{"date":"2023-11-02","type":"Study Session","videoId":"uEJsKPqWg_0","audioDuration":7105,"speakers":{"A":{"name":"Cecilia I. Márquez","role":"Vice President / presiding officer for this session"}},"utterances":[{"start":5760,"end":6560,"speaker":"A","text":"Good evening everyone."},{"start":8400,"end":9760,"speaker":"B","text":"Again, can you please be welcome."},{"start":25040,"end":96180,"speaker":"A","text":"Again, welcome everyone to, um, this Study Session, um, Thursday, November 2nd, and If you need to— the public, public is encouraged to speak to the board on issues concerning whether or not the issues are on the agenda. To address the board, please complete a Speakers Card available at the entrance, and then you can give it to anyone who is right across from me. If you wish to to report on a subject listed on the agenda, you will be called to the podium at the time that the item is being considered by the board. If the item is not on the agenda, you will be called to the podium during Oral Communication. Public comments are limited to 3 minutes per person per topic unless otherwise noted. And with that, are there any additions or changes to the agenda? With that, can I please get a motion to approve?"},{"start":96180,"end":107194,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you, Aldo Santiago."},{"start":107194,"end":120020,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, and so today, um, we're speaking on item 5.1, Update on Workforce Housing, and I am going to go and pass the microphone to Rafaela Bendaño. He is going to be our moderator tonight. He is with Redwood City Together."},{"start":120660,"end":1087480,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you, Board President Cecilia. Hi, good evening everybody. My name is Rafaela Bendaño. I'm the Executive Director of Redwood City Together. Welcome to all. A pleasure to have you all here. Se ocupa traducción, tenemos aquí atrás apoyo si quieren oír todo lo que sea en español. Tenemos apoyo hoy. Again, my name is Rafael Avendaño. I'm here representing Redwood City Together. The school district is one of our core partners. A little bit about what we do, we do collective impact work. So what does that mean? We go after equity gaps that exist in the community around education, wellness, and equity. And, um, For us, we really like to see our work as being systems engineer driven. That's right, systems engineer driven. So we leverage funds and resources to really go after things such as bus passes in our community. Last year we were able to work with the school district to get every kid in Redwood City and our folks bus passes to get to school at no cost. No longer are those days of our kids having to pay to get to school. That's some of the local public policy we do. We also do research. So we do COVID-19 needs assessment partnering with the Stanford's Gardner Center to reach out to our families. We were able to find what our immediate needs were during that time of COVID All of this can be found on our website, redwoodcitysdtogether.org. We also like to spark innovation. Last year we were able to have some uproar in downtown around youth on bikes called the Bike Life Movement. Instead of us responding with punishments, we, we responded with creation of program. That's right, folks on our board here helped us create the PACE program, Purposeful Action Creation Engagement Plan, which created jobs, mentoring, amenities downtown for youth to be able to have a place to go hang out. No longer do we have Wells Bowl, Discovery Zone, Malibu. If you grew up here, you know what those are. So we had to create pop-ups to make sure we responded to that youth voice, choice, and leadership that we wanted to really hear from. In addition to that, we convene and facilitate collaboration. We have 5 working groups and 11 initiatives. I'm not going to go over each one. You can go on our website. There's a lot of work that happens there. I gave you an example too, but a lot of the folks in this room help us move our local public work. Trustee McAvoy, Trustee Cecilia are both a part of our collective, and Lawson as well has participated, and Dr. Baker actually chaired our collective for the past 2 years. So it's a pleasure to always work with the school district to move this collective good. I'd like to say we like to move the needle of goodness in our community, and we also provide community development so like professional development for all of our community-based organizations here in our area. Our core members are CAASPP, the school district, which actually was one of our first partners. The school district really believed in this starting in 1991. We're 32, 32 years old, that's right. And so school district was one of the first ones to say, yeah, we believe in this collective impact model, which stemmed out of Stanford's work on collective impact work. And Stanford's Barber Center and also sits on our core group, as well as Sequoia Union High School District. I think I just saw Trustee, uh, Rich here in the house. He's also on our Leadership Council, um, and now our new chair, um, for, for our council, which is really exciting. Thank you for being here. Um, Human Services Agency for San Mateo County also sits on our, our, our board. The City of Redwood City is our fiscal sponsor, so we're a legal entity of the City of Redwood City. Very unique, very unique, um, that we have all of these players on the table. Sequoia Healthcare District, as well as Stanford John W. Gardner Center, and Camiata College. So a lot of people on the table, but again, we don't just sit at the table, we make activity happen, we get after it. When we see a gap, we like to fill it. And when my friends need help, I come in and try my best to support, to be able to, to bring what I, what I bring, and that's a lot of community knowledge. I've been in the community now going on for 14 years, worked with many of the educators in this room, which is really exciting, and It is, uh, just my joy to be your moderator today. Some of the goals for today is we're going to bring back the conversation on Workforce Housing for Redwood City School District. That's right, we're going to share information and we're also going to learn about powerful case studies that exist locally at the Jefferson Unified School District. They were actually able to have something that we're going to see today and how it's working around what we want to talk about. We're here to also answer board and guest questions. So speaker cards are available, and I got these out for y'all. If you want to speak today, make sure you fill one of these out. They're in the back there near the free water and snacks. We also got snacks, y'all, right there. If you get a little hungry, feel free to grab a snack, get some water. In addition to that, we have that agenda. If you didn't grab an agenda, feel free to grab that agenda. All right, sometimes these papers get forgotten, so I like to put them out there. We also have some frequently asked questions. Bulletins that sometimes we ask a question that may be answered in these bulletins that our staff works really hard on. So feel free to grab some of this as well so that if you have a question on certain items, it may be answered on this document right here. All right, and then going into that, um, I also want to say that the Redwood City School District Board and Superintendent is here to listen and learn with and for the community. That's right, with and for the community. All right, and when we're in the Q&A, we emphasize that the project has presenters will be able to answer questions and/or follow up with community members. In addition to that, um, I, I do want to remind you all that this is a Study Session, so under Bylaw 9323, um, individual speakers should be allowed up to 3 minutes to address the Governing Board on each agenda or non-agenda item. Should 1 or 10 people wish to address any topic, the Governing Board may elect to allot 3 minutes per speaker. Should 11 to 20 people wish to address any topic, the Governing Board may may elect to allow 2 minutes per speaker. Should more than 20 people wish to address any topic, the governing board may elect to allow 1 minute per speaker. So your voice matters. Don't be hesitant to ask a question if you're here to do that. Um, again, this is your community. We're here to hear from you, learn from you, and again, we're, we're here to actually bring upon new learning as well. Um, our desired outcome, all right, why is it ultimately that we're here, right? Ultimately, Who likes to know an outcome? Who likes to know a goal for the night? You're here on a weekend, come on, right? Yeah, goals, right? Our goal for tonight is for that— is for the community, staff, and trustees to learn more about what this investment can mean to Redwood City School District staff members to help create a stronger educational ecosystem, right? So we're here to learn. How do we do that? Whether it's, hey, you know, I, I don't know about this, or you know what, I do about this. We're here to learn about what it is that the community does know and what we don't know, right? So trustees, um, I just thank you again for having me here as your moderator. Um, and, uh, community, it's always fun to be here with y'all. I hope you have a good time getting to know this community as well. I'd like to thank Hoover School. I see the principal up there, right? Say hello. Um, and we're going to pass it off to Peter. So Peter, I think you're first up on the mic. Okay, thank you very much. Uh, my name is Peter Abrup, and I'm a consultant with the school district helping them figure out whether this project is feasible and they can move forward with it. Tonight I've got— we've got a two-part presentation. It's very brief and pretty high level. We're going to give you a snapshot of where the district is in its exploration of this, of this proposed project and kind of where we are in the process of going from, you know, zero to actually having approvals from the city and other agencies. We have special guests that are joining us tonight from Jefferson Union High School, School District, and they'll present their project and talk about what they've learned so far in opening and operating that project. And we really are looking forward to time at the end so that questions from the School District Board or the audience can be answered by those trustees from Jefferson. So when we get there, save your good questions for them because there's a lot to learn from what they've done. So I want to just start very quickly by framing the problem that we're trying to solve. We may need our lights lowered a bit here so everybody can see. Gymnasium lights are wonderful except if you're trying to show slides. How's that? Can you see those okay? So the problem is pretty straightforward, and I think everybody in this room totally understands what this problem is. It's called affordability crisis of housing, and it's It's well documented that California's affordable housing crisis is affecting school districts directly from recruitment and retention and making it very difficult for those districts to put together their, their all-star teaching team. So what we're going to talk about tonight is what is it that can be done directly by the school board to help mitigate this problem. So, you know, buying a house in this county is insane. The statistics are well known. Minimum qualifying income for average price right now is about $500,000 per household, which really means that rental, good quality affordable rental housing needs to fill that gap, especially for people starting early in their career. In San Mateo County, this is from the county's latest report on housing affordability, you can see that almost nobody on this chart, depending their job or profession can afford rent, and it's actually 3.7 times the minimum wage to rent in the county right now. So that gap— and to just put this in perspective, a teacher who's 3 or 4 years into their career in this area is probably somewhere about halfway across that line on the bottom, $6,000 to $7,000 per month. So we've got a real problem. There's an organization called EdSource, a statewide organization that has done a lot of research on this problem and has done and provided a lot of good information to districts. You can see that in California, the, what they call the percentage of average pay for two-bedroom, or the, the amount that takes of that, that salary, is way over half and climbing upwards. Whereas whereas affordable by definition means you're spending about 30% of your income on rent. So that is, uh, making it again very difficult. Um, in 47 school districts in the region, the highest paid teacher can only earn enough to rent an affordable one-bedroom apartment. That is really a challenging statistic. This graph is from the same study and actually, uh, highlights salaries in the Redwood Redwood City area and shows that the burden for a 3 or 4 bedroom is way beyond, uh, it's, it's double what it should be just to rent. So that's what we're talking about tonight is a big problem that the Board of the Trustees has decided to really take a hard look at and decide that there's a way to help mitigate that problem in this community. So the goals that we've been working under and that have evolved over time are really focused on the improvement of retention and recruitment, to leverage this potential partnership we have with the Sobrado Organization, which is a developer that owns the property right next door to the district office, and to adapt the best practices from similar projects in the Workforce Housing arena and school districts, which is not a lot. And Jefferson Union High School District actually is one of the very first in in the region to have done one. And also to balance— find that balance point between what the district can fund and also protect their general funds so that this project would not in any way impinge on the general fund. So our goal that we're working toward and the model that we're testing as we move forward is, can we offer new apartments in a new building in the downtown Redwood City area and offer those employees at 25 to 35% under market rate. So that's the goal. We're going to hear about that when Jefferson does their presentation here in a few minutes, but that really is, is what we're trying to test to make sure that, that we can make that work. So with that, I'm going to hand it off to— let's see who's going first. I'm going to go first. I'm Mark Feninger. I'm with Studios Architecture. I'm also Trustee Lawson, or Representative Hanna, in Redwood City for the last, last 15 years. And the, the first thing we wanted to talk about in relationship to the potential of this project is the site and where is this site located. And we've looked at the site in relationship to the schools that are in the district, and one of the things we've noticed is that it's all the schools in the district are within 3 miles, which seems to be pretty optimum from as far as location ability to get to it. Then if you zoom in a little bit more on the next slide, please, where, where is this relationship to downtown of Redwood City? And, um, it's actually really close to the downtown, um, really close to a lot of the walkable functions of the downtown, close to transportation, Caltrain station, the bus station, and, and a lot of the amenities of life in downtown. It really presents an opportunity opportunity to have people who work in the school district really be part of the community and really be engaged in downtown, you know, and really, really have an opportunity to connect. And I think that's very exciting. Next, please. And then one of the things we wanted to frame this in, in the next couple slides, is now we're looking at a map of where the site is in downtown. And the cream is something that I'll start referring to as the Downtown Precise Plan, which is a— it is a plan that the city of RCSD has for this specific area, that there are certain zoning rules and certain regulations that any project that happens here, we have to have a dialogue with the city about how, how can we move forward."