very clear what the work was. That concreteness was very helpful and he would certainly like to see it moving forward. Filseth pointed out that the challenge is there are so much useful, positive stuff to do that it is difficult to figure out what the scope is. It could become one of the core jobs because they will run out of resources before they run out of good things to do. Caswell mentioned that for her and others that are not attending every meeting, it is understanding really clearly what is working, what is not working, and are the things that are not working things they should continue to work on or are they not in the scope. Going back to the beginning, she recalls they worked on how to coordinate all the resources in town so they get the best bank for their buck. Also, if a child needs youth mental services, how can they ensure they are getting them in a coordinated way? She is not clear on how PSN is impacting that today and it is really important for them to be clear on. It is important to first have a clear scope and then work on a 501(c)3 and an executive board. Perhaps this is very clear to the PSN core team so she is not sure how they would get that insight if they should have another discussion at another time. City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 5 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF May 18, 2017 Filseth said it is fair to say that at the inception of PSN, they were focused on at risk kids and how to intervene. Caswell stated yes, that was the initial focus of how they could keep kids from getting to that place but they did strategically move towards thinking about how to get in front of this. Kniss said it was a crisis organization at that time and the question is where PSN is now. De Geus stated that from the beginning there were a lot of people that were interested and understood there was this important prevention upstream work that needed to happen now even when the crisis was happening. Caswell said yes, but when they placed ten organizations in the room, by working together they would have the impact of 20 organizations but they do not have an insight on whether that is happening or working. De Geus said it is a great question, they do get that a lot because how do they measure that and sometimes it is easier to measure than others. In his experience after many of these meetings, it happens in three different ways, they get people to come and become more aware of the issue and that they have a role to play as a parent or person in the community and they go away more activated on how can they support young people in their lives. Then there are agencies that are coming that are partners, they are learning from other experts and stakeholders that are in the room, coordinating and understanding what it is to be a good agency in terms of mental, social, and emotional health to take back to do better work with their agency. The City for example runs the teen center, teen programs so they do much better in running those programs and are much more aware of social emotional health. The third is when the agencies are working together and actively collaborating. The HEARD Alliance and the health fair are an example of that. Caswell said it would be helpful to have a report on all that. Gloner said they will come to do a study session with PAUSD and PSN will be doing an annual report. Update on City/District Cubberley Request For Proposals (RFP) City Assistant Director for Community Services, Kristen O’Kane reported they discussed how they could move the Cubberley master plan forward at the last meeting. They have redrafted the scope of work for their future RFP for a design consultant to help the District and the City put together a master plan for the future of Cubberley. They would like to bring the RFP to their Policy and Services Committee at the June 13 meeting. They would then like to bring it to City Council in August for discussion. Ideally, they would like to have a contract by the end of the calendar year. Golton reported he forwarded the draft to the Board. Golton and De Geus participated in the previous effort which started in May 2012 and end a year later with 800 page plus report. There was a Community Advisory Committee with about 40 people. The Policy Advisory Committee consisted of five members with three of City Council and two members of the School Board. It would seem the Board could choose to have a two member subcommittee to work on this. Golton confirmed with De Geus that he had done a preliminary look at what the previous version might cost. De Geus confirmed they looked at the cost of having a design firm come in to help them and the community through this process, yes. They think it is going to be in the $200,000-$300,000 range which sounds like a lot but this is a really big deal and they want to get right. They need to spend some money on this to do it right. Dauber asked if there is work between District and City staff they would expect before bringing the RFP to the Board to get input. Golton said yes. Dauber asked what the timeframe is to do that work. Golton said given the City’s timeframe, it would seem they would need to do their work very quickly. De Geus believes that has already been done, they drafted the scope and the City and District staff have provided input and now they are ready for the Board’s and Council’s feedback. Caswell mentioned Dauber is part of the District’s Agenda Setting Committee so they should coordinate a schedule so that they are not off schedule with the City. They should be parallel along this process. Keene mentioned the important part to him is what the depth of the political and policy commitment is to this. He is not going to advocate they spend a whole bunch of money if it is not really clear that the result will be something they all agree they can implement. They cannot spend $300,000 and have a process that does not go any place and that needs to be first and foremost. Caswell encourages them to have that conversation with Council and she will encourage the Board to have that City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 6 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF May 18, 2017 conversation. Future Meetings and Agendas The next meeting was rescheduled for Tuesday, June 20, 2017 as a field trip to Santa Clara Unified School District, Casa de Los Maestros, 3445 Lochinvar Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95051 to visit and discuss their teacher housing program. The June agenda items were deferred for a future meeting. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 9:34 a.m.