In the midst of all, we have liberty and justice for all.
That brings us to reading of the AUSD over the unified school district vision and mission statement.
We have a very special guest who will read Madame Superintendent.
Thank you. The mission of the Albany Unified School District is to provide excellent public education that empowers all to achieve their fullest potential as productive citizens.
AUSD is committed to creating comprehensive learning opportunities in a safe, supportive and collaborative environment addressing the individual needs of each student.
Thank you.
The Board took no action in closed session.
That brings us to approval of the agenda.
Do you have any questions or comments on the agenda?
I'll move to the agenda.
I'll second.
All in favour.
Aye.
Aye. Thank you.
That brings us to...
Thank you, Charlie.
That brings us to persons to address the Board on matters not on the agenda and we're very limited in any responses we can give.
And we basically will time you to three minutes to have anybody to comment not on the agenda.
Okay.
That brings us to our review and discussion items.
Number one is sustainability and integrated design committee update.
Thank you, President Roosevelt.
Trust these.
I'm going to turn this over to our chief business officer.
All in guard who is going to give us an update on the Sustainability Integrated Design Committee.
Mr. Guard.
Thank you.
Superintendent.
So tonight we're going to have a presentation from the Sustainability Integrated Design Committee.
We have Alan Daley here who will be making a presentation.
And so as he comes up to bring the presentation on the screen.
I just want to provide some background about the sustainability slash integrated design committee.
So first, this was started.
This was started earlier this year where we brought in local specialists who wanted to volunteer to expertise in their time to
help ensure that we utilize current best practices as well as incorporate local values to the review and design of any current or future facility projects.
This was a very good and thoughtful committee because there were a lot of experts around.
There was a lot of people felt very connected to the different projects.
And the expertise that was brought in helped really shape what we can do.
It helped create a pathway that I think will be very beneficial to the district for many, many years.
You'll see later in this agenda a resolution that the committee developed that we put forward to the board for review and approval.
And it kind of outlines the latest research as well as values of the city.
And it puts items in place to ensure that we don't lose sight of what we're able to do now in order to help create a good learning environment long term.
Being very flexible but as we're also cost effective so we're very responsible to the taxpayer money.
And so with that I'd like to.
Bring forward Alan daily for the presentation.
There's a laptop on the podium.
It's the presentations actually already on there.
I could this one that's free now it's actually.
It's the.
This is the only three tabs I see.
Please talk into the mic.
Hi everybody.
Thank you very much for inviting me to present to you tonight.
I'll just second Alan's comments it's been a real pleasure to be part of the sustainable design and integrated design committee for the school district here.
I'd like to present to you a discussion of what we've accomplished and a recommendation for adopting.
Building program called the California the collaborative for high performance schools chips and.
I think you'll see that this program that's very mature very well established used around the country aligns very closely with the goals and values of the committee but we think the larger community.
To take the approach here of not reinventing the wheel.
This is a well known well established program and because it's so nicely aligns with what.
We think the people of all we want and because and what the committee really believes the professionals that came here.
We think it's a great fit for the for the school district so.
I'll dive in.
The four community members or Diana Hayton Allen Brickett Rosa Shane and myself Allen daily.
Diana Allen and Rosa are all practicing architects and some of the nicest most thoughtful firms in the Bay Area.
We're lucky to have them being involved because of their experience and and attitude towards really great buildings.
I'm not an architect I've been trained in the mechanical engineer and I've actually run mechanical engineering design firm for about the last 20 years.
I'm from called Taylor engineering down in Alameda and I've worked on projects in this area as well.
So there's quite a lot of experience with green building design high performance building design that we've brought to bear here and in fact we've.
Found a number of other community members like Nick and other architects as well in the area that.
Looking forward to being involved in this as well.
Much of the material that I've pulled together here comes from the chips website.
I just wanted to give credit where credit is due to make it clear that I didn't prepare all this and this lots more information available on the website if needed.
When we first got together as a community we spent a great brainstorming session without even talking about chips or anything the first day actually the first we started off by looking at the existing plans that are.
Out there for some of the school projects that are happening right now marine ocean view.
San Gabriel site and that generated quite a lot of discussion.
The architects presented a lot of history there you know these projects have a life of their own.
And after two or three sessions about what was happening we had a nice opportunity to kind of step back and say.
Regardless of the specific work that's been done.
What do we think buildings should embody and what are our goals and values for schools in the district and what you see on the screen here.
These six high level summary points are brought back to by a number of other points but these were completely.
From scratch there was nothing or we said let's start with chip so let's start with the lead or any other start with hail 24.
This was just us in the room the 10 or 12 people that were there coming up with ideas.
And you'll see there's sort of an order as well.
Safe and accessible schools create very high quality learning and working spaces for both students and staff.
Create schools that are ability to have the ability to be used by the community that multi use aspect to them.
Use resources responsibly water energy.
Create great architecture that are inspiring places and delightful you know as well as functional and practical and cost effective.
And finally of course appropriate reasonable budgets.
This quick little snapshot of the document on the right is a more detailed version of the same notes that provides lots more detailed subheadings and things.
But you'll see that we came up with a really nice set of goals for schools.
And I think that fits right in with the vision for Albany schools and I bet all of you would agree these would be great things to have in schools.
So we're not a bunch of green wackos right.
We also wanted to point out that obviously the schools here are a part of a larger community and that larger community has established goals around these same objectives.
This is the city of Albany Climate Action Plan adopted six years ago now.
And we'll go into the details here I'm sure you're aware of this but it has elements that start to intersect with schools.
For example the one I pulled out here was about helping to create transportation initiatives in this city that helped minimize that kind of busy back and forth to school traffic that often happens.
Just one example of how there's an intersection between the two.
And part of the interesting discussion became about how do we operationalize these goals and values in schools and in building projects specifically?
Because it's one thing to write down a list of what we'd like to have but it's a very different thing to actually get them understood and embodied in the projects that you're delivering.
And I hope I'm not stopping anybody's toes when I when I guess that none of you are really building people.
You know it's not your job to know how to run big capital campaigns and you know design buildings you're educators and that's why you're here.
And so part of this operationalization, operationalizing these goals is to try to find a way that's well established that you can fit into the architectural community.
And the building community understands that will really enable you to get their kind of projects you want.
So jump to the end here, the recommendation here is to consider adopting chips, schools, the chips criteria, the chips rating system for AUSD buildings.
And I'll talk a bit more about that. So what is chips?
The collaborative for high performance schools, right? It was a group of architects, engineers, planners, school boards, teachers, they came together to say what would what represents best practice for school design in today's world.
And the mission here is a very simple one to make every school an ideal place to learn.
I'd like to point out this slide on the image on the right here is a school called the Chartwell School, then in C-Side California.
I'm very proud and happy to have gotten to be the mechanical engineer to design that project.
This is a school for students with learning disabilities, it's a private school.
And the goal of designing a very green sustainable high performance building was that the building and the environment itself could support the special education needs these students have to really help them achieve better results in their education.
And the school is just a huge success. It's a beautiful place to be for the staff and students.
Well, they let it, well ventilated, it's a beautiful environment right by the coast, just a massive success and one of the proudest and the proudest of that project of many of the ones I've had my career.
What is a high performance school? It is this kind of cross section of a whole bunch of different aspects, responsive, efficient, healthy, secure, comfortable, simple.
This little word blurb comes right out of the chips set of information that's available and you can overlay and I will in a sec. This set of words and this kind of word cloud with those goals I showed a second ago and you almost have a one to one match.
So the idea of not just, it's not just about, you know, minimum impact and zero energy and those things, it's about healthy, efficient, community focused, safe, teaching environments.
As well as as well as very efficient and unresponsible resources.
It's not just the high level, glossy brochure, kind of a guideline either. It's quite well thought through.
I won't go into all the details on this slide, but I want to just put something like this up because you'll see that it's a very thoughtful, integrated design approach to what makes high performance school.
There are elements here about classroom layout down in the lower right, positioning teachers and students and teaching walls and windows, just the layout of the room being thoughtful about that.
It all talks about lighting, right? High performance lighting, indirect direct, those kinds of things.
It's got acoustics, it's got daylighting, it's got ceiling heights, finishes, it's a guideline that really wraps all of the elements.
Of buildings to try to create a very nicely integrated classroom for high-performance learning and teaching.
This is my kind of overlay here of the overall high-level chip schools, environmentally responsible, healthy, high-performance learning environments against the six AUSD kind of brainstormed goals.
And you'll see that they, again, match very nicely.
I wanted to just take a little bit of a deeper dive for a couple of slides and talk to give you a sense. Again, this is a very well thought, very mature kind of a guideline.
In one of our planning sessions, one of our early sessions I was explaining a minute ago how the early sessions were about having architects and site committees present some of the school projects to us.
And maybe being a mechanical engineer, one of, you know, I'll say a little bit more clearly too, as a mechanical engineer in buildings, my job is all the ducks and pipes and controls and all that stuff.
The air conditioning engineer, you know, at some level.
I like to think about it as an energy engineer when I'm, you know, trying to feel a little better about myself.
And so all my stuff makes noise, fans and pumps and all that.
And we know that, of course, in a classroom, having a quiet learning environment is super important for learning and paying attention, all those distractions.
I mean, kids are sort of practical on, anyway, having a nice quiet environment is very important.
And so, one of my comments when I saw the Marine School design was the mechanical engineers in architects ended up putting these kind of special air conditioning units that go above a ceiling above each classroom.
It's a very simple, relatively inexpensive, kind of straightforward way to lay out air conditioning systems.
And it's one that I reacted very negatively to because those stupid things in the ceiling make a lot of noise.
And so here is the chips guideline. Great stuff right here.
It says, you know, how to about acoustics, it talks about standards, it definitely references larger industry documents.
It says on the right there, HVAC equipment can be located in the classroom near the classroom or away from the classroom in a central location.
blah, blah, blah. In room HVAC systems can consist of unducted fan coils, that's the thing they have.
Avoiding these systems is the best option acoustically, since otherwise it's hard to meet these certain standards.
So, very straightforward practical advice. You want to clap classroom, don't put this stuff in the ceiling.
It seems like so obvious to us, right? But yet, the Marine School design for whatever reason has a bunch of dumb HVAC equipment in the ceiling.
You know?
You're meeting the new, the new, the existing, and the existing, and the existing, where in school is no prize either.
I complete agree with you. My boy, as you know, my boy spent many years there at mine.
My first day at a U.S.D. was to meet your son at a naggy square.
Maggie came to the boys graduation party a few days ago. It was really fun. It was great.
I should have put a picture in the presentation here.
So, in any case, just, you know, thoughtful, reasonable advice that can help get you a better building.
Second one is really about daylighting. We talked a lot about the different projects.
Daylighting really is critically important for making nice buildings.
Buildings that are a great architecture have great daylighting. It's just that simple.
The way the light comes in, the way the light moves over the course of the day.