},{"start":1088900,"end":1088920,"speaker":"C","text":"And it—"},{"start":1088920,"end":1139000,"speaker":"E","text":"but just to start with, this project is in the heart of the downtown, as I said, and it really presents that opportunity to put people who work in these schools on an everyday basis in connection with people who live in the city on a day-to-day basis too. Next. Um, this starts to overlay, um, where— how is the site relationship to, to various, um, businesses, residential districts in orange, but, but also show that within a, within a 10-minute walking distance, there's really a tremendous amount of, um, you know, resources, a tremendous amount of restaurants, a tremendous amount of access to, to, um, retail, business services. So it's just, it's a way of seeing, you know, not only is the site centrally located, it's really having walkable, which just increases, you know, this idea of connectivity. Next."},{"start":1141400,"end":1142680,"speaker":"F","text":"Um, several years ago, 19—"},{"start":1143240,"end":1315120,"speaker":"E","text":"I'm sorry, 2020, we started looking at this project, and what we started off with is on the diagram on the left, which is, is, is just a simple box diagram that shows what the potential massing, the potential size of the project could be. And, and then what we were trying to do was understand how much how much housing could we provide within the limits of this Downtown Precise Plan as it stood in 2020. And at that time, what we came up with is, is about a 6-story building and about 68 units. And in some of the early dialogue that, that came out and some of the early research that the school district did in talking to what, what sort of demand is there for this housing, the feedback came back is that there's actually quite limited, and, and what can we do to get as much housing on the site as we reasonably can within the limits of, of the plan. So what we've developed is, is this current design that we're proposing to the city, um, a 10-story building, um, and about 180 units. So increasing the number of units to 108 from 68, it went from 6 stories to 10, and also being able to accommodate within this, you know, office —where, where the school should be. Um, and next slide, please. And then, in one of the first things we were talking about with the city was just understanding an approach from how should the building look and feel. And we don't have the building design, we don't have images of it yet because that's, that is a process that we will evolve with the city and the school district, but we did take an early position of just understanding the history of this site. The site actually sits right on the edge of Redwood Creek, which was really the, the founding of the economy of Redwood City. Redwood Creek is really where lumber mills were, and it's actually become the old heart of the building. If you look at some of the old buildings, they were these, you know, really simple, pragmatic lumber buildings, and a lot of the old buildings in Redwood City were actually brick. You can— the old hotel underneath that facade is brick. The current library, which was the old fire station, is brick. But there's sort of— and there's a lot of these wonderful little buildings you can see, like this old— used to be a blacksmith shop, I'm not sure. It's a brick building, and so there's this, this brick there. And so what we're sort of just trying to say is, through brick and through wood, is there a way of thinking of that in a way that you're proposing a building that might be modern, but it looks like it belongs here? It grows out of the history of the site. It grows out of the nature of the site. So that's just, we're just trying to think about the natural history of, of the site."},{"start":1315120,"end":1319680,"speaker":"F","text":"And we really think we want to ultimately move towards a building that looks like it belongs."},{"start":1320800,"end":1321520,"speaker":"E","text":"Next, please."},{"start":1324560,"end":1328080,"speaker":"F","text":"This, this is a plan of the building at the ground floor plan."},{"start":1328480,"end":1477850,"speaker":"E","text":"And this, this is just to illustrate, you know, where we are thinking about how do we start to understand the types of programmatic functions that go in here. In, in the yellow below would be entrance for the, the housing, and it's a primary entrance right off of Jefferson Street, um, as opposed to Bradford Street, which is around the corner. And what that does is it actually allows for an identity and an entrance that's closer to Main Street, um, just a few blocks away. And this orange space is the space that we're calling a flexible space, and what we mean by flexible is that is programming that's actually too flexible— flexible for the benefit of the school district. And it could be a, a variety of functions including just, just flexible use spaces. And I think the next slide suggests this is what a lobby might look like for the residential in the future. And we— one of the things we're seeing is the importance of lobbies really being multi-purpose and not just a place to move in and out and mail, maybe meet, talk to someone, open a paper. It's just really thinking about how do you get the most function out of that office space and that transition time. Next slide. And then what might the flexible space be? Could it be flexible meeting space? Could it be some sort of community serving space that, that further activates the community? And the real point here is there's potential for it to be something that further benefits the school district. We don't have to define that today. Right now there's plenty of time to do that, but we want to reserve some space that really creates that potential before the project happens. Next slide. And On the second floor is, is about 19,000 square feet that's set aside for the school district, and this is space that will allow for offices, meeting rooms, and conference rooms for the school district functions to occur. And also you can see in the bottom right-hand corner there is an elevated deck, and this is an outdoor space that really presents an opportunity for the people who work here to have, you know, outdoor space. And we think access to light and air is really critical for people in the school district. Next. And now I'm going to hand it off to Elaine, who is our partner in really understanding housing."},{"start":1477850,"end":1664070,"speaker":"D","text":"Thank you, Mark. My name is Elaine Wall. I am an architect with Ben Vader Williams Pollack. We are a multifamily, primarily affordable workforce housing architecture firm in San Francisco, working all throughout the the area for over 35 years and are really excited actually about the idea of Workforce Housing in particular. When we started on this exploration with Mark and his team back in 2020, it's right before, during the pandemic, you know, I think he mentioned we were really looking at 6 stories and maybe about 60, just under 70 units. And when the demand study came back and said, well, there's actually quite a bit of demand, you know, we really wanted to think about, well, what, what types of, units and, and community members within the school district, um, I think need to accommodate. And so where we kind of landed just with a kind of a feasibility study, um, looking at the, the 10 stories and, and the, the parcel that we were working on, um, is about 180 units of Workforce Housing. There's, um, 7 studios, about 46 one-bedroom units, 47 two-bedroom units, um, to accommodate smaller families, and then also 3-bedroom units, which are really highly unusual, I think, um, in the area. Family units are very challenging to accommodate, but, you know, seeing the demand that's there. So what we, you know, really are trying to do is, is, you know, within commitments based on resources, try to create efficient, very generous, and comfortable units. And this is just a kind of an example of one way we could lay out this, this unit count. You can see the, the light yellow is the studios, the darker yellow is the one-bedrooms, the orange are the two-bedroom units, and then the dark, dark orange, red orange is the 3-bedroom. So this is kind of a sample of how, um, a floor might lay out with, you know, 14 families or 14 households on one floor. Um, you know, the goal is really just to create community in the building. Um, I think educators and educational staff by nature are very collaborative, and so, you know, if this thing serves us well, we really want to see each floors be, be home to, to those residents. Next, please. These are just example images of, you know, how the units might look. Nothing is, is, is, is baked in stone, but these are just some units our firm has worked on in the past. You know, the living rooms are really nice. They have adequate— lots of natural light. That's what we believe in. The kitchens are, you know, have great casework and countertops and great finishes. You know, most of the housing is, you know, it's, it's very high quality materials, long-lasting, durable materials, and we really prioritize that at our office. And so, you know, this is just a sense of, you know, if we were to move forward with this, then we would love to, you know, recommend similar things. The bathroom is also equally durable in there in terms of the fixtures and finishes. This is, you know, these are homes."},{"start":1664070,"end":1666230,"speaker":"G","text":"We want these to be very comfortable."},{"start":1666230,"end":1837940,"speaker":"D","text":"And I think we also have the opportunity, you know, with the climate being so favorable down here really have balconies and some outdoor, some private outdoor spaces for some of those units, which is also a potential amenity. Um, next please. And then speaking of amenities, um, we on the third floor, uh, we're thinking, um, so the second floor is the offices, the third floor might be where the residential, uh, units would start, and along the outside edge would be residences, but then towards the inner ring, uh, where it would face a courtyard, there could be some really nice residential amenities. So, um, this could be a large community room for gatherings, an exercise room for people to kind of work out, and then, you know, both of those could front a large community outdoor terrace. So similar to the Workforce— the Workplace Deck, this would be a residents-only space for outdoor gatherings and outdoor activities. And, you know, again, this building is— or potentially, you know, it's— the whole building is home for someone, not just the units. So if you have a unit there, if you can take advantage of, of all of the, the other amenities within it. And so a couple of flavor images, just how we think, you know, some of these spaces could look. Oh, next please. Fitness rooms are a great way to kind of have casual contacts and, and, you know, build community. They can, they can have like this furniture, equipment, weights, but we also imagine, you know, it could— the doors could open up and there could be a Saturday morning yoga class or something, or to house communal activities not provided by the residents. Next, please. The, the community, the community room or the resident gathering room for the residents themselves. Again, we imagine a lot of indoor-outdoor connection, great finishes including like a kitchen for communal meals or birthday parties or, you know, you know, a fun kind of potluck night. But, you know, it also, it can also be very flexible and serve the residents with activities that they want to organize, whether that's book clubs or movie nights or game nights, trivia nights. So we really just imagine that this is kind of the heart of the community and places where people can, can connect and get to know each other. Next, please. And then last, we'll just give you the idea of what that outdoor space might look like. You know, at night it can glow, but during the day you can also just take advantage of this gorgeous climate down here and enable a lot of uses. So, and I think turn it back to Peter or Trustee Patel."},{"start":1838500,"end":1840420,"speaker":"F","text":"Actually, I, I'll, I'll talk to this."