District Office Modernization Project required more study
Superintendent Search Consultant RFP to be reissued
State requires masks for all students and staff indoors
LCC principal Reno Media presents marketing plan
District Office Modernization Project
The District's Headquarters building on Encinitas Boulevard is old and in need of renovation. District Staff and its consultant presented an update on the project to renovate the building. They presented two scenarios, a "base" or minimum recommended renovation for $4.6 million, or an "enhanced" version for $7.8 million. The high cost of renovation was attributed to the poor state of the building, which has suffered from many years of under investment.
The market value of the building today was estimated to be ~$5.3 million.
As a further scenario, staff considered selling the building and purchasing a different building in the district. However, staff stated that no buildings are available in the size we would require, about 15,000 - 20,000 square feet.
The Board was asked to vote to continue down a path of either the base plan or the enhanced plan, with the next step being the preparation of detailed plans and bid documents for the preferred option.
After asking a few questions, I was not convinced that either option necessarily makes the most sense. Staff estimated that if we chose the enhanced option, the value of the building after the renovation might be in the range of $9 million, and therefore adding only about $4 million to the market value of the building for an $8 million investment.
Also, I'm not convinced that we couldn't rent an appropriate space.
Another option I would like to explore is the possibility of selling the building to a real estate developer who would be responsible for the renovations, and we could enter into a long-term lease on the property. It is my belief that a professional developer will be significantly more efficient than the District in managing the cost of the renovation.
In the end, the Board voted 3-1 to study two additional scenarios - selling the building and leasing or purchasing at a different location, or entering into a sale/lease-back transaction at the existing site. Trustee Katrina Young was the only one to vote against this process. I will work with District staff to explore these options.
Superintendent Search Consultant
The Board voted to reissue the Request for Proposals (RFP) to hire an executive search firm to assist the District in hiring a new superintendent. The new process will allow a committee of the Board (rather than the entire Board) to direct staff and assist in outreach to (hopefully) have a more robust response from recruiters. The deadline for firms to submit new or revised bids was set for September 30th, 2021.
CDPH Mask Update
The District's attorney, Kendall Swanson, presented an excellent analysis of the legal framework around the wearing of masks indoors when students return to school.
Unfortunately, the State and County government is taking away local school district authority, and is requiring that all staff and students, vaccinated or not, to wear masks while indoors until further notice.
The original guidance from the state indicated that students must wear masks or the school district would be required to send the student home. Parents in favor of mask choice expressed optimism when shortly after that announcement the state removed the language requiring that non-compliant students must be sent home, and instead indicated that enforcement of the mask mandate would be up to the local school district. Unfortunately, Ms. Swanson noted that this was done for some arcane legal reason and that, in fact, it has been made clear that school districts must remove maskless students from class, or be subject to fines, legal liability, school closure, or even jail time for district leadership.
This is clearly non-sensical for a number of reasons, including that it doesn't take into consideration local conditions. For example, our District has very low rates of COVID infection and some of the highest vaccination rates in the country, yet all of California must follow the same mask mandate.
One of the reasons the state gave for requiring everyone to wear a mask is that some who choose not to wear a mask might be bullied. And, some who choose to wear a mask might also be bullied. This is actually in the regulation.
In any event, because there is apparently no room for local control or influence on this policy, as of today all of our students and staff must wear masks while inside at school. There are lawsuits in progress, but I'm not optimistic. There appears to be nothing we can do.
La Costa Canyon
LCC principal Reno Medina provided a presentation where he discussed how LCC would improve its attractiveness to incoming students. You may remember that earlier in the year we were facing a lottery to move up to 100 students from SDA to LCC because 70% of the incoming 9th graders chose SDA over LCC.
Principal Media postulated that most of the problem was due to marketing. Due to COVID the school was unable to do a number of things to show how attractive the school is, such as campus tours, meet-and-greets, etc. Going forward, with better marketing, he believes the school could mitigate the disparity in choice. I'm not convinced that there aren't fundamental issues that need to be solved before this issue can be mitigated. I think this will be revisited in the coming months.
There were a few other items, but these are the main items of interest.