Correspondence - #24 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Flores, Dora From:Tim Johnson <tjohnson@jlkrllp.com> Sent:Tuesday, July 20, 2021 8:29 AM To:eComment; Sarmiento, Vicente; Mendoza, Nelida; Bacerra, Phil; Penaloza, David; Lopez, Jessie; Hernandez, Johnathan; Phan, Thai Cc:Ridge, Kristine; Mendoza, Steven Subject:Agenda Item #24- School Crossing Guards Council…Tonight as you consider item #24, I urge you to delay this vote until such a time that an agreement between the City and the three local schools districts can be arrived at for cost sharing in providing crossing guards for our school children. If it is impossible to delay the vote due to the school year starting in a few short weeks, I urge you to seek as to whether it is possible to:  Shorten the time frame until the Christmas/New Year break to provide a few months to allow city staff to negotiate a fair and equitable financial sharing arrangement with the school districts  Go on a month to month basis until such a time that staff can negotiate with the school districts  Provide that the extension options are only allowed to be exercised by city staff IF AND ONLY IF the item comes back to the council for approval and after a complete report is provided by the City as to the efforts to have local school districts participate in the funding of the program. I believe we can all agree that safe passage for our children to school is very important. However, this burden should not fall solely upon the city’s ability to fund the program. Our local school districts have resources which should be sharing in this responsibility for safe passage for our city residents and their school kids. My gut tells me that a one year approval is the minimum that can be done if we want to have this program for day one of the upcoming school year. However, I believe that you have the ability to put milestones in place to where the city staff are required to provide an update on their actions in negotiating with our three school districts. I would recommend that you highly consider removing the ability to extend the contract without council approval and require substantial updates from the districts in November, January, and April including having representatives from the District justify in a presentation their positions if they are deciding not to participate in funding. If you feel that this program should be solely funded by the city because these are city school kids walking to school and utilizing the resource and you want to keep them safe on their way to school, I ask that you honestly answer the question “why are we only providing this service to the public schools and the children that utilize the public schools instead of the many students of our city that choose to utilize the great private and charter schools in our city?” Are the Santa Ana children who go to these non-public district schools any less deserving of safe passage? My gut tells me that the answer is that you believe that they are in deed entitled to safe passage to school but believe that the funding of those schools’ crossing guards may be better suited to come from the budget of that private school for their children. This highlights that the schools also have a responsibility in funding of the crossing guard program. If you do not believe the schools are responsible and that you are only providing it because the school aged children of Santa Ana are utilizing the services, then you have no choice but to say that the city should also be providing these services to all school aged children and not just those that go to our great public schools. To be clear, I am not advocating expanding this program at this time to our private and charter schools but instead am challenging your thinking if you are voting to approve because you believe that it is the city’s responsibility to provide safe passage for our children…but maybe not all children. Please take steps to ensure that the three public school districts that operate the 35 schools that participate in the crossing guard program participate financially in the program. By entering a long term contract right now with no requirement for negotiation with the school districts will ensure that the program is not fairly funded by the districts 1