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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-02-15 City Schools Liaison Committee Summary MinutesPage 1 of 25 Special Meeting February 15, 2018 Chairperson Holman called the meeting to order at 8:14 A.M. in the Community Meeting Room, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Present: City of Palo Alto Representatives Karen Holman, Council Member, Committee Chair Eric Filseth, Vice Mayor Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager and Staff Liaison Palo Alto Unified School District Representatives Melissa Baten Caswell, Board Member Cathy Mak, District Chief Business Officer and Staff Liaison Absent: Ken Dauber, Board President Todd Collins, Board Member Oral Communications Chair Holman: The first item on the Agenda, as always, is Oral Communications. If there are any speakers who'd like to speak to something not on the Agenda, I have no cards. Clerk has none. Minutes Approval 2. Review of Recent City Council/PAUSD Board Meetings. Chair Holman: We'll move on to the next Agenda Item which is Review of Recent City/School PAUSD Board meetings. Rob, do you lead on that? Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager: Nope. It's a discussion between Board Members and Council Members. Board Member Caswell: Yeah. A couple of things. One, we're in the middle of a Superintendent search. We have our consultants right now. Where we are right now is they have done small group meetings with constituents and people across the community and parents and teachers and basically anyone City/School Liaison Committee Special Meeting Final Transcript Minutes FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 2 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 who wanted a small group meeting, and of course the Board Members. They've also put out a survey. We've about 1,100 members of the community who have opined on what they'd like to see in a Superintendent. This is really important because this shapes their job description. They shared at the meeting on Tuesday the job description based on that. They also shared what they found out in the survey. I'll pass it around; you can take a look at it. The net net is we're looking for an educational leader who also is a systems person and has a history of strong implementation as well as a grounding in strong educational research methodology and implementation of that. That's where we're going. We had a lot of discussion tweaking the job description. We already have 40 candidates, so that's good news for us. We've been ranked the top district in the state for all the things that we could make better. This is still a pretty high profile job, and there are a lot of people who would like to take a high profile job and make us even better. We talked about when we're going to go out for the next bond. We've committed the last of the bond funds in the current bond, and we're almost done with many of those projects. We have two choices. We could go out in November 2018—this is probably a bit of a surprise—or we have to wait to 2020. There are two dates we can go out in 2020. The kind of bond we want to do, we have to go out in a regular election. It's a 55-percent vote bond. Anyway, we will be doing polling, and we will see how the polling goes. Based on the polling, we will make our next decisions going forward. There was a list of items that we want to work on at different levels. They will be solidified into a formal list. Just to give you a flavor, the Tower Building at Paly, a media and art building at Gunn … Chair Holman: The Tower Building, you mean, needing restoration? Board Member Caswell: The Tower Building needs a complete restoration. We can't really use the classrooms there right now. It's a beautiful building, but it's almost 100 years old. The Haymarket … Keith Reckdahl, Parks and Recreation Commissioner. Is it a safety issue or is it just …They can't use the tower rooms because of safety issues or because they're just not up to par for the facilities they need? Board Member Caswell: Both of those things. There are some just minor things. The technology we use today needs electricity and plugs, and we don't have those in many of the rooms. The rooms are not sized appropriately for what we need to use them for. I don't know if you've walked in the Tower Building recently. If you walk downstairs, there's sort of a softness in the floor that makes you believe there are some problems that we need to rectify. An art and media building at Gunn to … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 3 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Chair Holman: Before you leave the Tower Building, have any assessments been done on the Tower Building? Board Member Caswell: Until we get a bond passed, we're not going to do any planning. At a very high level, when we did the Master Plan for Paly (Palo Alto High School), they ordered the projects. The Tower Building was put below the line because creating more room for students was a first priority for the last bond, and upgrading the athletics and making a new media center. We have the Haymarket, which also has problems similar to the Tower Building. I don't know if you've been in there. There are holes in the floor. There are rodents that come in and out. There's one single bathroom that's a single stall. It's not appropriate for doing multiuse events. We want that to be a multiuse event space that could also be used by the community. Chair Holman: Its habitat. Board Member Caswell: Yeah, its habitat. I could go through a variety of things. The student center at Paly doesn't meet the needs of just being able to serve meals to students there. We need to do other things, and we don't have a room for that. At Gunn, Spangenberg, the outside is being remodeled—not the outside, the reception area. When you come in, that little area is being redone. The bathrooms are being redone, and some sort of utilities and safety things are being redone. That theater is not modernized, so some of the technological things that you do in a theater can't be done in that theater. We would like to bring that up to the same level of technology that we have in the new theater at Paly. The athletic facilities at Gunn, we don't have enough locker room space, and this has become problematic when teams come in. For example, when a football team comes in, often we have to close the girl’s locker room and move the football team that's visiting into the girl’s locker room, which creates problems. We actually have a girl on the football team. Just that by itself creates problems. They need some dance studio space. The stadium hasn't been upgraded for a very, very long time. There are safety considerations. If you go to the middle schools, our science lab spaces are not appropriate for the kind of science we're doing or for the number of kids that are going through there. There is no wellness space in the admin part of the building. As we've had more and more kids that need wellness support, we don't have space to serve them. The way the cafetoriums work right, particularly at JLS (Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School), is problematic. We make the food at JLS, and we put it out all over the District. We don't have a kitchen that really can stand up to that, so we're doing a lot of special things that make a lot of extra work and