Bruce Burns, superintendent, opened the Moraga school district board meeting on Tuesday night noting that the schools were featured in a Forbes.com article highlighting Moraga’s educational value for real estate dollars. He updated the board on the success of Moraga students in the Parent Teacher Assocation’s annual Reflections campaign, with students receiving recognition for video, music and written compositions.

Kym Leserman gave an update to the board about the bus services contracted by the district. Fees will go up about three percent a year. The bus service will use a texting system to notify parents or sitters if buses are late; however, only one bus in Moraga has been late in the recent past.

Joanne McClellan, president of the Moraga Teachers’ Association, wanted to extend her thanks to Bruce Burns for being great to work with in the absence of a formal appreciation day for school district staff.

Sara Mooradian, a parent at Los Perales, highlighted an upcoming community event taking place on May 24 at Lafayette Plaza Park from 7 to 8 a.m. Called “Wake Up California” this event is meant to educate the public, bring the community together and generate press interest in the ongoing budget issues impacting children in the state. 

The board passed proclamations honoring Gayle Lombardi, Carol Scott and Kim Gelman, all of whom are retiring from the district this year.

California School Employees Association Week is May 15 through 21. This week is dedicated to honoring staff at the schools who are often behind-the-scenes and keep the schools running smoothly.

With regret, the board approved the termination of positions dedicated to physical education and child behavior specialist. The positions have been eliminated to help balance the budget.

Dr. Brad Senden from the Center for Community Opinion presented an analysis of 401 telephone interviews to gauge community support. The net result is that there is “a solid base of support” of about 60 percent of voters for a parcel tax in support of the schools, but no one issue creates a super-majority required for passage of a tax.

The results suggest that the district “needs time to talk in detail to the 10 to 15 percent who don’t know. Answer their questions. You need to make the core of an argument for the monies requested.”

The board queried Senden regarding the need for a sunset clause on the potential parcel tax. Senden stated that it was no longer part of the polling process as response is strong every time for a sunset date.

In addition, the board requested guidance on whether to pursue a mail-in or regular vote. Senden stated that the mail-in process is cheaper for the district and that crowded ballots are often counterproductive to passage as the ballot measure gets lost among the other issues.

After further discussion, and after clarifying that any ballot measure passed would not impact taxes until July 1, 2012, the board directed Burns to pursue the potential for an April or May parcel tax.

Seismic upgrades then became the focus point of the meeting. Ron Gallagher, of R.P. Gallagher and Associates, a structural engineering firm, and John Nelson, of Murakami/Nelson Architectural Corporation, presented their findings on the Camino Pablo large classroom building and Wings 2 and 3 at Rheem Elementary.

These buildings all require seismic strengthening. Their construction – tilt-up walls – are prone to breaking away from the roof during a major quake. While the engineering firm does not anticipate that the roof would fall in on the buildings, a major quake would very likely make the buildings uninhabitable and unusable for the district.

Major costs are involved, as the walls must be braced to the roof, requiring that the roof be removed. At Rheem, the interior walls of these two wings also need to connected to the foundation. This would impact lighting, HVAC, electrical, and any other wiring or system that currently runs in the ceiling space – called “soft costs.” Because of the cost of the project, ADA requirements must also be met, requiring changes to sinks and doorways, impacting plumbing and flooring.

The engineers estimate that construction would cost about $4.2 million dollars. Broken out:

This number does not include rental of temporary classroom units so that the schools could continue to operate during the construction period, which would take about 10 months. 

The board queried the engineering team about monies available. While public funds from the state are available, they are quickly being used up. Replenishment of the funds given the state’s budget situation is unlikely at this time. In addition, any state funds typically require that the district provide matching funds.

The engineers stated that a retrofit project needs to be more than 50 percent soft costs for it to be cost-efficient to focus on scrapping the existing structure and build a new building that meets current safety standards.

In other money news, Kathy Bell, Chief Business Officer, updated the board on new accounting standards, requiring a change in reporting processes. She walked the board through the new categories.

Matt Westphal, of the Moraga Baseball Association, requested permission to build batting cages on the far west, unused portion of the Joaquin Moraga fields over the summer.

Lloyd Suganama and Bianca Lin, who live near the school, complained about noise and traffic. Westphal stated that batting cage use would occur during regular practice, not in addition to practice time.

In addition, Westphal stated that batting practice occurs now during practice time -- the batting cages are being requested to make it safer for the players and coaches by designating a specific location for batting practice.

Suganama and Lin both complained of late notice, having received the notice only the day before. Administrative staff spoke up, stating they had hand-delivered notices on Monday to increase attendance as in 2005, when the issue was last brought before the board, more advance notice meant that no one attended.

Tom Fitzgerald supported the projected and stated he moved close to Joaquin Moraga to be involved in sports and activities held on the school grounds. He noted that the cars and activity around Joaquin Moraga speak to “a vibrant community.”

The board extended the meeting 10 minutes to allow for discussion of reorganization of the after-school childcare clubs. The goal is to move to one director for all three sites. Next year, with the retirement of one director, two directors will oversee three sites.