},{"start":1840420,"end":2146960,"speaker":"E","text":"Um, we, we did want to explain to everyone where are we in the process, just so that everyone understands, you know, where we are and why is that important. Tonight. Um, I'll, I'll walk through some history. You know, where, where we are is right where this turns from green to purple right now. But, but just the history of this is, um, as I said, in 2020 we formulated this early, um, idea of a project that was about 68 units and, and 6 stories. Um, and at the time, um, the Redwood City Council and Redwood RCSD, the, the government, they were going through a process of understanding the downtown precisely, the future growth might be. And we had a talk with them and had to go through something called engaging the process, which is right now the City Council and the Planning Department are very focused on the types of projects projects that, that they are advancing within the downtown process. And because of this project's nature in relationship to providing housing for the people who will work in the school district, the, um, the City Council voted to approve this to move forward to the gatekeeping process. Now what, what that really means is it allowed us to move forward to where we are today and really get ready to make a future planning submission. And what that planning submission is, is the beginning of a dialogue with the city's planning department. Initially, what the city is going to be focused on is how big is it, how many units are there, um, and it's about the size of it and how is that consistent with the planning they have for, for this district. Um, we, you know, it's formally believe that we are consistent, but what we really need to make this planning submission, um, and to get to that beginning of that dialogue. Along the way, the dialogue will, will eventually turn to more detailed questions, but, but this initial question is really around how does the project fit within the current planning and how consistent is it with your current planning. Um, and so, uh, what this schedule is showing is a goal of trying to submit submit that planning submission later this year, early next year. We think that it'll then go into something that is called entitlement completion. Entitlements really means that the Planning Commission and the City Council agree that the project can proceed and can build what is in that planning submission. And that means that we can then move on to developing drawings that someone could actually built from here. So we, we believe that entitlement process will take about a year, and then once that is done, then we can proceed to developing the design further to actually develop— we, we call them construction documents, but that really means really thinking about the details, really thinking about the materials, and developing enough information so a contractor can then build from that. And at that point in time, we're going to have to go back to the city and have the building department approve, get places building permit, which means they will review the drawings again, and then, and after that, they'll ultimately give us a building permit. And, and we think that that's in 2026, and then, and then sometime after that, really shortly, start building. And the goal is, can we get this project done by sometime in 2023? Next. Thank you so much, Elaine, Peter, Mark. We learned a lot about the project that Redwood City School District's learning about, thinking about, dreaming about, as well as our, all of our community members. Again, if you just got here, don't forget, if you have some questions, there's Speaker Cards that we'll have time to dive into after our presentations today. I have the great honor to, to just be able to welcome Jefferson Union High School District, and they are doing some remarkable things around what we're talking about today. We have Andrew here, Lee, Kalima, my good friend. It's good to see you. You just made it. You're right on time, and you're going to be talking about, um, the program, the amazing project that you helped develop with your colleagues in a beautiful area I like to call home. I'm from South City myself, you know, we used to play Jefferson all the time, spent a lot of time in Westlake. It's, it's a beautiful town and you're going to tell us a little bit about how you made it a little bit more beautiful. How's that sound? I'm going to pass it off to you."},{"start":2147200,"end":2155240,"speaker":"C","text":"Hello, hi, my name is Claudia Salguin. I am on the Board of the Jefferson Union High School District. I'm the current Vice President."},{"start":2155240,"end":2158860,"speaker":"F","text":"Trustee Hanna, the, uh, current President of the JHS Board of Trustees."},{"start":2159970,"end":2362560,"speaker":"C","text":"Um, this is my 11th year on the board, um, and that's going to be it for me. I think we're done. Um, but I'm very happy and proud to be here to talk about our Workforce Housing. Um, the picture that you see up top, that is us at the groundbreaking, and that was a really, um, day, day 2 meeting, um, because we had fought for this for so long. So to see us actually be able to break ground was amazing, and then now to see the finished product and to drive past it every day when we go to work or do this always blows my mind. So the next slide. So, uh, this is just the agenda, um, going into the concept and what it is, feasibility, the marketing outreach, the funding, just some details, and then where we are now. So next slide. So how did this all start? In our school district, we have site-based board meetings, meaning we have board meetings right after school that are specifically— they're open to anyone, but they're specifically for our staff. Um, and the year we went and did our site meetings, we had massive turnout, and anytime there's massive turnout, you know, I'm like, uh-oh, let's get ready for what's about to happen. And our staff let us know that they were fed up, they were tired, um, that they were— they had reached a point where they couldn't, you know, they needed help, and that the, um, possibility of us losing more staff was going to be highly likely. We were already losing, um, 20 to 25% of our staff turnover every year, and, um, they were like, we, we're just challenging the board, you need to do something about it. Um, we, as we all know, we do not pay our educators enough, point blank. And when I say educators, anyone who is in the school walls, for me, working is an educator. You know, my students and my teacher when I was a child. I mean, when I was a child, I had so many teachers, and for my kids, you know, they were as close as they were to the custodian, to the cafeteria lady, as they were to their teachers. So everyone is an educator, and all of our educators were saying to us that we needed— they needed help. And so we looked at this in multiple forms, which we passed the parcel tax, but we also were looking at Workforce Housing, because when we polled the staff, we were surprised at the results that the number one reason they were looking to leave wasn't due to pay, it was due to housing and their ability to sustain, find suitable housing. So that put the bug in us to kind of look into what our community college district had done to think about Workforce Housing for our district. So when we went about the concept, we wanted to see if we could find something that would fit in the 3 acres that we had in the parking lot. Is there a way that we can make it so that rents would be affordable, below market, that we can use it as a recruitment tool, and it had to be cost-effective. We didn't want it to be more strain on our general fund."},{"start":2362560,"end":2365400,"speaker":"E","text":"Next slide."},{"start":2365400,"end":2457380,"speaker":"C","text":"So again, this was a feasibility study that we did, um, and, um, we reviewed similar projects. So again, looking at the San Mateo County Community College District, we surveyed our staff, um, we did a property assessment, which I'm sure you've all been through, and then we did a financial analysis. We formed a subcommittee, which Andy and I were the board members, um, and we also had a member of our union on the subcommittee, our members of administration, And we looked into the number of units that we thought would be feasible and how we would pay for it. So again, it's very small, but if you see the feasibility study, you see some of the feedback that we got. And we saw when we did the— the question that really impacted Andy and I the most was the question of how many of our staff are looking to be in And so on the response to that, it was about a third. And so that kind of spurred us to say, let's build enough housing to fit a third of our staff. If we know a third of them are going to leave due to housing, let's get a third of them housing. And then the conversation is, how do we pay for housing? Or I mean, how do we pay pay for, um, 122 units or 120 units of housing. And so that's what we came up with, a bond measure to see what we need. Next slide."},{"start":2457380,"end":2606950,"speaker":"F","text":"All right, so let's see, this is a little hard for me to see from over here, but, um, few things that, that you're able— yeah. Perfect, that's a lot easier. Okay, so there's a few things that we had to do with, with regards to marketing internally, uh, because that's— because ultimately we wanted to make sure that all the staff could understand what it was that we were about to do. So we want to make sure that our message was very clear to the district. So in particular, we wanted to make sure that our messaging plan— and we had to develop a messaging plan and make sure that our entire district administrative team can afford to use that same messaging. The other questions that we would get, which I'm sure some of you probably, probably already heard: why don't you just pay the staff more? Why don't you just use the money for housing and give it to the staff? Staff don't want to live in dorms. Staff don't want to live next door to their coworkers. We can address all of that later during the presentation. But we also wanted to make sure that we would have staff buy-in, and very specifically, as Khalil already mentioned, we had a member of our union on our, on our Housing Subcommittee team, and, and we also even had, I think, a second member who also joined for several meetings. We want to make sure we have the union workforce backing this before we started doing the outreach to the public. Khalil mentioned about the site meetings for staff. We also made sure that staff and understood the, the, our, our district budget. It's amazing how many educators actually don't understand how public education is actually funded, and so we wanted to make sure that our educators understood why it was that we could not pay them anymore and what the structural impacts were there. We also made, make sure, make sure that everybody understood that higher pay and housing are two different things. We also wanted to build higher high-quality housing, and we have made sure that as well that we had high-quality renderings and visuals to help sell the messaging. And there will be an example of that on our next slide. And again, we're glad that we had members of our union on our Study Session. And right there was one of the amazing renderings we had, which as you can see actually looks pretty much like the final product. Next slide. All right, you want to talk about this one, Cleo?"},{"start":2606950,"end":2771563,"speaker":"C","text":"Sure. So following up, um, before we started this process at all, we made sure that our our entire board was on board. So we aren't going to go out into the public with something that we already know is controversial, and at that time it was. Now a lot of K-12s are talking about it, but when we were doing it, no one in K-12 were really actively moving forward. So we, we were already the focal point of a lot of social media posts, and so we knew we didn't want board members going out and not speaking with the same voice and being united around this. So we had a meeting to make sure, you know, hey, are we all united? And the other thing was like checking our egos. Andy and I were the subcommittee and we were the ones that were assigned to be the speakers for it and all the rest of the board was just going to follow our lead because we wanted to be nimble. So we were also empowered to make a lot of decisions at the subcommittee level and, and our board trusted us to do that because, uh, it was a sense of urgency in my district as a mother, you 4 of the board members that have been part of this process have been parents in the district. And my own personal story, my senior year, my son's, my son's senior year in high school, every single one of his special education teachers left. Every single one. So for my own children, I can tell we are not offering an adequate quality education for my own child. And I know I know that it comes with privilege. Being a school board member comes with privilege, and I could not even exercise that privilege for my own child, let alone what's happening for all the other kids. And so that sense of urgency of we need to do something to ensure that when I walk into the community and somebody says, is Jefferson High School District offered a quality education? I can say yes. Um, the community outreach— we went to every single elected official, we went to as many community-based organizations as possible. We had all our PTOs and PTAs on board and our Chamber of Commerce. And again, we went with the same talking points and, and let people know the answers to those questions that were on the slide beforehand so that we weren't the only ones spreading the message that other people could answer those questions too. Why don't you just give the teachers the money that you're going to raise with the bond? We, we all know you can't use bond money. It doesn't go with the general fund. You can't use bond money for that. It's one-time money. You know, why don't you just pay teachers more? You know, two-thirds of our, of our budget already goes to teachers' time and staff pay and benefits. There's no more, uh, water to get from this rock. It's, it's, it's blood dry."},{"start":2771563,"end":2777097,"speaker":"F","text":"[Speaker:TRUSTEE WEEKLY] And even if we could pay $20,000 a year more, they still couldn't afford to live here in San Mateo County."},{"start":2777097,"end":2827570,"speaker":"C","text":"[Speaker:TRUSTEE HANNAH] The wealthiest school district, and we have some really wealthy school districts in San Mateo County. No school district in San Mateo County pays enough for their staff to live here. None. And we're one of the lowest funded high school districts in San Mateo County. So unless we were to pass a parcel tax, uh, for an astronomical amount of money, we had to find another solution. And then the other thing, and this is a real problem in the Bay Area, more than one thing can be true at a time, at a time. We need to pay our teachers more. Absolutely. And we also need to find a way to fit them suitable housing. Just because we do one doesn't cancel out the other. So just making sure that people understood that. Just because we're, we're moving for Workforce Housing doesn't mean we stop fighting for additional funding. We're doing all of the things."