People respond to daylight. They're studies that say students even learn better in daylight classrooms.
In fact, you know, up here I highlighted that daylighting forms the quarterstone of sustainable high performance design for schools.
Super simple.
And here's a highlight controlled direct sunlight penetration provide gentle uniform elimination.
Again, not to be too harsh on the Marine School design, but, you know, there was this huge glass facade along Santa Fe with that giant window on the multi-purpose room.
With lots of west facing windows along Santa Fe.
Very hard to control that, that sun exposure.
And, you know, just, every, all the committee members just, you see that and you kind of think, oh, you know, it's going to be a fight.
Not a, not a, not a fight from a design standpoint, but just to make that building perform well when those certain decisions are made.
So, again, some simple guidance that can really be a touchstone for the design team to start to work in.
Albert Cat is a great architect.
And he, you know, said very nicely in one of our committee meetings that, you know, you as the, as the board, we as community members, we don't want to be the architect's worst nightmare.
Where we go and we micromanage and design the building for them.
Design by committee is a disaster.
What you want to do is you want to give the architects and the design team clear guidelines and clear goals.
And then really enable them to create inspired architecture.
And we feel like these kinds of simple guidelines will allow them to do that without micromanaging and actually design the building for each of the teams.
Just moving on now, going back up a level.
As I mentioned before, chips is a well-developed, well-rounded mature program.
You can see here that here's the mapping of the United States.
Chips programs are used in all of the lighter colored ones here around the whole country.
And the five manuals up there are all resources that are available.
The first one is on planning.
So as you start to plan to be capital campaign, the second one in purple is on design how to specifically design these buildings.
The third one is an operations and maintenance.
Rolling operations and every day kind of activities into a sustainable design and operations program.
The orange one there is about commissioning.
Making sure your buildings are up and running correctly and you're getting what you thought you got.
We're getting.
And the last one over there on the right is about portables.
There's a whole special part of the guideline for about relocatable classrooms.
You know, these guys, they know schools.
They know your budgets aren't like you're building on the Google campus, right?
And that portables are a part of our lives.
But there is a way to even do those buildings better.
And right.
And chips hasn't raised that.
Sure.
Something I haven't heard in any of the discussion of replacement of right now.
You know, it's sort of end of life issues.
If you were going to build a brand or an Russian view 40 years ago and anticipated 40 years later,
you might have to replace them.
It's a big difference between I can take this annex down and replace it versus I got to scrape the whole lot.
Or, you know, can I design essentially the floor to never have to be completely removed.
I can always replace modularly, et cetera.
Is there anything in this that says, well, here's how to design so that 40 years, 50 years, et cetera.
You can get your next school here at less cost than if you've got to just build those the whole thing.
Yeah, I'm gathering.
I mean, I would not expect that any current chips of building has been replaced.
Yeah.
Where we're not at that stage of this movement.
But as any of that discussion come up in your meetings as well.
Some maybe Danica can come and comment later on.
But, you know, there's always so many priorities to juggle.
That's one of, you know, 50 concerns.
There's almost like this big octopus we talked about in one of the meetings, you know, of concerns.
And although sure it makes sense to be able to want to think that long.
More short-term priorities almost always dominate the discussion, because they're just, you know, pressing in today's world.
But there's lots of lessons we can learn from buildings about flexible spaces.
You know, the most sustainable building is when you don't need to tear down and build a new,
but you can reuse and keep going.
Look at, you know, Cornell as an example of that.
Higher ceilings, more flexible spaces, larger classrooms that allow for different layouts.
Maybe these guidelines don't directly connect, but certainly they make better buildings.
And better buildings get used longer.
To give you just a little bit of a sentence of the chips criteria.
Again, I'm not going to go into lots of details, but again, there's kind of seven categories about integrated design, indoor environmental quality, fresh air, comfortable environments.
Energy use, of course, water efficiency, selecting your sites well, managing materials, choosing good materials, recycling during construction, and then finally operations.
Discoring is quite flexible. What happens is there's a bunch of criteria that I just talked about.
There are some prerequisites that are required.
The designers of this program said these things are so important, they must be in every program.
But it's just a small subset of the overall points you can get.
There's 250 possible points, which you can choose from for your project, and you get recognition at different levels.
So, for example, at 110 points for a new building, you get recognized as a chips.
Certified, you know, a chips designed building.
And you can see out of 250, it's only 110, so there's lots of flexibility.
You know, the architects in the room and probably you have some experience building.
One of the fundamental facts about buildings is that they're all different.
And there's no uniform solution that can be applied across all buildings.
So they've designed a very flexible system that can allow you to not worry about some points and focus more on other ones, just because that makes sense for the district.
There's elements of this program for our new schools.
There's elements of the program for existing school renovations, and there's, like I said, before elements for prefab modular type buildings.
The student from levels of chips recognition on the left, it says chips designed.
This is a voluntary program where the architects themselves, or the design team themselves, or maybe the construction team, kind of self-certify.
Yes, we got that point. Yes, we got that point. Yes, we got that point.
Or there's actually a higher level called chips verified, where you can have a third party do an independent review and verification of the points.
If you do the verification level, you get this nice plaque that helps you communicate to the community in a very clear message that you put your money where your mouth is and built a building that embodies these principles.
Chip's designed is a perfectly fine way to go, but it's our what they are. If the board chooses to go that direction, you can certainly go along way with high quality architects and good design teams.
Chip's verified gives you the plaque and helps, again, message to the community in a very clear way, what you've accomplished.
There is some cost to that, of course.
And what's nice is that this resolution that we're suggesting you consider tonight, you don't need to decide right now one way or the other.
In fact, every single project you could go chip's design or chips verified as appropriate.
Maybe the bigger projects you want to have a flagship be verified with the other ones you don't, that's completely up to you.
Simply adopting the resolution tonight doesn't bound you to one path or the other.
So the recommendation is that you should adopt a requirement for chips projects and then decide later on verified or designed on a project basis.
A couple of points in here that are worth mentioning, I think, the, especially the last one.
There are of course incentive programs in the state of California for hard performance buildings, especially savings by design, which is a
PG&E utility sponsored program that helps provide some funding for the design team and for the district.
If you do a high performance building and because PG&E and because chips was, you know, founded and didn't mention it before, but chips actually had its genesis south of market.
A child's elie is old office there. It's, it's basically from the Bay Area. This is, you know, grew up here about in 2002 it started.
So if you adopt chips, it just helps send a message to the other partners that you might find in the construction process, like the incentive programs to make that process more straightforward.
Just showing this implementation flow chart. They've got a lot of nice materials in this, in this, the chips resources.
And this is one diagram from their planning guide.
And you can see they kind of have the circle of going around and measure from policy to designing a program to actually doing individual projects and then finally going back and evaluating your success and circling around again.
It's an iterative process. All design is iterative as we work through these things.
And so what, where we are is up in the upper right up here, adopt, adopt, adopt board resolution.
So it's just the beginning of the journey really.
And this guidance throughout to take the program further.
I'm going to start to implement it in your building projects over time.
So that is the end. I'm happy to, oh, I guess there's one more. The last one here is to the recommendation is if you want to consider this adopt resolution.
We've put together a draft resolution for your consideration and review.
Drawing from resources that were available kind of a template that was on the chip's website, but we've
modified it pretty significantly for the Albany Unified School District values and community
to really try to represent what we feel it is the right thing to adopt.
So we'll be looking at the resolution a little later this evening. We'll take questions and comments right now.
Okay, so I noticed that in the six guidelines adopted by the committee, number six,
considering what we went through to get the bonds passed and the surprise this was all the way down at
number six, is appropriate in reasonable budgets. I didn't see anything in the chips presentation
talking about budget, noon, can you address that? Sure. As I mentioned before, every building is
different and the budget impacts are hard to quantify any kind of blanket way across different projects.
You know, I've been asked many, many times over my career as a practicing building engineer, what's that going to
cost? It's a very hard question to answer, which I know is not a very satisfactory response.
That becomes one of those inputs you need to provide, one of those boundaries you need to give to the
design team. With the right design team given these goals and given a budget, they should be able to give you
a building that matches. That's my job as a design team member to give you the building you want for the
budget you have and help you understand the trade-offs as the project design evolves.
So it's easy to say a little cost, two percent more, ten percent more, and there's been studies
because like you many people have asked that same question, they want a simple answer to a complex problem
and the studies when you look at them, some say that they cost no more and some will say they cost 10 percent more.
And it's because different design teams, different owners, different projects, different values,
end up resolving that question different ways. So if you work with your design teams and you say this is
the budget and these are our goals and you lay it out very clearly and strongly, that gives the design
team the tools, did it give you the building that makes sense? Alan, may I add? Please.
This is, I have other comments, but this is partially in response to Paul's question because I was also
on the committee and I think that all my fellow board members know that I'm a big cheap skate.
I ask a lot of questions about spending money carefully, particularly when we want the money primarily
to go to students and we don't have as much as we would like. However, I'm going to explain it very
simply because I don't know a lot about architecture and about buildings and the questions that I asked
or answered to my satisfaction to some of the, to summarize many of the answers that I got
because the building codes and many things are evolving and changing over time, they're actually
starting to many of them are reflecting the same chips standards already. So then in that sense,
you're not talking about an increased cost. In addition, it was explained to me that because it is the
mature program that Alan has described more and more different participants in the building
process have become very familiar with the process and therefore the cost for them to do these things
has come more in line with maybe regular construction because they know that that's the
direction that everything's going. So that was actually quite eye-opening for me and you know I'm
a big cheap skate. I asked many different ways about that. So that was quite satisfying to me.
Okay, Dan, Dan, do you have any of the comments on that as well with your experience?
We need you to come up and join. We have a board member who's doing this remote and so you have to really
speak into that. Charlie is joined us by phone from New Orleans. Okay, great. My name's Diana Hayton.
I was on the integrated design sustainable design committee too. I would just concur with what you both said
and I thought Pat, you put a very common sense answer together there. All of the features of
energy efficiency, water efficiency, treatment of storm water materials and how you specify materials
that create a healthy environment for kids that don't off gas, et cetera. All of that is currently
built into the code and we are currently getting ready for the 2016 code which you know is coming out soon.
So I really think that just achieving chips certification should not be an ad. We can talk about it more
when we look at the resolution but that's my opinion. So my understanding is we're sure we're clear
and they're going to take a question from Charlie. The requirements now at the State Office of Architects
is very getting closer and closer and closer to chips anyway so that we would be required to
do many of these things that that chips requires as well. Charlie, do you have a question?
Okay, am I on? You are on? All right, thank you. I apologize if this is a repeat.
I'm having a bit of a trouble with a week-wide fight here and okay, I'm getting some feedback to it.
It's going to keep talking. Yes. I think Charlie, what you need to do is turn down your computer.