probably are more costly than they need to do. The FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 4 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Jordan classrooms are right now too small for the standard size of classes. We need to bring them up to a different standard. We have locker room and changing facility problems at the middle schools. Do you want me to keep going here? The libraries at JLS and Jordan haven't been upgraded for years. I invite you to come over to JLS and walk into the library. You will be sort of appalled that that is the standard that we have at a school that has other buildings that are up to a much higher standard. We don't have air conditioning in that campus. With global warming, maybe it's not air conditioning, but we need something because those classrooms get inordinately hot. It's both hard for learning, but it's also hard for teaching as well. In the elementary schools we have the same problem. For many of our school wings, the sun shines right into the classroom in the middle of the day. It used to be just a few days a year, and now it's a substantial number of days. We have three schools that don't have learning resource centers for special needs students, which means we have to send them to non- neighborhood schools, which isn't good, particularly now that we're doing inclusion and trying to keep kids in with their community. All of you have been in the MP rooms in the elementary schools. Those MP (multi-purpose) rooms in addition to not having the right just infrastructure to do things like slide presentations and bringing screens down and audio—I don't know if you've been to a show recently at an elementary school, but you can hardly understand what they say on stage because of the way the audio—the best we can do are these portable things that are terrible. We serve food at lunchtime out of the elementary schools, and we bring food—we have these carts that come out. That doesn't work very well. It's expensive; it's slow. There are long lines at lunch as a result of that. We have flex rooms at some schools but not at others. We would like our standard to be three flexible rooms that can be used for music, art and science, and maker space at every school. We have a few schools that have this because they're not at full enrollment. It's changed teaching and learning. Teaching and learning has changed anyway; it's much more project-based than it used to be. We need to have spaces to do things like this. Adding solar, doing a technology refresh, and then just some stuff, some utilities and shade and other infrastructure replacement. The bond that we're using right now is meant to be half a bond. There was actually 20 years of bond projects that were in the Master Plan for that bond, and they chose to do a bond that covered 10 years of it. What I'm talking about is really the next 10 years or so of the bond. This will be in the polling that goes out, or some portion of it. There will be a more formal—what I'm just telling you is an overview. It's not a formal report. What else did we talk about that was helpful for you to know about? The Magical Bridge Playground—about that too. We're putting a Magical Bridge Playground in at Addison. We want to be able to put a commensurate quality and level of playground in at every elementary school. A bunch of purchases I don't think you really care about. The Board FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 5 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 voted to put a term limit item on the ballot in November as well for term limits. There was one thing that we talked about that wasn't an agendized item, but we talked about it under Board operations that you should know. There is some legislation going through the Assembly right now that would allow districts to use the SAT or ACT instead of the CAASPP test, the standardized test that we're using right now at 11th grade. This is relevant to us because we have had participation of less than 30 percent on the 11th grade test. I think it's probably the lowest in the state. Trying to figure out how you get more students to come to a test they don't want to take—11th grade is a very challenging year. You take a lot of tests. Pretty much all of our kids take either the SAT or ACT. In states where they've made this an option, like Michigan, a huge percentage of underserved kids suddenly are eligible to apply to college because they got a free SAT or ACT because it was given by the school for free. There is precedent for this being a good decision. We will probably hear more about this. So far everybody that I've talked to at different districts is very positive on this. The State Superintendent and the President of the Board of Education, though, have invested a lot in the SBAC or CAASPP standardized tests. That's where the pushback would be; they've invested a lot. There are only seven—just for your knowledge—states in the country that are using the SBAC test for their 11th grade testing. They include South Dakota, West Virginia, and different states than we normally put ourselves into for groupings. Mr. Reckdahl: Do we think that the current standardized test is a better assessment than the SAT would be or is … Board Member Caswell: The current standardized test that we give at 11th grade does not match what we're teaching to our 11th graders. It does match what the State standards are for 11th grade. For all of our other grades, we've sort of standard things you learn in the classroom, and all the same students are in the classroom. By the time you get into high school, everybody's taking a different program. Mr. Reckdahl: If we did switch over, do we think we'd have a better idea how our students are doing or … Board Member Caswell: We look at the SAT and ACT every year—this Board does—as a measure of how are students doing, but not every single student takes that test. There are whole groups, particularly the underserved minority kids, missing from that group, so it would be helpful actually to see the whole group. This proposal right now, that's in the Assembly, is that the test that's chosen would make sure that anything that needed to represent the standards would be included in the test. The SAT has changed recently, FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 6 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 so it's more aligned to what the standards are than it used to be. It also is— in order to get into our public university, the SAT or ACT is one of the requirements today, to our public California State universities. Chair Holman: Do you know when that's coming up for a vote? I haven't seen any advocacy. Board Member Caswell: No. I have a write-up here. It's Patrick O'Donnell. Chair Holman: It's AB (Assembly Bill) what? Board Member Caswell: It's AB 1951. Chair Holman: Patrick O'Donnell? Board Member Caswell: Yeah. There are several districts that are piloting this right now, Long Beach, Fresno, Oakland, San Jose. They're not piloting it; they're just giving this test in addition to the test that we're required to give for free to all of their students. Vice Mayor Filseth: My recollection as a community update is that there are some colleges that you apply to that want to see every SAT you ever took. Board Member Caswell: That's true. Vice Mayor Filseth: If the School District goes to the SAT as the standard for all the kids, is that version of it also going to be accessible to any school that wants to see it? Board Member Caswell: Probably, but it would be given at the end of the 11th grade year. I've had some feedback from people that have said kids will go get tutoring for it. Yeah, that's true today, so it's no different than it is today. Really what we're talking about here is a way to reduce the amount of extra testing during the 11th grade year. Vice Mayor Filseth: I get that. Thanks. Board Member Caswell: And create an equity situation, where kids that don't have access to this get access. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 7 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Chair Holman: It seems like it would be good to find out when it's coming up for a vote and find out what the School District and others are doing to support it if that's the real goal. Board Member Caswell: Yes, and we will share that with you as we get— right now, I don't know that there's a date for that. I just don't know. Chair Holman: Good, thanks. A question about wanting Magical Bridge Playgrounds at all schools. I'm … Board Member Caswell: All elementary schools. Chair Holman: Elementary, I should say that, at least all elementary. Big supporter and fan of Magical Bridge, but I also know they're quite expensive to implement. I don't know how that's being scaled or if there is a plan for that yet. If you're going out for a bond, there has to be some kind of scale identified because it relates to cost. Board Member Caswell: Actually, the way these bonds work is we have to have a list of things we would use the bond for. We're hoping that we will learn with the Addison project what needs to be scoped into the standard for this. Chair Holman: Will these literally be Magical Bridge Playgrounds or will they be accessible playgrounds after the model of Magical Bridge? Board Member Caswell: We haven't committed to the brand Magical Bridge, if that's what you're asking. Magical Bridge won't necessarily define it. What we do at Addison will help us define it. We hope to have a new Superintendent hired by May, and I believe we will. With 40 candidates so far and we haven't even put the job description out, we're on track. Chair Holman: Anything else, Council Member Filseth? Board Member Caswell: I just need to clarify. We'd have picked the person in May; they would start the first of July. That would be our goal that they would start the first of July when our school year starts. Chair Holman: Thank you. Thank you for the very thorough debrief. Item 3, Library Card Collaboration. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 8 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Board Member Caswell: Wait. I still need to hear what you guys did. Chair Holman: I'm sorry. I haven't been on this Committee before. What we've done. Council Member Filseth, you want to start? Mr. de Geus: You had a Retreat and selected some Priorities. Vice Mayor Filseth: We had a Retreat. Priorities were Housing, Transportation, Finance and Infrastructure, and Grade Separation was the other one. Let me start with Grade Separation. A lot of discussion of cities trying to go through this very methodically. The objective for the timeline is that we come down to a small set of feasible alternatives by roughly June of this year, and then have a preferred alternative by the end of 2018. The disposition of the Churchill/Alma crossing is going to be a subject of discussion for many months ahead. There isn't going to be any decision made any time soon. There's going to be a lot of back-and-forth and dialog over this, which we're hoping that PAUSD will be an active part of that. Board Member Caswell: I think it would be good if this is put as an agenda item a couple of times during the year for that reason. Vice Mayor Filseth: That makes sense. The only thing I'm trying to say is it's not terribly urgent that people should rush to do something next week. It's going to be a long and systematic process, and that makes sense. Let's see. We passed a Housing Work Plan with an omnibus of programs to modify zoning to encourage much more rapid housing development. I should say that we have looked at the infrastructure, the current Infrastructure Plan, police building, garages and fire station overhaul. There appears to be at least a $50 million gap, possibly closer to $75 million gap. We are looking at how we are going to close that gap. It's very likely in my opinion that the City is going to come to some form of "we need to raise revenue." That's going to have to be done right away because we're spending the money now, and it probably can't wait to 2020 for this program. What else? Housing, Transportation, Grade Separation, Finance. The two major focal points for Finance this year are going to be how we fund the Infrastructure Plan. The City is looking very carefully at its pension liabilities, which are very large. They're actually one of the highest in the state of cities per capita. That's probably going to be the primary focus. Chair Holman: I don't want to speak out of turn. Having to do with infrastructure, I've said publicly several times before and will say it again we could not be doing these projects at a more expensive point in time. In FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 9 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 combination with maybe increasing revenues or maybe going out for a bond, we ought to also look at timing for projects because construction prices are just astronomical right now. Even for small projects, it is months before we could even get anybody to work on them because of how much the labor market is just consumed with work. It's not a good climate in which to be doing a lot of infrastructure. While this isn't a City initiative, it relates to schools because Joe Simitian has his proposal to create teacher housing across from the Courthouse in the California Avenue area. The City will be participating in that at whatever level. We haven't brought that to the Council yet. I've talked with Supervisor Simitian, and it's clear he's looking for support and interaction with the City. That housing will be not just for Palo Alto teachers given where it is and who owns the land. Palo Alto teachers would, in theory at least, have first priority at it. You had something to add to that? Board Member Caswell: I'm not sure we're going to have first priority on it, but we will definitely have a piece of it. He's talking about between 100 and 120 units. That would give us maybe 15 units if his plan comes to fruition. He had asked at least in his proposal that each community think about how they could contribute money, but there are other ways to raise money for a project like this. I know that they're looking at other ways as well. I do want to just give an example. In Santa Clara County, they had surplus land for the school district 40 years ago. No, I think it was 25 years ago. They built teacher housing. Because you can't raise a bond for teaching housing through the School District—it's not an educational program—they formed an organization that had a board and issued revenue bonds against future lease payments. That funding mechanism has worked fairly well. There are other funding mechanisms. I just want to make sure you guys know this as well, so you're not thinking the only way to do it is everybody fund