},{"start":2827570,"end":2980000,"speaker":"F","text":"Next slide. All right, so the funding of, of this. The over— overall project cost was $75.5 million. $33 million of it was, was provided through the Voter-Approved Bond, Measure J, in June of 2018, and that passed actually at 55.8%. And what, you know, historically for our district, our bonds have typically passed well over 60%. This was definitely a case where voters didn't understand what we were trying to do despite all of our outreach. And in fact, just a quick story about this, this was, as you may recall, this was the first all-mail-in ballot election in San Mateo County. And in our district, the ballots in Pacifica and, and Brisbane tended to get, get counted earlier. And after those cities had come through on Election Day in June, we were down at about 52, 52.5%. As the Daly City ballots came in— Daly City typically comes in and votes on Election Day— it took 2 weeks for those votes to be counted, but it was about 2 weeks later week that Khalid and I were on a call, we saw the numbers, saw the numbers, and we, and we were practically broke down in tears actually with that news. I mean, it was, it was amazing that it actually happened. And finally, the remaining $42.5 million balance is paid through a COB certificate participation that is secured by the rent revenues on the building. Next slide. So a few details about the building: 122 units, with 50 one-bedroom homes, 9 one-bedroom units, uh, 9 one-bedroom-plus units. They say those actually are pretty cool, they have the pet ships, they have a little den. 56 two-bedroom units and 7 three-bedroom units. Amenities, this is anything you would find in a typical market-rate product: fitness center. We do also have laundry rooms on every floor, playgrounds, a community room for a community gathering space, also common workroom rooms and, and lounges, and those are actually quite popular. There's one on every floor, and staff will actually use it either to socialize or sometimes even just to get away and collaborate together, or even just to get away from their own families just to do some work. Uh, and the laundry rooms— we built more laundry than was needed because guess what? They all work the exact same schedule. So, so there's laundry rooms on every floor. One is open 24 hours, the other, we are open until 10 PM."},{"start":2980000,"end":3046390,"speaker":"C","text":"[Speaker:TRUSTEE HANNAH] Yeah, we were intentional with the design because, you know, again, to battle back this myth that we're building dorms, we're not building dorms, we're building homes. And, you know, seeing where you get friended by people who work in the school district and you would see some of the stories that they would post about living in housing where it was hard to grade because of the noise, their roommates, or just having family there and having to go to Starbucks sometimes to grade papers. We see posts like, \"In Starbucks grading papers.\" Um, it is a crime that the people who are raising up the next leaders don't have adequate housing, and so when we built this, we didn't want to give them another, you know, another space that was inadequate. So being thoughtful and saying, can we build that version of Starbucks where they would go, just put it in the unit and different places, and we have seen a lot of collaboration and teachers who work not just in the same school but in similar fields and other schools working together and collaborating. And this myth that, you know, they don't want to live next to people they work with is not true. There's— Annie was building—"},{"start":3046390,"end":3126740,"speaker":"F","text":"because there's parties in there all the time. Yeah, the community room actually truly is a place for community. They do have many events. It's always booked every, every weekend. It's free for the staff to use. We, we know stories of staff from the same school who have classrooms right next to each other and they have their apartment units right next to each other. I mean, there are, there are little neighborhoods within the building and many staff have commented to us how much they've just enjoyed meeting their colleagues from other campuses and being able to connect that way. So the next step that we had to do while we were under construction was to develop the Educational Housing Corporation. So in April 2020, we established the JUHSD Educational Housing Corporation, which is a nonprofit corporation that manages the operations of 705 Saramonte. This is the entity that separates the operation of the building from the school board, because we don't want residents complaining about their neighbors coming to a school board meeting. They should go to the board of the Educational Housing Corporation when something like that happens. So the EHC itself oversees the management and operation Budget, Resident Rules, Resident Eligibility, and also hire a third-party property manager that manages the building."},{"start":3126740,"end":3167180,"speaker":"C","text":"And this is— and this is the part that's the hardest part about this, you know, not to be all sunny, but you know, when someone doesn't work for us, they can no longer live here, and we have to be tight on that rule. So non— non-re-elected, etc., they have to move out. And, and being a member of this body, that That is not an easy thing being, you know, now I see the struggle of being a landlord. That is not an easy thing to do, you know, dealing with what happens when a very popular staff member moved in here with his family and then passed away a few months later. And so having to have that tough conversation about the rules that we have, that the, the, uh, we tried to offer a job to the spouse that was living, they didn't want to."},{"start":3167180,"end":3170660,"speaker":"E","text":"They, they're also an educator, they didn't want to switch to our district."},{"start":3171460,"end":3203510,"speaker":"C","text":"So you have to, it's part of the bond, you have to work for the district in wanted to live here, so we're having to ask people who don't work for the district to leave. Um, and you know, knowing that we have to stay strong with rules, that it's in my heart to want to be flexible, but you have to, you know, have the same rules for everybody because you don't want to go down that slippery slope. But these are just things that you wouldn't see on the horizon, we are now having to deal with, and just, you know, full transparency that there are some things that are challenging."},{"start":3203910,"end":3310100,"speaker":"F","text":"Right, and the board itself is currently comprised of 2 non-resident staff, 3 community members, and 2 school board members. So these are just a handful of photos from our grand opening celebration, which coincided with us celebrating the centennial of the district in May of 2022. Fantastic. It was actually wonderful to have many members of our community Many of our fellow school board colleagues from throughout the county came to help celebrate with us, um, and to be able to celebrate at least at that point roughly 25 or 30 residents who had just moved in. Next slide. And where are we? Where we are today. So here's, here's some, some of the fun stuff. We are 100% fully occupied. There are 15 15 staff on the waitlist. So going back to that one-third rule, one-third that, that Trustee Hanna mentioned earlier, we are currently housing 25% of our staff and another 15 staff are on the waitlist. 55% certificated, 45% classified. So for those who don't know, that's 55% teachers and 45% other staff. And the residents represent a full range of staff. Currently, the maximum stay is 5 years, although we are about to discuss in the next few raising that to 7 or 8 years. The leases operate on an annual lease that is on a 1-year lease that is renewable annually for up to 5 years currently. Average rent for 1 bedroom is $1,400 a month, average rent for 2 bedrooms $1,890 a month, and average rent for a 3-bedroom is $2,400. Anybody want to jump in?"},{"start":3310100,"end":3402410,"speaker":"C","text":"And then, um, the thing about this, why we're so thrilled that it's 100% full, is we didn't build we built more than what employees said that they wanted. So when we asked staff how many people would be interested in living, only 65 said they would be absolutely interested in living, but we built to the data point of the third that said they were going to leave due to inadequate housing and then just hope that if we build it, they actually would come. And, and so that was a gamble because if they didn't come, than it possibly would have. We would not be able to pay back the COP loan, or we would have to have raised the rents, and we really didn't want to do that. So we are thrilled that it is 100% full, and not just 100% full, but there is a waiting list. The other thing that was important, and one of the lessons that we, we took away from our Community College District, is they said that they also built to what the staff said that they wanted and then later wished that they they had built to need because they had to go back and build two more, um, developments. And we know that every day you delay in housing, it goes up millions of dollars. It's just crazy how much it is to build anything, and every day you delay, the price goes up. So if you delay by years, it's going to cost way more than if you just built it when you— in the first phase. So we initially had planned multiple phases to maybe get up to 122 and then decided let's just build it all out and to be as economical as possible, and, and did, it did pay off for us."},{"start":3402410,"end":3448270,"speaker":"F","text":"[Speaker:TRUSTEE WELLS] Right, and it also took us nearly a year, a little over a year to get to full occupancy because there were obviously a lot of staff that were in other leases that they had to wait to, to end before moving in, which also allowed us to have plenty of units available for those for recruiting purposes. We actually got to a point by midsummer where where our principals were telling staff to stop talking about housing because we actually were already full. So it's a nice problem to have. Lastly, at least, you know, the other piece is the past 2 years at the start we have been 100% fully staffed as a district on day 1 of the school year the past 2 years."},{"start":3448270,"end":3479532,"speaker":"C","text":"[Speaker:TRUSTEE SENA] This has never happened in my entire time as a school board member. In fact, we actually had our school teaching a math— I mean, our principal, our Superintendent was teaching a math class at one point because we just could not find a math teacher. So to now, and then, you know, as board members we get our board packet, more reports, and then the Human Resources report was always like the hardest thing to look at. We would be halfway through the school year and still trying to fill spots, and to now get our HR report and it's sometimes blank. You know, it's just— I think there's no words."},{"start":3479532,"end":3479556,"speaker":"E","text":"Wow."},{"start":3479556,"end":3505900,"speaker":"F","text":"So I think that is all that we've got."},{"start":3505900,"end":3505990,"speaker":"E","text":"Call to Order."},{"start":3505990,"end":3578390,"speaker":"A","text":"With the skyrocketing cost of living and widespread teacher shortages sweeping the nation, school districts are being forced to get creative with how they retain and recruit qualified staff. To alleviate this issue, the Jefferson Union High School District opened the district's affordable educational housing building at 705 Saramani in the spring of 2022. One of the first in the nation, this newly constructed 122 unit apartment community is exclusively available to our faculty and staff. Our housing has been a great tool for retaining staff and recruiting from across the nation. We were challenged with what we could offer teachers, and this provides a great resource to not only retain our staff but help them with their dreams. We take a lot of pride in that. The main goal of the project is to reduce turnover and to make us more competitive, and how could we make it more affordable affordable for our teachers and staff to live and work in our area so that our students can have teachers that stay year after year and can have a stable environment. Really, with the staff housing, it just shows how devoted they are to recruiting and retaining."},{"start":3578390,"end":3591680,"speaker":"E","text":"That alone just makes Jefferson unique because they're one of the first in the country. When I heard that Jefferson High School District is building housing for teachers, that will be a great helped, especially with my finances."},{"start":3591680,"end":3624970,"speaker":"A","text":"We wanted stability for our students, so we thought that one thing we could do is provide them with some stability of staff staying year after year, and it's helpful because we want to be fully staffed each school year. Oh my God, I love it. This is the best decision I made for myself. I think the Bay Area is so expensive, costs are rising, it's hard to find an apartment in San Francisco unless you want to live with a roommate. It's such a beautiful new— what do you call months, I was blown away at what they were able to create."},{"start":3624970,"end":3629010,"speaker":"D","text":"We wanted to make sure that this housing was very nice."},{"start":3629010,"end":3639250,"speaker":"A","text":"We wanted it to be on par with any market rate development, and so making sure there were ample spaces for people to gather, spaces for children. We wanted this to be family-friendly."},{"start":3639250,"end":3650010,"speaker":"D","text":"We have a playroom, we have outdoor play structures for both younger kids and older kids, and we put laundry on every floor because we knew that everyone had the same work schedule."},{"start":3650010,"end":3653130,"speaker":"A","text":"And so So we didn't want people to have to wait for a unit."},{"start":3653130,"end":3658170,"speaker":"C","text":"The structural design is so good, I can't hear anything."