I just turned off the audio on the computer or video sheet, which was out of sync with
a virtual SMS. Anyway, I just wanted to say personal thank you to the committee for all the work
that you did. I learned a lot from all of you. So thank you for the time that you put in.
You can be a question or comment I had with in relation to costs. I think it's my understanding that chips
is not so much the, it's not so much a set of item by item requirements that would add one cost after another.
The rather, it's a kind of a framework and within that broad framework, it would give the
architects the flexibility to allow the board to determine what resources are available and then to
actually direct those whatever that whatever our budget is, whatever the resources that we have
to work with my team, we can direct those resources to whatever we think are the highest priority items within
the chips kind of framework. Is that a correct understanding? Yes, that's a good, that's a good
way to put it. There's quite a lot of flexibility in the program. And so you can shift priorities
as needed to steal a couple of ships, but meet budgets and design good buildings.
Okay, thank you. And if I could just add one of the trips, so one of the processes that we put into
place for each of the projects is something that will be touched on with the high school design
presentation next, but essentially at each phase of the project we have cost estimates done to ensure
that what is being talked about and incorporated and planned is in line with the budget and then if not,
what are our options in order to bring it back to budget? And then when we, if we ultimately go out
to receive formal bits for construction, that'll be another time where we can see where are we with our
budget and what either added features or what cost savings are able to be accomplished because of
those cost estimates. And so there are many points throughout the process where we're
ensuring that we're on budget and when we're not then we're going back to the design team to really
look at options so that they're also not blindsided with, well I thought I really wanted this and
after the fact going back to them saying, I'm sorry we didn't have enough money for it, but
you know here's a new building that's already there. So there's several points along the way to ensure that
we're on budget and responsible with taxpayer dollars. Thank you. I just wanted to say the one thing
and then one of the item briefly, Charlie is always so gracious, he always beats me to the
bunch of us also thinking about wanting to acknowledge and to think the community members already mentioned,
including Alan and Diana for giving their time, but we also had our city council member Nick Pilch
participate quite a bit. I thought it was very useful to have the staff members including and I apologize
if I forgot someone. Don Allbright was very useful because he's the facilities person and we had
Deborah Brill, Terry Georgeson, Alexia Richie, Robin Cooper and at least some other people those
so good to have the principles and all that. And I would just say that when Charlie and I were there,
we both learned so much and we feel very fortunate to live in a community of such civic-minded
professionals and everyone who are willing to give their time. The one other item I would say is that
you know, I tend to be a cheap skate and think a lot about things and I learned a lot about this, but I actually remember
quite distinctly, many of you know, Ellen Hershey, she has supported many of our personal taxes and
the schools for a long time although she no longer has her children are grown. So she no longer has children
and she said I don't know if I think it was at one of the facilities meetings that when her grandchildren grow
she wants them to have a nice world to live in and she wanted us to put everything we could into
energy saving and she was Nick with love her because she was very much a supporter of net zero and so
I you know I think about her as one of our constituents someone with no one in the schools every time I
think about this project and the goals involved with it. And thanks to you and thanks to Charlie
participating and putting a lot into it for the one meeting I attended you really had a lot to say and
facilitate the conversation. It was our pleasure by the way Paul, I actually helped type out that list I think
and I just wanted to clarify except we're safe and accessible which I thought we felt was obviously
fundamental. I'm very sure we have a discussion that the rest were there were a list but not necessarily in
private case use bullets not numbers. All right just the clarification.
Any other questions or comments from the board? I'm just a comment on the general discussion of
facilities and all that you know we we we talk about I'm absolutely prepared to believe that building to
these sorts of guidelines and standards results in say lower cost buildings. I really love to know by how much. So
maybe in a future discussion on facilities we could see something like say here is the past years operational
cost of Marin what we pay PG&E what we pay for this that the other and and to be able to look at
and say well we are anticipating 50% less or zero cost because we will have solar and net net will come out
zero just to know if this is 2% of what we're going to expect to spend and in the infrastructure as is 10% is the
maintenance tail a huge thing where anything we do could have a great net impact on the road or we dancing around the margins.
So it might be really nice to see something like that when we have a discussion you know when I hear the phrase it'll save us money
and operations over the longer run. Well how much I'd love to see those numbers.
I think the the the chips framework is it's more about creating a high quality
learning environment that is sustainable versus reducing energy usage or water usage or or or just resources.
There we can provide information about how much usage the current buildings use for various resources and then we can provide an estimate on what
A projection of what the new buildings could be, but then it's, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see.
So for instance, so for elementary for, for the schools, with the classrooms, there's a difference between incorporating natural ventilation and fans versus just incorporating a HVAC system.
And then what the differences are there and some of it could be utility usage, but then others could just be like unquantifiable improvements in the learning environment.
Let's see.
There is a, will be some payback and we know that because of, because of what we're doing for sustainability.
Well, we expect there to be, but I think one of the comments that I heard from previous discussions were, we want to increase the usage of these facilities so that they're more than, you know, then classrooms,
and then they're used by the community as well. And so if they're, if the usage of those facilities are more than what they are now, then it would be using more resources.
And so we may not be able to show the new building is using less energy, but we would be able to show that it is more efficient in the use of resources.
Yeah, if I could just offer an anecdote along those lines, I've done this, you know, a few years.
We've designed these buildings, we do energy models, we predict how much energy a building's going to use, and then oftentimes we'll go back and measure it later on.
And it's ironic, but sometimes the greenest buildings are the ones where we miss it the most, and it's because they're great buildings.
And instead of just everyone wanting to go home at five, they hang around longer, and they get used in the evening, and they get used on the weekends.
So what you end up with is maybe not necessarily lower utility bills, but you get much higher use, much more value out of the building.
So energy, I mean, I'm an energy guy, I've been energy guy in my whole life, that's why I do what I do.
But energy in the end is just one measure of the value that a building creates.
And in some ways, you want them to use more energy, because that means they're being used more.
Of course, you know, being responsible at how you source the energy and using clean energy if source, we have many options in today's world.
But just, you know, getting your energy down utility bills down isn't necessarily the only goal, even though that is one financial benefit.
You know, maybe you get bigger risks, because you can rent, I don't know how you use it, but there's dimensions there too.
I mean, I think about, for example, solar energy.
And if we put enough panels on a roof, then no matter what the use is, you know, when I put my solar panels on, my usage actually has gone up, because I feel better about using electricity, but it will pay for itself after nine years.
So that was the plan, and apparently I'm ahead of the game.
So I'm going to save money, but so if we put the right sustainable things on the, there should be a payback anyway.
And just one more thought along this line.
So we had a presentation this past year from Ed Set on replacing light bulbs and Albany High.
And I mean, maybe the energy use of the current and projected ocean use school might be a big fat target for somebody to do a research project.
Give the whole class doing that everything from auditing what comes to us from PG&E to putting sensors out and actually measuring heat, temperature, consumption, et cetera.
Yeah, and I recognize that what we may know about Iran is a big fat number called here's what PG&E told us all of Iran is.
You can't say, well, these four new portables over here are consuming this percentage of it.
I understand it, but it'd be nice to have something better than a guess that, well, if we replace portables within organic building, it'll be cheaper to maintain.
I hope so.
I'd love to see the numbers that say it's cheaper this much or this much.
I'd like to comment on that that, you know, I'm all in favor of decreasing operating costs and it sounds like, you know, this will do that.
I think it's to some extent playing the game of if we put this on, what does this cost and what will it save us in operating costs?
Doesn't really make sense because for one thing, it's not what did this cost, it's the differential and what this cost from what you would have done otherwise.
And then we have to remember that we're paying for this with borrowed money that's being paid back over time with tax money.
So if we paid $10,000 for something by the time it's paid off, it'll be $20,000.
And I don't know how you factor that in to the operating costs.
So I think just.
It makes sense that if you use photovoltaics, you're paying less for electricity.
But you also, there's also the cost of putting the panels on the roof.
And at some point, you're probably just wasting your time to try to figure out exactly what the payback period is for that.
I think I'll be.
I just want to last thing that it just reminded me so.
We attended a workshop at the Berkeley Library.
We was at the North Berkeley Library of camera.
But it was one of the first net zero public buildings in California.
And it had all these systems in place to ensure that it's using.
You know, it's as sustainable as possible.
But then when they were going through the presentation and having the discussion.
They realized that some of those systems that are such that just the automatic were turned off because it impacted the use of those facilities.
And so because of that, the calculation that showed it's.
The grants building ever is not really true because the operations of it didn't really match.
The parameters that were put into place to create that calculation.
Interesting.
That's North.
North Berkeley branch.
In our committee meetings, we address the same issue.
We can definitely vouch for this.
And again, again, you know, the.
The top of the list over here.
Or the number two, you know, high quality learning environments.
We all.
Rallyed around the fact that this kind of a program will create the best.
Learning environments for students and for teachers and teaching environments for teachers.
And that in the end is the most important factor.
Although, of course, there are things like energy use and operating costs and maintenance and everything else.
It's an important.
But, whatever you do in complex project like this, you're always going to end up in.
Budget priority balances.
And we all wanted to and I think it's even part of the resolution that we understood that the most important element is to create high quality learning environments.
And that's what this.
Chips program will help accomplish more than anything else.
I think that's what we're going to see next in our agenda is what we're thinking about for the high schools.
And it's all factored in charts and diagrams and everything.
Any other comments?
Nick?
Please.
Good evening.
I'm Nick Pelch, I'm your city council representative on this sustainability committee.
And thanks very much for giving me the opportunity to do that along with the other committee members.
I think it was an excellent thing to put into place.
And in fact, I'm hoping that you continue to keep this up in some form.
Maybe keeping the committee in place or some in some form revisiting this from time to time.
I think that would be wise.
I'm really happy that we landed on this, which is something really concrete.
I think that we could have gone in a bunch of different directions and not ended up with much at all or maybe pages of discussion,
but this is I think something very concrete that you can choose to implement and choose to vote on and adopt as a school district.
And I hope that you do and I really appreciate the work of Allen having putting the presentation together.
And the other members of the committee who worked on the resolution and that to me was quite something to see these volunteers step up and do that.
So you have something really really well formed in front of you to consider and to vote on.
I think that as a member of those that I do have a pension for net zero.
But I do also acknowledge that it is a goal right now that the state has and that the state architect is taking up.
But I think landing where we did the committee landed on having a goal of net zero ready is is the place to be because I think we need to respond to both the cities, climb action goals and what's coming down the line from the division state architects from the state school.
And I also would I thought that Allen suggested that you take.
You consider the verification process for chips very carefully is a good one.
I think we we had a lot of discussion about how do we avoid the mistakes that might have taken place in some of the other schools and having a third party come in and verify that you know the chips has been followed.
I think is an excellent way to help prevent those sort of errors and so I would support that in your resolution.
I think we highly recommend that it's not required but we highly recommend that you do that third party verification.