some money. I think that's going to be very, very hard if you can't use bond funds. Because of the pension liabilities, no one has extra General Fund money just laying around. Chair Holman: There are other ways to participate too on the other aspect of this project, on the Courthouse site itself, sharing costs for parking and that sort of thing. There are other ways to support his broader program. I did want to bring up the teacher housing because it relates to our conversations here. Anything else? Rob? Mr. de Geus: Nope. Board Member Caswell: I just want to say the teacher housing issue is a regional problem. We're going to need a lot of different solutions. This is a FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 10 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 nice idea for a pilot, but it certainly isn't going to solve any of the districts that participate problems. We're going to have to have a lot of different pieces to it. Chair Holman: Given that this housing conversation has been going on since the 1960s, I don't think anything that we do is going to solve all the housing problems in any arena that we're talking about. This conversation really has literally been going on since the '60s. We've gotten ourselves where we are through a series of many, many years of policy decisions and market trends as well. Vice Mayor Filseth: As long as 500 square feet of land can provide workspace for five workers but housing for only one worker, the economics of housing will be tough and really tough in Silicon Valley. Board Member Caswell: Some of the stories that came up during his presentation were heartbreaking, teachers with kids living as roommates with other families, losing their housing because the building was sold out from under them and they have kids and they're an hour away anyway. It's really heartbreaking. Vice Mayor Filseth: What was the (inaudible) of where is the problem? Is it with young, early-stage teachers starting at the bottom of the pay scale or is it mid-career teachers with families and so forth? Board Member Caswell: At this point, it's across the board. Unless you have a spouse that's working in another industry and you already own a home, you're going to have a problem. Vice Mayor Filseth: There's a push on it to do small units, 500 square feet to one-bedroom units. Is that going to address teachers or..? Board Member Caswell: It'll address some, but it won't address the ones that have families. There's not a way, if you start out in something like that, to move into something that you can have a family in. We heard from teachers who are living in one bedrooms with their kids and a roommate. It's hard to believe that this is where we are and commuting. There's a lot of pieces to this. One thing that we could maybe work together on is there are people in our community who have extra bedrooms in their house, who would be interested in renting them out. Occasionally, they call us, and we try to match them up with a teacher we know that has a particular need. If we were able to do that at a bigger scale, maybe that would help some FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 11 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 number of people. Not everybody, but it would help some number, probably more than 15. Chair Holman: It's allowed now. It's probably a matter of networking in some fashion. Board Member Caswell: Some people are willing to rent to teachers but not to other people. You know what I mean? Chair Holman: Is the School District trying to develop some kind of plan or program or outreach to facilitate that? Board Member Caswell: We're sort of in the early stages. Right now, the way we facilitate it is through HR. Somebody calls HR with an apartment, and we try to find a teacher for it. We're trying to figure out a better way to do that. Chair Holman: A broader reach, yeah. Does Staff have anything they want to add to this conversation? Mr. de Geus: It's 8:45, so we probably need to move on. 3. Library Card Collaboration. Chair Holman: Library Card Collaboration. Gayathri Kanth, Assistant Director for Library Services: Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to present today. I'm Gayathri Kanth. I'm the Assistant Director for the Library. This is Emily Garrison, who is the Educational Technology and Libraries Coordinator for the Palo Alto Unified School District. We're going to talk about the student asset cards, which is a collaborative project between the Library and the School District. Palo Alto City Library and the Unified School District has had a long history of working together as educational partners. We've had kindergarten drives at the school. Palo Alto Unified School District students work at the Library as volunteers as well as being our TLAB advisers. TLAB is Teen Library Advisory Board Members. They help us figure out services as well as programs for teens. We also collaborate with our Cram Slam. We literally open the Library for longer hours where students can literally cram the last minutes. Let me show you some pictures. The first is from the kindergarten party. Obviously kids are having FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 12 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 a lot of fun. The second is a TLAB program where the students were making holiday stuff. This is the finals Cram Slam. What we do is not only provide space and refreshments but also bring therapy dogs. There's a place where they can relax and also study together. This project came as a result of several local and national initiatives. The first one is in 2015 White House and the Institute of Museum and Libraries started something called ConnectED Challenge. This basically wanted every child enrolled in any school should have a library card so they have access to books and technology. Following that, the Urban Libraries Council, again a national organization, started a Leaders Library Card Challenge where they not only wanted to bring the library and the schools together but also local stakeholders that support it. For example, our Leaders Library Card Challenge was signed by the Mayor at that time along with the Superintendent and the City Staff. Locally, we have the Pacific Library Partnership, which is one of the nine cooperative systems of all the libraries in the area. They brought something called Student Success Initiative where they brought all the libraries in the area together so we could share resources as to how to work with the school districts so that every child in every school district has a library card. Palo Alto Library was selected as one of the pilot libraries to implement this project. We have been working for about a year on how to work with practice, policy, as well as technology and just the logistics of giving cards to 10,000-plus kids. Emily is going to talk about what the student asset card is. Emily Garrison, Coordinator of Education Technology & Library Services for Palo Alto Unified School District: What we're calling the student asset card is basically a joint card for students. They will be using their Palo Alto Unified School District student identification card that has a library identification code on it that they use for libraries within the School District. What they'll be able to do is use that same card to access City library resources. They'll be able to check out books and get to draw resources from the City library as well. It's a fully functional library card for both the School District and for the City libraries. Board Member Caswell: Do our kids have library cards for elementary at this point in time? Ms. Garrison: It depends. It different. Really what we use is a bar code number. A lot of the librarians have the bar code numbers for their students on physical index cards or something. When they come into the library, they can use that. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 13 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Chair Holman: There's an efficiency to using the same card. When I was a kid, it was a big deal to have your own library card. I'm just wondering what the appeal or attraction is of having a library card too as opposed to have this joint card. Ms. Garrison: Actually, a lot of students use that number. They need that library number to access their things. Because a lot of our students work digitally, a lot of them will just be inputting a number into a computer and accessing library materials that way. The library card physically is a wonderful thing. I remember mine as well. It's also a convenience for students. If they can use one card in both places, that will be very convenient as well. Chair Holman: There's not an appeal to having—if you have a library card, you could also use the number off that for digital access. There's not an appeal to having a separate library card? The reason I'm asking this question is it seems like are we diminishing the awareness of the library by having the one card, which is your student ID card. That's what I'm questioning. Board Member Caswell: As a parent, elementary school kids lose these things all the time. That's why I asked if elementary school kids even had a library card. I don't remember my kids having a card. It was hard enough for them to keep track of the books they took out. I don't think it will diminish it. Honestly, the old days when it was such a fabulous thing to have a wallet with something in it have gone away. Chair Holman: Now, we have this with cards in it. The other may sound like a silly question. As a dog person, thank you for allowing dogs into the afterhours. I'm interested in what libraries that's allowed at too. I'm going to put it out there anyway about having dogs have their own library card. Just as something to again get kids (crosstalk) library because it's another— I don't know how broad it would be or how much work it would be or anything. Kids love stuff like that. Ms. Kanth: That's a really interesting idea. We'll definitely look at it. Vice Mayor Filseth: If the City doesn't issue them, the kids will make them up on their own. Ms. Kanth: Maybe that could be a really good project for the kids. The whole purpose is to also let kids know that schools provide education in a FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 14 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 different way, and the libraries provide education in a different way. For them to have that opportunity to understand both being really critical for their lifelong learning skills. This could actually be a really great project. Board Member Caswell: Libraries have changed what they are for kids. They used to be a place where you came in, and it was about checking out books or other things. Now, they're about a place where you go to do some work. As a matter of fact, some of our school libraries are really not about the books that are in the library anymore; they're about the space and about meeting space for group projects and things as well. Having dogs there, doing the therapy dogs supports having the space as a place you come into, where you relax as well as do work. Ms. Kanth: Also to let you know, we do have a program called Paws to Read. This is a program where kids can come and just read to the dogs or any other therapy animals. Studies have indicated that really helps their reading skills because the dogs don't care about grammar or (crosstalk). It has really proven to be very effective. Constantly, the teens that come to the Cram Slam program tell us how much they enjoy having the dogs there. Keith Reckdahl, Parks & Recreation Commissioner: Yeah, I have a question. Melissa mentioned about elementary school kids losing their library card. Does it have a pin or is it a picture ID or how do protect against losing the card and then losing assets? Ms. Garrison: We're working on those details right now. We have a couple more slides that will give a little bit more details. I think that would be helpful. Would you mind if I answer in just a little bit? I want to talk a little bit about the why behind this project. We know that students with access to public libraries increase their academic outcomes, again that ability to access information and knowledge. Public Libraries provide a targeted support for education in multiple areas, for example, in information literacy, which is a really important topic right now in where we are. Research skills, reading for pleasure is a big one. Just again, providing that space for them to be in. Being familiar with libraries can support students with lifelong learning habits, lifelong literacy habits. For us, this has been a really important project just to be build the relationship between our organizations and work together, again thinking about students and how can we support them with their needs. Ms. Kanth: We're going to talk about Developmental Assets. I know that the City and the School has worked a lot on Developmental Assets. We also FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 15 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 had the project Cornerstone. The Library is also very interested in helping young people grow up healthy and responsible and caring. If you look at it, these are the lists of items directly the Library helps with these assets. We provide a safe environment for the students. It also provides, like I was talking about, a fun and relaxed learning environment for research and reading, doing the same thing slightly differently. It's very effective. The Staff has developed a very positive relationship with students. It is really important to have adults that are not parents to have that kind of very positive relationship. Libraries also provide student with options to participate in community service because we have a lot of volunteering activities that kids can be a part of. They learn how to start giving back to the community. One of the things we find is sometimes you'll have a volunteer who's a little bit on the shier side. By the time they're done, they have tons of friends. They also work multi-generationally with various different volunteers and Staff members. Board Member Caswell: If you're going to use this slide again, I would recommend the second bullet include group projects. Project-based learning is a big part of what we're doing in the classroom now. Many kids don't have a place at their home where they can bring students together. We do have kids that are doing projects; they're doing Google Hangouts and stuff to do their projects. It's really nice that you have these conference rooms where they can get together and do projects. Ms. Garrison: To talk about some more of the details about what's coming next in this project. We have been working, as Gayathri said, for about a year. One of