},{"start":3658170,"end":3665450,"speaker":"A","text":"I don't hear any of my neighbors. I have my privacy, but then I also have opportunity to connect with community too. I think this space is so welcoming."},{"start":3665450,"end":3670890,"speaker":"D","text":"They have a community center, a fitness room, there are desks, they're always here helping with maintenance."},{"start":3670890,"end":3687740,"speaker":"A","text":"With this housing, it gives me opportunity to have an easy access to all kinds of transportation. And with the highway being right here, I mean, the location could not have been more perfect. I get on the highway and I'm at work in 6 minutes. Aside from being close to my job site, we also have the Cerramonte Shopping Center down the street."},{"start":3687740,"end":3691420,"speaker":"C","text":"And even I could just walk down the hill just to go to the malls."},{"start":3691420,"end":3700780,"speaker":"A","text":"We have already seen benefits from the housing project. We were able to start our school year fully staffed with teachers when some of our surrounding districts weren't able to do that."},{"start":3700780,"end":3711770,"speaker":"D","text":"The students in Jefferson Media High School District deserve everything that any other student in than any other district received, and I am hopeful that this will improve education for them."},{"start":3711770,"end":3752200,"speaker":"A","text":"I needed my own space, and this was the opportunity to be able to stay in the Bay Area, be close to my family, and be able to go to work. Anyone who is looking to teach in the area and is looking for an affordable and lovely place to live, this is such a great opportunity for you. For other districts that are considering building employee housing, I would encourage them to move forward. I think having a united board Having a union leadership that supports the idea and including everyone when you're making plans would be my recommendations, and I say go for it. Visit our website to learn more about how we turn this idea into a reality."},{"start":3752200,"end":3755760,"speaker":"C","text":"Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."},{"start":3755760,"end":3825280,"speaker":"E","text":"So in the spirit of just children and families, the heart of why we're here, Y'all definitely deserve, you know, I'm a former teacher, a strong clap. How we do this, I think we have some kids in the house, is it goes like this: 3, 2, 1, clap. Because y'all, this is strong work. So let's do that, everybody. The spirit of children can happen. That's why we're here, right? So ready? 3, 2, 1. Good job. And that goes straight into what, you know, we're going to get into our Q&A, right? Our Q&A, um, and we're going to start with our, with our trustees, and then we're going to go into the community. So if you have a Speaker Card, please turn it into Evelyn. Thank you so much. And, um, I think Evelyn will then bring it to me for me to call out the individuals who want to speak. But we're going to open it up to Q&A for, um, our architect team and for our amazing Jefferson High team, right? So with that, I pass it on to to, um, our board members."},{"start":3825280,"end":3871790,"speaker":"A","text":"Well, thank you everyone, that was just awesome. Um, thank you to the architects for your feedback, and then, um, Talina and Andy for the presentation. It was, it was great to hear what you guys have done for for your school district, and to hear that you guys are at full capacity and again you don't have any openings. This year we had to hire lots of people even from outside of the country, so I do appreciate that. I'm going to go ahead and pass on the microphone if any of my colleagues would like to ask any questions."},{"start":3871790,"end":3905720,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you so much for coming down to present to us. It's, I think it's very helpful data for us to have as a board to see how this has played out in, in other geographies. Congrats on hitting 100% occupancy. I'm, I'm curious if we're now at a point where the Jefferson PHD is cash flow neutral. Yeah, thank you so much for the presentation."},{"start":3905720,"end":3949460,"speaker":"C","text":"We're bringing in more than we need, so we're holding it. You know, we, we have to— right now we're in the phase of what happens next because this is not permanent. This is temporary housing in 5 to 7 years, maybe more. And so now we're thinking about, especially for our classified employees who make less, you know, what, what do we need to do to ensure they can save enough or there's a plan in the back. And so part of that is like savings and is it possible for us to do matching. So with the extra money, you know, that's one of the things we're thinking about, maybe using that to help match. So there's just different everything that we do, but we have additional money that's coming in from—"},{"start":3949460,"end":3969150,"speaker":"F","text":"And we're also saving up just for regular maintenance, uh, for deferred maintenance. Obviously it's a brand new building, but we do need to build that, build up that reserve. We've spoken to other folks who have done, who have done this where they didn't save, and 20 years later they're struggling to find a way to pay for maintenance."},{"start":3969150,"end":3980910,"speaker":"E","text":"Thanks, Peter, Martin, and Lincoln, for presenting. I do have a couple questions for Andy and Karima. Um, since you hit full resident occupancy, um, how has that been causing any tension?"},{"start":3980910,"end":3982830,"speaker":"A","text":"Is that another hard thing you have to deal with, waitlist?"},{"start":3983150,"end":3989390,"speaker":"E","text":"Uh, or is that just— this didn't even exist before?"},{"start":3989390,"end":4005840,"speaker":"F","text":"Yeah, yeah, pretty, pretty much. You know, those who are on the waitlist, some of them are people probably waited just a little too long to make the decision to move. And then in some cases, they're just as the new hires who've just been told we have a waitlist and, you know, hopefully your trip will come up in the near future."},{"start":4005840,"end":4020280,"speaker":"E","text":"Great. And then one of the— you, you had mentioned that you switched from 5 years to 7 years, or you're thinking about switching from 5 years to 7 years. What were sort of some of the factors behind maybe initially picking 5 and why you sent it to 7?"},{"start":4020280,"end":4045440,"speaker":"F","text":"One of the One of the things is that the Community College District, I believe, is at 7 years. They had moved up from 5 to 7 because it's just going to take that long. There may be some, some residents who are saving for down payment on a home, so it's going to take a little longer. And certainly in the case of classified folks, we want them— want to make sure they're able to save sufficiently so they can have the funds needed for their next move, you know, whether it's another affordable place or possible—"},{"start":4045440,"end":4149230,"speaker":"C","text":"or, you know, [Speaker:TRUSTEE WELLS] So, um, you know, I think we needed to start, so we just started somewhere, but I think now the discussion is looking like what is physically possible for our staff, because what we don't want to do is like if it's— if we pick just 7 and then 7 years from now no one is able to afford to move out and we're asking people to move out and it's still— we don't want to be right back at where we were. So we're really looking at how, you know, fiscally what is it going to take. Is it feasibly possible for one of our teachers making a certain salary to save enough money to put a down payment on a home? And what do we need to do to help support that and get them to start saving? We've had a lot of discussion. As you see, our rates are really affordable, so they, they do have money. But what happens from somebody that's not used to having extra spending money that is now, as I that they're spending money, they want to spend it on things they want to be able to get for it. So how do we incentivize saving? What do we do to support? Right now we're looking at an educational series that we're going to have in, in the community room that bring people in to talk about savings, to talk about the different ways you can save in different banking and market rate— I mean, market access and the different accounts that they can use. Um, working with accounting to see if we can get some of our staff on affordable housing lists, and the wait— like, the average wait time is usually around 6 to 7 years. So is that enough time to get picked up for affordable housing? You know, so having all of these discussions now that we have some, some, um, some lead time, you know, putting in the work now."},{"start":4149230,"end":4152410,"speaker":"A","text":"Great, thank you. Thank you everyone, um, for all of our presenters tonight."},{"start":4152410,"end":4154103,"speaker":"D","text":"Appreciate it."},{"start":4154103,"end":4165410,"speaker":"A","text":"Um, uh, for Andy and Kalima, I assume you have, um, deed-restricted units. Um, curious how it's been managing that, if you've had any issues with that."},{"start":4165410,"end":4179280,"speaker":"F","text":"No issues whatsoever. The City of Daly City required 10% inclusion area, and so 12 of our units meet that requirement, and they are not tied to a specific And so it's just, we just have to make sure there's always 12 units available to meet that."},{"start":4179280,"end":4204470,"speaker":"C","text":"[Speaker:TRUSTEE_PATRICK] And then also the waiting list isn't by the number you signed up. We have the ability to, and, and people know on the waiting list that if we, we want to keep the ratio of the staff matching the ratio of the housing. So if you're classified on the waiting list, you may be a priority because we want to keep those ratios."},{"start":4204470,"end":4258850,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you very much to all the speakers. Thanks to the architects. That was great to kind of vision ahead what we might be seeing. So thank you, and thank you, Peter, for your part. And a special thank you to our guests, Kalima and Andy. I've known you since the very beginning. We've worked on a lot of things together over the years, and I'm such a a fan of this school district and the two of you and your leadership in Workforce Housing. So appreciate you coming here, battling the traffic. I know to get here it's not easy on a Thursday night, and just to share with our community what a project this could be. And in case you don't know, I've been an advocate for Workforce Housing from the beginning when we first started thinking about it as part of, you know, we re-envisioning, uh, Redwood City School District back in, I think, 2016, 2017."},{"start":4258850,"end":4265130,"speaker":"C","text":"Ultimately in 2018, we made some changes to our schools given declining enrollment that we had seen."},{"start":4265130,"end":4310750,"speaker":"A","text":"We knew that we needed to get our finances in order so we could continue to provide a high-quality education for our students and be able to take care of our staff. And we We also have been hearing about housing. I mean, it's a, it's an obvious thing. Lots of school districts have been thinking about it. And so we started to think about where we could do workforce housing in our school district, where we have properties. Really, most of our properties, and you know, a couple of them did become available through this reimagining process that we went through. We're now leasing those sites out. Actually, so making money for the school district. And those sites were really— they're, they're really not appropriate for large numbers of workforce housing."},{"start":4310750,"end":4316870,"speaker":"C","text":"You could do very small residential housing, you know, maybe could go up a couple stories."},{"start":4316870,"end":4506730,"speaker":"A","text":"And then the downtown site became a pretty obvious place because if you look around downtown Redwood City, you are seeing 6, 8, 10-story buildings, right? And so we can get more units on it, on an acre, right? And then we had an opportunity— Sobrado came to us. Thank you, you've been a great partner all along. We've had a lot of closed session conversations because we've been negotiating property, and we've had a few open sessions where along the way, you know, we've talked about this. This is kind of the first time where I think it's had a more lengthy conversation, and it's been great to hear from you as leaders, um, Kalima and Andy, to really think about what this could mean for our district. And, you know, so many of the points that you made is why I'm an advocate for it. Um, our, um, our teachers, our staff, our educators— I like the way you talked about that. And, you know, every, every person who's at a school site, in the district office, they're educators. They're here for our students and our families. And they deserve to live in the community they work in. They, they want to live here. They want to be a part of the community, and they deserve high-quality housing just like everybody else, right? And so I'm so excited for this. You know, one of the things that we've been spending the last couple of years on is thinking about financing, and we know that we have a financial plan that we can do that will not impact General Fund, because in case you don't know, for those of you who don't know, that the funding in California for education is crazy. There's all sorts of different buckets, and the General Fund bucket is typically what pays for your salaries of all of your educators in your school site. And so we want to make sure that the Workforce Housing does not impact that. So it's, it's an and, like Lima said, we will continue to work for more money so we can continue provide for salaries, but there's also this opportunity, there's another opportunity through loans, which basically that's what the certificates of participation is, like a loan that you would take out if you took out a mortgage on your house, right? So it's a loan and we're able to pay back the loan with the rents. We also have a bond, right? And part of the bond in the bond language talks about the ability to have Workforce Housing. And so, and then And we also have private funding that we've been out seeking, right? And we have a public-private partnership with Sobrato. So we have a lot of wins. Um, and so what I, what I would, you know, I don't really have any specific questions. I think you kind of heard a little bit of my thinking. I really want to hear from, um, community members, some of the questions that you have, um, certainly from our staff who are here. Thank you for being here tonight. Uh, if you don't have an opportunity or you don't feel like making a public comment, we are certainly open to, you know, send us an email. We will be adding on the website a place where people can go and provide a comment. Um, and so we want to hear from you. You know, this is the time. Um, and I'm personally very excited about the journey that we're on together. And thank you again, Klima, and everybody. Thanks again."