And finally speaking to the cost aspect I think that you know one tendency that people can have is to try to build.
The biggest bang for the buck the most you can get out out of the money that we now thanks to the voters have or you have to to spend.
Couple of caveats just kind of echoing some of the other things that said that is that I think one of the conclusions of this committee is our hope for the school district is that to have that these new schools have great integrated design.
You know not only do they address sustainability and you know the energy aspects but that all is a whole and I think chips you know helps to to figure out how to do that.
But we want I think the community and the committee expect there to be.
These these new facilities to be facilities that we can really look up to and be proud of as a school district as a community.
And you know it could just getting the biggest thing for your money of course is not the way to do that.
And I personally believe that there can be a greater cost to choosing you know cheaper design and materials not that anyone's suggesting that.
As maintenance costs down the line can you can just trump any any any savings so.
You know giving some thoughts to using the the best the state of the art there or the.
Best materials and practices as as as exemplified in the best current best practices and as as.
As as noted by chips it is definitely the way to go and I personally think that.
You are to look at reducing operational costs and I just you know getting closer to net zero as possible I think I personally believe is going to be a.
I big way you can do that so thank you.
Thank you.
Are we ready to move on.
Okay.
Thank you once again.
Our next item is the opening high school class where addition design update.
Thank you.
Presvers one trustees this is the review and discussion item on the update from gold Evans regarding the Albany high school classroom addition design team in turn this over to Alan Garney.
Thank you superintendent.
As gold Evans is coming up to present I'll just provide a brief background about the process and so.
This project came about after the development of the facilities master plan because.
Assumptions in the facilities master plan.
I'm going to incorporate the growth that is projected and currently projected with the city of Albany twenty thirty five general plan.
And so one of the things that we want to do is.
After we review those.
In role as projections and growth projections we wanted to provide flexibility for the high school campus as well as the school district so that.
As growth does come to fruition we want to.
Be proactive instead of reactive. And it would be very difficult to add portables to the high school campus with the current layout.
And so this project came about through the discussions of the San Gabriel Design Committee, where this option about a high school, about a,
having at the high school on top of the amphitheater was looked at as a strong possibility.
And so in the spring, the board proved agreement with school devins in order to research this further.
And so we have Bob Baum from school devins to present on the high school classroom edition.
Okay? So again, I'm Bob Baum. I'm principal with school devins.
And we're lucky at our office of school devins because we, 25 people in three of them are residents of Albany.
So we only hire Albany.
So one of them is here at tonight, B.K. Kim in the audience. And he's a, he's a project architect.
And one of the others is Lauren Moss, who, who really, sorry not to be able to be here tonight, the longstanding family plans.
But, but she has been leading the project. She's the lead architect on the project.
I'll do my best to stand in for her tonight. So I'll take you through this as best I can.
We've been engaged in a, in a collaborative process.
And we've had five stakeholder meetings.
And we're here tonight for the meeting with to present to the board.
And we have a final presentation and our documents do in, in August.
So process is, is moving along.
But, as in all of our projects, the, the, the beginning is to, is to work collaboratively with, with the group.
The community, the parents, the staff, the teachers, and, and, and developed the design.
So this is well.
I think well grounded in that process.
So we've done a lot of work in, you know, what's been called 21st century learning.
And I think that has helped to inform this process.
And just to go through some of the concepts and discussions that happened with the, with the groups.
And, and, and, and also to show you some examples of, of inspirational spaces, some by us, some by others.
These are learning centers that were developed in milk that we designed in milpetus.
And it was all about creating space for, you know, one-on-one learning with a computer, small groups, project-based,
maker-type work. So we, the, that's been one of the principles here to create those kinds of spaces.
And then the notion of active learning classrooms and, and there, you know, we're still using a module here that makes sense as a classroom,
but it's, it's, is some of it is about how the furniture is used and there's presentation equipment on the, you know,
in whiteboards on the walls and flexible arrangements of tables and chairs.
And, and again, all of it in the service of, you know, the fact that the, the teacher is less, the source of the information,
but it's more of the sort of mentor and coach and, and helping the students learn, and, and, and, and sort of process that information.
So, trying to create those kinds of spaces.
This notion came up, the sort of hybrid social and academic space and, and we see this a lot,
even, especially on the high school level, and it, it begins to, to borrow a little bit even from the community college model,
where we try to engage the students and, you know, we want students to spend time in these facilities.
You were just kind of talking about that. If we, if we do this right, we get more use out of these buildings.
And, and, and I think, you know, the notion that the, the student wants to be there, where there are mentors and, and counselors,
and there are, you know, other students and people to collaborate with is, is all, what we want to create.
And, again, another example of active learning classrooms and how they're utilized.
And then the notion of art and maker spaces and more and more, we know that that's a way, you know,
learning by doing, the, the more engaged students are in making things and doing things, even in our digital world.
The, you know, the better they learn and the better they're equipped when they go on to higher education and to go out into the world to participate.
So, so this is sort of the, the, the, the image, if you will, the vision of, of the kind of spaces we want to create,
specifically, there were principles that were, were arrived at during the meetings.
And, some of this is, is a little bit repetitive, what I just showed you in the notion of the maker space, the way the, this new pedagogy and the curriculum and the spaces go together.
The sustainability that I really enjoy listening to that conversation, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, what I've always, what I've enjoyed a lot about sustainability is, yes,
it's about saving energy and it's about building out of materials that, you know, health are, are sustainable in the selection of materials.
But I really love the notion that we're creating a healthier environment, right, and more natural ventilation and more natural lighting and, you know, and you know,
and you know, the more, you know, that the indoor outdoor connection, you know, California and Northern California, this is, you know, this is such a wonderful part of the way we live that, so I think the health environment to me is, is a really important thing.
The notion of a student hub and a, and a sort of student centric place, and as I get into the way we've designed the space, I'll talk a little bit more about that.
And as I said before, the community and after school usage, you know, to the, not 24 hours a day, but facility, let's say, 14, 16 hours a day that the community is getting benefit from.
And on the left side here, this is important, the flexibility notion and adaptability and, and it was, you know, in this process as much as we've looked specifically at programmatic elements that I'll talk about.
There was an overview in a guideline that we had to create flexible space and, you know, that, you know, if the community's going to make this investment spend the money, it's important to be able to.
And, you know, use it in a number of different ways as, as things change and as the needs change, so that's an important thing.
And then architectural aesthetics.
I think this is, is important, you know, in terms of the functional parts, but I think we want to create a space that's visually appealing and, and, you know, people want to be there, right?
And I think you can create a new feeling and, you know, of course, this is what we do, but we believe that, you know, the kind of environments we create if they're, if they're appealing and people want to be there and, you know, that, and if they, if they have a freshness to them and encourage people to, to look at things in new ways.
So, I didn't want to read all of these, but that's sort of the basic ideas of, you know, that came out.
And then just back on sustainability and really this notion that, you know, the goals were identified and, and they, these healthy things, natural lighting, natural ventilation,
net zero ready.
So, that's, that's important.
And a well-insulated building, one of the things we know is that we save energy.
And one of the ways, the, one of the best ways we save energy is to build a building well, and, and they get insulated, right?
And so, you know, it's, it's one thing to, to produce energy and use it, or have mechanical equipment that's efficient, but if we make a building that's by its nature energy efficient, that's really important, you know.
We heard about noise earlier, and I know those are fans on the ceiling.
Right. So, this, these fans...
These are the cards to me when we actually talking about it in the meetings.
Right. So, these fans are different than, you know, the old, they're not like these fans, which,
which run very, they're quick, you know, they're fast, and they make some, I haven't heard these, but imagine they make some noise.
These fans, they have a funny name that I probably shouldn't say, but they're big, something fans.
And they're, they're like 10, 12 feet in diameter, and they move very, very slowly.
And the notion is that they, that slow movement, gets just enough movement to the air to, to make it more comfortable.
And, and, and, and it allows us to, create a more comfortable environment by moving the air rather than having to cool it more.
So, they're not actually noisy.
Right.
It's a brand name. So, I guess it's okay, right?
They have a ties in the Sunday Times.
Exactly. Right.
And, and we've installed them, and they, they truly work and, and they're, um, it, it's, it's a good idea.
Um, if I could just add...
Oh, sorry, if I could just add...
Uh, one of the interesting things that I learned was, um, with fans and natural ventilation, um,
um, an environment that has the same temperature as an environment that doesn't have air movement,
can feel hotter if there's no air movement.
And so, just the simple, um, addition of moving air will, um, make it more comfortable.
And, it wouldn't trigger the feeling or the need to add coolant to the environment or, you know, pay for our HAC and you
such things like that.
All right. So, anyway, that's, that's the type of fan.
Um, so programming and design approach should just sort of filtering some of those concepts together.
And this is, this is an overlay that we often use, which I, which I think is helps us to visualize the idea
of this, uh, and, and, and, and interestingly, it comes from the, some of the notions of retail experience.
And it's the five E's and it's, you know, how do you, you know, what's the entry experience?
How do you entice people into the space?
What's the entry experience?
What's the engagement?
The more we can engage people, the, you know, together, the more they learn.
Better they learn, you know, what's the exit experience?
What do you see when you leave?
And, and then, you know, how do we extend that?
And some of that is to do with, you know, you know, you know, even social media and all those kinds of things to, to, to, to, to make that experience a holistic thing.
And, and, and so, getting a little bit out of architecture, but it certainly has the architectural component.
And so, we looked at the, in looking at the site, we looked at, you know, how, how people would enter this space, you know,
you know, what their experience would be like in the space, what it's like to leave this space and, you know, how do we build on that?
We did the more, you know, sort of regular work of programming, which is to determine, you know, what the spaces are, how big the building would be, what the, you know, what are the adjacencies that makes sense?
And, you know, so we identified, uh, essentially five learning spaces.
One of them slightly larger than the others, a design build lab, a computer lab, and then the sort of, the clinic space, the biomedical and notion of being, that being,
is a great opportunity being closer to the gym and athletic fields.
We, we put a lot of exterior circulation in its, it's to the efficiency.
It also contributes, frankly, to more natural ventilation and a more healthy environment.
And then there are some of these other sort of storage spaces, bicycle storage.
And we came out with a total program area, which is a little over 10,000 square feet.
And then I wanted to show you the talk about the site a little bit and how we thought about it, but I should just digress for just a moment before getting into this site.
There were some discussions about some alternative ways to create space and, you know, the multipurpose room, the little theater.
And, and I think the, the conclusion that was arrived, that was that there were, um,
neither of those is very efficient or effective way to add space.
They either resulted in a lot of good space, nor did they, where they inexpensive, right?
And, you know, part of that is, is DSA and, you know, when we do remodels being never as simple as we hope it is in the first place.
So, that was not, you know, this is really more focused on, on the space that's available where the, where the amphitheater is currently.
And so, you know, we looked at, you know, we looked at things like where the sun is, where the prevailing winds are.