the things that we've consistently said is that we have been taking our time with this project to make sure we have things in place and we're doing things in the best possible way. The first big hurdle that we had to get over was an MOU. We do have a Memorandum of Understanding between our organizations that is quite comprehensive about what this project is about, the data that will be shared, all of those kinds of issues. We've also been communicating with our parent community. This summer we're piloting at JLS. That was the school that we decided we would start this pilot with. In the back-to-school packets this summer, all parents received a letter informing them about this project that we would be piloting this school year at JLS. That letter was also an opt-out form. We want to make sure that our parents understand that this is not something that everybody is just into and that we're just doing it, that parents have a choice whether they would like to opt out of this. We actually only had maybe 22 parents that returned that opt-out form. Most of our parents are interested in it. What we're doing right now is we are ready to start the pilot. We have three classes at JLS that we will be focusing in. We're going FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 16 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 to design a short, interactive lesson that the students will use to be able to get onto the City Library system and explore the resources that they have. The City Library has outstanding, incredible resources and many more resources than we have in our PAUSD libraries. It's just a fantastic partnership. That is in the process right now. Again, another communication went out to all the parents just reminding them again that we were going to get started with this. Once we start with that, it's one teacher and three classes. We're just going to have to see how things go. We're going to have to see how it happens, how our systems talk to each other, how the students interact with it. Our plan is to continue this rollout until we have all students at JLS by the end of this school year hopefully involved in this project. In that time, we're going to find out what the bumps in the road are and the things that we need to figure out, those other pieces that we need to put in place to make sure this all works. The ultimate goal is to then open this up to all schools starting next school year, starting for the 2018-2019 school year. Additionally, that opt-out form or that opt-out information will also be included in what we call Infinite Campus, which is our student information system. Every year, parents do an annual data update, so that will actually be part of their annual data update, so parents will be able to opt out every year. Those are just some of the details. Hopefully, once we really get in there with the students of JLS, we'll be able to start thinking about how do we scale this out to our other schools as well, especially elementaries, to get back to your point. Ms. Kanth: Thank you very much for listening to our presentation. I'm Gayathri Kanth, as I said. This is Emily Garrison. We're happy to answer any questions whether you have that today or you can email us or contact us. Chair Holman: Thank you. Questions, comments? Vice Mayor Filseth: Good idea, it makes sense. Chair Holman: Melissa, any questions or comments? Keith, did you get your question answered? Mr. Reckdahl: Yes, I have. I was distracted, so I didn't get the gist of it. If the library card is lost and they bring it to the City Library to check out assets, then how will they determine whether that's their card or not? Ms. Garrison: Those are all details that we're going to have to figure out once we start actually working with this. Again, my perception is that we're FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 17 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 probably going to be working in a more digital environment than that physical thing. The students will have their numbers, so they can use that as well. Again, we're going to have to get in there and see and experiment. Which is why we're taking the rest of this semester to actually do the pilot in smaller pieces. Board Member Caswell: My experience with my own children, who lost their cards pretty much all the time, is that they would show up at the Library and say, "I lost my card." They'd say, "What's your name? Where do you live? What's your phone number?" Then, they'd say, "This is your library number." They'd let them check things out with that. Mr. Reckdahl: In the past, you could just bring your card in and check it out. There was no protection. Now with a pin, you have to have the pin to check out on the City Library at least. 4. Cubberley Master Plan Update. Chair Holman: The next item on the agenda is the Cubberley Master Plan. We do have one speaker card. Would Staff like to make a presentation first? Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager: I'd like to invite Kristen O'Kane to come up and join us. Kristen's the Interim Director of the Community Services Department. Welcome, Kristen. Community Services is the department in the lead on this project, working closely with the City Manager's Office. We did create a scope of services for the Master Plan for Cubberley. That was approved by the City Council and the School Board. The RFP (Request for Proposals) was released, and we received two proposals that were comprehensive and firms that we were pleased responded. Last week, we interviewed both firms with City Staff and School District Staff. We're checking references on both firms and meeting again this afternoon with the School District Staff to consider which firm we think might be best suited to work on this project with us. That's where things stand today. Kristen, do you want to add anything? Kristen O’Kane, Interim Director of Community Services: Sure. Kristen O'Kane, Community Services. Rob summarized it really well. Although we only received two proposals, they both seem like they're very solid companies. They come with a lot of experience. They've presented us some really creative ideas and examples of other projects they worked on that make it really exciting for us to start embarking on this project. We did question whether we should go out again and try to get more responses, but FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 18 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 we feel like the two firms, like I said, are really strong candidates. We're going to meet today and hopefully make a decision on who we want to move forward in the process. Chair Holman: Thank you for that. We do have one speaker, Alison Cormack, if you care to join us. Thank you for coming. You'll have 3 minutes. Alison Cormack: Morning. Alison Cormack. I just want to reiterate the reasons we should all be more focused on this than I think we have been. I'm just going to update my statement from last year with just adding a year to each of them. Cubberley's now 62 years old. It's definitely still ready to be retired. I know you all know we need a modern building in its place that's designed for the purposes it's been used for for the past 39 years, sports, arts, health, music, languages, dance, lifelong learning. I'm sure I could go on, but that encompasses most of it. These opportunities and services make living in