},{"start":4506730,"end":4515430,"speaker":"B","text":"Um, and I do have a question. How did you determined, um, who would start filling in those units?"},{"start":4515430,"end":4523750,"speaker":"A","text":"And for example, the 3-bedrooms, there's a lot of people in this generation that don't have kids yet."},{"start":4524310,"end":4537240,"speaker":"B","text":"So were you able to rent it to those that have kids or to those like that had roommates and that were willing to live with those people for 4 or 5 years?"},{"start":4537240,"end":4599900,"speaker":"F","text":"I don't remember the specific details, but we did do— we did actually do a prioritization based on both their family total household income, whether they're certificate or classified, whether they're full-time or part-time, and whether they have previously owned property or not. So those who have previously owned property were, were low on the priority list. But this was for the initial lease-up process, and for— and then, then it became— they put their names in, and I believe then it became actually a random draw for very specific types of units. With regards to your question on the 3-bed units, there were actually a handful of people that actually put in for those. Of the 7 units, I think initially only 5 would be leased up, and it took a, took a few months before the other 2 remaining, uh, 3-bed units could be leased up. But they are at least up to families of, of 4 or 5. Yeah, and, and right, yeah, and we do have minimum requirements, occupancy requirements for each type of unit."},{"start":4599900,"end":4617340,"speaker":"B","text":"And then my other question would be, um, you talk about the like education or Educational Housing Committee, so at what point do you like draw the line where you as trustees come up come up with the rules or regulations and then you pass it on to them."},{"start":4617340,"end":4675310,"speaker":"C","text":"Can you explain that please? So the trust— so we serve in two different positions. So we're trustees and the Board of Trustees doesn't make any decisions about the housing. We're two— we're two voting members of a larger body of the— at the Housing Committee. So that body makes decisions. So Trustee and I, we both feel a way about something and can be outvoted by the other members of the committee. So that's the body that makes the decisions. Nothing should go to the board or to administrative staff. We have one staff member whose job is to help manage employees around housing, but he does not make any decisions. He does not handle complaints. Um, employees know that if there's an issue with the housing, they're to go to the management company, and if the management company can't solve it, it's elevated to, um, the Housing Committee if their solution isn't already answered in the rules for the committee."},{"start":4675310,"end":4704839,"speaker":"F","text":"[Speaker:TRUSTEE WEEKLY] And, and the other piece was that early after the establishment of the, of the EHC, Educational Housing Corporation, board, there were board subcommittees that were developed to, to determine rules, to determine eligibility, and to determine financial Finance, as well as the selection of the— to make a recommendation on the selection of the third-party property manager. So, so, so all those subcommittees in conjunction with our third-party property manager help develop the rules."},{"start":4704839,"end":4705250,"speaker":"E","text":"And who is the board?"},{"start":4705250,"end":4714913,"speaker":"F","text":"Do you mean the EHC board? The EHC board, not the school, not the school board."},{"start":4714913,"end":4735780,"speaker":"A","text":"Can I ask a follow-up question? Yeah, so did, did the school board give some direction to the educational corporation or like some of the higher level parameters? I'm assuming so. I mean, you know, we don't need to get into that level of detail here today. That can be a follow-up question."},{"start":4735780,"end":4775640,"speaker":"C","text":"So no, and the reason why is because no one set a precedent to have people like, well, the school board said, and then what if the EHC disagrees? And then so the workaround is to go back to the school board. So we want everyone from the beginning, you're going to the EHC. Now, do— does the EHC members listen to what Andy and I have said in regards to that? Yes, you know, we're, we're from the school district and the school board, but at the same time, we're, we're two folds of, uh, of a 7-person body, so we can easily be outvoted. So it's on us to make sure that we're communicating properly what we believe the district needs."},{"start":4775640,"end":4827120,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you. All right, if there's no further questions from our board, um, we're going to move forth, um, go to our community. Our community members today have 3 minutes. We have 3 speakers. That have filled out speaker cards so far. Each speaker will get 3 minutes. You can actually go up to the podium or you can go to any of the mics on the tables, whichever you feel most comfortable. If you need Spanish translation, we have that as well. So don't feel shy, you are the community, you are the people. Feel free to ask your questions, that's why we're here. And we have great speakers today with some great case studies that are happening locally, so this is your chance. Our first speaker will be Chris, um, R. Thank you."},{"start":4827120,"end":4829140,"speaker":"F","text":"Um, so I wanted to address one topic."},{"start":4829140,"end":4870870,"speaker":"E","text":"So Redwood City has sold $90 million of its $298 million Measure S bonds that are Prop 39 bonds despite the fact that that election is being contested. Um, these bonds have been added to people's property tax bill in the community. So, and the intent obviously is to use that money, part of that money, along with the COPs and the, uh, private funding to fund this Workforce Housing. Two problems with that. First of all, Article 13, Section 1(b) of the California Constitution is very clear. I have it right here, but in short, it clearly says that, um, Prop 39 bond money is to be used for school facilities and no other purpose. It's very clear about what it what it can be used for, and it's very clear what it can't be used for—"},{"start":4870870,"end":4872350,"speaker":"F","text":"school facilities."},{"start":4872350,"end":4908300,"speaker":"E","text":"Workforce Housing and a new district office is not a school facility, full stop, period. So that's the law, that's what's written, and, and the fact that it might be written in the ballot measure of the voter guide is not law, right? So that can— you can write all kinds of things in there, but that's not the law. So the Constitution is— so unless there's some law that I'm not aware of that says that's allowed, that's unauthorized expenditure on the property line. So I want to make that very clear. The second issue is, and obviously I totally agree with the goal that was articulated by the moderator about attracting and retaining teachers."},{"start":4908300,"end":4909260,"speaker":"F","text":"So how can this be done?"},{"start":4909260,"end":4921990,"speaker":"E","text":"There are other ways to do this, right? I forwarded this to all the trustees. There is a— or Housing Finance Authority. There's tens of billions of dollars that's being looked at. It's going to be on the 24 ballot for affordable housing."},{"start":4921990,"end":4924870,"speaker":"F","text":"So there's other ways to do this. With respect to—"},{"start":4924870,"end":4956030,"speaker":"E","text":"so this is in general, in my opinion, now I'm getting to the policy side, the suboptimal answer on how to attract and retain teachers. So I did a public records request, and 40 out of the 122 units that JUSD, RCSD, and high school, um, 57 are teachers, right? Um, and out of the 122, so it's 47%. The rest are like custodians and things like that. Nothing wrong with paying for custodians' housing, but there's a lot of other people in the community that also you might want to fund. So where does it stop?"},{"start":4956030,"end":4958710,"speaker":"F","text":"So that's, that's the numbers, less than half for teachers."},{"start":4958710,"end":4994760,"speaker":"E","text":"And then for San Mateo Community College District, it's out of their— it's only 24% of their units. With 140 units, 25 are faculty, and the rest— so it's more than 3/4 are which maybe that's why that wasn't presented, I don't know, but San Mateo Community College has more than 3/4 not occupied. So it doesn't really, and it doesn't hit the question, is this something that's, that's effective, or do teachers want to do it, especially when your boss is the bottom 2 stories, and furthermore, can they qualify, right? I don't know what the qualifications are, and that might be something to address."},{"start":4994760,"end":4996570,"speaker":"A","text":"I don't know if the survey would talk about that."},{"start":4996570,"end":5003130,"speaker":"E","text":"But they just pull people, but maybe it's based on household income, not individual income, so how does that all work?"},{"start":5003290,"end":5012943,"speaker":"F","text":"So, um, I mean, in summary, I just think there are other ways to do this that I, I do think a parcel tax is a better way to do it. Give people housing vouchers and attract them that way."},{"start":5012943,"end":5014610,"speaker":"C","text":"Um, so I'll stop there. Thank you, Chris."},{"start":5014610,"end":5040700,"speaker":"E","text":"Just to clarify, you had a couple of questions. First one is, is there some law that you need to be aware of around the building of these units? Second one is, do teachers really want to do this? And is that— so are those the two questions that you want us to unpack today? Yeah, okay, great. So I will pass it on to the RCSD."},{"start":5040700,"end":5070190,"speaker":"F","text":"Yeah, the Two Trials Act of 2016 actually makes it— basically allows for any district to be able to utilize Any funding available for school districts to, to fund can be used for in the scope of educational housing. And then there's been some legislation over the years that have actually helped tighten all of that. We would not have been able to go to a bond measure for 2018 had the Teach Housing Act not been implemented at that time. The other—"},{"start":5070190,"end":5225900,"speaker":"C","text":"and so I'll leave it there. The other thing is, if you— are you ever been in an elementary school bathroom, um, custodians are next to God, and I would give each of them a house if I could. Um, to— COVID taught us a lot, and the people who were most needed in schools were the people that you're maligning, not teachers, right? Teachers are needed, but we need people to clean the rooms, we need paraprofessionals who do not who are not fitting our qualifications, teachers who are absolutely— we need substitute teachers who don't fall in your qualifications, quote-unquote teachers who are absolutely needed to run a school. We need cafeteria workers because one of the biggest complaints that we got from our students was that the food is terrible and they didn't eat. And we know that how important feeding hungry children are, but if we're giving them substandard food, then they don't learn. So a lot of people are living that don't fit your quote-unquote qualification as teachers are also feeding our students. So are teachers vital? Absolutely, but a community is a part of a school district. There's lots of people who fill lots of roles and, um, that are just as important as the people who are standing in front of the class giving instruction. So I would push back that, um, on disqualifying qualifying it because there's not enough people that are filling the category that you think is important enough to get housing to. And anyone who's working in service to our students, and you know, my son would not have graduated from high school if it wasn't for his paraprofessional, you know, and that's one of the people that are, that you're saying doesn't fit into the quote-unquote teacher role. The other thing is the funding. The reason why we're funding it this way. So LA had a huge problem because they used federal money to fund their housing, and when you use federal money, it has to be affordable, 100% affordable. A lot of teachers are, are making more money than that, and so they could not put any teachers into their housing because they made too much money. The other issues with the federal guidelines— there's a lot of issues, but it also put limits on asking people believe. So a lot of— they couldn't— when staff turned over or went to another position, they could not ask their staff to remove themselves from the housing because of the federal money that they received, which is why we went about this and seeing if we could find other ways to fund it, like a bond, so we wouldn't be held to those same restrictions. We'd have much more control over our housing."},{"start":5225900,"end":5248440,"speaker":"F","text":"The other piece, I'm not sure, uh, the, the timestamp with regards to the data that you had pulled, but as of today, with 55% certificated in the building, we have— of the, of the 122 units, they are occupied by 127 staff. So at 55%, that's about 70 of them are teachers in the building."},{"start":5248440,"end":5259517,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you for your question. We're going to move on to the next, uh, speaker. Elizabeth Starks will have 3 minutes."