zone-California 7

Another resident replied at https://pastebin.com/KD1ZUXVz. Below is the content.

The response from resident James not only lacks proper nuance, but is evidence of the lack of education relating to this subject.

Yes, trans people do represent a small portion of the population. But in the real world, chances are, more likely than not, that your child will interact with a person who identifies as such. Exposing this topic to them so they have a better understanding of the world around them is crucial for their success as they grow up.

Characterizing the increased visibility of transgender people as a 'social contagion' fundamentally misunderstands what we're observing. Consider the following analogy: Imagine if left-handedness was stigmatized and forcibly suppressed. In this situation, left-handed people didn't cease to exist—they simply hid their natural inclination. As society's acceptance grew, the recorded number of left-handed people rose dramatically, not because being left-handed was 'contagious,' but because people finally felt safe being themselves. By the time acceptance was widespread, the percentage of left-handed people stabilized at its natural rate of about 10%.
What may look like a 'sudden increase' to some is actually the unveiling of what was always present, just hidden from view. We aren't seeing more transgender people being created—we're seeing more transgender people who feel safe enough to live authentically.

The last claim is just straight up moronic. Bathroom signs are not stopping rapists and perverts. Please cite sources when making claims as bold as “rapes are clearly correlated with trans women using the women’s bathroom”.

CUSD Measure Z Approved with $347M Bond

Measure Z, a bond measure for Cupertino Union School District (CUSD), has been approved with a 61.07% approval rate. This bond, amounting to $347 million, will be funded through a property tax rate of approximately $21 per $100,000 of assessed valuation, generating $23,300,000 annually. Importantly, Measure Z extends the current tax rate without any increase.

Next Steps: Allocating the Funds

With the bond approved, it's now crucial to determine how to allocate the funds to maximize benefits for the community and the school district. A Citizens' Bond Oversight Committee will be formed, appointed by the school board, to ensure transparency and effective use of the bond money. For more information about Measure Z, please see here.

Partial Project List

Hiring Contractors for Measure Z Projects

There is a discussion on the best approach to hiring contractors. One perspective advocates for exclusively hiring unionized contractors to ensure better quality work and suggests using a Project Labor Agreement (PLA). According to sources, PLAs can have various impacts:

• Impact on Cost: PLAs may increase the overall cost of the projects
• Impact on Competition: PLAs could discourage or prevent non-unionized contractors from competing for construction projects.
• Impact on Minority Contractors: PLAs might disproportionately impact small businesses, particularly those owned by women and minorities.
• Local Impact: PLAs can be used by public project owners like school boards or city councils to set goals for creating local jobs and achieving social welfare goals.

Use Measure Z to Reimburse Previous Project?

There was a tentative resolution proposed at the board meeting on December 9, 2024. The tentative resolution stated, "the District will reimburse the District’s Building Fund 21 the balance of the debt lease financing for the District solar project costs from the bond proceeds from Measure Z".

The resolution was for discussion only and didn't appear at subsequent board meetings.

The solar project was approved on November 2, 2023. According to the presentation, the project is funded with a debt that can be paid off through savings on utility bills. The district starts to save money even with the debt in place.

Pros and Cons of Using Measure Z to Pay Off the Solar Project
Pros:

• The district won't need to pay for the solar debt in the future, which will reduce the expenditure from the general fund (about $1.8M per year).

Cons:

• It will impact the number of new projects Measure Z can support.
• The community may not anticipate or agree with this usage of funds.

Response from resident James:

In general, trans issues probably shouldn't be taught to children, unless proper context is provided. Although there are people who are actually born trans, they tend to be less than 1% of the population.

The massive increase in "trans people" (mental, not genetic or physical) over the last decade or two, is in part due to a "social contagion" aspect, which appears to be bolstered by such widespread media surrounding it.

There are plenty of reasons why people might feel like they "don't fit in," especially, again, in the last decade or two, where the amount of "ways to live" is higher than ever. This doesn't mean that they should be incentivized to pursue life-changing hormones/surgeries with a relatively high incidence of life-long pain/discomfort, both physical and mental.