You know, how we enter the space, the relationship to, to, to the, to the, to the park, in this case, in the fields.
And, you know, let's see, I think the challenge is the worth talking about that there is a change in elevation across the courtyard of about six feet.
So, we tried to come up with a way to improve that situation, make it work better.
Um, it's, it's not a big site, uh, and it's got some constrictions that we had to deal with.
And then, uh, I'll show you where the existing utility easements are.
And then, obviously, there are disability access upgrades that we, their challenges, but there are also opportunities to, to make the campus.
More accessible campus. And this diagram shows you, I think, one of the more notable things about this diagram.
I think I have a larger version, right? Okay. So to the top of the page, which is east, we have two easements.
We have the East Bay Midewater line easement and the public sanitary sewer easement. So we can't build over those. So that forms a hard line on the east side.
And then, without getting too much into the detail on the other sides, where there are building code related separations between the various buildings that we had to follow.
So this sets the bounds of what we can do. And we came up with this design, which is an L shape building.
It's intended to be very welcoming from the entry from Kyurut Boulevard through the campus. It's also, as I'll show you, has a nice connection to the field side.
And you begin to get the idea in the landscaping here and I'll show this in three dimensions.
But taking that six foot transition of elevation and creating something that looks graceful and connects things together.
Right now, the building to the south, you know, is the Gen 7 building is, you know, it's got its own sort of raised terrace in front of it.
I think that tends to separate, of course, the amphitheater itself tends to separate things.
And then, of course, on the bottom of the page, on the west side, you know, we've got some sort of, we're trying to connect those grades together.
And I think this plan works pretty well. It's, you know, one of the keys is to be where we can transition at a slope, which is less than 120 or actually, you know, it's one in 21.
So that it doesn't look like a ramp. It's just a slope surface. Once we go sleeper, then 120, we've got to put all the handrails on and things like that.
So people in the wheelchair can traverse it, but it doesn't, it's, it's a more graceful looking kind of thing. So that's one of the principles that we've, we've used here.
There are a few steps in certain places, but there's a very easy movement.
As far as the building itself, you see the, on the, on the left side, two of the learning spaces, their size, nine hundred and sixty square feet, which is a standard classroom size.
The biomettespace in the corner a little bit bigger and the design build again bigger than that in the upper right.
And then through the kind of breezeway connection to the fields, that's where we've located the, the bathrooms, the toilet room.
So there's a men's and women's and then there's a unisex and an elevator of course, and there are two staircases, which are, of course, required.
And we've tried to put them in kind of graceful places.
So this diagram just to show, you know, I think it helps to understand that space and to see that, although we're taking up space.
I think the experience is going to be actually more spacious because the big element of the amphitheater is, you know, kind of in the way.
And, and I know that's a nice of a part to it, but you could see here that the, that the L shape courtyard that we're creating is really going to be much more welcoming.
As you come into the, to this area, the campus.
And again, went through this, I'm sorry, this is now you're looking at upstairs.
And we were, again, the circulation is outside and this sort of upper circulation area connects to an outdoor learning space.
Again, especially off the, you know, some of the other learning spaces, the idea of the ability to, again, as I said before, we have this wonderful climate.
And, you know, we've learned that being outside, you know, has has real cognitive benefits for her students.
And so we want to encourage that.
And then so this is a three-dimensional image, obviously, with the courtyard, I think you can get a sense here of how welcoming this is and engaging.
The, the roof form is oriented to the south, so that we can, as part of making it, net zero ready.
And PV panels can be added to, to get us to net zero or close to net zero.
Simple window pattern, but, but I'll show you how that works in terms of daylighting, but, but simple enough that it's reasonable to build.
From a cost point of view, and then, you know, a little bit of a fun trick with the stayer to make it more of an engaging element.
And, and it, it's done in a way that the path on the west side of the building is, and that's an important path because we have to maintain a 20-foot width back in there from a code point of view, and so that you can circulate underneath it.
But that's, you know, one of the more dramatic elements.
And then on the lower right facing south, you can see kind of a special feature where there's a small potential double height space to create some interest in that portion of the building.
And then, at, that, of course, was bird's eye level. Now, looking at it more from eye level.
You can see how the ground is sculpted to create, you know, a place, and the transitions are intended to be benches, as well as transitions in grade and mix of stairs and slope surfaces.
And I think you can see here that, because we've kept these slopes flat enough, you know, they're, they're, they're not off putting their, they're kind of welcoming the greenery trees, of course.
And, you know, I think it's, it's, the space is open to the south and to the west, and then California, and the northern California, the Bay Area, that's a really, really nice orientation, right?
And, you know, sunny, and, you know, things will grow there, I think this could be, you know, as it mature, especially, these, this will be a really kind of wonderful, wonderful place.
And I think it'll draw people out, it'll draw people through it, it'll connect people. So, I hope you agree.
And then, this is the side facing the, the fields, and I should point out that the materials are meant to be straightforward, but, but provide interest.
There are a mix of the, the light color is, is cement plaster, and the darker color is a, is a board siding, which is a cement board, so it's very durable.
And, you know, I, you know, I, final colors, I don't think, we're here, although, I think the notion was to keep it kind of background, and not compete, and let the, let the greenery show, let the setting show, and then in the middle on this elevation, you can see the notion that we have,
the notion that we have one feature all, and, and we like the idea, and it would be wonderful to make that a green wall.
I'm sure you've all seen examples of that, but it could be some other thing, it could be artwork, it could be, you know, as, as the ideas get developed, something else could happen there is also benches, you know, are created on that side.
And again, here's the, you can see, and what the shows is, the combination of the existing materials, and, and the, and the proposed, and I think, you know, the notion of a bit background and color, so that the greenery and some of the other stronger color elements can, can, can coexist.
And to touch on sustainability, this is a daylight analysis diagram, and, and the, let me see something here from the moment.
So this, what we do here is we measure the, the predicted, the predicted foot can the levels at table height, right, that's what we want to make sure we've got the, you know, the, enough light and not glare.
And so, um, what the shows in the way our window pattern works is that we have really, uh, very good, uh, the yellow is good.
And then the areas of blue are less, but those are where the, the toilet rooms and things are, so obviously the need for daylight, it's not as important, and, and I, I should say from experience when we've done this kind of analysis.
People tend not to turn the lights on. I mean, it's, you know, they, they really do, it works. We can get enough light in these rooms that, that, that people just, they're comfortable not turning the lights on.
And so, um, I think that's a, you know, really kind of encouraging.
Very similar to that earlier diagram of this shows what we're actually doing and from a ventilation point of view, we're, we're bringing in the cooler air down low on on the one side and then, um, the, uh, what they're, what we're suggesting here are these passive stacks and they don't have a fan to just a vertical stack.
And it, by natural ventilation, it tends to, the air comes in cooler low and is exhausted out, right up high.
So, um, it's, one of the things I love about the discussion of sustainability these days is so much of it is a return to the basic principles of how we, you know, people built buildings for hundreds and thousands of years of, you know, how you, how you create natural ventilation.
So, I think this is a modern interpretation of how that works and then the, the big fan is meant to, um, you know, exactly what Alan said, that lowers the need to cool the air, um, and it, you know, it's comfortable.
Um, and the, the potential PVs on the roof, um, so I think all that is, is very good, the, the, um, well, this is just highlighting the night purge.
You can actually, you know, in the Bay Area, in many places, if you, you can use the night area, the differential and temperature between the night area, um, so to, to, you can cool it at night to start off cooler in the morning.
Um, and then we do have a mechanical, you know, we are suggesting a mechanical system, but it's a very efficient system, as I said before, the key is to control the environment, so we're not wasting energy.
And, uh, it's a fairly simple technology that we're looking at, you know, and I think that's important to for maintenance, right?
And we've, we've had a lot of success in using smaller individual units rather than, you know, big units that are tougher to maintain, sorry Alan.
Um, that is, uh, one of the goals was just capturing, um, the great environment that we're in.
And, uh, using, uh, best practices to reduce the, uh, need to use HAC, but then still have the basic ability for the few days in the year, where it's going to be too unbearable or, or, or whatever, so that staff would have the option of turning it on.
But then, um, the expectation is that we're creating such a great environment that they wouldn't need to use it, um, yeah.
And, and I would just report that we've had success if we take these kinds of measures and, and, you know, it's not just ideas, but it actually can work, and especially in this climate.
So, but, yeah, I mean, on those days where it's unbearable, we want people to be able to teach and learn in these buildings.
So, um, chips, I enjoyed the presentation, and, uh, so, uh, this is in line with what was explained earlier, and basically, we've identified, uh,
142 points, uh, potentially, that could be achieved, 110 is what's required.
And, and we, you know, we do this, this is, this is how we start, basically, by targeting these things.
And, the point that was made earlier of that, you know, the fact that the codes have changed so much is really spot on, and, and the, you know, Cal Green now gets you, gets you a long way there, you know, in terms of being chips, uh,
meaning chips targets. Um, so, um, you know, there's, would obviously be worked to be done to play all these out, but it's, we've identified it, and,
I think it's pretty comfortable to get there. Again, 142 is, we've already targeted, um, with a minimum of 110 required.
We just finished, it took us a little while to get the actual verification, but in unclear elementary school, we just, this last year, uh,
we had the ceremony, which was a lot of fun, um, and the, um, the, the guys ahead of chips came out and,
a little recognition of, of doing a chips, or if I building, so, you know, whether you choose to do that on every building,
I mean, that's something you have to think about, but to target the chips design, I think is really smart, you know, and, and, uh, and dual, you know,
and, and so, and I think it makes a point, you know, which is great. Part of it is, there are things where you even have to, I don't know if you cover this,
just a little bit at the beginning, but, you know, there's even some graphics that are created that explain that, you know,
the chips features and the building, and I think those are important, because people walk through the building and they learn.
So, um, I think next steps are really for Alan to talk about, um, and obviously I can answer questions. I hope that's a pretty thorough understanding of where we are.
So, so take some questions.
Okay, mostly comments, so one you could address, somebody, I was on the committee, so I've heard
all the answers already, but somebody asked before the meeting in an email, why this building is not
sharing a wall with one of the other buildings. There's a problem with circulation in the
high school, for example, and not having enough stairs. This could help ameliorate that.
We've talked about bridges between the buildings. I know you would address that.
Do you want to just answer? Sure.
Well, I think part of the answer is that the way in which DSA applies the code can be really
challenging and sort of when you connect buildings, whether it's just sharing a wall or a bridge.
You increase the amount of requirements that anyone has to deal with and they drive up costs.
So, I think the conclusion that was arrived at was that this would be the most cost effective way to achieve your program.
We tried to be very mindful of where we could, certainly in the courtyard, making sure that there's clear paths and we can keep the opening.
But it's the code makes it more, you know, it can be just more costly when you put buildings together and trigger lots of other requirements.