},{"start":5259517,"end":5446440,"speaker":"B","text":"Trustee Lawson. Thank you. I am a resident of Redwood City and I also speak Spanish and can translate for all the beautiful parents that they are here, and I'm very, very happy that you are interested in what is going on in the school district. I raised 4 children and luckily I was also an ESL teacher and I I was committed to be like a mother for each kid in my class. This was very important for me. And the most important thing, when I moved to Redwood City, I noticed that I live very close to a middle school and elementary school, and all the kids are coming out of the school and they are meeting at the pizzeria and you can see them eating on the floor, all of them, 20 kids. And that breaks my heart because the Spanish community should be more important than the teachers do. The teachers, of course, they make more money than many parents. Many parents are working really hard. They are working, they stay the whole day, and they come home and they are exhausted. And those kids are alone. So we should build more places for kids where they can be together and they can play sports for free. They can be swimming for free. This is my important— this is what I'm thinking. I live in Germany, I live in Europe, I live in Israel. I live— I did many languages and I help the people when I go to a community. I help. So right now I'm asking you, if you are going to hire teachers because they don't have any money, please hire teachers that they teach history, math, English, Spanish, other language. The most important thing for these kids, we need to think about the new generation, not to destroy them and not to spoil them. We need to think about that. So I'm very happy that you are building very good communities for the teachers, but where are the kids? The most important things are the kids for me. My children were raised with me when I, I was very young and I was taking care of them, and I was a house mom, and they were very quiet. The school teachers, they were coming to me and telling me, oh, your kids are very quiet, they are not standing up for anything. And I said, because they respect the teachers, they love the teachers. They— I told them not to speak up, not to stand up, and not to scream at them. I taught my kids meets very well. 4 of them, I raised them well, they are professionals."},{"start":5446440,"end":5465120,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you, Ms. Márquez. Appreciate you being here. So the questions I just wanted to clarify that you were asking primarily are, where are the kids in this plan? Is that right? Yeah. Okay, so for, um, either landscaping team or RCSD, um, maybe you'd like to take this."},{"start":5465120,"end":5525708,"speaker":"F","text":"I'll kick it off. We went into this with the kids in mind first, because if they're experiencing 35— if 35% of our staff at the time that we did the survey were going to leave the district through the cost of housing, we cannot take care of our kids. If we're experiencing 25% turnover of staff annually, we're not taking care of our kids. So if we have educators who are struggling with housing security, we're not taking care of our kids, they won't be able to take care of our kids because they're worried about their needs. So we have to provide for our, our educational staff to ensure that all the programs that we want to offer our students are available and that we can also continue to build on the programs year after year to improve. If we are stuck constantly hiring and retraining 25 of our staff every year. We are always willing to start back at zero every year."},{"start":5525708,"end":5597510,"speaker":"C","text":"Trustee Weekly. [Speaker:TRUSTEE SENA] Elizabeth. Hello. So, I, I'm Black, I'm a single mother, and I was raising 3 kids in all of our schools. And the reason why I became a school board member was not to become a developer, right? I didn't run for school board, it was like, oh, you know, I'm going to be a major developer one day, like that was not the goal. I went into this to take care of the kids and knowing what my students and, and knowing what— I keep saying my students and I'm just saying students instead of kids now— what my kids have gone through going through the school district and the hardships they faced because of inadequate Good teachers, and it is— we know in communities of color it is really hard to find qualified teaching staff who want to teach there, and that's because through a whole lot of historic suppression, our property taxes are lower, and property taxes should not be tied to educational funding, but it is. And so we have— we can pay less, and other places where people don't look like us, their, their teachers are paid more. And that is the reality. Is this solution perfect?"},{"start":5597510,"end":5597910,"speaker":"E","text":"Absolutely not."},{"start":5597910,"end":5746460,"speaker":"C","text":"The perfect solution in, in California would get off its behind and fund schools the way they need to be funded so we can take care of all the kids and fund schools equitably so the students that have the most need get the most money. But that's not the reality we live in. So I did what I did with the cards that we had to serve the students in the best way that I could. And one of the ways that I know I can take I can tell you right now that my son, because he had wonderful teachers, he was just blessed with wonderful teachers through freshman through junior year, was able to survive, and I'm not using that word lightly, as an autistic child survive a year where every single one of his trusted teachers were gone, and he had terrible teachers, terrible. But there was no option that I can give. We can't say let that teacher go and bring in a better teacher if there are no other teachers, if there are no other paraprofessionals, if there are, you know, students coming in and saying the bathrooms are disgusting. We can't fire the custodian and get a better one if no custodian wants to work for us because we're paying pennies, pennies, and I can't give them any more money. But this is something that I could do. So in my mind, I am serving a student because they have a clean bathroom when they come to school so they can come to school in dignity. They have a teacher that cares about them. We're 100% staffed and we have more people that want to work for us. So if a teacher isn't living up to their potential, we have the option now to let them go and get somebody else qualified who wants to live in our housing. We aren't wasting money hiring a bunch of people, training them, and then having them go get better paying jobs somewhere else, and it's a constant, constant reflush. We aren't having homeless morale of our staff because they're having to carry the extra weight of teachers that are there just watching come in and out, come in and out, come in and out, and they're having to carry all this weight. So are there other issues as public educators? Are there other ways that we're failing students? Absolutely, absolutely. And just because we built teacher housing doesn't let that off the hook. We still need to do a better job in other areas, but you have to give us the tools to do that. And the best tool to do that is to have a qualified staff who aren't worrying about where they need to sleep at night so they can take care of the kids while we handle the other problems of affordable housing for all of our students, making sure all of our students have the things they need in their community, make sure that the community is safe for all of our students. Those don't go away just because we build the housing. We need to care about all of those things, and, and that's what I'm committed to doing, and I know your school board members well, and I know they're committed to doing it too."},{"start":5746460,"end":5755450,"speaker":"E","text":"I think you had a little bit of a follow-up to that."},{"start":5755610,"end":5838147,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah, I would like to reframe that the parents here, they have a lot of things to say, and maybe you can join the parents to become teachers. Maybe you can have something more important for them. Mothers, I was I was part of the school board in Burlingame. I was at the PTA. I spent 4 hours every day, and I have to go to work at 3 o'clock in the afternoon until 10 o'clock at night. I have 3 jobs. But the teachers, if you love the children, you don't care how much money you make. Well, not in California, because in California you cannot I don't leave. When the property taxes come to my house that I work really hard to have it, and I'm not going to be able to pay the property taxes because they're not— they're going to evacuate it, my house, I'm going to be moving. And this is going to happen to everybody. So instead of building all these low-income low-income houses, be low-income houses for these families who need help. You need to think about the families who are low income. That's my—"},{"start":5838147,"end":5839491,"speaker":"C","text":"that's you. Thank you for your comment, Trustee Sena."},{"start":5839491,"end":5841320,"speaker":"E","text":"We appreciate it."},{"start":5841320,"end":5844580,"speaker":"C","text":"We're going to move forward. There was no question."},{"start":5844580,"end":5855450,"speaker":"E","text":"Um, if anyone has any other Speakers Cards, that's what we do. Thank you. We're going to go for the Maria Trustee Marquez. Trustee Stockton, you have 3 minutes to, to make a comment."},{"start":5855450,"end":5855530,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you."},{"start":5855530,"end":6001890,"speaker":"D","text":"My name is Maria Stockton. I'm a leader here for the classified union of Redwood City Chapter 5. We cover paraeducators, office staff, food service, technology department, custodians, facilities, and many others. Thanks to food service, technology department, and office staff, we came in and worked during the COVID time at our sites, this school district would not be able to run, especially without the technology department. Our parent educators and instructional assistants were online every day teaching your children just as the teachers did. So they're equal. You can go into a classroom and you can take out a teacher and see that classroom is still running because the parent educators or instructional assistants are just as qualified. So I really take offense to you just talking about teachers and putting down classified, and I thank you for, for supporting. Thank you. So anyway, as for the presentation, it was given that 1/3 of the teachers' salary go to housing. I will tell you how I have been here. I'm working on my 45th year, so don't tell me classifieds aren't dedicated. All of my paychecks, it's a $200 go to renters. I, I know John would like to see him retire hopefully in a few years, which I will not be able to qualify for this house. It'll take a lot longer. But people who are coming in now, the district is striving to pay as much as they can, but it won't be enough. My rent went up $150 last year and $150 this year. The district did not give me a raise of $300 a month to pay for my rent to be able to live here. We have all kind of international people working here now because we could not fill classified and teaching positions. This district is doing the best they can, but they need help for the staff. We are leaving because it's too expensive here in Redwood City, so many of our classes classified live over the bridges. They have to come here in long distance to turn around and work in this district. Why? For the money? No, they're dedicated employees that want to stay here, and if they had housing here, at least they would have a few more dollars and relief that they are here. They don't have to worry about accidents or anything else every day that they serve this district."},{"start":6001890,"end":6004780,"speaker":"C","text":"Uh, uh, let's see."},{"start":6004780,"end":6042390,"speaker":"D","text":"Uh, if, if you have parents who are interested in becoming teachers, apply for classified positions, take the test, and this district has assistance to be a teacher. So if you have parents who are interested in being teachers, have them apply for a job here. The district will assist them if they're truly dedicated to doing that. Uh, I love the presentation. I could not see it from here, so if If the presentation could be given to me in a hard copy, I would love that. Uh, let's see, uh, let's see, I just— I'm sorry. And I think that's probably all."},{"start":6042390,"end":6067800,"speaker":"E","text":"I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you for all your comments. I appreciate it. All right, she said it up. We're going to move forward to Lupe Guzmán. Lupe Guzmán."},{"start":6067800,"end":6069960,"speaker":"A","text":"First of all, thank you very much for your presentation."},{"start":6069960,"end":6078400,"speaker":"B","text":"It's amazing. Um, I have the pleasure of being the principal here at Hoover Community School."},{"start":6078560,"end":6082800,"speaker":"C","text":"I, I knew of the Trustee because of my parents that 2 blocks away."},{"start":6082800,"end":6131796,"speaker":"B","text":"And so it really does take a community. We would not function without every member of our staff, without our parents, our wonderful cafeteria ladies who take care of us, our custodians, um, and of course our staff, our teachers, our community, uh, our Family Center. So I know that a lot of A lot of them drive a long, long way to get here, and I know that some of our staff live with other families because they can't afford to live here. And I also know that if they could, they would live in Redwood City, and that would strengthen our community because I remember when I was a little kid—"},{"start":6131796,"end":6135020,"speaker":"F","text":"I won't tell you how long ago—"},{"start":6135020,"end":6225750,"speaker":"B","text":"And I would go to the store and I would see my teachers and I would see my principal and I would see the instructional assistants and the yard duties and that doesn't happen anymore. And we've lost part of our community because of that. And we need to bring that back. Part of what made Redwood City wonderful when I was a kid is that we all knew each other and we took care of each other and I would I want that back, and this is part of bringing our community together, part of raising stronger kids. Our kids have lost some of that community, some of that bond, bonding, and it's, it's really sad because we need them to grow up with the values that we're here for each other, that we're taking care of each other, and that We are stronger together, and this is a plan that will help bring that back and would help my staff not be so stressed out. And some of my wonderful new teachers have left. They tell me, I love this place, I just, I don't want to live with my parents anymore, so I'm moving down south, I'm moving to Texas. No offense, Texas. Um, and it's been very It's been very challenging to staff my school, very challenging, and this would definitely help. So thank you, and thank you for being a part of it."