Palo Alto healthier and more meaningful. This project is just embarrassing. It's been neglected for far too long. I'm delighted to see that the City and the School District are working together cooperatively. I remain concerned about the time that it's taking. We're already behind the schedule that was presented to both you. I'm also going to reiterate my suggestion that you consider concurrent polling during Phase II. It's something we did with the Library. Certainly Trustee Caswell was talking about that this morning. That's going to bring us to the topic money. In the list of the potential bond for the School District, I did not hear Cubberley. In the list of infrastructure things that Council Member Filseth went through, I did not hear Cubberley. With both organizations considering what needs to be funded when, this is a big elephant in the room that's important. If it's going to be funded separately by the two of you, it still needs to be considered in the overall picture. That's my plea. We've seen this movie before. Last time it had a really happy ending. I'd love for that to happen again for the entire community. Thanks. Chair Holman: Thank you. Cubberley is on the list of City infrastructure. Ms. Cormack: I didn't hear it. Chair Holman: He did not list a comprehensive list of the projects, but Cubberley is a part of that. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 19 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Board Member Caswell: We don't have a written Master Plan. I assume it will be in there. I was just talking about what had been discussed as needs from the principals who were at the meeting. Vice Mayor Filseth: Thank you very much for the update. I'm glad to see this is in motion. Thanks. Chair Holman: Melissa. I have a question about the RFP. The RFP came to the Council, and then it went to the School Board. The School Board, as I understand it, added the needs assessment. Did that get added to the RFP? Ms. O’Kane: It did. The words "needs assessment" are included in the scope. Chair Holman: Good. Should I make too much about the words or … needs assessment? Ms. O’Kane: It is a needs assessment. It's looking at what assets we have and then what additional needs the community would want to include in Cubberley. It's definitely included. We want to ensure that the consultant is looking at all the existing data we have already, so they're not collecting a lot of new information that we've already collected from the Parks Master Plan, from the Comprehensive Plan Update, and various other data collection efforts. It's definitely part of the scope now, but focusing on the data we already have and then adding to that. The needs assessment piece could be collecting more data, but it's really building on the data that we already have. Chair Holman: How I envisioned a needs assessment, which was recommended by the Cubberley CAC and the Parks and Rec Commission and some on the Council and the School Board, is—I don't know what existing data there is. The way it came to the Council was we'd look at what we have and what we need to supplement, which is not the same as doing a needs assessment. That's where I'm trying to get a little bit of clarity. I don't know what data exists currently. Ms. O’Kane: The Parks Master Plan collected a ton of data on what programs and services exist, what facilities exist, what's in Palo Alto. We don't want to collect those same piece of data again. Chair Holman: That's what exists, but what are the needs, what do we not have that the community … FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 20 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Ms. O’Kane: They'll build off that to find where the gaps are and what needs do exist. Chair Holman: By community input? I'm sorry … Ms. O’Kane: Yes, by community input. Chair Holman: I'm just trying to get clarity. I don't mean to be hammering you. I'm just trying to get clarity. Ms. O’Kane: That's fine. By community input. A huge piece of this master planning effort is the community engagement piece. When we look at the two consultants that are proposing to work on this project, it is one of the main features that we're looking for. Can they do this community engagement in an intensive way but a creative way, in a trusting way to really get as much information from the community that we can get to really ensure that Cubberley is providing the services that the community needs and wants? Chair Holman: Lastly, that's being done within the same scope of dollars that came to the Council? Mr. de Geus: We're working on the cost. Both of the bids were slightly higher than what our current budget is. We're working with both consultants about what is in the scope. It may be that we have to go back and add a little bit to the budget to make it work. I'll let you know. Chair Holman: I agree with Alison Cormack's comments. This and the now- called Ventura plan have both been longtime frustrations of mine too because they just seem to be "we'll get to it." We're going to do it at this time and date, and then that passes, and we set a new schedule. I'm really glad that we're finally getting going on this and the Ventura plan. Melissa, do you have anything to add, questions? Board Member Caswell: No. Keith Reckdahl, Parks & Recreation Commissioner: Just one comment or question. I agree that in Palo Alto any big project can take a long time to plan. In the Palo Alto process there's a lot to get through. This has other layers just because it's so huge we don't have the finances for it. That's going to tend to slow it down. You have two customers, the School Board FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 21 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 and the City, and that's going to slow it down even further. What can we do to keep pushing, to not necessarily accelerate the project but prevent the project from deaccelerating? I'm really concerned that this is not going to be built in the next 20 years. Board Member Caswell: Can I add one more thing just based on what you said? We have restrictions when we raised money with the bond of what we can raise it for. That's probably going to—I don't know, but we're probably going to have to have discussions separate from our second phase in the bonds we're talking about right now. It has to be for educational use. If we raise money, it has to be for educational use. If it's being used for other things, we probably have to figure something else out. Chair Holman: I think it's important to understand specifically what—I know there is a definition—educational use is. Rob, do you want to speak to the scheduling and timing? Mr. de Geus: There's a number of challenges that we're going to face with this project. It's big. It's going to be very expensive. The timing and interest from the School District is likely different than the City and the community's. We stay the course. We have a scope of services to do the Master Plan. We've now funded that. We have some good firms we think are going to be able to help us with this. We cross the roadblocks as we approach them. I can tell you it's a priority for the City and a priority for the School District. We stay the course. 