Also, with regards to the safety of "biological women," "trans women" probably shouldn't be allowed in women's prisons, sports, etc., and perhaps even restrooms, as the increased amount of rapes and injuries is clearly correlated.

Since the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, the Cupertino Union School District (CUSD) has faced several controversial issues, attracting significant media attention. You can find some media reports here and here.

Long Jiao mentioned adoption of BP 6144 at the Board Meeting on September 26, 2024, a request also made by a group of CUSD parents at CurriculumIntegrity.org. Board members Jerry Liu, Phyllis Vogal, Sylvia Leong, and Satheeth Madhathil requested to add BP 6144 to future agenda items during the September 24, 2024, board meeting.

BP 6144 appeared in the Board Advance on October 17, 2024, and will be revisited in the future.

BP 6144 is a board policy regarding instructions related to controversial issues.

Some of the guidelines for instructions related to controversial issues are:

• The topic shall be age-appropriate.
• Instruction shall be presented in a balanced manner without bias and without promoting any particular point of view.
• In the classroom, teachers act on behalf of the District and are expected to follow the adopted curriculum, meaning they have limited freedom of speech in the classroom.
• Students have the freedom of speech without jeopardizing their grades or being subject to discrimination, retaliation, or discipline.

Below are the full list of guidelines.

A group of CUSD parents supported BP 6144. And some members of the Cupertino Educators Association (CEA), or the Teachers' Union, opposed it.

BP 6144 has been adopted by numerous California school districts, including the Fremont Union High School District, which encompasses the entire CUSD area.

CUSD adopted BP 6144 at the board meeting on 11/21. See here and here for details.

During the board meeting on 10/14/2021, CUSD Board voted (with 3:2 simple majority) to close Meryerholz and Regnart Elementary Schools. This decision had profound consequences to the community.

But this is not the end of it. According to the Board Meeting on 9/23/2021, the district might evaluate another possible school closure in FY2025-26.

It's important to revisit what happened in 2021 to understand the process and the reason leading to the schools' closure, as well as what can be improved.

The Timeline

• CUSD failed to pass parcel tax Measure O in March 2020.

• CUSD created a Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) in the Spring of 2020 to consider options for school closures and consolidations.

• The CAC presented the final report on 10/22/2020 after five meetings.

• In November 2020, right after the election, the community was informed about possible school closures.

• CUSD failed to pass another parcel tax Measure A in May 2021. According to [the report]
  (https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/cusdk8/Board.nsf/files/C78SEY0492B6/$file/Cupertino Union School District - Final Report.pdf), "The Parcel Tax revenue would allow the district to delay the decision of closing schools."

• The district resumed school closure process after the failure of Measure A.

• The board voted 3:2 to close Meyerholz and Regnart at the Board Meeting at 10/14/2021.

The Reason

The district mentioned two reasons for school closures:

• Declining enrollment
• State funding affecting the district budget

The district expected the enrollment to continue to drop.

The district expected the budget to be in a deficit for many years.

Several years have passed, and I collected the actual data and compared with the prediction below. The enrollment prediction was relatively accurate, but the financial predictions were way off.

Notably, the budget in FY 2023-24 is in a deficit again even though the actual revenue is $42M more than the predicted revenue and $34M more than the predicted expense.

One of the reasons for school closures was to reduce the expense, but the expense was not affected by the school closures at all.

Enrollment Rules
The district proposed two enrollment rules during the school closures in 2021.

• Each elementary school should be staffed with at least two Kindergarten classes.
  
• Each middle school should be more than 700 students. (see above)

According to publicschoolreview.com, average school size in California is 588 students.

What Can Be Better?

Since the CUSD school closures in 2021, possible future school closures have become nightmares among local residents, such as the dispute related to the FUHSD Trustee Area transition.

To restore residents' confidence to the district, I think there are at least two things the district can improve on

• Critical district issues (like school closures, reconfiguration, selling school sites, etc,) should require super-majority (or 4 out of 5) votes from the board.
• If schools are going to be closed due to low enrollment, they need to have opportunity of open enrollment programs across the district.

Note

Someone asked for the voting record for the school closures. You can find the information from the record for the 10/14/2021 board meeting at Agenda - Cupertino Union School District BoardDocs Plus. They don't have a direct link and you have to manually find the meeting on that day. It was agenda item 13.1. Below is a screenshot.