},{"start":6225750,"end":6242552,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you, Trustee Patel, for your comments. We really appreciate you. Thanks for hosting us today and your wonderful staff. We appreciate you. Um, we're going to go on to this— you're not Richardson, you're not Richardson. Hi, Mary."},{"start":6242552,"end":6300860,"speaker":"C","text":"You have 3 minutes. Thank you. I'm interested in teacher housing only because my district is— I'm a visiting school board member in San Francisco, and we are talking about that for years. And I, I know some of the trustees in Jefferson were My worry was kind of housing, are, what is the quality of construction? Will that last? Or are those, is that housing made up of what's now considered, they call it prefab housing, or is it from the gravel? Will this, these units hold up over time? Paying the rents, um, do they go back into the general fund and then do the districts do pay down the bond or what, what happens to that money?"},{"start":6300860,"end":6309220,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you. Just to clarify, this is for the project we just saw? Okay, got it."},{"start":6312820,"end":6348120,"speaker":"F","text":"So that's great. So the building is ground up, it's It's, it's a steel frame construction, 4 stories tall. With regards to the, to the, to the rents, then the rents are going into to pay off the COP, and any excess is just going into savings for now that we're reserving for, for future deferred maintenance. At such time that the, that the COP is paid off in 20, 25 years, then those funds would revert back to the general fund of the district."},{"start":6348120,"end":6351530,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you. Um, next speaker, Janet Cochise."},{"start":6351530,"end":6416400,"speaker":"C","text":"Janet Cochise. Y yo he sido, soy mamá de distrito por lo que es del 2008, y este, he sido afectada porque dos veces mis dos escuelas han sido cerradas para mi mismo niño porque nos cerraron ferros por lo mismo que no había maestros. Ahora nos cerraron la escuela elementaria que es este Garfield, pero solo cerraron a sexto grado, ya no hay más sexto grado por lo mismo."},{"start":6416400,"end":6417630,"speaker":"E","text":"Y su maestra que tenía en quinto grado dice de que su maestra que tenía también se fue por lo mismo, del área, porque no alcanzaba a pagar la renta. O sea, esto es algo que nos viene afectando muchísimo a nosotros y a nuestros hijos, porque mi hijo está mucha gente y no se adapta a la escuela donde está. Primero fue el transporte, El transporte es un desastre que va de, que los lleva de Garfield a McKinley. Hay un desastre horrible allí. Nadie inspecciona. Cuando yo como mamá y muchos papás nos hemos quejado, yo lo que hice, tuve acceso, como mi hijo llevarlo yo, pero los demás no se puede. O sea, no sé en qué nos pueden ayudar."},{"start":6417630,"end":6488240,"speaker":"C","text":"Yo he hablado mucho por las dos escuelas, por la escuela donde estaba en Garfield y la escuela que estaba en Tema Kaimí, por lo mismo de transporte. No sé, para mí esto sería una buena idea que nos ayuden a tener maestros aquí para que ellos puedan estar con nosotros, porque esto es muy difícil para nosotros como papás, porque hay muchos papás dejan sus hijos en el bus porque no tienen quién los lleve a la escuela. Y nuestros hijos algunos sufren mucho en ELPAC. Primero, ELPAC está gritando, los niños no sabrán, van a ser tranquilos, pero hay muchos, muchos problemas serios en los docentes."},{"start":6488240,"end":6488400,"speaker":"E","text":"Gracias."},{"start":6488400,"end":6501850,"speaker":"F","text":"I am a mother of a kid and I'm here to talk to you because many, many times we've been through a lot of challenges."},{"start":6501850,"end":6623831,"speaker":"E","text":"My kids were taken out of their homes and then from Garfield and the community school that is Garfield, but they only have certain— until 6th grade. For that reason, he was removed, and his teacher, there was a 5th grader, he said that he had to leave the school district because they weren't able to pay for her rent. And that is something that's affected us over and over, to us, to the kids as well, because Mikey cannot adapt to any school. And the other aspect is transportation. Transportation is a mess. It's truly very challenging. They, as a mom and many other parents, share the same. What I had to do is I had to find my own means of transportation, and this cannot be happening. So I'm not sure how can you support us today for whether it's in school or Garfield or whatever else so that Transportation. For me, that would be a great idea, great idea. If you could support us bringing teachers in so they can be here with us, because it's very difficult for us as parents to— many parents, they have to leave their kids by themselves because they don't have anyone to take them, and they just have to be there. And first, transportation. They go chat, they write themselves, and we have a lot of challenges, very obvious challenges in that regard. Thank you. Gracias, Sena. Thank you, Miss Cochise, for your comments. Uh, next speaker is Aaron Washmore. Aaron, you're free to grab a mic anywhere you like. You can pull it out of the socket there if you like to. Thank you."},{"start":6623831,"end":6623900,"speaker":"A","text":"You have 3 minutes. Thank you."},{"start":6623900,"end":6626100,"speaker":"E","text":"All right, hi everybody, my name is Erin Washburn."},{"start":6626100,"end":6629500,"speaker":"D","text":"I'm the president of the Redwood City Teachers Association."},{"start":6629500,"end":6633940,"speaker":"C","text":"You asked the question earlier, do teachers really want this? Is this something that teachers really want?"},{"start":6633940,"end":6640180,"speaker":"E","text":"I can't speak for all teachers yet because I haven't done a survey on this matter, but I can speak for a few teachers."},{"start":6640180,"end":6653470,"speaker":"C","text":"I know a couple of teachers who applied for low-income housing and finally got it, and I just watched their whole life turn around because they were able to finally have their own place, and they live right next door to each other, and they love it."},{"start":6653470,"end":6666430,"speaker":"E","text":"They're loving it. So yes, those teachers really wanted it. I mentor a music teacher, and I mentor a teacher who works in Hayward, or who lives here but has to drive. It's her first year."},{"start":6666430,"end":6700010,"speaker":"C","text":"She just moved here from Virginia, and she drives across the bridge every day to go to Hayward to, to go home to live with, uh, 4 or 5 roommates, um, because that's where she could afford to find housing. She's a first-year teacher, um, and I know that this kind of program would help our first-year teachers to be able to be in their communities, to be around the kids that they work with, and I, I think that would be great for the community and great for our first-year teachers, um, second-year teachers, third-year teachers, new teachers, right?"},{"start":6700010,"end":6704050,"speaker":"E","text":"It could do nothing but benefit them."},{"start":6704050,"end":6714690,"speaker":"C","text":"Me, I've, I've been a teacher for, gosh, 15 or 16 years now. Been in the district for, for 8 of those years, and I've done a lot of—"},{"start":6714690,"end":6723330,"speaker":"E","text":"I've built up on my salary schedule. I've done a lot of extra work to get a lot of units, college credits, so I'm doing pretty well."},{"start":6723330,"end":6744740,"speaker":"C","text":"But there's still a there's no way I can ever afford to buy a house in Redwood City, ever. So I'll be renting for forever. But with this kind of program, if I can pay less rent for 5 years and save that money, maybe I could eventually have a down payment for a house. You know, those 5 years, I could actually— that could build something."},{"start":6745540,"end":6750250,"speaker":"E","text":"So that would really help me a lot. Yes, this teacher would, would really like to do this."},{"start":6750250,"end":6753010,"speaker":"C","text":"I, I love this presentation that you brought today."},{"start":6753010,"end":6770890,"speaker":"E","text":"You answered a lot of the skeptical questions that I had, and I think, you know, our kids in Redwood City deserve the best, and quality teachers is part of that best, and to be able to retain and recruit quality teachers is what we want to do here."},{"start":6770890,"end":6773490,"speaker":"C","text":"So I really support this plan."},{"start":6773490,"end":6853590,"speaker":"E","text":"This looks— this could be really good for us. So thank you. For, for that. Moving forward, hopefully moving forward with it. Thank you so much, Admin, for your comments. All right, with that, we're right about time, and I just want to say what a powerful day of learning we've had as a group. We've all come with our own knowledge, but we've gained new knowledge, I'm sure, different perspectives Testimonials, the power of storytelling is the first form of education, right? And how do we know? Well, we spent an evening together getting to know each other a little more and getting to know struggle and getting to know also how we do liberate, right? And I think that's the importance of dialogue, right? And I just want to thank Kalima, Andy, your whole team at Jefferson High School District for, um, I, I, I'm going to quote you on this, Corina. Not building dorms, building homes and dreams. And, uh, wow, very powerful. Um, and I'd like to thank, uh, Peter, Elaine, Mark, the architecture team for being here, um, the Redwood City School District Board, Superintendent Baker, and most importantly, our community members who are here today learning. Thank you so much for being here."},{"start":6853590,"end":6854150,"speaker":"C","text":"You rock."},{"start":6854150,"end":6871110,"speaker":"E","text":"Um, but You know, I don't want to end with my note. I'd like to end with, uh, maybe some words you'd like to tell the district, um, to kind of dream with and to go with that you would have wanted to hear back in the day when you were hearing a lot of differences, right?"},{"start":6871110,"end":6951710,"speaker":"C","text":"Um, so for me, you know, I understand how you feel because Andy and I felt the same way. We were terrified moving forward with this. Because we knew if we messed up, you know, it would be horrible for any district coming behind us. Um, and, you know, if I could go back in time and talk to me, I would say stay strong because you know what is right, and what is right is to have staff treated with dignity. And who am I as a school board member to keep demanding takes of staff, and then want to turn around and watch them deliver pizzas and work second jobs and live with a bunch of people and have that type of stress or pay so much rent that they can't buy food and then say on top of that I need you to be their teacher, I need you to be a mental health person, I need you to check on this, I need you to do that, we need you to feed here, we need you to teach during COVID we need you to teach during shootings, we need you to teach during all kinds of other things but we're not going to do anything that we can possibly do to ensure that you are safe at home. I know what is right, and this was the right thing to do."},{"start":6951710,"end":7059780,"speaker":"F","text":"Let me share just a quick vignette. You know, Maria, you mentioned you have a lot of a lot of, a lot of international teachers here, or, and staff, and other staff in the district. We do too. We have a lot of Filipino national staff and teachers as well who specifically are teaching special ed and some single subject matter. And they've came over the past few years and moved together, right, because they couldn't find a place to live. Well, last Last year I was actually helping one of our staff move from one apartment into 705 Ceremoni, and I was just talking with one of the staff members who was helping her and asked them, so, you know, so what's your story? And they said, well, you know, I just got a 2-bedroom unit. We just moved in last week, and my family just moved in from the Philippines yesterday. We reunited families in our building. They left their families behind to come teach our kids, and they They let their families behind. I mean, it was hard to not cry while doing a bunch of options. So you're doing the right thing. What, what's heartening here tonight is to hear we've got union, staff, board, administration are all, all on the same page. And right there, that's the powerful combination you need to making this happen. So I'm really heartened by by what I'm hearing tonight, and I'm really excited for the path forward. You've got, you've got a lot of good going. You've got a lot of good ahead of you, and I can't wait to see what you do in a few years. And when— hey, we want to be there when you break ground, and we definitely want to be there when you open doors to welcome home your staff."},{"start":7059780,"end":7064850,"speaker":"E","text":"Trustee Hanna, Trustee Patel, Trustee Marquez, Trustee Lawson, Trustee Wells, Trustee McAvoy, Trustee Marquez. Trustee Sena, I want to end with the words of Trustee Márquez, Cecilia Márquez. Pass it off to you, um, to wrap this up today. Thank you so much, everyone."},{"start":7064850,"end":7078890,"speaker":"A","text":"Again, thank you so very much to everyone that came. Um, we really appreciate it. And with that, we do want to be, um, conscientious of everyone's time. And again, we appreciate for being here. So with that said, would somebody—"},{"start":7078890,"end":7085220,"speaker":"B","text":"I'm going to make a motion to adjourn the meeting."},{"start":7085220,"end":7086660,"speaker":"C","text":"All those in favor."},{"start":7086660,"end":7088510,"speaker":"A","text":"Aye. Thank you very much. Have a good evening."}]}