So, I wasn't in that particular meetings. I don't know if other things were added, but that's my, you know, and I've talked a lot
quite a bit about it, and I wish it was simpler to do those kinds of things.
You know, we come in and make those kinds of suggestions often, but we just when we put that cold light of, you know, of budget, which is important, you know, they just become difficult to do.
Yeah, that's what I heard.
I'm going to think about that question, though, and hopefully, you know, having to deal with the nightmare of the staircases in the main building.
Hopefully, if we alleviate some of the overcrowding that should make it a little easier, these two transports.
It's still going to be an issue for the kids who have to run down one set of stairs, run across the campus, run up another set of stairs.
But, um, extra pee. Yeah, it's extra pee. I just had a couple of comments. One is that I love that overlay diagram.
I'm the one who insisted that it be included in this presentation, where it shows the old amphitheater and the new plan on top of each other.
It really makes you appreciate how even though this is a whole new building on the campus, there's going to be more space for the kids to hang out in.
Yeah. And I think it'll be a more attractive space.
We have a lot of kids leave the campus for lunch. It's an open campus.
And I could see more of them hanging out on campus because they'll have a nice place to hang out.
I really appreciate that about this design.
The other comment is that this specific building design incorporates that maker space, which is a very specific to a maker space.
It has a portion of it that's two stories. It has large garage-type doors, all the power and ventilation and so forth.
There would be needed for a maker space. And if we build this, we are committing ourselves to this program.
So I want the board to, you know, be aware that this is a new program in the high school that we've been talking about for a couple of years.
But this is a putting that money down and saying we are committed to building this program at the high school.
I like it. I'm in favor of it, but I don't want any of the board members to just let that pass by without being aware of it.
Yeah, so I noticed that the garage doors are opening, but it's opening at an area that's about great.
Is there any, I've built a car in my maker space. Can I get it out to the street?
Yeah, that, that, yes. I was asked and it looked from there.
Yeah, it's a little bit odd, but yes, you can get a truck up there.
And that's a relatively unattractive side of the campus. I mean, it's essentially a long alleyway north to south.
And there is no access to the field on that side really. So we could imagine doing various things with it.
So only having been on the board year and a half now, I don't know, say the prehistory of all any high and when things happen.
I know the art building is some future point, the little theater will be replaced by maybe a bigger theater, et cetera.
One of the obvious things I could see here, if it didn't really make sense, making this a join the main building.
The gen 7s could go away in favor of two story construction later that makes this a big U.
How much of a problem would that be if 10 years from now those gen 7s go away and an extension of this annex makes it a U.
Is that more easily done than putting a fly over to the old three story building?
Well, probably because this, I mean, I can't, you know, I don't know for sure.
I would think because this edit building is going to be built now, it will be.
And we can think about that also and if there are any aspects of it that need to be sort of intentionally thought about.
I think that's a great idea and I think that's probably the key that we can think about it now if that becomes something you want as a potential flexibility in the future and we can.
Please plan to add to some extent and eliminate some of the problems that we have now in connecting to the other buildings.
Flexibility and flexibility and flexibility.
We have a comment from New Orleans.
So let's get that one.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes.
I have to laugh if you have a comment from New Orleans.
I just wanted to again thank you for the presentation.
It's a fabulous design.
I really appreciate the thought that's gone into this particular design, especially since we've given you a space about the side of the postage stamp to work with.
The other comment I thought I would just add is that this presentation really follows very nicely the previous one because it gives us an illustration of what the ship's framework is.
This is a building that's great to have comfortable learning spaces, good learning spaces.
And so much that comes about by working through the ship's framework.
It's a lovely example that you provided us of what was discussed in a more general way in the previous presentation.
The one question I had before you was that there was something here in the ship's framework about the super addition energy option.
There's 20 points there.
I was curious what that is.
I'm sorry.
Can you completely hear that?
It's a 40 point item for a super efficient something on the other side.
Let me take a look.
You know what you're talking about?
Charlie was reading the chips to the scorecard.
Under under energy, I guess it's page 60.
Right.
Second item.
I can't read it as it's like 89 points or something total possible.
Yeah.
More superior energy performance of the purpose of energy performance.
Do you know exactly what that is?
Yes.
I wouldn't agree with that.
That was all about.
But I don't think Charlie that that's included in one of our design.
Right.
So I'm not 100% sure.
From my experience this is typically what we've taken.
So we're targeting what we think is quite doable.
This would probably take further study to determine if it's doable.
So we've taken as a target the eight points for energy performance, which means, you know,
maybe it's not quite superior, but it's good and advanced energy performance.
I'd have to get back to you with what we're required to get more of those points.
Do you think it's a kind of thing where you get, if you do this, you get 40.
It's probably some scoring of the energy performance and you might get, you know,
10 points or, you know, 6 points or 12 points depending on where you score.
What we're trying to do here is identify we can get to chips comfortably with what we know now.
So it isn't that that couldn't be pursued.
It's just that this is what we know now.
Okay Charlie.
Okay.
If you're interested, just know if it's on page 17 on the board packet.
That's PE1.1.
Yeah.
That's it.
Right.
I understood it.
Thank you.
I was addressing.
So I hope that was clear.
Yes.
All right.
Going back to the connection with the gen settings.
One of the items I was brought up during the discussion was when the pool was built and one
of the gen settings were installed.
If there was additional money to add more than four classrooms,
I believe that definitely would have been done.
But the money that was available was sufficient for the four classrooms.
And so that's what put a one story for classroom wing there.
And so one of the things that was incorporating the conversations was that we wanted to be very flexible with this space
because we recognize that on the campus this is really the last usable space on surface.
And so we want to make it flexible.
We want to make it adaptable to unknown changes from the future.
But then really maximize that space to tie in the various buildings so that it's not just this.
One building here and then a different building there.
And people could really see those differences of when they were installed or what we wanted to try to tie that whole campus together.
Any other comments questions?
I have a question.
Yes.
I was also on the design team.
I learned those the answer to this but we talked about all the wonderful.
I'm a cement space that's there that could be a skateboarders dream.
I was thinking.
And so one of the questions I had asked about was,
you know, how do you keep this beautiful architecture which by this very impressive.
And not have to put all those little metal pieces that could actually to track from the architect.
and Alan, they talked a little about soft cement or something.
Can you just talk a little about that?
I mean, thank you.
Or maybe you could talk more about that?
Not surfaces.
Soft surfaces to deter skateboarders.
Right.
There are a number of devices.
And there are those, even if we'd win and put some of those, I learned today it's
they're called, what are they called, skateboard prevention devices?
I was looking for some fan to your turn than that, but there are ones that can be more
of like an art piece or something like that.
So there were ways to do it.
Dan at an embarked errand San Francisco, there are those like little sea creatures, but
there are also more technology that allow us to create the surface of the concrete that's
not quite as preferred.
Seeing as how we want students and other folks to be able to sit there, you know, little
sea creatures can be uncomfortable to sit on, but I mean, you know, first-hand knowledge, the
amphitheater has been, it's famous in the Bay Area, it's famous in California actually, has a
skateboarders heaven, so we really don't want to repeat that.
I spent almost every afternoon for four years chasing skateboarders, it's not deep
fun.
Go on now.
So, so it looks like all of the rooms in this have an external exit.
If you were going to use this for after-hours community, et cetera, you've got the issue of only
opening up the room or rooms you want, as opposed to a room where you're going to use a classroom
in the main building, you've got the front door and then you've got people on the loose.
So I like that.
I don't know what plans we would have for 16 hour, 20 hour use would not, but it's nice to have
that option.
That's a good design.
Yeah.
Really happy with it.
Thank you.
Well, unfortunately Lauren's not here to hear more, but she and B.K. have done a great job, so you can pass
on the word.
We'll do.
Seeing no more comments.
Yes.
I was also on the high school design committee, and I also really appreciate this design.
It does everything we ask for in a very quiet, sensitive way.
It's a very difficult site to design a building for with the imposing high school building
on trees.
So I'm very happy and can support this project. As a community member, I want to say just a couple of things. One is that I would like to see our district do a really good job at trying to maximize the potential of our existing buildings, as well as building new buildings.
And in this particular case, the multipurpose room is an underutilized space, and I feel a sadness that we are putting that we're building this addition without addressing an underutilized space.
And there is a repeated refrain that DSA will, you know, the requirements that DSA will bring upon an existing building makes it impossible with our budget constraints.
Just ask that we return to this and really consider the reuse of our existing buildings when appropriate for our budget, because we're trying, that is a flexible space.
It's a flexible building and we want to repurpose it and reuse it. And that's exactly what we're trying to do with our new construction as well.
So let's not, I would advocate that we continue to investigate those options.
And then real specific about the design, there's three little tiny things that I would like to comment on. One is the overhang on the gymnasium building.
It is like a little stage on the gym and the building is forced to be clear of it by a certain distance.
To me, that overhang is just like the tower, the glass block tower is remnant of some big idea that the original architects had.
And here we are using it to govern where we locate the building.
We've talked about doing that as an alternate, including revisions to that overhang as an alternate and I would advocate for that.
The daylighting diagrams, I think that be great if the bridging documents can be a little bit more developed in that, because they were at 70 focandles.
So what we want to see is that they are hitting that 35 focandle mark, so that it's controlled lighting in the space.
So, and if we leave that up to the design build team, I don't know if we'll get what we're looking for, so that's probably the next step that Golden Evans will be going through is fine tuning that.
And then the last is the green wall idea, it looks great, I love it, but it would be great if that was vetted by the biology staff, so that we know that it will be a big part of the curriculum and maintained and really embraced by the community.
Thank you.
Diana, before you, can I just want to ask a question of clarification on your point about the multipurpose room?
So you're referring to that room that they eat in, right?
That's the one you're talking about.
Yes, that's all right.
The cafeteria.
The cafeteria, the thing.
Okay.
And so in your reference to it's being underutilized and trying to make it more used, were you talking then about the initial question,
and what it asked about actually a type of bridging, connecting another building with that, though I didn't understand how it's underutilized or what we were considering.
What we could do to make it, you know, more utilized in this context.
Right, so the team, the design team and committee with Golden Evans had a couple of meetings where we explored could it be used for the temporary offices.
Was it big enough could it be used for the makerspace because it's a two story space located right on the corner also great access for bringing in large objects and trucks and that kind of thing.
And it was originally designed that way as the shop apparently.
So it has a great affinity for that in its original design.
So we looked at that and then I think at some point, I missed that discussion.
The committee was decided it wasn't in the budget probably to pursue it.
Ellen could come in on that.
But I, I just, it's currently we don't need all of them all of that cafeteria for queueing when you get your food.
That's part of what it's used for long lines for them at the counters and then also for seating.
And then the other use is the dance studio.
Right.
So, but it's, it's not taking up the whole space and it, and it's not in my opinion, it's not the best place for dance.
I'd like to see them in their own studio if we have four to five classes of dance a day.
That's significant.
So.
Yeah, there was discussion of what could be done with that.
There was a lot of, at one point, a lot of people thought that it would be great to use that for the makerspace.
Since it was built as an auto shop and seemed a natural place for it.
But the teachers on the committee pushed back pretty strongly saying that that space is used a lot.
It's used pretty much all day long that there really is no place else to put the kids for lunch.
And that it's, you know, also used a lot as a dance studio.
We talked about maybe moving a dance studio in the new building and that it just never quite can't out.
And I'm not saying that it couldn't if people spent more time brainstorming and thinking and working on it.
But in that context in that committee.
People there just couldn't quite come to that within the budget.
I do agree that it's that space.
I think has a lot of potential.
We couldn't quite get there.
I wouldn't be opposed to it being looked at some more.
Originally the.
The kitchen was not here.
So the the being.
Yeah, that's part of the shop.
So that that's where those big doors are where things are delivered now for the kitchen.
Oh, sevens is where that.
It's next.
Yeah.
So I mean on the other side where the yeah.
Go on.
If I could just ask that.
A future for me.
I'm bringing an item to.
For gold Evans to look at maximizing the multipurpose room, just as far as.
Layout and options so that we can incorporate it into the.
And then it's not a.
And item that gets lost as things get moved forward.
And I mean, there's a lot of problems with that room.
Ventilation and all those kinds of things.
Mr. Council member.
I think so just a couple of quick comments on and actually I thought maybe.
Diana's going to mention the.
The two story window.
The issues the potential issues with solar gain.
I when you when I can include my comments.
You might want to if you want to speak to that.
And I've been interested also knowing what the secure bike storage is.
That's very very.
Yeah, very interesting to me.
When I heard that there might be store a bike there.
I thought bike racks for there not not a good idea.
But if it's secure storage that could be a cage or something.
That could be great.
And it is I do agree it's a great design.
And I was very happy to see the roof pitch.
The PV ready.
And so I ask you why not do PV.
You know, if we can afford it.
Well.
And I think the secure bike storage is bike racks with bulls.
We can have more discussion on it.
It's preliminary.
Should I address those questions.
Yeah, so we get on.
The the secure bike storage is envisioned as a fence caged area.
I think there might be some backstory to that I don't know.
So that's what it is.
It's a place to secure bikes.
And then in this drawing.
We're showing is a series of horizontal elements that would shade that window.
And and that's a on a south facing window.
That's a pretty common way to do it because it blocks the high sun and the summer and
let's the the low sun in the winter which can be a good thing.
I can only say sort of artistic license in that drawing.
And it's not it's not yet precisely laid out.
You'll be more discussion.
We'll see you then.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome for all the work and thank everyone else.
Yeah, and thank you for the opportunity to work with you guys.
Moving on.
And thank you, charter.
Okay.
Review an action resolution number 2015-16-20.
Sustainability and design and construction of high performance schools.
And I know we had a number of comments that you were reflecting on.
So.
Yeah, I'll just turn it over to this is a review and action item.
Thank you.
So it's another guys review an action in the agenda in the board pack up.
I'm a secondly put review and discussion, but it's.
Really brought for review an action.
This is a resolution that was developed.
With the sustainability integrated design committee.
Utilizing the chance that chips template.
But then updating it and incorporating all the new values.
In to the resolution.
This resolution is designed to.
Trying to encourage the participation in chips.
With the flexibility of.
Maybe utilizing it for.
Some projects, but then others that are maybe small and scale or.
Not feasible for whatever reason.
The board would have that ability to.
To make that determination.
And it incorporates.
It's encouraging that.
Any facility project we do is.
In line with the.
City of Albany general plan that was developed as well as the.
Climate action plan and the goals.
And achievements that are embedded there.
As well as just being.
As well as incorporating.
Systems and routine.
Updates to the board so that.
You know, sustainability and efficiency resource efficiency is.
Is a is a.
Always up the forefront for for for Albany.
And so with that.
You know, we could open up.
Any questions or.
So we have some modifications.
I think.
Okay. Well, one.
Alan responded to.
The second whereas.
It's not really a full sentence.
You had.
Rewarding for that one that was fine.
They all been a unified school district work closely together.
It's not.
So that is a part of your medical.
It's you.
And to be transparent.
I plagiarized from the city of Albany general plan.
It's led.
So it's fine in be city of Albany plant because it was referencing the city's.
Perspective in working with.
The school district.
And it didn't work in the city it didn't work as far as.
as the school district working closely together.
So you started reworking for this, which was,
it's it up one, which is, it's says that the school,
we should get that up on the screen.
And because we want to make sure we have the exact wording
that we're going to vote on it.
I have an email.
The Albany Unified School District, the City of Albany,
and community will work closely together.
Right.
That's good.
Work goes, yes, good.
OK.
That's fine.
My other comment, this is a little bit more complicated.
That's not what I'm going to do.
Oh, yeah, well.
I saw a couple of those, but I've gotten tired of it.
Anyway, on this, on the next page, I'm
under the results, there's a lot of results in this one.
Three up from the bottom.
Resolved further that the Board of Education
directs staff during the design phase of the remaining project,
in the current construction and modernization program,
and all such future projects to require architects and staff
to verify that their district projects
have met or exceeded the minimum requirements for CHIP certification
and report the scores for all of the CHIP categories
that strongly recommends project participation.
I have a problem with that resolved,
because there's no mention of any bounds.
There's no mention of budget.
So, for example, 10 years from now, we decided to do a modern,
you know, a minor modernization program at Cornell School,
we would be required by this resolution
to bring the whole school up to CHIP's code,
which I don't think is probably ever going to be in our budget.
So, I just need to have something in here that
put some bounds on this, that the recognizes that there are budget.
Constance, in some cases, you know, you could just take out the required, take out the required, the Board of Education, direct staff during design phase,
modernization to ask architects, to direct architects, you know, something less than require, request, right?
You know, just something that gives us a little bit of wiggle room if it's just going to be beyond our budget to do this.
Do you want to include the escape clause or the board can decide if it is not likely to be finished?
If feasible to board may weigh the weight of this required?
Yeah, that would be fine to any.
You know, I'm sorry, usually I suggest specific wording, but I kind of wanted to leave it up to the people who worked on this to come up with wording for that, but I just really can't require every modernization program in the district.
To meet chip certification, every time, knowing what I know now.
There's a lot of sense to me.
I'm thinking the same.
Sometimes I know in other items, you've used the wording to the extent possible.
Yeah.
Maybe we could use some kind of language there.
That's an easy way out.
So in all of the teacher projects.
To the extent.
To require to the extent.
We'll try to determine or exceed it.
That's a word to record.
I think if you just see to the extent possible, it doesn't limit it to just fiscal.
It would be inclusive, but what would happen if you want to be possible is a little bit, you know, because you're well, it's possible.
You know, it may cost more than, you know, but it's possible, so.
Well, we're designing this for the board that isn't us.
Yes.
You're right.
And I think if you say where unless it's not possible, you're giving too much wiggle room.
Whereas you put it in an actual, you will do this.
Unless the board says it is was in, well, that's not really in the budget.
I couldn't put it, put it something that says unless the board directs otherwise.
I have a suggestion since Paul brought out that the people who wrote this should.
Should answer this question.
Maybe we can send that back and bring it back as a consent item at our next meeting.
That would be fine, you know.
Instead of us hammering it out now.
So.
Coming up with.
So let's clarify.
So if it's a consent item, it means that it's usually going to be something that's just accepted by us.
Right.
And we can pull it forward.
We can send it.
Right.
But but usually when it's on the consent, the assumption is that it is.
And I know that is.
Well, let's say who is going to do it.
Who's.
It's you and Charlie.
Okay.
So.
You start.
It's Charlie still with us.
I think so.
Yeah.
I am here actually.
And I do have a suggestion.
I'd like to.
Okay.
I.
I definitely hear what you're saying.
And I.
I would concur.
The board wishes to.
Have some revisions made and then bring it back to the consent calendar.
I'm fine with that.
I think maybe the language you're looking for could be.
Instead of saying.
To require architects and staff to verify that.
The language you're looking for might be.
To get a require or to request architects and staff to need.
And then.
And then it's just the question of.
We're asking them to determine.
Basically, chip scores and report the scores.
And and and that's all that's that's what we're asking.
I.
Charlie.
Maybe.
You can rework this and maybe we'll bring it back.
As a action item.
You know, you know, Charlie that that.
I answered my objection, but might be a little bit too weak because we want them.
Not just to determine if but to attempt to do it.
That.
How can I.
I think.
Just a little bit.
I think that might have an answer here.
I actually I have a suggestion.
Yes.
Instead of saying to take the part where it says that the Board of Education direct staff.
Take that piece out.
And it would be resolved further during the design phase of the remaining projects in the current and finish that sentence.
And then just tag in unless the Board of Education direct direct staff.
Otherwise.
Okay.
So the the Board of Education come during the design phase of the remaining projects in the current construction
Modernization program also for the project.
So I would take out the wording that the Board of Education direct staff.
Take that out.
No, there's a problem in there because it doesn't.
The problem.
The problem right now is that you don't have your computer set up so we can see across now.
I.
I have a suggestion.
It's just not and it's not just because I'm trying to avoid work.
I think that I think Paul, you know, has some strong feelings about the wording and he works very well with Charlie who seems to have some ideas.
So how about they form a little subcommittee to bring us back.
I trust them in the conversations that we've had to to to bring back language, which would.
I, yes, that I'd be happy with that.
And I think Val has a germ of an idea here.
No, I'm not I'm not I'm a green was with Pat that.
Yeah, no, but I think.
I think I could work with what you just suggested.
So.
What?
You could really work together.
Okay.
Wait a minute.
I'm not.
Okay.
I'm not.
Okay.
No, I don't.
I don't know if Charlie has agreed.
He was very sorry.
Okay.
Charlie.
Give me your salary for the next three.
So the agreement Charlie would be that you and Paul would work on the language and we would bring it back.
On consent at our first August meeting.
It would not be ready for the July meeting because we'd have to post the agenda in two days.
Right.
Give that a point.
But.
And then just to let the people know who have sat through this meeting to support this.
I think.
The other board members can contradict me if if if if I am.
Miss speaking, but I think.
Everyone appreciates the resolution.
The support it would just want wanting to be very careful in the language because it.
It's going to direct future board members who aren't us and so we want to make sure that it's it's clear.
How strong.
That recommendation.
Yes.
Thank you.
And I agree.
I'd say I support the resolution.
It's just that one small tweak that I wanted to.
And I'll caution my my fellow board members to read it carefully because it becomes back and consent and any of us want to pull it.
I have to have to make sure we we've seen it.
I'll just jump in here there.
I just pulled up the resolutions online and what we had pulled from was chips resolution that mandate minimum certification, which is what we were recommending.
But there is a different template and it is the using chips as a resource and you know there were like 30 schools that took the mandate.
And there are only one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
They did it as a resource.
So we can look at that and maybe get some help from that language as well.
And I think the problem is with the current projects that we're looking at, you know, but in the future we don't even know if chips will exist and what's in me.
And they're getting something 10 or 20 years out.
Doesn't make sense.
Okay.
So we are putting that on our August agenda.
We put them to our gender committee.
And that brings us to second reading adopting more policy.
Sixty one, fifty two, placement in mathematics course.
I think this is actually the first reading.
I think it was.
Ah, table.
First reading.
No, we did talk about it.
We did read and talk about it.
And we do this week.
We put this on as a second read, but rather than put it on consent, it was decided that there would probably be additional discussion.
So we brought it back as an action item.
Because I had a lot of changes asked for the last time that didn't happen.
So I don't think we actually discussed it.
The resolution.
We talked about.
Math placement, but I don't think we talked about the actual board policy.
We're having.
Oh, I said it's a good distinction.
I might be right.
There's no rush to pass this.
Where is there?
We have a statement.
We don't really need to pass this.
We need to pass this.
Because the state says that it will just be passed.
Yeah.
So let me just talk a little bit of introduction here.
If I could get.
It's called.
We can't pass it unless we are agreed to all the language.
Let's take.
Anything.
Okay.
So the.
No.
I'm going to work.
Can we put this up?
It's going to be a little bigger because.
It's a little plus in.
We're not going to stay on this document for for the duration of the meeting.
I just want to call attention to the backup.
So that I can reintroduce since there has been time that is passed.
Thank you.
So.
On October 5th, the governor approved Senate bill 359.
The California mathematics placement act.
The legislation requires governing boards that serve pupils entering grade nine.
To adopt a fair objective and transparent mathematics placement policy.
Before the beginning of the 1617 school year.
At May 10th, school board meeting.
The Board of Education engaged in a robust discussion about the new mathematics placement policy.
And recommended revisions to ensure that the policy reflects the district's values related to equity for students and all grade levels.
Furthermore, the board recognized the value for district staff to engage in more than.
In more substantial and authentic conversations about equity and bias rather than simply receiving training.
Those were one of the highlighted topics.
And during that time, I took notes on a Microsoft board document, which I'll now transfer up to my screen.
That reflect the revisions that were suggested.
Both during that meeting and afterwards from board members who submitted questions and responses.
Okay, can I add a little bit more background here?
Because there was a question.
The last time this was on.
The agenda when we I'm pretty sure did not actually discuss it.
About why there's all this stuff in here about elementary grades.
When the actual mandate is to write a policy about placement of math courses in the second years.
And the reason is because I asked for it.
And the reason I asked for it is because I think that if you're only looking at math placement in the second areas, you're way too late to fix the problem.
And so we don't have the kids before they start school, which is where you really want to attack it.
But we can at least start in the elementary grades addressing the problem.
So I wanted our policy to go well beyond the SESPA recommended policy and address that issue if we can.
So it's just a point of information.
On the Tuesday, May 24th agenda, the second reading was scheduled, but we postponed it, but I haven't found the first reading yet.
Yeah, I don't think there was one.
I'm going through a month.
No, there might have been.
It might have just been the straight CSBA version.
And then I asked for changes to that.
I don't remember, but I'm sure that we never discussed this version.
My recollection was that they, if the first version was, it was the CSBA.
I was on our, I haven't now.
It's on our Tuesday, May 10th agenda.
And I have to find the actual page.
And I know you'd asked for revisions.
And then we did not have a chance to discuss this at the last board meeting.
So we moved it and created this board meeting.
So what, let's, let's move on.
So on the 20 page, 27 on that first one, it was.
Is the actual board policy there?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
I just found it.
All right, so let's go on.
Yeah.
I just want to make sure we clear and get that on the record.
Okay.
So if I could go, if it's helpful to the board, I can go through.
The language of the policy as it was presented on May 10th as well as the strikeout.
It's an addition that we're already included.
And so you'll see that through the document here.
The first change was to strikeout the word courageous and change that word to insightful.
The next change was instead of creating language that went on and on in a paragraph format.
Instead to create a bulleted listed format.
Recognizing these particular issues.
Tell me if I'm going too fast, you can always stop me there.
A third change was to change language instead of saying a positive experience.
Let me go backwards.
A child's self perception of their competencies and mathematics begins very early in life.
And that parents, teachers and community members need to be aware of the impact.
That encouragement and high expectations can have on the long-term future of a child's education in mathematics, instead of a positive experience.
There was some reordering of vision statement, and also some drafting of the new language.
This addition says that the district will encourage and facilitate training and education for parents and guardians of preschool and elementary school students to help them engage.
In insightful conversations about issues of bias and about the impact of encouragement and high expectations on later achievement in mathematics.
A change here.
There was a request to add teacher and or counselor to the list of people who could disagree with the placement of a student's initial mathematics course and to the list of people who may appeal the decision.
So before this version, teachers and counselors were left out in it just said that a student and his or her parent.
And further, those were the revisions that I took note of.
And there was another courageous.
There was another courageous.
On the non-discrimination and district programs.
You made the change you didn't highlight it.
Engage in insightful conversations.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry.
So it should have been here.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
So I very much like the addition of teacher and counselor.
If you look at different identification programs and different districts that have been revised for identifying gifted children.
That's one of the things that they want to make sure you know prevents bias that it's not just sort of your stereotype of the upper middle class parent pushing their kid forward.
But there are many caring adults in a student's life who might be able to help that recognize that young person's talent and pushing forward.
So I really like that.
I need a little clarification.
I don't understand why you can't have, I mean, it's fine to take a courageous, but then why can you put it in insightful.
So I just need a little clarification.
Well, I think I'd be ahead to give a better word.
I thought courageous is kind of.
Doesn't mean anything for one thing or it means too much.
I mean, right.
You've coined courageous conversation.
Courageous.
Right.
It's too emotionally laden.
And insightful is not.
Yes.
But if you've got a better word, I'd be glad.
You know, my problem with it is it's sort of the buzzword of the actually the buzzword of last year.
Not even a courageous conversation.
Courageous conversations.
I don't like keeping those in the future.
People are going to say what?
What would he talk about?
Engage in serious conversations.
You could just say engage in conversations.
I'm not way too insightful.
I just don't really like those adjectives.
It's like you're just like not in personal experience.
Isn't it?
But we are just picking one above and the other.
And what's I don't.
Actually, I would prefer to strike the attitude then.
Well, I mean, I'm actually wondering about the word conversation.
So I mean, what do we really want to do?
Yeah, conversation might be a little weak.
We want dialogue.
What do we want?
Yeah, I like that.
I'm just going to say that.
We have dialogue is good.
Engage in dialogue.
These are important dialogues.
Because dialogue has a stronger connotation.
You're just chatting about it.
Yeah, you're engaging in dialogue.
I feel comfortable with that.
And I feel more comfortable with striking the adjectives.
Because I think it's a bit over time.
I'm happy with that.
Take out the insightful conversations and just change it to engage in dialogue.
I like that better.
That's.
I'm happy with that.
Okay.
So I have a couple that I didn't say.
Do you have any more?
No, I think that's mine.
I'm just wondering.
Do we include the U.E. and dialogue in America?
Is that British?
We put it in the United States.
Okay, happy present.
Okay.
I'm happy with that.
On the first page, Peter,
and I'm sorry.
And it's in the third paragraph.
To the extent possible.
I'm sorry.
We don't want to strike conversation.
Dialogue.
Oh, yeah.
You do.
So that actually makes it perfect.
Which is good.
Good.
Perfect.
Okay.
Thank you for waiting.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
Where can I go next for?
Third paragraph.
In this first page.
I go.
Yeah.
And I'm sorry.
To the extent possible.
Like that.
I think we, I would love to see that's stringent and saying,
this could student shall be provided an opportunity.
I don't see why it's the extent possible that sort of orders it down.
It does.
It does a little bit.
I would.
I don't remember who came up with that wording.
Probably Peter.
But to me, that's just a little bit.
Much for our special needs.
Kids who can't be.
Given that opportunity.
Well, but they provided the opportunity.
And that's.
We should provide the opportunity.
Some students came.
Can't.
Or take of it.
Okay.
I wouldn't argue.
But I mean, this, this, this, this says that, you know,
well, if it's not possible.
And it doesn't say, you know,
the special needs to do something like that.
Same like a little bit too much of a weasel out.
Yeah.
Sounds a little weaseling out.
Okay.
All right.
Everybody else.
Okay.
I've asked Charlie if he would like to wait in.
And I'm.
Sorry.
It's midnight.
Where he is.
He said he says.
I tend to agree with Ron.
Thank you.
It's nice to have.
Down in the third from the bottom.
The governing board recognizes that there is.
There are significant gaps in opportunity in achieving for certain groups of students.
That I don't know why that also bothers me.
Certain groups of students.
I mean, we're, we're.
Students in a.
Yeah, but.
Well.
I can, I can live with it.
Just.
I think the term.
Yeah.
I think the term achievement gap.
It's also.
We'll become a term and already has become a term that is.
It's going away.
Yeah.
It became a bit more obsolete.
It made smooth.
And that to opportunity gap to.
I'm to.
I'm to serve students in it.
It for that language.
That work.
I would change.
Yeah.
Okay.
I can live with it.
I think that was it.
I had courageous.
Okay.
Thank you.
Good.
I'm happy.
You know what?
So with the revision.
We've got over our time and we didn't extend the.
Did we?
What was our time?
A 45 is the German.
Oh, I've moved that we continue the meeting until nine o'clock.
Thank you.
Okay.
That's fine.
Okay.
Good.
Does the border.
Agreed to.
Bring this for approval tonight.
I'm given the changes that have been made.
Yes, I will.
I will move that we approve.
More policy.
652.1 with the.
Change is specified tonight.
Do we have a second?
All in favor.
Hi.
Thank you for the work.
Yes.
Charlie.
Charlie says approve.
Okay.
Can I.
Can I make a call it?
Yes.
So this work is dear to my heart.
But even more important is the reception from the parent and teaching community of this work.
This conversation when it was passed.
By California was a conversation I brought to our teachers and they're very anxious and eager to move forward with this.
It gives them permission to have more difficult.
Maybe courageous, maybe insightful conversations.
Several of the middle school teachers have signed up along with me to attend a county wide.
Monthly conversation around how to advocate for social justice using mathematics instruction and how to elevate student achievement.
And I have a parent engagement committee who selected math and science for next year as an opportunity to focus on student achievement.
So they appreciate the support.
They've told me that.
They appreciate the board's focus at the policy level along with.
The district's focus at the action level.
Thank you.
We have any comments from the good or.
I just want to ask Charlie make sure he doesn't need too much gumbo.
And we are adjourned.
Thank you.