Please notice Sylvia Leong and Phyllis Vogel's current term end at the end of 2024. Sylvia is seeking for re-election while Phyllis hasn't pulled any paper yet (up to 7/25/2024).

At the Board meeting on 4/25/2024, the Board discussed the plan to relocate the District Administrative Office from its current location at S. Mary Avenue, Sunnyvale to the Meyerholz campus. which was closed by the district in 2021.

The district plans to use Certificates of Participation (COP) debt to finance the new office building. Unlike bonds, which need to be approved by voters, COP comes from the district's operating budget and doesn't need voter approval. The district is currently in a budget deficit.

Since CUSD is renting its current Administrative Office, after moving into the new office, the district needs to pay the COP, but not the current rent. The current rent is about $471K per year. The COP payment would be about $686K per year, an increase of about $215K per year. I assume the district would pay both current rent and the COP while the new office building is in construction. But the district needs to pay neither after COP is paid off (30 years later).

This district is planning to convert Meyerholz Elementary School to new district office, but is this the best location? I assume once Meyerholz is converted to district office, it wouldn't be suitable to be a school anymore. Should we keep Meyerholz as a potential school site and build the new district office somewhere else?

Southwest corner of Lawson Middle School could be a good alternative place. The corner is currently occupied by a lot of school buses and other district facilities. It looks like below.

The Finch site is a 1.5 acres empty lot next to Sedgwich Elementary School. It should be a suitable alternative site if it's large enough.

CUSD Board discussed a potential bond measure at the 4/25/2024 Board meeting. The list of projects can be found here.

Why bonds?

As you can see in CUSD FY2023-24 Budget, CUSD budget were spent on

• Employee Salaries and Benefits (83%)
• Books and Supplies (7%)
• Services and Operating Expenditures (9%)
• Misc expenses

Only part of "Services and Operating Expenditures" can be used for facility repairs and improvements. But that's not enough. CUSD depends on bonds for facility repairs and improvements as a "tradition".

What are current bonds?

You can find all CUSD bonds on EMMA.

Residents are currently paying two CUSD bonds right now (you can check at Santa Clara County Tax Allocation).

The 2001 bond should be paid off in 2027.
The 2012 bond (Measure H) ran out of money in FY2022-23, but will be paid off around 2040.

What's the difference between bonds and parcel taxes?

Please see this article for more information.

How bonds work?

According to Bond measure at the 4/25/2024 Board meeting,

• The district raises the money (bond) in three series
• The residents pay back the bond based on assessed property value in about 30 years (probably faster since the assessed property value should increase)
• The district uses the bond money on projects (normally last shorter than payback time, previous 2001 and 2012 bonds lasted around 10 years each)

The Official Bond Measure:
On 06/13/2024, the board voted to put modified tax rate extension on November ballot. The total bond amount is $347M. The tax rate looks like below with longer term and lower average tax rate.

The project list for the bond is mostly generic with emphasis on new classrooms, labs for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM). The keywords for the usage are "repair", "modernize", "renovate", "upgrade", "expand", "construct", etc. Below are the full list.

If passed, the bond will have an oversight committee and report the usage every year.

Scenarios for new bonds (obsolete)

The district proposed three scenarios. Below are the screenshots where you can see residents' burden and the bond amount.

Please notice the tax rate is per $100,000 assessed value (not market value). If you property is assessed to be $2M, your burden for this bond will be 20 times the proposed tax rate per year.

Tax rate: $30 per $100,000 assessed value, total bond value: $444M.

Tax rate: $24 per $100,000 assessed value, total bond value: $350M.

Tax rate extension. Total bond value: $306M.

CUSD is about to transition from LCFF (Local Control Funding Formula) to Basic Aid in 2024-25.

California K-12 public schools have two funding models: LCFF and Basic Aid, with California setting an entitlement per ADA (Average Daily Attendance). If the school district revenue from property taxes and other sources is less than the entitlement, the district will be funded by LCFF via state funds. Otherwise, the school district will be funded by Basic Aid via property taxes.

