Agenda - 03-10-20; 8-a - Minutes

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12 1 Commissioner McKee asked if, in a worse case scenario, the County may be looking at 2 2 '/2 new schools county wide by 2026, if it chooses to implement full pre-K, in addition to the 3 legislative mandates. 4 Craig Benedict said when SAPFO was first put together the model to increase capacity 5 was to build a new school, but now the model is not necessarily a new build as there is so much 6 work to be done on the existing schools. He said capacity has been added to some of the 7 schools in recent years, and the new model may be redevelopment of existing buildings, as 8 opposed to new builds. 9 Commissioner McKee said the existing schools are in need of extensive work, costing 10 millions of dollars, and if this worse case were to come to pass, it would be another —$75 million 11 for new schools. 12 Craig Benedict referred to the slide that indicates 775 seats lost due to legislative 13 mandates and pre-K, and said that equates to 1.5 schools. He said OCS would also have 14 enough seats lost to warrant an additional school. 15 Commissioner McKee said regardless of how the problem is tackled, it will cost money. 16 Commissioner Marcoplos said he is concerned about the reduced class size, and asked 17 if this has been well thought out and if there are better ways to deal with this. He asked if the 18 County is bound to follow the class size formula, or could the class size be a bit bigger but an 19 additional teacher added to the room. 20 Commissioner Bedford said if the County fails to comply, the State would take over the 21 school board, and suspend the license of the superintendent. 22 Commissioner Marcoplos said the current legislature would do that, and he asked if the 23 current educational establishment might have alternate ways to deal with classroom numbers. 24 He said these are unfunded mandates from the State. 25 26 Student Capacity and Projections (chart) 27 28 Commissioner McKee asked if the school board staffs and members would like to 29 comment. 30 Commissioner Dorosin asked if the first set of numbers are based on changing class 31 size and the second set of numbers are based on the pre-k seats currently taking up space in 32 the schools. 33 Craig Benedict said there are pre-K students in the schools, and staff takes that 34 capacity and assumes it is used for K-5, but they are actually used for pre-K as well. 35 Commissioner Dorosin said a school might have 585 students, and asked if that number 36 includes the pre-K students or not. 37 Craig Benedict said staff is counting the capacity of the school, and assumes the 38 capacity is for use of K-5t" only, when actually a certain number of seats are being used by pre- 39 K. 40 Commissioner Dorosin said he is still not clear. He said a school has x number of 41 spaces for K-5, based on the classroom size mandates set out by the legislature. He said, for 42 example a school has 585 seats, and when the students are counted and number 585, then the 43 school is at 100% capacity. He said if the number is higher the school is over capacity, and if it 44 is lower the school is under capacity. 45 Craig Benedict said yes. 46 Commissioner Dorosin asked if pre-K students are currently included, when students 47 sitting in seats are counted. 48 Craig Benedict said no, pre-K students are not counted. He said the original MOU said 49 to not count pre-K against the capacity in the school.