5. Discussion of Agenda Topics for 2018. Chair Holman: The last item on the Agenda is—even though we got started late, it looks like we're going to finish on time. The last item on the agenda is Discussion of Agenda Topics for 2018. Council Member Filseth, do you have things that you want to see added? Vice Mayor Filseth: Not at this time. Chair Holman: Melissa, do you want to speak for your colleagues? Board Member Caswell: I'm going to let Cathy Mak speak. Since both of my colleagues are gone, it creates a weird problem so Ms. Mak needs to speak. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 22 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Cathy Mak, District Chief Business Officer: Cathy Mak, CBO for the School District. I do have a list of topics that were suggested by the two Board Members. The topics include Cubberley, safe biking to and from school, middle school athletics, coordination on construction street repairs and its effect on students traveling to schools. I guess it is more coordination between the City and school construction projects. Let me look at the other list. Board Member Caswell: It did come up earlier that the train crossing plan probably needs to be talked about a couple of times during the year, particularly as it has to do at Churchill. Ms. Mak: Here are more items, shared effort to look at pension, OPEB liabilities, and ways to address pension liabilities. Next item, how to incorporate school sites into large new housing developments through community plans, for example Fry's site. Chair Holman: Can you give a little around that or will they need to do that? I'm not quite sure what that means. Ms. Mak: Melissa? Board Member Caswell: I assume because we've talked about this before—I don't know where that came from exactly. We have neighborhood schools. If there is going to be neighborhood housing built, we need to make sure that there's space in our neighborhood schools. We need to be in discussions together whether it means more space at a particular school or whether that means different boundaries. We need to get on that early so that we don't have a bad overflow situation. Chair Holman: I would suppose also having to do with the Stanford GUP. If housing is placed where kids don't have to cross El Camino … Board Member Caswell: We're talking to Stanford about that. That's going to be very impacted by how Stanford decides to work with us on that or not. Chair Holman: I know you are. I just meant it was another example of housing being placed nearer schools so that kids aren't … Board Member Caswell: Yes, absolutely. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 23 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Chair Holman: I was trying to speak in general but use that as an example. Ms. Mak: Last item is teacher/staff housing options. Chair Holman: In that list, you covered a couple of mine. I would presume, as part of the teacher/staff housing options, the PAUSD Churchill site would be in discussion. It's been brought up. In City documents at least, it's been brought up as a possibility. Board Member Caswell: We've had no discussion about that. Chair Holman: This group needs to talk about it because it shows up on some of our City documents. We need to … Board Member Caswell: This is one of those things where this is a liaison committee. You can tell us what shows up, but this group can't come up with a plan or the Board Members won't be able to be part of that. Chair Holman: I am not proposing that whatsoever. Not proposing that at all. We need to have some conversation about it to see where different entities stand or have a perception of where the different entities stand and what the possibilities might or might not be. It's just a discussion and a communication. This is a liaison group and not a decision-making group. Board Member Caswell: I think what you're going to find is you can give a presentation of what you believe are things that have been discussed. Because we haven't discussed anything, unless this is at the latter part of the year after we have had a discussion, there's going to be very little we can provide. Chair Holman: The other thing I would like to see—I agree with Cubberley. Cubberley ought to be on here regularly to try to help keep it going and information provided. Obviously, Item Number 2 on this one should be on here all the time probably. It would be good to—when there seems to be something to add or some point of interaction—keep the Supervisor Simitian teacher housing proposal on the agenda at appropriate points in time. Anything else to add? Vice Mayor Filseth: I'm glad we get to take a look at some of these impacts. The word "magical thinking" got thrown around on Monday night in respect FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 24 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 to whether housing expansion would produce cars. It's our job to avoid magical thinking in all kinds of areas. Board Member Caswell: I'm not supposed to add things to the list since I'm not on the Committee. I would encourage you to think about having a conversation about traffic in general as it relates to getting students to and from school. That's different than bike safety. Rob de Geus, Deputy City Manager: I had one just in light of the tragedy yesterday, the school shooting. We do usually do an emergency preparedness discussion. It just reminds us that we've got to be sure that we're working closely together with our PD and Fire and Office of Emergency Services so that we're as prepared as we can be. Board Member Caswell: I was reminded earlier this week because early this week some teachers mentioned to me that we had done some Code Red drills. We do them regularly. It just seemed ironic to me that we were doing them this week. Keith Reckdahl, Parks & Recreation Commissioner: I have one thing to add. As part of the Master Plan, we looked at what the City needs for schools and gymnasiums. Those are both really big ticket items. If the school has assets that we can use and that's beneficial to both, that's a route we should go down. We also should look at it the other way around, if the school has assets that they need and they can incorporate that in City planning. The School District and the City are the same people. It seems silly for us to have this independent planning of facilities. Between money and land, it makes a lot of sense to have more dovetailing of the planning process. I would like further cooperation of facility planning and facility use. Chair Holman: That would, I think, come up probably in the needs assessment. Mr. de Geus: It would. It's consistent with the Parks and Recreation Master Plan that was just approved, increased cooperation. We do a lot of cooperation already. Certainly, we should continue to see how we can do more of that. Board Member Caswell: Past discussions have really been on what assets do we have and how can we share them. What you're suggesting is what assets do we need and is there a way to get them, which is not a conversation we've had in this group. FINAL TRANSCRIPT MINUTES Page 25 of 25 Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting Final Transcript Minutes: 2/15/2018 Chair Holman: I don't see any other comments on that. Related to what you were just referencing, Rob, I would like to adjourn this meeting in memory of those who lost their lives in the Florida shooting. Our thoughts are with those who are suffering the consequences of that impact and that tragic event. Meeting adjourned. ADJOURNMENT: The meeting was adjourned at 9:23 A.M.