If school district is funded by LCFF, the total revenue will be related to enrollment. The more enrollment (ADA) there is, the more revenue the district receives. If the school district is funded by Basic Aid, its total revenue will be based on the total amount of local property tax, and not related to enrollment anymore.

From Santa Clara County Tax Allocation, CUSD should receive 24.75% of the property tax (FUHSD receives 16.71% of the property tax). The total property tax rate is about 1% of accessed value.

CUSD also has two active bonds which are at 0.0357% in total. For $100K accessed value, CUSD should receive $247.50 from the 1% property tax plus $35.70 from active bonds. As a comparison, FUHSD receives $167.10 from the 1% property tax plus $44.10 from bonds.

From CUSD 2023-24 budget, the revenue for CUSD is $207M in FY 2023-24, a 12% (or $28M) decrease compared to that in FY 2022-23 due to reduction in Federal, State (other than LCFF) and local revenues. But the total expenditures are $223M. So CUSD has a $16M deficit in FY 2023-24.

Within the $223M expenditures, about $185M are for employee (teachers and administration positions) salaries and benefits.

Compared to FY 2022-23, the enrollment in FY 2023-24 decreased 1.5% (from about 13,700 to about 13,500).

But the total budgeted FTE (Full Time Employee) in FY 2023-24 is 1502.540, an increase of 53.491 (3.7%) compared to FY 2022-23 (1438.174).

Budget for FY 2024-25

CUSD passed a stunning budget for FY 2024-25 with more than $33M deficit. The expense is more than 10% compared to previous year. Below is a summary of the budget.

Cupertino City staff proposed new Capital Improvement Programs for FY 2024-25 at 3/19/2024 Council Meeting. Six (6) new projects were proposed with total cost about $19.5M.

At the same time, there are seventeen (17) existing projects with remaining funds more than $25.8M, 6 nearly completed projects, and 5 completed projects. See here for a complete list.

Because Cupertino is in a budget crisis right now, the city's capital reserve is expected to drain out in two years.

Weeks later, city staff proposed City Work Program (CWP) for FY 2024-25 at 4/3/2024 Council Meeting.

Comparing with proposed CWP staff proposed one year ago (4/4/2023), the new proposed CWP staff proposed on 4/3/2024 has a noticeable change: the new CWP didn't include any budget information. Some of the CWPs appeared in the 2023 CWP list which contains budget information. But there are some new CWPs (like "Speed Limit Lowing") totally missing budget information.

The list of new CIPs can be found here. Below are the screenshots for each of them.

Which CIP do you support?

Bollinger Road is the boundary between Cupertino and San Jose.

In July 2021 (during Covid-19 pandemic), the City of Cupertino generated Bollinger Road Corridor Safety Study. The report provided many safety suggestions and two alternatives.

• Alternative A includes a lane reduction on Bollinger Road, from two travel lanes in each direction to one travel lane in each direction and a two-way left-turn lane.
• Alternative B maintains the existing lane configuration of two travel lanes in each direction.

You can also see related information here.

San Jose Spotlight reported on 01/22/2024 that the project is set to start this (2024) summer.

Cupertino received external funding for this project. Cupertino needs to pay 20% of the cost for design.

This project appeared as Low priority item on 03/19/2024 City Council study session.

According to Bollinger Road Corridor Safety Study, the total cost for Alternative A is $11.7M, and the total cost for Alternative B is $10.5M in 2021. The project will be a five-year project. And total cost for Cupertino is estimated to be $4M.

During the public comment time, residents were split into two groups with one group supported Alternative A (lane reduction), while another group supported Alternative B (maintain lanes). Which alternative do you support?

Below are more details about Bollinger Road Corridor Safety Study.

The study is a safety study with goals to "identify improvements to create a safer and more accessible corridor". According to the report, seems all the collisions happened at intersections.

The study performed two surveys in March 2021 and May 2021, respectively. The March survey received 247 responses. While the survey in May had 139 unique users "VIEW" the maps. The report didn't mention how many responses received for the survey in May. The survey in May was about the two alternatives of reducing lanes and maintaining current lanes. Some residents reported they were aware of the survey in March, but they were not aware of the survey in May.

The results for the survey in March 2021 were:

The results for the survey in May 2021 were: