BOARD: Administrators map out bond-money plan

From Page A1 talk about a recent staff meeting where she learned that some classrooms are being evacuated on a daily basis.

After a brief recess, the meeting moved into the Measure M Bond Program prioritization presentation by Superintendent Matt Best. The presentation began with a brief history of Measure M and its signature bond projects that have been completed with the $150 million dollar Measure M facilities bond. Best then talked about how that original $150 million is coupled with an additional $85 million in state and local funds.

“Our main task of the next several weeks is to decide what we should be constructing with some of those expected $85 million in remaining funds. In 2018 and again in 2020, boards at those times prioritized definitively what we call our ‘signature projects’ and loosely prioritized projects for funds which were expected after 2025. Why they were prioritized after 2025 is we were expecting to sell all of our COP funds in 2025 and we have since moved up the sale of half of the roughly $50 million,” Best said. “We know that the most important thing for us to determine is our programmatic needs because form must follow function and we only want to construct, upgrade and/or modernize our facilities when we have a clear, programmatic vision and identified need.”

Best mentioned further considerations including what the highest need projects are and how they match up against available funds, cashflow management throughout the remaining projects as well as the impacts of other construction projects.

In light of this, staff recommends in June of 2023 beginning Phase 1 – the design phase – of the early childhood education project worth approximately $16 million. Best said they’d prioritize sites that can be completed by the fall of 2025. They’d also commence with technology infrastructure improvements in the summer as well as begin the design process for safety and security improvements. The recommendation also includes updating the facilities master plan in the fall. Following suit was an update on the district’s Local Control Accountability Plan given by the interim superintendent of instruction and director of secondary education and Leadership, Troy Allen. She gave an over view of the LCAP’s goals and components, and timeline for the remainder of the year. Allen talked about how the draft goals will be thoroughly reviewed and revised by multiple advisories in the upcoming months before the public hearing that will take place on June 1 followed by a plan for adoption at the June 15 meeting.

“I want to emphasize that, as a team, we understand the vision of DJUSD is mid-reform, and our work at this moment in time is holding the tension stability for our students and our staff and our community and building a bridge to our bigger aspirations as represented by our graduate profile and the coming strategic plan,” Allen said. “The LCAP is a highly technical document and an important mechanism to codify some of the granular details of our pathway toward realizing our goals. But more engaging is that as a community, we’re giving ourselves permission to identify real needs and tangible supports that lead us towards a focus on student outcomes, effective instruction and those structures that will support them.”

Finally came the approval of the employment contract for the superintendent of instructional services. Best broke down the steps in the hiring process before presenting Allen as the person selected as to fill that role. The trustees voted unanimously to approve the contract as the gallery applauded.

With that, the meeting came to an end with the next scheduled for May 4.

— Reach Aaron Geerts at aaron.geerts@mcnaughton. media.